79% of PH firms expect AI to reshape their offices. Only 18% have started.
Office deals in Metro Manila slowed in the first half of 2026 while companies wait to find out if AI shrinks the number of desks they need. Property firm JLL says the deals are delayed, not dead.
Companies renting office space in Metro Manila have started holding off on signing, and the reason they give is artificial intelligence. Property consultancy JLL Philippines said businesses are pausing to work out whether AI will cut how many desks they need or just change how the work gets done. Net take-up, meaning new space actually occupied minus space given up, was about 67,000 square meters in the second quarter, bringing the first half of 2026 to 162,000 square meters.
The clearest sign is a gap in JLL's own survey of Philippine corporate real estate decision makers. Seventy nine percent of them expect AI to significantly reshape their property portfolios within five years. Only 18 percent have actually begun making changes. Almost everyone sees it coming. Almost nobody has moved.
What a paused market actually means
A pause is not a collapse. JLL's read is that companies are postponing decisions, not walking away from them. Janlo de los Reyes, the firm's head of research and advisory, described the first half as a market on watch, and said the contracts are still live.
Deals are still in place and will be probably locking in by the next couple of quarters. So, these are just delayed deals, not necessarily terminated deals in terms of the office space.
Why it matters here
Office space in this country is mostly a jobs story. The IT and business process management sector, the call centers and back offices that employ well over a million Filipinos, made up 61 percent of second quarter demand. When those firms stop leasing floors, it is worth asking whether they are planning to hire fewer people on them. JLL's longer view is the opposite one, that AI ends up requiring more staff rather than fewer, provided workers are retrained for it.
The catch to watch
Read the 79 percent carefully. It measures what executives expect, not what AI has already done. With only 18 percent acting on it, most of this slowdown is anticipation, and anticipation can be wrong in either direction. The honest test comes in the next two or three quarters. If the delayed deals sign as JLL predicts, this was a pause. If they quietly shrink or never close, the desks were real jobs.