Reading: Campbell Gordon says office rents now close to £36 per sq ft

Property agency Campbell Gordon has issued its Thames Valley 2016 review, saying more corporate occupiers expanded into bigger or better office premises last year than contracted.

Headline and net effective rents continued to improve, with the top headline office rent in Reading now standing at close to £36 per sq ft, said Duncan Campbell.  "Why? For two key reasons - partly due to the growth of rents in London, and partly because of a shortage of the right space in the right location. The latest signals however indicate that this growth will not continue in 2017," he added.

In the office-to-residential market, it had been 'another extraordinary year', he remarked.

"Record prices continue to be achieved, including on buildings we have sold in Wokingham and Henley. This has been driven by the relative speed and simplicity of these developments, along with a significant number of new entrants competing for stock," he reported.

This new market had dramatically changed the fortunes of secondary office property, and resulted in a material change in property use profiles in some locations. Campbell Gordon estimated in Reading that some 300,000 sq ft of secondary office stock had been converted to residential use in this way, much of it on the town-centre fringe.

The firm was ranked in second position for disposals in the Thames Valley by both CoStar and Estates Gazette. "We are the only independent top 5 firm on the ground in the Thames Valley in either listing," said Campbell.