Folksonomics

Wall Street Journal, in its recent report had stated that rents in the UK will witness a decline of nearly 8.5%, which according to its year end analysis is the highest drop in rents ever. A report published by Sandner Commercial Real Estate attributes this decline to the fact that most people are returning the office space to the landlords, estimated to about 19.6 million square feet.

Having said that, it is important to add that in reality, the third quarter has seen a remarkable increase in activity related to desk space rental in Birmingham, which has been attributed largely to the increased availability of sublease office space. This increase in availability has not really led to an increase in rents in Birmingham, which incidentally has increased by a measly 0.02p but only in the category of Class A multi tenant buildings.

The third quarter report published by Sandner Commercial Real Estate showed that available sublease office space in the third quarter was over 744,000 Sq ft as against 703,000 Sq ft of the second quarter and 718,000 Sq ft of the first quarter. The report claimed that this increase in the third quarter was largely due to the availability of nearly 400,000 Sq ft sublease office space in the Colonade AT&T building.

The report also stated that there was a small decline in the occupancy rates of office space, which it had computed to 89.7% in the third quarter of 2009 as against 90.5% of the second quarter and 92% of the first. However, the occupancy rate of office space was higher than that of submarket property, with occupancy of Vulcan Oxmoor Submarket, reducing to 61% this year.