Knight Frank’s latest Logic Report reveals that the West Yorkshire industrial market is expected to continue to perform well into the first half of 2018 with a number of available units under offer.
Over 700,000 sq ft of industrial/warehouse space was transacted across West Yorkshire during the second half of 2017 involving units above 50,000 sq ft.
When combined with take-up in the first half of last year, this brings the total transactions for 2017 to 1.4m sq ft, which is in line with 2016’s figures.
According to Knight Frank’s report, availability has remained stable, as several buildings have entered the market to offset the strong take-up seen earlier in the year.
As with other regions, high-quality existing and new build industrial stock in the mid-size range (30-75,000 sq ft) remains in short supply and there was limited speculative development during 2017.
Iain McPhail, partner with Knight Frank’s industrial property team in Leeds, explained: “The market rallied during the last three months of 2017; consequently we expect to see improved take-up figures in the first six months of this year.
“Prime rents for mid-sized distribution warehouse units have now broken the £6.00 per sq ft mark with the recent letting of the 50,500 sq ft Unit F Trident Park to the Kelling Group which completed in October. Prime rents are anticipated to increase in the near future, with quoting rents at three new speculative warehouse units at the Trilogy@Logic development situated within the wider Logic Leeds scheme being marketed at £6.25 plus per sq,” said Mr McPhail.
“There also remains a dearth of ‘Big Sheds’ in West Yorkshire above 200,000 sq ft, with the exception of the 215,000 sq ft Axis 62 unit in Normanton and ‘The Copperworks’ on Haigh Park Road in Leeds, which is currently under refurbishment and extends to over 300,000 sq ft.
“The lack of stock in this size range has resulted in an increase in activity in the design and build market. Notably the largest deal of the year so far in West Yorkshire involved technology distributor Premier Farnell taking a bespoke 361,000 sq ft unit at Muse Development’s Logic Leeds scheme within the Leeds City Region Enterprise zone.
“There has been a marked rise in enquiries and occupier activity since the turn of the year and with several larger buildings already under offer in the region, it is expected that to be another good year for the industrial market,” said Mr McPhail.
