(1888PressRelease)
May 24, 2007 - Manchester is the UK's second city for commercial property, according to JMW Solicitors, who have handled a number of large commercial conveyances that have taken place in the Greater Manchester area.
Commercial property solicitor Alan Burns said that Manchester currently has "an extremely busy" commercial property market and "has strong potential for growth".
"There are always new developments coming along, so I'm sure there will be growth," he said, adding: "My impression is that Manchester has a very strong claim to being the second city as far as commercial property worth is concerned."
London is also awash with new developments at the moment, something which Jeremy Warner, a business writer for the Independent, recently commented on. He noted that every part of the London horizon "seems alive with cranes" working to produce an "abundant supply of new office space".
According to Mr Warner, "the flood of investment into commercial property continues to astonish. Lending into the sector has been off the scale; there's a continued wall of foreign money into London office and UK commercial property and … retail investors can't seem to get enough of it either."
These views were echoed by Duncan Lamb of industrial and warehouse space broker Brixton plc. He likened London commercial property to "a restaurant that everybody wants to get into but nobody can".
London's industrial property market is one of the most in-demand in the world, he said, with parts of the Greater London conurbation being home to some of the most expensive commercial real estate in the world. Recent figures suggest that Heathrow has the most expensive industrial property in the world.
Outside of the capital and the bigger cities such as Manchester and Birmingham, there are some smaller - and perhaps unlikely - areas that are also seeing commercial property prices reach a premium. A recent report by officebroker.com highlighted Stockport and Reading as two areas that were seeing their commercial property sectors prosper, thanks to good transport links and proximity to regional industrial centres.
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