UK Commercial Property Update Further support for a more optimistic office rental outlook The tone of today’s CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey was generally subdued, although an improvement in expectations about future business volumes points to a continued slowdown in the rate of decline... 29th March 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Retail outperformance is narrowly based The retail sector again recorded the largest rise in capital values in February. However, the recent outperformance of the retail sector has been driven almost exclusively by retail warehouses. To us... 16th March 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Does the fall in speculative industrial development matter? At the margin, the continued fall in the speculative industrial development pipeline can only be a support for medium-term rental value growth prospects in this sector. However, we still suspect that... 12th March 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Will the boom turn to bust ... again? The lessons from 1993/94 The current surge in commercial property capital values broadly mirrors the rebound seen in 1993/94 as the economy emerged from the last recession. That episode, however, gave way to renewed capital... 9th March 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Does the property derivatives market know something we don’t? Current commercial property derivatives prices suggest that IPD total returns this year will be markedly lower than either our expectations or the IPF Consensus forecasts. The derivatives market may... 4th March 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Recovery may now be broadening, but not to all non-prime property There can be no question that the recovery in the prime segment of the commercial property market continues apace. The evidence on the performance of near-prime and lower-quality property, however, is... 4th February 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Surveyors may be too pessimistic about retail occupier prospects Surveyors’ responses to last week’s RICS Commercial Property survey painted a downbeat picture of the prospects for the retail occupier market, which seems consistent with the weaker tone of today’s... 27th January 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Industrial rental value prospects: too soon to upgrade the outlook The latest survey-based evidence from the Bank of England and the CBI shows that manufacturers and other firms in the industrial sector are increasingly optimistic about their prospects. At the margin... 22nd January 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update London's City office rental prospects: first signs of recovery? The recent, high-profile Blackrock leasing deal has caused some to conclude that market rents for London City offices have started their recovery. For prime property that is almost certain to be the... 15th January 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Yield differential between Turkey and Russia to be maintained We expect the differential which has opened up between initial yields in Turkey and Russia to be maintained for the next two years at least. A less severe downturn in the occupier market seems to have... 14th January 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Prospects for financial services sector, and office rents, still subdued Today’s CBI/PwC Financial Services Survey was generally weak in tone, and tended to support our forecast that rental values across the office sector as a whole will fall for much of 2010. Of course... 11th January 2010 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update De Montfort Lending: some encouraging results, but not many Although the media coverage of last week’s De Montfort University study of commercial property lending over the first half of 2009 was relatively negative in tone, there were some more positive... 8th December 2009 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Further question marks over sustainability of current property rebound Yesterday’s BPF/IPD Annual Lease Review for 2009 showed that leases continue to get shorter and break clauses more common, implying a higher risk of voids for landlords. Although commercial property’s... 26th November 2009 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Has the shift to part-time working limited the fall in property demand? Part-time working has become more common during this recession, and may have helped commercial property demand to hold up better than it would have done in a scenario where firms were simply laying... 13th November 2009 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update Why have leisure and hotels held up relatively well during downturns? As they did in the early 1990s, the leisure and hotel sectors experienced smaller-than-average capital value falls during the most recent downturn. The weight of evidence is that these two niche... 10th November 2009 · 1 min read
UK Commercial Property Update What do property/bond yield spreads imply for rental value growth? With 10-year bond yields averaging 3.65% over the past month and all-property initial yields at 7.7%, investors seem to be pricing property on the assumption that rental values in 10 years’ time will... 21st October 2009 · 1 min read
