London serviced office prices on the increase

Nearly a year ago Abacus Office Finder was predicting an increase in demand for serviced offices in London – were they right to be thinking ahead of the gloomy cloud that seemed to be hovering over the London office market? Needless to say it isn’t an easy question to answer, but in the last twelve months london serviced office rents have inceased substantially and so using a basic economic equation one would have to accept that if the price has gone up (but the supply hasn’t changed) then demand must have gone up too.

SME’s looking to expand or contract their business are ham-strung by conventional landlords. The keyword for any SME has to be ‘flexibility’, whether this has to do with their business offering or the structure of their business. The global recession has made it hard enough to trade at all without the unwelcome interference of outside influences, such as inflexible landlords of business premises. It has long been a personal frustration of mine that property often ends up driving business instead of being a servant to it.

Abacus Office Finder have recently worked with a number of clients who made decisions to expand or contract their businesses into new offices, only to find that their current landlords wouldn’t release them from their existing commitments. In each case they were forced to ride out their leases of inappropriate office space, to the detriment of their business, before they were able to implement their future plans.

With even more journalistic comment about a double dip recession looming, businesses are certainly reluctant to branch out into new offices with so much uncertainty ahead. Taking a lease on a conventional office isn’t for the fainthearted seeing as many conventional landlords want you to sign a 10, 15 or even 20 year lease.

At the risk of sounding rather simplistic, there is a very straight forward answer - use a serviced office! Everything is laid out and ready of a new occupier, lease agreements are often on one or two sides of A4, lease terms can be as short or long as you like and if you need to expand or contract in a few months time you can just move to another office withing the same building without needing to change your stationery or anything else.