The UK’s big six regional office markets recorded 4.36m sq ft of take-up last year – up by 26% year-on-year and the highest full-year take-up since 2019.
Last year’s take-up across Bristol, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester and Leeds also came in 15% above the five-year average, according to research published by Savills.
The report found that the year’s strong momentum carried through right until the very end of the year, with Q4 take-up being 38% higher than the same period the year before.
Edinburgh and Glasgow were the frontrunners of the pack in terms of year-on-year take-up growth, with 70% and 42% respectively. They were followed by Manchester with 29%, Birmingham with 21%, Bristol with 5% and Leeds with 0.1%.
Edinburgh also took the medal for the largest deal of the year after Lloyds Bank completed a 282,000 sq ft letting at Port Hamilton, which helped Edinburgh register its highest quarterly take-up on record in Q4 last year.
Other large deals included BNY Mellon’s 197,000 sq ft letting at 4 Angel Square at NOMA in Manchester and Aston University taking 189,000 sq ft at 10 Woodcock Street in Birmingham. In total, across all markets, there were nine deals over 50,000 sq ft in 2024, which is a quarter more than the five-year average.
Investor confidence across the regional markets also improved, with a 29% rise in the number of deals completed and a total of £2.9bn transacted last year – a 10% rise on the year before.
There was, however, a shortage of very big deals, with just two transactions last year exceeding £100m: Tristan Capital Partners’ purchase and leaseback of Cody Technology Park in Farnborough, Hampshire, for £112m and the sale of Abcam’s headquarters at Cambridge Biomedical Campus to Danaher Corp.
James Emans, joint head of UK investment at Savills, said: “Investment volumes remain low compared with historical figures, but we are now seeing signs of investor confidence returning, evidenced by the increase in deal activity year-on-year.”
He added: “There is some caution as we enter 2025, but opportunistic investors are proactively seeking out assets with good fundamentals that have inevitably been repriced.”
Image: 4 Angel Square, NOMA, Manchester – from MEPC
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