When it comes to office space, words matter

Can you speak tech? Are you fluent in lawyer? Today’s Central London office market is more diverse and complicated than ever and the race for footloose occupiers ever more competitive. Vacancy rates have fallen below 5% – and closer to 1% in some districts. Occupiers want all the help they can buy. Yet has the office brokerage and agency business kept pace with the change? Is it stuck in a monolingual bunker, happy talk in landlord but unable to order a coffee in fin-tech, or ask for the gents (or ladies) in street-wise media-speak?, writes David Thame. A few weeks ago the Bedford Estate – owner of a large chunk of Bloomsbury, including 825,000 sq ft of offices – decided to re-pitch its agency contracts. Language skills were top of its list. Estate steward Simon Elmer has an aversion to the expression “midtown” – a narrow office market concept which doesn’t do his complicated estate any favours, he says. But he was also on the lookout for more stimulating language. In particular, he wanted to hear agents talk the language of tenants. “Sexy?” Elmer ponders, then decides. “Yes, it is. The tenant representation thing. It absolutely made a difference to us, and it was one of the reasons we appointed CBRE. We want agents that come from a different angle, with different skills bases.” Stewart Smith, head of London tenant advisory at CBRE, couldn’t agree more. “We’ve all had to learn to speak tenants’ language, not landlords’ language, and the traditional City/West End distinction is gone. There are no boundaries because occupiers want someone who can talk authoritatively about Chiswick as much as Canary Wharf.” Smith says the fast-moving agent, out to work with footloose occupiers probably needs a vocabulary lighting on specialist jargon, and strong on profit and loss, cash flow, cost per desk, in other words “the concepts all occupiers use,” he says. “And occupiers expect something else, too – empathy. And if that means talking to an older white male is less appealing for them, then… that’s how London is changing.” This is exactly the challenges that prompted Savills to launch a branded flexible workspace consultancy. Workthere – a new brokerage service and website listing platform – is all about empathy, explains Cal Lee who came up with the idea and now runs the business. “Savills needs to be able to work with all occupiers – whether single person start-ups or global firms. And we wanted to target a new demographic who – when they saw ‘Savills’ – thought of a high-end residential estate agency. So we’ve gone in with a fresh cooler brand and the ability to talk to clients about temporary or longer leases, because their requirements change all the time, because the world is fast moving.” It complements wider changes in the agency world which see agents roam freely around the capital, unchained from City or West End offices (see panel). Richard Proctor, head of Central London tenant representation at Knight Frank, says agents have learned to mind their language. “Nothing annoys occupiers more than going to them with material written for investors or landlords. Basic things – like talking about rental movement being ‘positive’ meaning growing – that is not positive for occupiers. And words like ‘supply’ – they don’t want to hear that, they want to talk about choice. It’s a completely different language and they want to see different data and know we can talk the talk in their sector. “There’s a vast appetite for this – both from occupiers, and from landlords who want to understand what drives occupier decisions.” The Berlin wall If its west of Kingsway, then talk to our West End office. If its east, talk to the City team. For as long as anyone can remember landlords and occupiers have been divided by this Berlin Wall. But it’s a sign of the new diverse, multi-locational central London market that today agents grab a chance to disown the old ways. They hope it makes them more appealing to footloose occupiers who couldn’t care less whether its north, south, east or west so long as it is right. Dan Bayley, head of Central London agency at BNP Paribas, talked to EG after a bracing morning tour of central London with an occupier client. “Their aim is to attract talent, all locations are options,” he says. Digby Flower, head of London markets at Cushman & Wakefield, says his 150-strong team is physically located in West End and City offices, but business demarcation between the two “has long since fallen away”. He says:“Occupiers look at central London as a whole, and what they want is to talk to a specialist in their sector – legal, tech, whatever – not someone rooted to a particular location.”