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
UK Commercial Property Update Further bad news for retail occupier demand and rents Tesco’s plan to scale back its new-store expansion won’t have any direct impact on existing occupier demand for retail property. But the decision is symptomatic of wider weakness in consumer spending... 16th January 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Survey points to sharp slowdown in Central London office rents The results of the latest CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey suggest that, over the next six to nine months, Central London office rental value growth will slow pretty sharply from its current rate of... 9th January 2012 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Derivatives pricing highlights downside risks to capital values Given the sharp growth in trading activity in the property futures market, conceptually its pricing data perhaps give a better guide than swaps to the near-term prospects for physical property capital... 15th December 2011 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Should we be concerned about institutions’ property sell-off? At face value, net disposals of property by investing institutions in each of the past three months could be a sign that capital values will start to fall again very soon. Equally, however, it could... 7th December 2011 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Will shopping centre rental values continue to underperform? The recent underperformance by shopping centre rental values is unlikely to persist throughout 2012. But this does not mean that we envisage a recovery. Instead, we think that where shopping centres... 2nd December 2011 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update What does the fall in export orders mean for industrial rents? The order books of UK manufacturing firms have taken a knock over the past few months and the steadily weakening prospects for the euro-zone suggest that there is worse to come. All else equal, this... 17th November 2011 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Has the worst passed for public sector cuts to London office demand? To us, it seems likely that the worst of the effects of fiscal tightening on public sector demand for Central London offices has not yet passed. To be fair, the public sector probably accounts for... 11th November 2011 · 1 min read
