The insurer Hiscox has announced the company that has been appointed to build its new offices in York.  The news of the £19-million offices has been welcomed by the city of York, which will be able to boast Hiscox’s largest offices outside the UK capital. 

This Thursday, the long awaited football world cup starts and as always there has been a huge amount of build-up leading up to this much anticipated event. England’s chances do not seem great this year, but maybe that is a good thing as we often perform our best whilst being branded the underdog. Anyway, this entire nation has now unofficially agreed that no one will be turning up to work on the Monday if England wins the world cup. 

Transport for London’s art deco building above St James Park underground station is, it seems, to be converted into luxury apartments. 

A few days ago Almacantar were granted planning permission to knock down Marble Arch Tower and replace it with two new towers of mixed use purposes. The existing tower has been there since 1967 and has provided a large amount of office space to the area, which in the current market is going to be sorely missed as the tenants will now have to leave the tower by the end of this year and re-locate across London. 

The TMT sector continues to grow as take-up was up again on the 2012 figures from 23% to 34% of office lettings in 2013. With a third of all Central London office lettings now made up from the TMT sector, it is a clear indicator that developers and major landlords now have to look at creating different specifications in their building to attract this growing sector.

Recent reports have indicated that the tenant of Chinese-owned Lloyd’s building may be considering a move away from the iconic skyscraper. Lloyd’s of London is reputed to be tempted by a move to a proposed building for which planning permission was granted earlier this year. The plans show a skyscraper already likened to a ‘Gotham City’ tower and is the brainchild of TIAA Henderson Real Estate. 

Last week was a very busy one for all of the agents at Morgan Pryce. This was mainly due, as often seems to be the case, many deals come to completion all at once. 

Morgan Pryce have recently acquired 2,500 sq. ft. in the heart of the City. With £4 off the quoting rent and 9 months’ rent free on a 5 year term with a 3 year break we thought at the time that this was a pretty good deal, little did we know that in 4 months’ time the market had changed so much that this is now a fantastic deal.

Recent statistics from the IPD UK monthly property index are showing an increase of 0.8% in the values of commercial property in April. The growth was 0.3% down from March 2014 but is still an encouraging sign for the UK property market, which rose almost 8% over the last year: significant, but still below the 2007 levels. 

It has recently been announced that the owners of The Heron Tower in London, who include State General Reserve of Oman Fund and members of the Saudi Royal Family, have agreed the lease of 50,000 square feet of the building’s space. The new tenant is Saleforce International Ltd, a company based in San Francisco, and due to the extent of their occupation of the building (90%) the owners have agreed that the building will be renamed Salesforce Tower – not a bad marketing move!