Record year for Dublin's office market in 2018
Nearly 350,000 square metres of office space was taken up in Dublin last year.
According to Savills, this is a record figure which is considerably ahead of anything seen in the city before.
In their latest ‘Dublin Office Market in Minutes’ Report released today, they have found that lettings are getting bigger to meet demand, with the average letting size up 50% in five years.
Strong jobs growth in 2018 fed directly into a record year for Dublin office lettings. the report says, with office-based employment there increasing by 12,300.
Savills note that the vacancy rate in Dublin’s office market is now 8.1% - its lowest since 2000. This is despite 462,402 square metres of new office space being completed in the city since mid-2015.
Dr John McCartney, Director of Research at Savills, said: “2018 was a record-breaking year for Dublin’s office market with companies taking-up nearly 350,000 sq m of space. This was partly due to a continued increase in the average letting size.
"Transactions of 5,000 sq m or more were once a rarity in Dublin but there have now been 21 of these in the last 15 months.
The largest was the 80,826 sq. m pre-let to Facebook at Bankcentre in Ballsbridge. But even without this 2018 would have been the fourth strongest year of take-up in the history of the Dublin office market.
Mr McCartney says he expects continued inward investment, attracted to Ireland by a range of “natural advantages” and that foreign capital is driving larger space requirements;
“The use of English as the main spoken language, the country’s strong cultural ties with the US, a business-friendly environment and policy choices that have consistently embraced globalisation are all leading to a continued inflow of foreign capital," he said.
"The incoming operations often serve a global audience from their Irish base and, as a result, their business space needs have decoupled from the size of the domestic economy.”
