Office take-up in the City reached its highest-ever level in the third quarter of 2014, according to data from CBRE.
CBRE’s Central London Office MarketView shows Q3 2014 office take-up in the City was 2.3m sq ft, surpassing the previous high of 2.2m sq ft seen in Q3 2000.
This took the year-to-date total to 4.8m sq ft.
A total of seven deals over 50,000 sq ft completed in the three months to the end of September, including two prelets over 100,000 sq ft.
These included 430,900 sq ft to Amazon at Principal Place, EC2, and 322,700 sq ft to M&G at 10 Fenchurch Avenue, EC3.
The creative industries accounted for 29% of take-up in the quarter, compared to 22% from banking and finance.
The business services sector, boosted by deals such as the 66,400 sq ft letting to Ipsos Mori at 3 Thomas More Square, E9, represented an above-average 19% of take-up.
Chris Vydra, executive director at CBRE, said: “This comes at a time when the City availability rate has dropped to 7.9% – its lowest level since 2001.
“The low level of availability in the next two years is clearly driving the increase in preletting activity witnessed this year and we expect lease events and projected increases in office-based employment to boost demand, especially for space of between 20,000 sq ft and 100,000 sq ft.”
