£3 Billion Invested In UK Office Market Outside London

Despite the economic and political turbulence caused by Brexit - aspects such as the UK’s talented labour pool, strong financial markets, transparent laws/regulations and advanced technology infrastructure - still makes the UK an attractive proposition for businesses/investors seeking to set-up or expand their operations, according to Savoy Stewart.

The commercial property firm analysed the latest findings from several regional city reports complied by Knight Frank, to discover the total ‘investment volume’ and ‘take-up’ of office space in 10 major cities across the UK in 2018.

The 10 cities included within the research are as follows: Aberdeen, Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Newcastle and Sheffield.

Savoy Stewart found that Manchester experienced the greatest take-up of office space in 2018, reaching 1,750,562 square feet ft. This was a 44% increase on the previous year, with office take-up reaching 1,218,892 square feet in 2017.

Glasgow came in second place with a take-up of 962,921 square feet in office space - equating to a 52% rise from 2017, when office take-up was 633,710 square feet. Birmingham followed, with an office space take-up of 755,137 square feet.

Out of all the considered cities, Newcastle had the lowest take-up of offices at 236,928 square feet. Despite this, the city still had a 33% surge in demand for office space compared to 2017 when office take-up was just 177,870 square feet. Just ahead of Newcastle was Sheffield, which had an office take-up of 363,584 square feet in 2018.

In total, the 10 cities had a combined office space take-up of 6,726,097 square feet last year.

Manchester benefited from the highest office investment volume at £989m in 2018. This represented an 8% increase from 2017, where the investment figure was £917m.

Subsequently, Glasgow gained an investment volume of £468m, which was a 3% rise from 2017, when the office investment level was £453m.

In third position was Leeds, with an office investment of £362m – illustrating a hefty 185% increase from the year before (2017 = £127m).

Newcastle had the lowest office investment volume from the ten cities with £62m invested. This though, was still a 24% rise from 2017 – when office investment amounted to just £50m.

Notably, Sheffield was one of the other cities which had a substantial year-on-year increase (up 180%) in office investment – from £54m in 2017 to £151m in 2018.
Collectively, £3,347m was invested in the office markets of the 10 cities in 2018.