MOAF: City centre take-up surpasses 1m sq ft

The Manchester Office Agents Forum have calculated yet another robust performance in quarter three which closely resembles the market’s performance in the previous quarter with 741,926 sq ft transacted within the Greater Manchester and Warrington markets in the past three months.

Manchester city centre has experienced yet another strong quarter with approximately 373,477sq ft transacted for Q3 which provides a year to date total of 1,052,154 sq ft, indicating that 2015 will be a record year.

Notable transactions for the city centre during the last quarter include Global Radio 16,669 sq ft, Shoosmiths 32,000 sq ft, NCC Group 60,246 sq ft all acquiring space in XYZ Building in Spinningfields, and Gazprom taking 51,200 sq ft at First Street.

Year to date total in Manchester is 1,052,154 sq ft, in South Manchester 446,574 sq ft, in Salford Quays 513,837 sq ft, and in Warrington 229,821 sq ft.

Steve Brittle, senior associate at Matthews & Goodman and spokesman for MOAF, said: “The Q3 figures are extremely encouraging for the Greater Manchester region. The level of active requirements in Manchester remains healthy, supported by both local and national demand. Akin to the last year, the business and consumer services sectors have been the most active but we have also seen a notable significant increase in requirements from the legal sector.

“The prospect of ‘Northshoring’ will become more evident as occupiers seek to address increasing costs of occupation. This has already been demonstrated by the arrival of a well known legal firm in their search for 100,000 sq ft in Manchester. Further moves north are anticipated by Financial, Professional Services and the Public Sector in an attempt to decant from an overheating London base.

The imbalance of demand over supply in Manchester city centre has been well documented. With this imbalance and scarcity of prime stock it is likely to push headlines rents in the city centre up by the end of the year.

As a consequence six new build schemes including One New Bailey Street, the XYZ Building, One Spinningfields, Embankment and No.2 St Peter’s Square are set to deliver much needed additional Grade A space between 2016 and 2018.

The South Manchester headlines were stolen by Syngenta taking 32,330 sq ft at The Towers Didsbury and Avecto taking 29,000 sq ft at Trident.

Salford Quays continues to perform well this year with MWH acquiring 25,294 sq ft at The Soapworks, Hamburg Sud 17,800 sq ft at Metro and Travel Councillors 28,500 sq ft at Venus. The Salford Quays area has benefited from occupiers seeking attractive, well connected and cost effective property solutions as a viable alternative to the city centre market where rental levels continue to rise.”

MOAF members includes BE Group, Bilfinger GVA, CBRE, Canning O’Neill, Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield, DTZ, Deloitte, Edwards & Co, Hallams Commerical, JLL, Knight Frank, Lambert Smith Hampton, Matthews & Goodman, OBI Property, Savills, TSG Property, WHR Property Consultants and Williams Commercial.