Midtown’s Q4 office take-up hits 1m sq ft
The central London Midtown office submarket stormed to a strong finish in Q4, crossing 1m sq ft of take-up in a single quarter for just the second time in 10 years.
Take-up rose by 153% when compared to the previous quarter, according to agents Farebrother’s Centre of London Research Q4 2024.
Design, advertising, media, internet, and tech & telecoms, also known by the acronym DAMIT, accounted for the greatest proportion of take-up for the Q4 at 23%. The professional services and legal sectors came in at second and third at 20% and 18% respectively.
The central London Midtown office submarket stormed to a strong finish in Q4, crossing 1m sq ft of take-up in a single quarter for just the second time in 10 years.
Take-up rose by 153% when compared to the previous quarter, according to agents Farebrother’s Centre of London Research Q4 2024.
Design, advertising, media, internet, and tech & telecoms, also known by the acronym DAMIT, accounted for the greatest proportion of take-up for the Q4 at 23%. The professional services and legal sectors came in at second and third at 20% and 18% respectively.
With over 1m sq ft currently under offer, momentum appears steady in the short-term and demand is not going anywhere as it rose by 27% year-on-year.
Investment volumes also rose by 130% year-on-year, coming in at £960m – of which more than a quarter transacted in Q4.
But longer-term structural issues with office supply continue to weigh on the market, with 58% of the 3.64m sq ft of space under construction already prelet or under offer.
Availability has hit 2.7m sq ft – its lowest level for three and half years, according to Farebrother’s report – and the amount of space available under construction drops off dramatically post-2025.
While there is 892,411 sq ft available space under construction and due to complete this year, this figure falls to 473,000 sq ft in 2026 and 160,000 sq ft in 2027.
There is currently no space available under construction due to complete in 2028, according to Farebrother’s report.
The year’s strong finish was also not enough to remedy the rest of the year’s quiet quarters.
Take-up for the year came in at 2.26m sq ft, which is down by over a fifth year-on-year and the lowest annual total since 2021. Just 398,717 sq ft of leasing deals were completed in Q3 – the lowest for three years.
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