Phnom Penh's Grade A Office Market: TPMG Tower Arrives as Occupancy Slides

Cambodia’s property conversation runs almost entirely on condominiums and boreys. Commercial office space — the buildings multinational firms, banks, and professional services actually occupy — barely gets discussed, despite being the clearest available signal of how seriously foreign business is taking Phnom Penh. TPMG Tower, a 31-storey landmark now nearing completion in Daun Penh, is as good a hook as any to look at that market properly: what it actually offers, who else is competing for the same tenants, and what the published occupancy numbers say about the risk of building into oversupply.

The building: TPMG Tower, or Norodom Business Tower

TPMG Tower — its formal project name is Norodom Business Tower — sits at #44E0 Preah Norodom Boulevard in Daun Penh, next to the new National Bank of Cambodia headquarters. The developer is TP Moral Group (TPMG), chaired by Ty Khun; the building broke ground in 2023 as a joint construction effort with main contractor MCC, architect Aedas, and Meinhardt as MEP consultant. In July 2026 the developer confirmed the structural frame had topped out and most of the glass façade was installed, with the project moving into MEP installation, fit-out and commissioning.

The tower delivers roughly 9,301 sqm of Grade A office net leasable area across a typical floor plate of about 1,070 sqm NLA, with slab-to-slab ceiling heights of 4.3 metres and a fully integrated raised-flooring system — specifications aimed squarely at the ESG- and wellness-conscious tenant CBRE has flagged as increasingly selective (more on that below). Quoting rent is $28 per sqm plus a $6 per sqm management fee, offered on what the developer describes as promotional terms for first movers.

The office floors share the tower with Cambodia’s first five-star Pan Pacific hotel — a 227-key property occupying the mid-rise floors, with a rooftop sky bar, wellness centre and spa available to office tenants on corporate terms. Knight Frank Cambodia has been appointed exclusive leasing agent and, on completion, property manager — a scope that covers both tenant leasing and day-to-day building operations. Ross Wheble, Knight Frank’s Country Head, framed the appointment around a demand shift: “Businesses today are looking beyond location alone — they want efficient, professionally managed buildings that reflect their brand, support staff productivity and provide long-term operational value.” The stated target market is multinational corporations, professional service firms, financial institutions and larger Cambodian businesses.

One honest flag: the completion date has moved. Leasing collateral circulated earlier in 2026 quoted Q2 2026 for handover; the developer’s own July 2026 construction update now says “late 2026.” A one-to-two-quarter slip on a 31-storey mixed-use tower with a hotel inside it is unremarkable — but it is a slip, and it is the kind of detail that matters more in a softening leasing market than a tight one.

The Grade A universe is still a handful of buildings

Phnom Penh’s Grade A stock is small enough to name individually. Vattanac Capital (2014, 39 storeys, 187 metres, LEED Gold, designed by Farrells) has been the reference building since it opened, adding a Rosewood hotel on its upper floors in 2018 — the same office-plus-five-star-hotel formula TPMG is now repeating. Canadia Tower (2009) was Cambodia’s first purpose-built high-rise office block and is still marketed as Grade A by some agents, though its age relative to newer stock means it is now more commonly treated as Grade B. Exchange Square was an early Grade A entrant at roughly 15,000 sqm, though we could not confirm whether that figure still reflects the building’s current standing — treat it as a historical reference point rather than a current one. Sathapana Tower is marketed alongside TPMG as another new Grade A entrant in the same Daun Penh leasing window.

That is the competitive set TPMG Tower is entering: two long-established benchmarks (Vattanac, and Canadia at the margin), one earlier entrant of uncertain current standing, and one further new building arriving at roughly the same time. It is not a deep market, and every new Grade A delivery moves the supply needle meaningfully.

What the data actually says: a market softening before the next wave lands

The clearest, most current numbers come from Knight Frank Cambodia’s H2 2025 Real Estate Highlights (published mid-February 2026) and CBRE Cambodia’s Phnom Penh Mid-Year Review 2025 (released mid-2025) — the two firms that track this market systematically, no equivalent public series exists elsewhere.

Supply. Existing office stock reached 1,040,255 sqm of net lettable area by H2 2025, up just 2% year-on-year — a marked slowdown from the roughly 24% jump CBRE reported for 2023 alone. Only 24,875 sqm of new space actually completed in H2 2025 (one Grade A building in BKK1, one Grade B building in Chroy Changva), consistent with the “delayed completions” CBRE flagged through 2025. The pipeline behind that slow delivery, though, is large and getting larger: 746,680 sqm of future supply, up 38% year-on-year, with 78% of upcoming City Centre supply classified Grade A. Centrally-owned buildings dominate the market (72%) over strata-title (28%), and the City Centre — Chamkarmon (23% of existing stock), Daun Penh (22%), BKK1 and 7 Makara (13% each), Sen Sok (12%) — accounts for 80% of total supply against 20% in the suburbs.

Occupancy. This is where the trend turns genuinely concerning. CBRE’s H1 2025 review put citywide office occupancy at 64% and Grade A occupancy at nearly 80% — Grade A holding up notably better than the market as a whole. By H2 2025, Knight Frank recorded citywide occupancy at 58.7% (down 2.7 points year-on-year) and, more pointedly, prime/Grade A occupancy at 76% (down 5 points versus 2024). In other words, even the segment TPMG Tower is entering — the segment that was supposed to be the resilient one — lost ground in a single half-year window, at the same time the future pipeline swelled by more than a third. Knight Frank’s own assessment: “the short-term outlook for the Phnom Penh office sector is challenged by rising vacancy rates.”

