Regional office market holds up
THE sluggish economy did not slow down city centre and out-of-town office take-up activity, according to a quarterly regional office market report by GVA.
Regional city centre take-up totalled 995,095 sq ft in the final quarter and 3.77 million sq ft throughout 2012, 6% below the annual average.
Office take-up in the out-of-town markets was 767,000 sq ft during the period, up 34% on the quarterly average. Activity was particularly strong in Birmingham at nearly 217,000 sq ft and with over 100,000 sq ft of deals in Manchester and Newcastle.
Recent figures from the Manchester Office Agents Forum (MOAF) show total take-up for 2012 in Manchester city centre was 788,265 sq ft and 660,829 sq ft in south Manchester.
More deals were completed but there were fewer big lets. Bruntwood’s Riverside performed strongly leasing around 80,000 sq ft with large deals to Futureworks (24,000 sq ft) and MoneyPlus Group (21,500 sq ft).
Chris Cheap, director and head of North West offices at GVA, said: “Whilst the central Manchester market ended the year on a high with the likes of Worldpay (20,000 sq ft at 3 Hardman Sq – pictured), HSB EIL (19,000 sqft) and Egencia (12,700 sq ft) all taking Grade A accommodation, we did not see the torrent of anticipated transactions which would have really underpinned the year.
“With further delays surrounding the much anticipated ‘Project Tomorrow’ and the likes of BUPA and Pannone delaying their significant moves it shows that there is varying levels of confidence in the market place. This said, Manchester continued to show robustness due to its scale and demographic back story.”
