Vail Williams - Offices General - South East

Date: 16 Sep 1998

There remains an acute shortage of office space in the eight major commercial centres in central southern England despite the first increase in available stock for two years according Vail Williams' latest Business Space Bulletin.

By the end of the second quarter this year a total of 322,553 sq m (3,472,000 sq ft) was ready for occupation in Reading, Southampton, Portsmouth, Bracknell, Basingstoke, Crawley, Heathrow and the Blackwater Valley. This represents an increase compared with the first quarter of 7%.

Simon Ward, head of Vail Williams' research team believes the figures could offer a potential warning to the future prospects of the region's property market: "The market is now at a point of paradox. What is uncertain is whether this increase in availability and fall in take-up (22% in comparison to quarter one) is a 'blip' or the start of a longer tenn trend.

"There has been a tailing off in demand levels as the summer holiday period approached and the 'crunch' time for the market will come in the first few weeks of September when activity normally resumes at a strong level."

The centres with the least amount of available stock are the Blackwater Valley (16,524 sq m/ 177,862 sq ft), Bracknell (19,564 sq ni/210,592 sq ft) and Crawley (24,077 sq m/ 259,163 sq ft). The other centres stand at Portsmouth (40,698 sq m/438,073 sq ft), Basingstoke (47,570 sq m/512,040 sq ft), Heathrow (53,815 sq ni/579,269 sq ft), Southampton (55,806 sq m/600,694 sq ft) and Reading (64,500 sq m/694,278 sq ft).

During the second quarter work started on 11 new buildings around the region increasing the amount of space under construction to 181,351 sq m (1,952,058 sq ft) of which 138,848 sq m (1,494,558 sq ft) is speculative.

Activity is primarily concentrated around Heathrow with other new projects underway in Reading, the Blackwater Valley, Bracknell and Basingstoke. With the exception of one 1,254 sq m (13,500) pre-let building in Southampton, there is no development activity in the two M27 cities.

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