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As unemployment in the UK continues to rise and companies look for more ways to cut costs, the office property market continues to experience a downward spiral on both valuation and letting rates. It is predicted that occupier controlled office spaces will come back into the market with very few buyers to take them.

As far as Manchester is concerned, office space rental and valuations will continue to remain low, though not as low as other cities, according to a report from Jones Lang LaSalle. Trevor Sloan, who heads the company’s National Office Agency team in Manchester, has said that while the trend of reducing office space among companies is prevalent across the UK, Manchester has been more or less protected from it so far. Hence, financial loss from vacant office space has been less in Manchester.

The biggest reason for office spaces lying vacant in Manchester is that landlords have temporarily suspended redevelopment work on their properties. Thus, it is more because of such half-renovated office space lying vacant rather than tenants giving up existing office spaces that is causing the vacancies in the Manchester real estate circuit.

With the coming year however, tenants in Manchester are likely to start vacating Grade B space as well as prime Grade A space, leading to a steep fall in rentals. This is likely to affect the Manchester market for a long time, predicts the company.