Oxford Properties is a global real estate owner, investor, developer and property manager, estab-lished in 1960. It has offices in Canada, the USA and Europe, and interests in office, retail, industrial, residential and hotel properties. Notable assets include the Leadenhall Building in London and The Royal Bank Plaza in Ontario, Canada.

App tycoon Snapchat – a wildly popular app with teens and young adults that allows them to take a photo or short movie, which cannot be saved, to send to friends – has just acquired new headquarter space in London’s vibrant Soho. The area has always been a location that attracts media companies. With its combination of loft-style offices and boutique coffee shops – not to mention the under shadow of the red-lightesque shops – it is a haven for creatives.

Having previously blocked Renzo Piano’s initial design for a 72-storey residential pole, Westminster City Council has now approved ‘The Paddington Cube’ – a 360,000 sq ft, mixed-use scheme that will sit on a 12-meter podium.

AXA’s planned skyscraper, 22 Bishopsgate, has been forced into a re-design after a revised planning application ordered the building to lose four storeys. The change – which will make the tower 23m shorter – has been made to counter concerns that were raised over the building’s proximity to London City Airport.

A shortlist of four US firms: Tristan Capital, Harbert Management Corporation, KKR and Ares Management, are all bidding on the Arlington Business Parks Partnership (ABPP) Portfolio. The portfolio is comprised of six business parks, the largest of which is the Hammersmith Embankment campus, which has a value of £120 million. It also includes business parks in Gloucester, Oxford, Uxbridge, Manchester and Arlington Square in Bracknell.

Post Brexit, many occupiers are looking for office solutions that provide more flexibility but don’t carry the hefty price tag that usually accompanies serviced offices. An increasingly popular solution is often second hand tenant space. This can come in the form of a sublease or an assignment, and has both pros and cons.

Morgan Pryce has just acquired a small office in Victoria for a client looking for a well-located space for private meetings. Although Victoria is an area that is currently benefiting from a huge amount of development, the floor plates are largely 10,000 sq ft and above, which is making it difficult for smaller occupiers to find offices in this very desirable location.

Over the last 12 months, Morgan Pryce has seen a dramatic increase in clients looking to open gym spaces in London. The model they follow tends to be similar: the onus moving away from big rooms filled with banks of treadmills, cross-trainers and machines, towards a more personal training experience, either one-on-one or small groups. Specialised equipment and workouts designed for individuals have taken over, along with a price hike; some operators are now charging just under £200 a month.

GPE (Great Portland Estates) is a large British property development and investment company. The majority of their sizable assets – which totaled £2.3 billion last year – are office and retail buildings based in London. GPE have been constructing a mixed office and retail use development at 73-89 Oxford Street and 1 Dean Street, which has just been sold to Norges Bank Real Estate Management for a huge £276.5 million, reflecting a yield of 3.2%.

According to research conducted by a major UK real estate company, development in central London has reached an 8-year high, with 14.8 million sq ft of space currently being built. However, as the market is on its way down from the dizzy heights of summer 2015 we are seeing mainly refurbishments rather than new builds. New construction is down 42% since summer 2016, when 51 new schemes were started in comparison to just 40 this winter.