Land Securities is set to benefit from what it describes as an "acute" shortage of office space in London. After impressing the market this week by reporting a rise of no less than 20 per cent in its net asset value, the company has now stated its intent to develop more properties in the London area in order to capitalise on the lack of available office space in the capital.
"Consistent with our view last year, we expect the strongest rental value growth to occur for our London offices and we continue to believe that the best way to capture this is by undertaking speculative development projects in the best locations in London," says the chief executive officer of Land Securities, Francis Salway.
So many potential development projects were put on hold as a result of the recession that the capital is now falling short on office space, and with the recession now receding, many international firms that are beginning to grow and expand are finding that there is nowhere to grow and expand to. Land Securities clearly intends to change all that, however, already having no less than 123,570 square metres of office space in development with more to begin over the course of the next 18 months.
"It's evident that some of the development projects that we have, which we started in 2010, based on conservative numbers, have real potential to deliver returns well ahead of standard development profit levels," Salway notes.
