UK Commercial Property Update IPF Consensus Forecasts (Q2) The latest IPF Consensus forecasts were little changed from February’s survey. Capital values are expected to drop by 4% to 5% this year. To our minds, however, the consensus is still a little too... 25th May 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update The pace of deleveraging may pick up even further Not surprisingly, the latest De Montfort survey highlights lenders’ increased concern about the impact of the euro-zone’s plight on UK commercial property. But given the survey relates to 2011, this... 18th May 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Have non-prime yields passed their trough? For the first time since mid-2009, IPD reported that in Q1 2012 yields on lower quality commercial property increased. Not least because of higher distressed loan work-outs, we would be very surprised... 10th May 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update How is the London office development pipeline holding up? In recent quarters, Central London office vacancy rates have edged higher and the amount of space under construction and set for completion over 2012-13 has risen. This is despite the lack of pre-lets... 4th May 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Relocations are another downside risk to West End office rents Media reports suggest that high West End office rents have begun to push some tenants out of the area. To be fair, evidence that high relative rents cause widespread relocations across the capital’s... 19th April 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Can stronger industrial occupier market conditions last? Occupier demand for industrial property increased in Q1 and, given its low starting point, further gains in the near term can’t be ruled out. But the medium-term prospects for the manufacturing and... 17th April 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Rental values - are comparisons with the 1990s relevant? The stagnation of commercial property rents over the past two years is similar to the experience of the mid-1990s. But while the earlier episode laid the foundations for a sustained recovery, a repeat... 11th April 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Central London office rents remain on track to rise this year Positive results from the latest CBI/PwC Financial Services survey point to a modest rise in City and West End office rental values in 2012. But the improvement in financial services firms’ sentiment... 2nd April 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update The best may have passed for hotel property returns The Olympics are now only four months away and one obvious, potential beneficiary is the London hotel sector. But even if London hotels do receive a boost, this won’t disguise the weak demand... 27th March 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Financial and business services sector jobs (Q4) The number of workforce jobs in the financial and business services (FBS) sector rose strongly again in Q4 and, given the normal lags of six to nine months, this points to continued growth in Central... 14th March 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Do surveys alleviate worst fears about the refinancing outlook? Encouragingly, recent surveys suggest that there could be enough debt available this year to meet the UK commercial property market’s refinancing needs of perhaps £30bn to £35bn. But these estimates... 13th March 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Jobs growth unlikely to be a sign of rising occupier demand The fact that employment began to rise again in the final stages of 2011 may be less positive for the occupier demand outlook than it appears at first sight. Driven entirely by part-time jobs, the... 16th February 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Is availability still relevant to the industrial rental outlook? Viewed over a 30-year horizon, there may be a case for thinking that IPD industrial rental values have become largely immune to overhangs of vacant space. However, over the past decade, the... 8th February 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Will retail warehouses underperform in the medium term? The fact that the retail warehouse secondary to prime yield spread is now not too far away from its 2006-07 lows may not necessarily make this sub-sector vulnerable to underperformance in the near... 7th February 2012 · 1 min read
Europe Commercial Property Update Have investors pushed UK property too far down their rankings? The UK appears to have fallen down the rankings as a target market for global property investors. In absolute terms, there is plenty of cause for caution about the outlook for UK capital values and... 1st February 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Have industrial rents become less sensitive to GDP? The falls in industrial rental values over the past few years have been much smaller than those seen in the early 1990s and also modest in relation to the depth of the 2008-09 recession. We suspect... 20th January 2012 · 1 min read