Check out how fast rents will rocket in Wan Chai and Causeway Bay

Their prices will even outperform Central.

Colliers International concluded in its whitepaper "The Evolution of Office Space in Hong Kong" that the improved infrastructure connections to come linking the central business district and non-CBD locations will lead to a narrowing rental gap between core and non-core areas.

Based on precedent, we can project a potential narrowing of 23 percentage points. During 1983 and 1984, two years before the opening of MTR Island Line, the average rental premium for Central stood at 56%.

Here's more from Colliers:

After the opening in 1986, the average rental premium contracted to 33% for the eight-year period between 1987 and 1994, representing a decline of 23 percentage points. The narrowing gap implies a quicker pace of rental growth in noncore locations, in percentage terms.

For projection purposes, we assume rents in Central will follow the local economic performance. The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) predicts that Hong Kong’s real GDP growth will range from 2.0% to 3.3% per year between 2015 and 2025, while annual inflation will rise between 2.5% and 4.4%.

We project Central rents will increase 83.5% over the next 10 years to HK$168.1 per sq ft per month, or a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 5.7%.

Based on the aforementioned rental premium predictions, rents in decentralised locations – Wan Chai/Causeway Bay, Island East and Kowloon East – will record a CAGR of 7.3%, 6.8% and 6.6%, respectively.

Simply speaking, the pace of rental growth in Wan Chai and Causeway Bay as well as in Island East will outperform Kowloon East in the next decade. But all those districts will outperform Central.