Avison Young in the Midlands
Avison Young's team has been operating in the Midlands since 1991 from its office in Coventry. From here Avison Young are well placed to serve the entire regional market which lies at the heart of the UK mainland. The area has long been an important manufacturing centre for a wide range of products. Today major manufacturing businesses include Aston Martin, Jaguar Land Rover, JCB and Rolls Royce. The top 20 manufacturing companies in the area each contribute to a combined figure of more than £63.5 billion in sales to the UK economy.
Services
Avison Young UK 's advice-led solutions deliver value across the breadth of commercial property services.
User / Occupier
We recognise that for most occupiers, the property burden represents the second highest cost and tends to be the biggest contingent liability. Therefore we focus on helping occupiers create property and workplace solutions that improve performance, increase competitiveness, adapt to changing markets and provide the optimum workplace environment for their staff.
Owner / Investor
Our UK team adds value right through the property lifecycle, from acquisitions to disposals, in a wide variety of sectors including: offices, retail, industrial and alternative sectors. Our collaborative approach means we gain a more intimate understanding of the needs of owners and investors. As a result, we can provide customised advice that underpins intelligent and informed decisions.
Area Overview
The top Midlands cities include Birmingham, Coventry, Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. The region's automotive industry is known globally for its design and engineering capabilities, and is attracting significant domestic and international investment. As well as being home to huge international businesses the region boasts world renowned universities which are important centres of research and development and attract huge numbers of domestic and international students.
Leading Midlands industries include; advanced manufacturing and engineering, construction, IT service, digital and creative, logistics, culture and tourism, fashion, financial services and healthcare.
By virtue of the excellent access to the UK market the region is the most important location for warehousing and supports a highly sophisticated logistics industry.
Markets
OFFICES
The office market is principally focussed on the major cities. Occupiers from a broad range of businesses include Barclaycard, Capital One, E-on and J Sainsbury.
INDUSTRIAL
The UK's logistics sector has seen strong activity much of which has been driven by the e-commerce sector.
The automotive sector has also been an important component of recent industrial property demand with a number of important acquisitions by car manufacturers and their supply chain.
The Midlands Golden Triangle bounded by the M1, M6 and M42 is considered to be the prime location for logistics space and has seen rents increase up to £7.25 psf. Already 2018 has seen take up of 9.14 million sq ft which exceeds to full year take up in 2017. We expect the end of year figure for 2018 to approach the circa 13 million sq ft record of 2016.
INVESTMENT
The UK commercial property market continues to show strong performance with investment for all sectors for 2017 totalling £62.969 billion and the figures for the first six months of 2018 stand at £25.883 billion.
Investment in warehouse / distribution throughout the UK for the year 2017 stood at £7.008 billion and for the first six months of 2018 stands at £1.746 billion. The average yield for all industrial sectors was 5.6% in 2017.
The region has seen strong rental growth which has led to fierce competition from investors keen to acquire industrial assets throughout the East and West Midlands.
Over the past 12 months key investors in the East Midlands include; Aberdeen, Cabot, NFU and Tritax. In the West Midlands active investors include; Liberty, NFU and Tritax.
The outlook for the next year remains positive and we see further pressure on yields due to the weight of money wanting to enter this market sector.