Behind the scenes at Metropolis Property Research
May 29, 2014 1 Comment
Part 1 – The Lighter Side
Amongst the hundreds of phone calls and meticulous research work tracking down around 120 UK firms with plans to move each week, there are some lighter sides to the job of putting together our brand of intelligence led property business leads every 7 days:
– During one call, the tenant asked who we are, so that he could make a note, when the researcher said ‘Metropolis’, the manager asked if we spelt that the same way as Superman does?
– Many clients will be familiar with the tussle to extract information on when office and facility managers will be arranging their furniture and fit-out tenders, with many guarding the information jealously. Until that is, one day in a standard call to a secretive London law firm planning to move in 5-6 months time, the facilities manager suddenly volunteered “and we are about to look for someone to supply our furniture”. Well, ‘surprised’ wasn’t the word..
– a common misunderstanding when opening the conversation with tenants is: Researcher: “we’re contacting companies that are looking for offices” Tenant answers “well we’ve we’ve got none to sell”. OK, lets start that again..
– In another call to a media firm in a building about to be demolished, we established that the company had to move, whereupon the MD started asking what he should do in order to find new office space. Half an hour later, we were still talking, as he went through the pros and cons of different locations, rent levels, service charges, transport links, fit-out costs..
– One of the bugbears of the 21st century is the blanket ‘no names’ policy, “if you don’t already know the name of our facility manager I won’t put you through,” yah, boo, sucks. It used to be just animal rights-protest-fearing pharmaceuticals that adopted this policy, but now about half the corporate world tries to use this blunt tool to stop business inquiries. Unfortunately 90% of these individuals then quite innocently put their name and job title on their Linkedin page and their company Facebook page..
– Finally, some years ago, in a scene mirroring a Dads Army sketch, when talking to a firm with a very hush hush requirement, we asked who was handling the search, as the FM hesitated, we heard a colleague whisper “don’t tell him that John Smith is in charge”, so the FM eventually says “I don’t know”. Thank you and goodbye.
Central London April 2014 lettings
May 22, 2014 Leave a comment
Central London office lettings in April 2014 reached just over 850,000 sq ft in 55 medium/large deals. This total was slightly behind the average for the first 3 months of the year and was mainly due to the lack of any large deals over 100,000 sq ft. The balance is likely to be restored in May after a number of pre-lets.
The City again led the way with over 440,000 sq ft of deals in more than half the transactions. Midtown, encompassing Kings Cross, is the second busiest area with nearly 180,000 sq ft of deals, while the West End remains subdued.
The largest office deals on the Metropolis datebase during the month included: the Office Group’s 69,000 sq ft letting of Henry Wood House, 3 Langham Street, London, W1 and law firm DWF taking 43,000 sq ft at 20 Fenchurch Street, London, EC3. However active requirements listed on Metropolis, in the West End, now total over 1.3m sq ft and there are three large properties under offer to occupiers.
Filed under CityOffices.net News, Market Comment Tagged with April 2014, lettings, London, metropolis property research, office market, sq ft, under offer