A quarter of the office space in Amsterdam and Eindhoven would have been left empty if efforts had not been made to turn it into hotels and homes, property advisory group JLL said on Thursday.

However, by redeveloping empty offices as homes, the vacancy rate has been cut to around 15%, JLL said in the Financieele Dagblad.

In 2006, some two million square metres of office space was leased to new tenants but by last year this had fallen to 1.2 million square metres. By demolishing old properties and transforming others into housing, developers were able to keep the take-up at over two million square metres, for the first time since the economic crisis, JLL said.

On average, around 15% of office property in the Netherlands is empty.  Fewer offices are needed because companies are working in smaller spaces as more workers are allowed to work from home.