Office take up in Bristol highest since 2008, says Savills

By Nicky Godding

22 September 2022

Share

The Business Magazine article image for: Office take up in Bristol highest since 2008, says Savills

Take-up totalling 378,000 sq ft was the second highest first half take-up since 2008, according to Savill's latest office lettingsupdate.

This was 71 per cent above the H1 2021 total and represented a significant 50 per cent increase on the five-year H1 average, said the surveyor.

Grade A take-up accounted for 41 per cent of Q1 take-up. This represented a much larger Grade A proportion than the five-year H1 average of 23 per cent. This included the 24,000 sq ft acquisition by Pax8 at No.2 The Distillery and the 23,000 sq ft letting to Deloitte at Halo.

Total supply currently stands at 770,000 sq ft. This equates to just 1.3 years of supply, and with Savills regarding anything under two years as an undersupply, availability within the Bristol city centre market remains extremely limited.

The current Grade A supply level in the market is 121,000 sq ft. This represents a significant decrease of 30% on the Q4 2021 total and is indicative of the severe lack of Grade A supply within the market. As such, Grade A vacancy rate currently stands at 1% at the end of H1 2022.

The technology, media, and telecom sector continues to perform strongly in Bristol, recording 105,000 sq ft take-up in Q1 2022, which accounted for 45 per cent of the overall total. This included the 55,000 sq ft acquisition by Paymentsense UK at CEG’s EQ building, where construction is due to complete in Q1 2023.

Elsewhere, it was also a promising start to the year for the professional sector. Total take-up of 64,000 sq ft accounted for 27 per cent of the overall total take-up, which has already surpassed the annual total achieved in 2021.

By Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe.

After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts.

She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.