CBRE reviews regional office markets
CBRE has issued updates on several key regional office markets. It says take-up of city-centre offices in Birmingham reached 169,183 sq ft in Q3, which was 7% more than in Q2 but down 27% from Q3 2010. The total of available office space has declined quarter-on-quarter to 2.68m sq ft, but this is still 8% more than was available at the end of 2010, the firm notes.
Despite the increase in availability overall, the amount of available Grade A space declined again in Q3 and now accounts for just 26% of the total space on offer, which CBRE says is 12% lower than at the end of last year.
Take-up of offices in Manchester in the third quarter dipped slightly from Q2 at 161,803 sq ft, which was 76% below the third quarter of 2010, when more than 680,000 sq ft was taken up.
Availability is creeping up, reaching 2.79m sq ft in Q3. CBRE notes that although the amount of newly completed space has risen from the total at the end of 2010, this is due to space which had been under offer now being released onto the market, rather than reflecting any new schemes completing this year.
Q3 take-up of office space in Leeds slipped slightly from the previous quarter, to 104,202 sq ft, but CBRE points out that the city has already seen more take-up of office space so far this year than it did in the whole of 2010.
About 35% of the 1.48m sq ft of office space available in Leeds town centre is good-quality, newly completed office space – this figure continued to decline during the third quarter. CBRE estimates the office stock in Leeds at 9.96m sq ft, which means that there is a vacancy rate of about 15%.
Third-quarter take-up in the market for office space in the Thames Valley and M25 area jumped 70% from the previous quarter, but remains sharply lower year-on-year. While third-quarter take up this year reached 599,071 sq ft, nearly a million sq ft was taken up in Q3 2010.
CBRE says there is just over 886,000 sq ft under offer across this region, which is the highest amount of floorspace under offer the firm has seen since 2005. Available space has risen slightly from Q2, to 16.9m sq ft in Q3, and is now around 10% more than the amount available in Q3 2010, reflecting the addition of the new, early marketed space, that has begun this year. The total vacancy rate across the region for ready-to-occupy space has dipped to 8.1%, the firm adds.
