Canary Wharf’s Office Rental Nightmare
Posted on 08 May 2009 at 05:33 am | Tagged as: Biz Ops, Commerce World, Plugging Things
It looks like problems with rising office vacancies and falling rents are set to plague one of Canary Wharf’s major shareholders, Songbird Estates PLC. Past leases were for long term rental, averaging around eighteen years.
Over the next five years, between now and 2014, around five hundred and twenty thousand square feet of office space could be left vacant if companies decide to terminate and relocate from the Docklands office district. Songbird have almost eight million square feet of space available, and this would leave almost seven percent of that space empty.
Knight Frank are speculating that the 4.9% office vacancy figures of 2008 will rise to fourteen percent by the end of this year, 2009.
Bryan Laxton, the chief executive for the UK faction of Cushman & Wakeman recently supported the Knight Frank prediction by stating, “The story in 2009 is the deterioration of rental income”.
With current falls in office rental figures and vacancies on the rise, there does appear to be a bit of a glut in this sector. However not all is bad, with the rise in empty office spaces many firms are looking at desk hire as a good source of rental income from small business start-ups and freelance nomadic workers.
