Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) have today released figures which show that year-end Dublin office take-up for 2015 has totalled 2.87 million sq.ft. for the last 12 months.
 
This is way ahead of expectations and is just shy of the annual record in 2007 of 2.97 million sq.ft.
 
The figures show that take-up was boosted by strong activity in the fourth quarter of 2015, when almost 1 million sq.ft. of take-up occurred across 64 deals. This is an increase of 62% from the previous quarter.
 
The city centre continued to dominate demand accounting for 60% of take-up in the last 3 months, and there remained a particular focus on Dublin 2, which accounted for 39% of total take-up. 
 
In terms of supply, the vacancy rate has remained unchanged in the quarter at 7.9%, however it is significantly lower than the 11.8% vacancy rate recorded 12 months ago. There is currently 3.0 million sq.ft. under construction and 0.9 million sq.ft. under refurbishment. If this space was added to stock, the vacancy rate would increase to 13.3% overall.
 
Associate Director and Head of Research at JLL, Hannah Dwyer commented, "It is also encouraging that we are continuing to see increasing levels of construction activity in response to the tightening availability of prime space in core locations. The city centre vacancy rate is now just 3.9% and is even tighter for Grade A space. 

"Although construction activity is currently underway, of the 900,000 sq.ft. of space that is due to be delivered in 2016 from new development and refurbishments, 61% of this is already pre-let. Supply is therefore likely to continue to fall throughout 2016 and until significant levels of new supply are brought to the market." 
 
Source: www.businessworld.ie