Edinburgh Office Market Update

May 24, 2019 Leave a comment

Metropolis ran nearly 50 business leads on Edinburgh occupiers relocating in the early months of 2019. There are nearly 200 office occupiers approaching lease events in the city in the next two years. Recent expansions are showing a rise in the number of financial services and technology companies taking space.

In Q1 2019, total office letting in Edinburgh reached 185,000 sq ft, of which nearly 60,000 sq ft was Grade A new office space. Figures from Savills show that 90% of Grade A deals came from Tech industries. The largest deals included Amazon signing for 30,000 sq ft at Exchange Crescent and Epic Games taking 10,000 sq ft at Quartermile 2. Over the past five years, Edinburgh has seen employment growth of 7% in the professional scientific and tech industries and is forecast to see a further 11% over the next five years.

Avison Young spotlight the wider Edinburgh office market, which also saw large deals. Two of the largest deals freehold purchases out-of-town with 49,000 sq ft to the Church of Scientology at Westfield House and 12,000 sq ft to Sime Hospitality at South Gyle Business Park. There were other mid-sized deals to CGI and Upward Mobility. Lloyds Bank is expanding into a 75,000 sq ft technology hub at its Scottish Widows’ headquarters.

In the centre of Edinburgh there has been a high concentration of sub 5,000 sq ft deals, with tech firms have particularly active in this size bracket, accounting for 33% of all take-up.

Analysts expect a boost in take-up for the business services sector over summer 2019, with a number of buildings under offer to providers of co-working serviced office space.

Avison Young reveal that overall availability in the city centre amounts to 448,000 sq ft, which is less than a year’s supply based on the recent past demand. Although future supply was boosted when M&G Real Estate has instructed Qmile Group to build its mixed-use Haymarket scheme, which includes 350,000 sq ft of office space. There is currently around 55,000 sq ft remaining at Capital Square ahead of completion in May 2020, 2 Semple Street has 35,000 sq ft available, and 30,000 sq ft of sub-let space is on offer at 20 West Register Street.

Looking ahead, with a vacancy level of 3%, more pre-letting looks likely. Metropolis is tracking around 30 confirmed and potential medium/large office searches in Edinburgh.

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Central London Office Market in April 2019

May 17, 2019 Leave a comment

Central London office lettings in April 2019 reached just over 1 million sq ft, from 35 mid-large size office transactions (5,000 sq ft+) during the month. The April 2019 figure is in line with the current monthly London average of 1m sq ft.

April was characterised by 16 office deals over 20,000 sq ft, which were led by Facebook’s 175,000 deal at expansion at Regents Place, NW1 along with a large pre-let to G-Research at the under construction Soho Place in London, W1; Spaces at Cabot Square, E14; Trade Desk expanding at One Bartholomew Square, EC1; plus Mastercard at 1 Angel Lane, EC1 and Splunk in Paddington, W2.

IT Services topped the table of lettings by sector, compiled by Metropolis, underpinned by the Facebook deal and G-research’s expansion pre-let. This was followed by business services led by a number of serviced office sector deals. Financial services, led by Mastercard, plus media led by Trade Desk were also well represented.

Office deals ‘under offer’ in central London rose to 3.6m sq ft, and pending deal volumes are healthy in nearly all sub-markets, with a number of deals in solicitor’s hands.

By area, the City accounted for 28% of the office floorspace let in April 2019 at 280,000 sq ft. The West End saw 500,000 sq ft of take-up. Midtown contributed 139,000 sq ft of lettings and Southbank 25,000 sq ft. Current London office demand is calculated to be around 3.8m sq ft in the City and 3.1m sq ft in the West End.

The volume of grade A (newly built or refurbished office space) let during the month, reached a healthy 417,000 sq ft sq ft (42% of the monthly total), as transactions for new space maintained the recent strong showing. Availability is dominated by secondhand space in all London markets.

Metropolis research is currently monitoring 630 ‘live’ London office requirements, including a large volume of requirements from the banking and finance sectors, with pending deals for space of up to 1.5m sq ft due to sign in the next few months.

Paul Ives Metropolis

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Banking and the Office Market

December 14, 2018 Leave a comment

CBRE has just published its report: “Why We Can Bank on London 2018” which looks at subsectors within London’s financial services ‘ecosystem’: investment and retail banks, fintech firms, traditional asset managers and private equity firms and hedge funds. The intentions of occupiers in these sectors make up a large part of the Metropolis weekly office leads output.

The financial sector accounted for 27% of active space requirements by sq ft in autumn 2018

CBRE say Since the EU referendum, banks have continued to commit to London with Deutsche Bank taking 550,000 sq ft and SMBC taking 161,000 sq ft, while Wells Fargo took 220,000 sq ft for its new European
headquarters. However, banks have also been ‘nearshoring’ (moving staff to regional hubs in the UK) with Bank of America, JP Morgan and Deutsche Bank all announcing plans in late 2012 to move 3,000 jobs away from London.