Rent. Knight Frank put the average prime net effective rent at roughly $21 per sqm per month as of H1 2025, broadly flat since 2023-24. CBRE’s earlier 2023 review is worth remembering as the mechanism behind that flatness: landlords facing vacancy have tended to hold quoted rents and instead offer free-parking, extended rent-free periods and tenant improvements — meaning achieved (effective) rents have been compressed well below what quoting rents suggest, a gap that a headline number alone will not show you. TPMG’s $28/sqm quoting rent sits meaningfully above that prime average, which is normal for brand-new stock with hotel-grade amenities — but it is an asking price, not a proof of what tenants will actually pay once leasing gets underway.

Demand drivers and the honest risks

The medium-term demand case rests on FDI and CDC-approved investment continuing to flow — professional services, regional back-office functions, and financial institutions setting up to serve that investment, which is the buyer profile Knight Frank and Wheble both point to. ESG and wellness credentials are becoming a genuine differentiator: CBRE has flagged that non-compliant, older buildings are starting to lose multinational tenants outright over sustainability and operational shortfalls, which is exactly the gap TPMG’s raised flooring, high ceilings, and on-site wellness centre are designed to close. If that flight-to-quality dynamic holds, it should concentrate demand into the newest handful of buildings — TPMG, Vattanac, Sathapana — at the expense of ageing Grade B stock like Canadia Tower.

Set against that:

• Occupancy is falling, not just flat, at both the citywide and Grade A level, in the two most recent reporting periods available.
• The pipeline is growing faster than demand — a 38% year-on-year jump in future supply, mostly Grade A, landing into a market that just posted its weakest Grade A occupancy reading in the data we could find.
• Cambodia’s 2026 GDP growth forecast has been cut to around 4.8%, per Knight Frank, against a backdrop of Cambodia-Thailand border tension — a macro headwind for the corporate expansion this segment depends on.
• TPMG’s own pre-leasing position is not publicly disclosed. We could not verify how much of the tower is pre-committed ahead of its now-delayed handover, which matters more in a softening market than a tight one.
• The completion slip itself (Q2 2026 to “late 2026”) is a small but real data point worth tracking as the project moves through its final fit-out phase.

The read-through for a property investor

TPMG Tower is not a product an RC reader can buy into directly — it is leasehold office space, not strata-titled units for sale, and there is no Grade A office REIT or fund on the CSX to gain indirect exposure through (our CSX and REIT guide covers what does exist). The relevance is indirect but real: a five-star hotel and a flagship Grade A office tower opening in the same building is a genuine confidence signal about Phnom Penh’s standing with international brands, and MNC and financial-sector tenants leasing in Daun Penh are exactly the demand base behind expat rental demand in BKK1, Chamkarmon and Toul Kork — the districts we cover in our Phnom Penh market outlook. Read this market as a leading indicator for who is showing up to do business in the capital, not as a segment to underwrite directly.

The takeaway

TPMG Tower is a legitimate, well-documented addition to Phnom Penh’s Grade A office stock — a real developer, a named international leasing agent, and Cambodia’s first five-star Pan Pacific hotel sharing the same address. It is also arriving at an uncomfortable moment: Grade A occupancy fell from roughly 80% to 76% in the space of two quarters through 2025, the wider market sits below 60% occupied, and a future supply pipeline up 38% year-on-year — most of it Grade A — is still to be absorbed. None of that makes TPMG a bad building; Knight Frank’s own leasing appointment and the ESG-driven flight-to-quality argument suggest the newest, best-specified towers should fare better than the market average. But “better than a softening market” and “a market you’d underwrite blind” are different claims, and the honest read is the first one, not the second.

Sources & further reading

• Cambodia Investment Review — TPMG Tower Reaches Full Structural Height Ahead of Late-2026 Completion; Knight Frank Appointed Exclusive Leasing Agent — the July 2026 construction milestone, the Knight Frank appointment, and the Ross Wheble quote.
• Cambodia Investment Review — TP Moral Group Breaks Ground on Norodom Business Tower and First Pan Pacific Phnom Penh 5-Star Hotel — the 2023 groundbreaking, developer and project-team detail.
• realestate.com.kh — TPMG Tower Project Profile — office NLA, floor plate, quoting rent and building specifications.
• Pan Pacific Hotels Group — Pan Pacific Phnom Penh — the 227-key hotel component and 2026 opening.
• Knight Frank Cambodia — Cambodia Real Estate Highlights, H2 2025 — current office supply, pipeline, occupancy and district breakdowns.
• Khmer Times / realestate.com.kh — Key Takeaways from Knight Frank’s 2025 H1 Real Estate Report – Phnom Penh — cumulative supply, Grade B market share, and the $21/sqm prime rent figure.
• World Property Journal — Phnom Penh Commercial Property Sectors Face Crosswinds in 2025 — CBRE’s H1 2025 occupancy figures (64% citywide, ~80% Grade A) and the ESG-gap finding.
• Wikipedia — Vattanac Capital — background on Phnom Penh’s original Grade A benchmark building.