January 22, 2019
London remains top gateway city in the world for commercial property investors
London maintained its position as the top city for global real estate investment in 2018, according to research published today by JLL. The report claims that investors continue to favour cities they are familiar with and that have well-established investment markets and high levels of transparency. Well-known, large gateway cities with the world’s deepest concentrations of capital, companies and talent continue to dominate the top ranks. Twelve cities–London, New York, Paris, Seoul, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Shanghai, Washington DC, Sydney, Singapore, Toronto and Munich–have appeared in the top 30 ranking every year for the past decade and account for 30 percent of all real estate investment. More →
There was a record-breaking rate of take-up within the regional office occupier markets outside of London and the South East in 2018, with few signs of Brexit-related uncertainty, according to an analysis by CBRE. Across the ten regional cities monitored by CBRE, provisional analysis shows that overall take-up reached nearly 7.3m sq ft. This level was 16 percent above the five-year average and 6 percent higher than 2017, the previous record-breaking year. The majority of regional office demand has again been driven by the business and professional services sectors. 2018 saw record take-up from flexible office operators across the UK, representing the leading portion of business services take-up. This was the year the co-working revolution surged into regional cities. Birmingham, Bristol and Glasgow were all stand out expansion locations. With more demand from flexible workspace operators – both from established and new entrants, further expansion is anticipated in 2019 albeit at a further pace as markets become more saturated.
Half of employees say that their working environment has a negative effect on their mental health (51 percent) and wellbeing (49 percent) and two-thirds (67 percent) say that they only ‘sometimes, rarely or never’ feel valued at work. The research by Peldon Rose shows that two-thirds of employees (64 percent) currently have poor or below average mental wellbeing and that the majority (56 percent) claim increasing workloads, followed by a lack of time to focus on wellbeing and exercise (46 percent) are the leading causes of their stress. While half of employees think introducing exercise facilities will help them to better tackle their workplace stress (50 percent) – less than a fifth of workplaces (16 percent) currently provide these facilities, something employers should consider when looking to boost the morale of their workforce.