The UK has been ranked first globally for the strongest fintech sector since 2016. It’s largest companies include Funding Circle, a peer-to-peer financing platform for companies and mobile banking service Revolut is achieving ‘unicorn’ status in April 2018 on reaching a valuation of $1.7bn (both companies’ intentions recently featured on Metropolis).  Fast growing Nutmeg is the first firm to offer an online discretionary investment management service in the UK. Fintech firms are dispersed but have tended to cluster in areas such as Canary Wharf and the City, where initiatives such as Level39 provide provide space. The typical lifecycle of a fintech firm begins in low-cost flexible space, usually in fringe locations. Typically, the firm then moves to a larger and more corporate space as it matures. Metropolis has run nearly 40 leads on fintech companies recently.

Private equity and hedge funds. London is the second largest centre globally for hedge fund managers  Over the past 10 years, firms other than banks or traditional asset managers have accounted for 61% of the sector’s total take-up of 27m sq ft in Central London. There are currently over 200,000 sq ft of office requirements live in this sector in central London. Metropolis has brought subscribers over 30 stories about hedge fund companies office move intentions in recent months.

CBRE conclude by forecasting the rise of agile working becoming more widely adopted in the banking sector, increasingly shifting towards more open plan offices and policies such as working from home. Firms are also increasingly considering an area’s wealth of amenities and transport links. For private equity firms in particular this could become a growing trend as they move away from prestige locations such as Knightsbridge and Mayfair to better connected locations.

Metropolis has run over 500 leads on London-based financial sector occupiers relocation intentions in 2018.

Merry Christmas to all Metropolis blog readers.

Paul Ives, Metropolis Head of Research. December 2018

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Law Sector and the Office Market Update

October 5, 2018 Leave a comment

Knight Frank, the property consultant, has just published an update on trends in the law sector over 2017-18 which impact on the UK office market. Some of the main points include:

Consolidator firms such as Gordon Dadds, Redkite Solicitors, Knights and Metamorph Law are acquiring smaller rivals to gain market share. Consolidation activity is driving occupier demand in certain markets as merged firms looked to consolidate into single offices;

Some mid-tier law firms are aggressively expanding, in particular those that have focussed on niche services. One such firm that is forging ahead is Weightmans which has invested £1.3million on new technology over the last year. Another leading mid-tier firm is Fieldfisher who recorded a second consecutive year of double-digit growth that included moving into a single site in London;

New market players are expanding in regional markets. These included Leeds-based Alpaca, who launched in 2017, and Rradar, who relocated to larger office space at the Bruntwood Platform building in Leeds having undergone rapid growth;

Meanwhile, Norton Rose Fulbright revealed plans to create 100 new jobs in its legal process hub in Newcastle, Simmons & Simmons taking larger offices in Bristol, Walker Morris will relocate to 33 Wellington Street, Leeds, Reed Smith opening in Leeds, Graysons moved into larger, more modern premises in Sheffield, Pinsent Masons consolidated their two offices into 141 Bothwell Street in Glasgow, while Hogan Lovells tripled its space in Birmingham;

Manchester recorded the highest legal services sector takeup by square footage across all the UK regional cities at 155,328 sq ft or 13% of total take-up last year. This was followed by Bristol where legal services accounted for 9.4% of total take-up

Knight Frank conclude that changing business structures will demand a resetting of the corporate footprint with most relocating to higher quality office space in core CBD locations.

Metropolis is tracking over 100 law firms with either identified requirements or potential requirements for relocation from October 2018 onwards.

 

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Technology Companies and Offices

September 6, 2018 Leave a comment

CBRE has recently published its ‘Tech Cities’ report looking at  office leasing patterns in the technology sector across Europe.

Conclusions include:

Technology companies still dominate tech activity across Europe in real estate terms – 65% of all deals tracked fall under software, IT services, telecom or hardware;

The e-commerce sub-sector accounts for the largest average deal size of leasing transactions, which reflects the aggressive growth of the sector across industries. Berlin for instance has attracted larger
e-commerce floorplates than anywhere else in Europe along with London, Dublin and Amsterdam;

While new tech companies make up a smaller proportion of total deals than traditional sub-sectors, they are just as space-hungry as the more traditional companies in terms of average deal size. This reflects differences in growth speeds of companies within each of these two categories in the global marketplace, with the new tech sector seeing particularly rapid growth;

Depending on the tech sub-sector and business strategy, occupiers will be able to agglomerate with peers within the same sub-sector, or identify a different sub-sector that offer benefits of a close location, with London, Reading, Bristol and Cambridge as examples;

