Sluggish economy fails to dent city centre and out-of-town office take-up
THE sluggish economy in 2012 failed to slow down city centre and out-of-town office take-up activity, according to the Big Nine, the leading quarterly regional office market report by GVA.
Total regional take-up in 2012 reached 6.38 million sq ft, similar to the annual average for city centre and above average performance for the out-of-town markets.
City centre take-up across the nine GVA regional offices for Q4 was similar to the average, totalling 995,095 sq ft, with 3.77 million sq ft enacted throughout 2012, 6% below the national average.
Office take-up in the out-of-town markets was 767,000 sq ft in Q4, a strong performance which stood at 34% above the quarterly average with strong performances from Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester, which finished the year above the quarterly average.
Birmingham again came out above the national average, demonstrating strong take-up activity of nearly 217,000 sq ft, while Manchester and Newcastle both saw activity levels top 100,000sq ft.
Carl Potter, Director and Head of National Offices at GVA, said: “A lack of confidence in what remains a steady market is accentuating a state of continued unease. The reality is that, despite slow progress with deals across the board, transactions are not letting up. Nevertheless a number of cities are in the position where take-up in the future is going to be reduced as a consequence of the lack of future supply.”
The stand-out city centre for 2012 was Edinburgh which showed the strongest performance as a result of activity in the first half of the year, while take-up in Bristol and Leeds was also above average.
