According to a new report from CB Richard Ellis, the British capital is effectively the only major European city where demand for office space has been strong enough to bring substantial new office buildings into service in 2010.
For the most part, the pace of office space development in major Asian cities, with the exception of Tokyo, has been much faster than in the rest of the world, with close to two-thirds of all office space buildings expected to come from the continent between now and 2012.
The reason for the relative lack of office development in Europe and North America is reckoned to be a straightforward lack of corporate and investor confidence in what were comfortably the world’s strongest markets prior to 2007.
In general terms, Asian economies are further ahead in their cycle of development, difficulty, and recovery, which is having a knock-on effect on how their office markets are behaving, CBRE’s experts have suggested.
“London is currently the only major Western European market where reviving interest in development looks likely to produce a significant upturn in new construction activity over the coming year,” noted Richard Holberton, director of CBRE’s research in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
“A key influence on the pace of activity will also be the availability of finance. Elsewhere in the region, there are isolated examples of renewed interest in development, but these mostly reflect building-specific circumstances rather than a general pick-up in market momentum,” he added.
Editor’s notes: In the first quarter of 2026, Savills reported that development completions in Q4 2025 totalled 1.6 million square feet, a 42 per cent increase on the previous quarter, bringing the 2025 development completion total to 6 million square feet.
This was the highest level of development completions since 2016.
Notable schemes reaching practical completion in the final quarter of 2025 included Brookfield’s fully pre-let 430,000 square foot One Leadenhall, EC3, Tishman Speyer’s 185,000 square foot Angel Square, EC1, and BEAM’s fully pre-let 175,000 square foot 50 Berkeley Street, W1.
Several schemes were due to complete in 2026, with a total expected to reach 8.6 million sq ft, around a third of which was already pre-let.
However, over 30 per cent of the 2026 pipeline was scheduled for Q4, and given delays caused by the Iran invasion in the first quarter of 2026, it was unlikely the expected total would be achieved. 2026 completions were therefore expected to align with 2025 levels.
Savills predicted that completions over the following four years would reach 24.4 million square feet, 20 per cent of which had already been pre-let.
Construction on over a third of the space scheduled for delivery during this period had yet to start, with elevated costs and ongoing global uncertainty remaining challenges to viability.
The City Core had been particularly active, and this boosted Central London’s figures. Notable new starts in the City Core in 2025 included the 670,000-square-foot 50 Fenchurch Street, the 465,000-square-foot Dovetail, and the 380,000-square-foot 65 Gresham Street.
It was noted, however, that of the new development starts in the City Core, 27 per cent of the pipeline was already pre-let, with a further 5 per cent under offer; therefore, supply in the City Core was expected to remain constrained.