Myanmar's Foreign Investors Face Office Space Shortage

Sean Danley has spent the past six months in Yangon scouting office space for his US-based employer, which wants to open an outpost in Myanmar. He checked out the city's three office towers. Annual rents in those buildings, none of which is taller than 27 stories, now surpass $100 a square foot, higher than the $75 average for downtown Manhattan, according to broker CBRE Group. The Yangon villas Danley considered didn't have safety exits and required sharing space with other companies or were in odd locations -- all unsuitable for an international engineering and construction business such as his. Finding office space is a headache for the hundreds of multinational companies looking to set up operations in Myanmar, a nation of 48 million that was the target of sanctions for 15 years. Yangon, the commercial capital, needs at least 8.7 million square feet of office space to support the influx, according to Yoma Strategic Holdings.