Birmingham saw a big rise in businesses moving into city centre offices during the first half of this year, according to national commercial property consultancy Lambert Smith Hampton (LSH).
According to the latest LSH Office Market Pulse, Q2 2018 saw a greatly improved performance in the Birmingham city centre office market, with 169,929 sq ft let, representing a 14% increase over Q1 and a 51% increase over the same quarter in 2017.
Alex Tross, head of office advisory at LSH in Birmingham, said larger lettings of the quarter included 38,000 sq ft to BE Offices at Circle PLC’s Somerset House, 27,000 sq ft to the Environment Agency at the Canal & River Trust’s Aqua and 18,000 sq ft to iHub at Aviva’s Colmore Gate.
That leaves H1 2018 at 318,412 sq ft let, against 248,466 let during H1 2017, an increase of 28%.
Alex said: “With 31 transactions at an average 5,482 sq ft, activity levels are absolutely in line with the long-term averages. The serviced office sector continues to be very active, with four different operators taking a total of 73,000 sq ft over the quarter, which represents 43% of the total take up in Q2.
“’We will need a very good H2 to challenge a record breaking 2017 performance but we are on track to be in line with the long term average of 700,000 sq ft.”