Monday property news update - 29th March
Work-from-home and workplace equality, students return and urban property in demand
4 minutes to read
Life in the office, continued...
In what would be the largest office leasing deal since the onset of the pandemic, British Land and GIC are in talks with law firm Allen & Overy to rent around 300,000 sq ft of office space at One Broadgate, Bloomberg reported. The story notes that large companies seeking new state-of-the-art space are being forced to pin down new premises several years in advance due to a lack of new development projects.
Speculation during the past year as to whether mass home working would mark the decline of central business districts looks increasingly wide of the mark. We talked last week about new polling suggesting CEOs, weary after a year of home-working, are changing their minds about offices, with just 17% of global leaders now planning to cut back on space, down from 69% as recently as August.
Meanwhile, on Friday we covered Nationwide's decision to allow its 13,000 office staff to work from anywhere. Interestingly, the building society worked with polling firm Ipsos MORI to better understand what staff are thinking and it has published the results:
On the one hand 90% of staff want to keep working from home at least one day a week and six out of 10 report having a better life balance. On the other, the wellbeing of parents appears significantly worse than all adult households and workplace equality has been set back; women are taking on the lion's share of childcare and are more likely to lose or quit their job.
Escape to the country, continued...
In the six months following the first UK lockdown in March 2020, demand for UK property underwent a notable change as buyers looked for more space. The three areas of England and Wales that experienced the biggest increase in the number of properties that went under offer were North Devon, Ribble Valley and Derbyshire Dales - areas with an abundance of the properties buyers were looking for.
New research from Tom Bill this morning indicates a change is underway. The strongest performing markets in the six months to March this year have been: the London borough of Brent, Wrexham and Hartlepool. Local authorities including Dartford and South Tyneside also make up the top ten.
As Tom notes: “The search for space is far from over but the trend has a more urban flavour now. After an initial spike in demand for rural locations following the first national lockdown, the appeal of towns and cities is growing as buyers plan for life after lockdown and some attempt to capture the best of both worlds.”
University applications rise
Purpose-built student accommodation is another sector seeking answers to big questions in the wake of the pandemic. To take one example, if you aren't sure you want to commute an hour to the office anymore, what does that mean for students flying to the other side of the world to study at British universities?
The early signs are good, according to new analysis from Oliver Knight and Matt Bowen. More than 728,000 students applied to start a full-time undergraduate course at UK universities during the 2020/21 academic year, nearly 22,500 more applicants than the previous year.
In total, a record 41% of all 18 year olds in the UK applied for a full time undergraduate course, while there was also an uptick in the number of applications from outside of the UK, which climbed 7.5% on 2019 levels. Continuing a trend which has been evident since 2012, enrolment across higher tariff universities – which typically demand higher exam grades for entry – was up 13.2%. By comparison, medium and lower tariff universities saw acceptances increase by 3.7% and 1.1% respectively.
DIY nation
Retail sales values (exc fuel) declined by -1.6% year-on-year in February, Stephen Springham has this take on the numbers:
Many of the trends previously observed during periods of lockdown were even more prevalent in February. Huge polarities in performance saw household goods (+7%) significantly outperforming fashion (-54%). In addition “essential” operators, DIY +21%, chemists +21%, and garden centres +21%, saw much faster growth than their peers.
Stephen is bullish on the prospect of pent-up consumer demand supporting retailers, but he recognises that it will take considerable time – many, many months – before the sector fully gets back to its feet again.
In other news...
Andrew Shirley on Rural Markets and Tilda Mwai on the rebound in Africa's prime residential sales.
Plus, the government scraps the green homes grant, how the City went woke, get ready for a surge in US jobs, China's shift towards a consumer-driven economy is set to slow, Economic data confound forecasters and beat expectations, Europe’s third wave will not derail the UK recovery, and finally, ministers weigh Covid certificates for offices.
Photo by Jonathan Formento on Unsplash