London is CBRE’s top-ranking technology cluster. The city is a magnet for young technology talent, and employment in the tech sector has grown by 20% since 2008. Major employers in the IT services sub-sector include Capgemini & Cognizant; the largest employers in the software sub-sector include Microsoft and Oracle and in telecoms the city is home to major operations for BT & Vodafone. Other top employers of tech talent in London include Accenture, IBM, and Thomson Reuters;

The Thames Valley region is one of the most established technology clusters in Europe. The Thames Valley is dominated by very large organisations which make up more than 62% of employment. Telecoms, IT services and software are the dominant sub-sectors in the cluster with major employers being largely global tech companies including Vodafone, Huawei, Telefonica, Microsoft, Oracle and Hewlett Packard. Oracle, Cisco and Microsoft are major employers of development talent in the Thames Valley region with Visa and Sky also having large operations in the cluster;

Bristol is one of the major regional centres for tech outside of London and the Thames Valley with employment in the sector growing by 25% since 2008. Bristol is a major centre for the telecoms industry with EE, BT, Nokia, Orange and Vodafone all having a presence in the city. Other major employers of tech talent include Lloyds Banking, IBM and Hewlett Packard. Bristol is also home to IT service companies Softcat plc and Civica.

CBRE say that understanding underlying demand conditions using this framework helps inform potential future office transaction strategies.

Metropolis is currently tracking around 150 IT, technology and telecom companies searching for offices across the UK.

 

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Metropolis Leads in July 2018

August 16, 2018 Leave a comment

Metropolis ran 592 business leads on ‘office movers’ in July 2018. If all reported moves were added together the total would exceed 16 million sq ft of office searches and transactions, researched by Metropolis’ unique market-led intelligence research team, last month.

London was the largest region with 270 business leads during month, but there were also strong showings from the South East (71),  Scotland (69) North West (38) and Yorkshire (36). Financial services and business services were the largest business sectors planning relocations or agreeing moves during the month.

The relocation leads geographically covered the whole UK and provided details of the size of the office occupier, company likely move dates, a description of the reasons for the move, its business sector and full contact details including an address for written inquiries, at least one telephone number and in most cases an email address. Some of the largest planned moves and top picks amongst the 592 July leads, included those on occupiers Facebook, Linklaters, Barclays, EBRD and Diageo.

The July 2018 leads included 172 ‘identified requirements’, including 90 in London. Which means that the company confirmed to researchers that it has current or future plans to search for alternative office space. Of these 172 searches, 105 were newly posted office searches, not previously notified to clients.

The most recent research also included 142 ‘potential movers,’ which were mainly longer-term leads on occupiers, considering a relocation, but the occupier has yet to make a final decision on whether to search.

Most of the remaining stories covered companies that have just signed for new office space and have set a move date, including some large pre-lets and companies inviting tenders for fit-out contracts. The shortest planned move date is just over a month away, whilst the longest was late 2021.

Recent research by Metropolis concluded that a conservative estimate of ‘live’ business tender opportunities on the database in recent months, exceeded £1bn of business.

If you would like some information on flexible Metropolis subscription packages, then please email Andy at andy@metroinfo.co.uk, mentioning ‘Metropolis Blog’

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Metropolis Office Mover Leads in June 2018

July 19, 2018 Leave a comment

Metropolis ran 562 business leads on ‘office movers’ in June 2018. If all reported moves were added together the total would exceed 14 million sq ft of office searches and transactions, researched by Metropolis’ unique market-led intelligence research team, last month.

London was the largest region with 240 business leads during month, but there were also strong showings from the South East (60),  Scotland (51) North West (43) and Yorkshire (35) . Business services and financials services were the largest business sectors planning relocations or agreeing moves during the month.

The relocation leads covered the whole UK and provided details of the size of the office occupier, company likely move dates, a description of the reasons for the move, its business sector and full contact details including an address for written inquiries, at least one telephone number and in most cases an email address. Some of the largest planned moves and top picks amongst the 562 June leads, included those on occupiers Amazon, British Airways, Barclays, Scottish Office and WeWork.

The June 2018 leads included 171 ‘identified requirements’, including 84 in London. Which means that the company confirmed to researchers that it has current or future plans to search for alternative office space. Of these 171 searches, 100 were newly posted office searches, not previously notified to clients.

The most recent research also included 160 ‘potential movers’ which were mainly longer-term leads on occupiers, considering a relocation, but the occupier has yet to make a final decision on whether to search.

Most of the remaining stories covered companies that have just signed for new office space and have set a move date, including some large pre-lets and companies inviting tenders for fit-out contracts. The shortest planned move date is just over a month away, whilst the longest was late 2020.

Recent research by Metropolis concluded that a conservative estimate of ‘live’ business tender opportunities on the database in recent months, exceeded £1bn of business.

If you would like some information on flexible Metropolis subscription packages, then please email Andy at andy@metroinfo.co.uk, mentioning ‘Metropolis Blog’

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