By Scott Wright
TAKE-up of office space in Edinburgh city centre rebounded to close to pre-pandemic levels last year, new figures show.
Analysis by property agent Knight Frank has revealed 577,532 square feet of office space was let in the centre of the Scottish capital in 2021.
The tally was 150 per cent ahead of 2020, when just 230,881 sq ft was let as the UK entered its first national lockdown and people began to work from home from March of that year. There was a notable surge in the fourth quarter of last year, when 268,640 sq t was taken up – 171% more than the same period of 2020, when 99,321 sq ft was let. However, the total for 2021 fell just short of the take up seen in 2019, before the pandemic, when nearly 650,000 sq ft was let.
Simon Capaldi, office agency partner at Knight Frank Edinburgh, said: “Last year saw a strong final quarter, with a flurry of deals concluded. Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Edinburgh’s office market has been resilient throughout.
“We’re also beginning to see the long-discussed flight to quality, with more occupiers moving to high quality and more ESG-friendly space, such as 1 Haymarket Square. We expect this trend to continue into 2022 as more occupiers look for their property to reflect their sustainability commitments, business values, and the increased focus on staff welfare.
Knight Frank said the stock of new-build Grade A space has continued to dwindle, highlighting a series of pre-lets at Haymarket Edinburgh.These included lets by Capricorn Energy, until recently called Cairn Energy, and law firm Shepherd & Wedderburn, which were announced in December.
The average deal size in the city increased to more than 5,000 sq ft as occupiers sought more space, the agent added.
Professional services and technology, media, and telecommunications were the most active sectors, accounting for 12% and 31% of take-up last year respectively. FanDuel's commitment to nearly 60,000 sq ft at 2 Freer Street was the biggest deal of the year in the city.
Mr Capaldi added: “There is a highly positive sentiment going into this year, with Edinburgh being an even more desirable place to live and work. Our research has shown that it is among the best cities in Europe for quality of life and wellbeing and that only looks like remaining the case.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here