Occupiers will not stop seeing London as a business centre, Richard Howard said at the annual Association of Property Lenders conference yesterday.
Pointing to deals such as Wells Fargo’s £300m purchase of 33 Central, Howard, a senior director at Cushman & Wakefield, said that occupiers are still hungry for space in the capital.
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He said: “Occupiers still have to house big amounts of people and won’t wait around to see what happens.
“No one is saying, ‘Oh my God, get us out of London.’”
He said there would be no mass exodus to a city like Frankfurt, which has a population of 700,000 and would not be able to cope with any sizeable movements.
Areas of London that were previously ignored will likely see the kind of growth in demand King’s Cross has had as the HS2 opens up accessibility, he said.
He added that appetite will vary between sectors.
Howard said the tech industry is “more space hungry than ever” in London with rumours of Apple leasing Battersea Power Station. Life sciences, he added, will be the next industry to see considerable growth in London.
He said: “If you’re looking at a lending situation with tenants lined up from that sector, that is very sensible.”
Occupier take-up in finance and professional services, however, has seen a squeeze, while West End rental values have fallen 14% in real terms since the financial crisis.
