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Despite decline in rents of office space, the Birmingham office market showed an upward trend in the third quarter, largely due to increased availability of sublease office property.

A recent quarterly report published by Sandner Commercial Real Estate showed this upward trend of the market, quantifying it to nearly 744,000 Sq ft of available sublease office space in the third quarter of 2009 as against 703,000 sq ft of the second and 718,000 sq ft of the first quarter. The report attributes this increased activity to the fact that nearly 400,000 Sq ft of sublease office property was available in the third quarter in the Colonade AT&T building. The report, additionally stated that there was a marginal increase in the rents as well, quantifying it to 0.02p on an average while stating that this increase was witnessed only in class A multi tenant buildings.

The increase in rent desk cost is noteworthy in the light of a report published by the Wall Street Journal, which according to its yearly analysis deemed the rents in the UK to have decreased by nearly 8.5% percent and labelled it as the highest fall in rents since 1995. Additionally, the report stated that nearly 19.6 million square ft of sublease office space was returned to the landlords at the end of this quarter.

The report also talks about the fall in occupancy rates in Birmingham, which in the present quarter is only 89.7% as against 90.5% of the second quarter and 92% of the first. However, the report also adds that the office space occupancy rate is higher than the submarket occupancy rate. The occupancy rate of Vulcan Oxmoor submarket reduced to 61% this year from 77% of the third quarter of last year.