London Offices Market Analysis Q4 2014
2014 was the best year for London offices in more than a decade. Confidence continues to grow in the capital, with the amount of office space signed for in 2014 topping 14m sq ft and inching above the 2006 peak.
Take-up rose by 12% last year, with Docklands leading gains and more than doubling the space signed for last year. The City core remained the largest market, with 4.6m sq ft signed for, but as the availability squeeze cranked up a notch, Midtown had the worst year of all the submarkets, with take-up dropping by 10% on Q4 2013.
2014 was the best year for London offices in more than a decade. Confidence continues to grow in the capital, with the amount of office space signed for in 2014 topping 14m sq ft and inching above the 2006 peak.
Take-up rose by 12% last year, with Docklands leading gains and more than doubling the space signed for last year. The City core remained the largest market, with 4.6m sq ft signed for, but as the availability squeeze cranked up a notch, Midtown had the worst year of all the submarkets, with take-up dropping by 10% on Q4 2013.
For London overall, after a fast first nine months of the year that saw a quarterly average of 2.3m sq ft put under offer, there were signs that confidence is starting to wane. In Q4 space placed under offer fell to 1.6m sq ft. With the big corporates now settling prelets, some are starting to question where growth can come from.
Largest letting Q4
368,000 sq ft to Omnicom at 2&3 Bankside, SE1
Omnicom finally put pen to paper in Q4 and signed a deal for its 300,000 sq ft-plus requirement. The advertising agency took space in the southern fringe, boosting the market’s quarterly take-up figure to four times the five-year quarterly average. The deal was the second largest of the year, sitting just behind Amazon’s mammoth 430,000 sq ft letting at Principal Place, EC2, in Q3.
