Tenants Show Clear Preference for Liverpool City Centre Offices

A study of the tenancy patterns in Liverpool has revealed that city centre properties are immensely popular among takers while there is not much demand for offices outside the centre. In effect a few deals in the centre have contributed to most of the total tenancy activity in Liverpool in the past year.

Of the total 519,274 sq ft of office space available in city centre according to Liverpool Commercial Office Market Review 2009, a record occupation of about 520,000 sq ft was witnessed in the fag end of 2009.

Two of the biggest deals were entered into by the UK Border Agency and Merseytravel. While the UK Border Agency signed a deal for a 15 year lease in Old Hall Street at the Capital Building for 220,000 sq ft, Merseytravel took up 140,000 sq ft at the Mann Island development for thirty years.

These two deals contributed hugely to the total tenancy recorded in Liverpool. Total office space lettings touched 721,189 sq ft which is quite high as compared with 2008 figures but still fall short of the 2007 highest ever figures. It must be noted, however, that these two organisations moved into new premises from Liverpool itself.

While city centre occupation went up, desk space to rent occupation rates for properties outside city limits went down by 33%. Only 131,220 sq ft of offices outside were taken up during this period. In addition, the popularity of refurbished offices seems to be waning as proven by the falling number of takers for such spaces.

While only a handful of deals accounted of r the major portion of city centre commercial space occupancy, these have reduced the amount of Grade A space available here to 178,000 sq ft.