A total of £15.9bn of commercial property has been traded in central London this year after a bumper November during which £2.9bn of deals took place.
The £725m sale of the Gherkin, EC3, to the Safra group was the largest single deal of the month. Some eight lots, each priced in excess of £100m, also traded.
With a further £3.8bn of deals currently under offer, according to DTZ, 2014 is set to be one of the most active years on record.
However, it is unlikely to exceed the £22.4bn reached last year.
DTZ’s head of UK inward investment, Ben Cook, said: “A record £89bn of capital is currently targeting European commercial real estate, a third of which is targeting the UK. We continue to see strong demand for core assets in the capital from both institutional and private investors.”
Sophy Moffat, of DTZ’s central London research team, said London still offered good prospects to investors looking for income growth, with various submarkets seeing double-digit rent increases this year.
“Next year City rental growth is expected to reach double digits too, thus exceeding growth in the West End during 2015,” she added.
