The capital’s commercial real estate sector managed to attract record levels of investment in Q1 of 2017 as foreign investor shrug off any Brexit fears, CBRE figures reveal.
Between January and March 2017, there was a total of £4.9bn in transaction in London commercial property market.
Strong UK commercial property market demonstrates resilience in first quarter
This was the highest number ever in the first quarter of the year as well as the biggest quarterly total since the end of 2014.
The biggest contributors to this were overseas investors who shrugged off any fear of uncertainty accompanying the country’s fare well from Europe. They made up 80% of transaction volume, an increase of 6% from 74% at the end of last year.
CBRE revealed that a total of 13 deals were worth £100 million or more during Q1 of 2017, an increase from 11 transaction in the previous quarter.
Nine out of thirteen (just under 70%) of the mega-deals were purchases by overseas investors.
Stephen Pearson, head of city investment at CBRE, said:
“The momentum we experienced at the end of last year has shown no sign of abating in the early months of 2017 and London remains a central focus for international capital requirements.”
These numbers, however, sit in drastic contrast to figures published a couple of weeks ago stating the amount of foreign companies looking for commercial property in the UK has dropped by 40%.
Germany is now Europe’s most active commercial property market
Commercial real estate portal Property.Works stated that foreign firms accounted for 11.3% of all its searches in the early months of 2016, the number had dropped to 6.7% towards the second half of 2016.
Whilst experiencing a drop straight after the referendum vote they also saw an increase to similar levels like pre-referendum times a couple of weeks later with their most-searched cities being London, followed by Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds.
