Metropolis ran 616 business leads on ‘office movers’ in October 2018. If all reported moves were added together the total would exceed 14 million sq ft of office searches and transactions, researched by Metropolis’ unique market-led intelligence research team, last month.
London was the largest region with 300 business leads during month, but there were also strong showings from the North West (61), South East (52) and Yorkshire (52). Financial services, IT and business services were the largest business sectors planning relocations or agreeing moves during the month.
The relocation leads geographically covered the whole UK and provided details of the size of the office occupier, company likely move dates, a description of the reasons for the move, its business sector and full contact details including an address for written inquiries, at least one telephone number and in most cases an email address. Some of the largest planned moves and top picks amongst the 616 October leads, included those on occupiers Shell UK, IBM, WPP,Jane Street Capital and McCann Worldgroup .
The October 2018 leads included 161 ‘identified requirements’, including 100 in London. Which means that the company confirmed to researchers that it has current or future plans to search for alternative office space. Of these 175 searches, 109 were newly posted office searches, not previously notified to clients.
The most recent research also included 176 ‘potential movers,’ which were mainly longer-term leads on occupiers, considering a future relocation, but the occupier has yet to make a final decision on whether to search.
Most of the remaining stories covered companies that have just signed for new office space and have set a move date, including some large pre-lets and companies inviting tenders for fit-out contracts. The shortest planned move date is just over a month away, whilst the longest was late 2021.
Recent research by Metropolis concluded that a conservative estimate of ‘live’ business tender opportunities on the database in recent months, exceeded £1bn of business.