A flurry of December deals gave a much-needed boost to London's West End office market, but was not enough to stop overall take-up for the year plummeting 63% on 2019 levels. Savills data shared with Property Week shows that take-up fell from 4,464,317 sq ft in 2019 to 1,669,436 sq ft in 2020. After the first national lockdown was introduced in March 2020, take-up rallied but did not return to pre-lockdown levels. However, in December there was a 63% month-on-month increase in take-up, to 205,780 sq ft. Only in January and February did take-up exceed this level, reaching 277,588 sq ft and 223,704 sq ft respectively. "December is always quite a bumper month as occupiers and landlords look to finalise their plans before the new year," said Andrew Wedderspoon, director in the West End agency team at Savills. "We can expect a quiet Q1. But the expectation on the occupational side is that as the vaccine rollout begins to happen and occupier confidence builds, we should expect a pickup in Q2 and hopefully a busy Q3 and Q4."
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