UK Commercial Property Update What can retail sales data tell us about shopping centre rents? The strength in headline retail sales volumes is at odds with shopping centres’ poor rental performance. This is due to the fact that sales of items that form the core of shopping centres’ offering... 19th November 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update London’s growing office pipeline not (yet) a cause for concern Construction in London rose sharply over the last six months. That said, fears about oversupply in London’s office market overlook the fact that completions do not deliver a one-for-one rise in stock... 12th November 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Can competitiveness rankings help explain UK property pricing? Relative economic competitiveness scores go some way to explaining UK pricing in a pan European context. Yet while prime all-property yields look about 50bps lower than the UK’s competitiveness score... 27th October 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Will supermarket returns be even weaker than anticipated? Reflecting weaker occupier demand conditions, total returns in 2015 are likely to undershoot our forecast from last year. However, falling yield spreads against standard shops and a shrinking pipeline... 23rd October 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update National Living Wage will have little impact on occupier demand The impact of the National Living Wage (NLW) will be largest in the retail, leisure and hotel sectors. But even there, increased labour market flexibility should ensure that its introduction has... 15th October 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Is falling space per worker a downside risk for London offices? If occupiers continue to require less office space per employee, our supply concerns about London’s office market would increase. However, with economic conditions and confidence improving over the... 6th October 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Is the UK market headed for a crash in 2017? Some forecasters are expecting commercial capital values in the UK to fall sharply in 2017 with an implied yield expansion of up to 120bps. This is unlikely unless we have significantly underestimated... 1st October 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update How strong are the main regional office markets? In mid-2015, capital value growth in the Rest of the UK office market was roughly half that seen in the South East or London. Yet Manchester and Birmingham are delivering rather stronger rates of... 23rd September 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Is the end of the City office rental upswing in sight? Experience suggests that shifts in demand, rather than supply, tend to act as the trigger for major rental value downturns. So, although the London office development pipeline has surged and is... 17th September 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Tourism’s strength to support hotel values Visitor numbers to the UK recently reached record levels, an encouraging development for the UK hotel sector. But spending by overseas visitors was less buoyant, suggesting that prime retail and... 10th September 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update What does the slump in equities mean for property? Yesterday’s sharp falls in global equity markets and the value of UK real estate equities have not altered the outlook for the UK commercial property market over the next year or so. Commercial... 25th August 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Should we worry about falling prime/non-prime yield spreads? The gap between prime and non-prime yields has fallen in seven of the past eight quarters and by roughly a third over that period. Yet there is little in this data to ring alarm bells. After all... 13th August 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update How much upside is there for distribution rental values? Distribution warehouse rental value growth hit 2.9%y/y in Q2, a 15-year high. But with output in the distribution sector growing at above-average rates and real rental values more than 10% below a... 6th August 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Greater scope for prime office yields to narrow in Munich than London The spread between government bond yields in Germany and the UK is less indicative of the relative strength of the two countries’ economic outlooks than it was in the past. As such, in contrast to... 29th July 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Are shopping centres the weak link in the retail rental recovery? Shopping centre rental values have yet to find a floor. But with rental values for in-town centres still struggling, while out-of-town rents appear to be staging a recovery, the data are most useful... 20th July 2015 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Will UK commercial property perform as strongly in H2? As we move into the second half of the year, it seems a good time to review our 2015 forecasts and to assess whether they could yet be knocked off track by the ongoing saga in Greece. Fortunately... 6th July 2015 · 1 min read