More than half-a-million square feet of Birmingham office space was let during the second quarter of 2015 — 75 per cent of the city’s average annual take up.
The 521,136 sq ft return, reported by commercial, office and industrial agency Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH), represents a 358 per cent increase on the same period last year and gives Birmingham the largest transacted volume of any city outside London.
Marking the strongest April to June period since the post-2008 downturn, LSH says the figures were boosted by HSBC’s 212,000 sq ft pre-let at Arena Central but, even without that deal, the second quarter was still 174 per cent ahead of the corresponding quarter last year.
Alex Tross, director of office agency with LSH in Birmingham, claimed there was a real chance that the 2015 total could surpass the record 2008 return of 959,000 sq ft. The challenge, he stressed, was maintaining the current momentum for the long term.
“These are incredibly positive figures for Birmingham and reflect the city’s growing reputation as a business destination with a significant amount of the deals coming from inward investment rather than just from businesses relocating around the city,” Tross explained.
“There are still a number of key requirements in the market and the bringing forward of a number of key developments is going to be critical to meet this demand but it is important that there is managed delivery to market.”
Adding a note of caution, he said: “After a fallow period we are now seeing a raft of schemes either in planning or coming out the ground and all will be crucial in the long-term, but if they all come to market at the same then there is the potential that it will stifle rental growth as we saw following the downturn in 2008 as prices were pushed down by more aggressive deals.”
