Take-up of office space in Birmingham city centre during the second quarter of the year was well above average, according to the latest market analysis from GVA.
The results of the latest Big Nine report – which looks at activity in the UK’s nine largest regional cities – have found that city centre office take-up levels in Q2 were 14 per cent above the five-year quarterly average.
While most cities recorded above-average take-up, activity was particularly strong in Birmingham, Leeds and Bristol, which recorded the three largest deals, including GVA’s 134,000 sq ft letting of Five Brindleyplace.
GVA has attributed this rise to significant optimism in the regional office markets, an upturn in confidence and a more stable economic position filtering into occupier business strategies.
Carl Potter, National Head of Offices, GVA, said: “Our Q2 analysis of regional office take-up is encouraging, with sentiment up on what was already a positive first quarter.
“Occupier confidence in the city has improved as traditional financial and business services return to the market and we are beginning to see the first signs of reduced incentives.
“While take-up will continue to improve, the concern remains that supply, which is only slowly being replenished in a limited number of cities, will not keep up with increased demand. In some there remains no new development at all.
“Without speculative development, an ominous tipping point will present itself. Demand has already started to outstrip supply in some regional cities and this will be replicated in all of our cities just 18 months from now.”
City centre and out of town take-up combined in the nine GVA regional office centres recorded 1,730,000 sq ft in deals for Q2, 7% above the five-year quarterly average.
The city centre market made up 67% of this total and recorded take-up of 1,161,000 sq ft, 14% above the five-year quarterly average. Unfortunately, in Q2 the out of town market dropped 5% below the quarterly average.