Take-up for Manchester city centre reached an impressive 319,995 sq ft across 53 deals in Q1 2025, according to the Manchester Office Agents Forum. The strong start to 2025 follows an active 2024, which saw a total of 1.22 million sq ft transacted in the city centre, in-line with the 10-year average.
Q1 Highlights
The first quarter was notably buoyed by Trader Media’s commitment to 130,000 sq ft at 3 Circle Square, a development by Bruntwood SciTech. This significant deal underscores the attractiveness of Manchester’s office market to major tech companies.
The education sector continued to perform strongly, with a total of three deals totalling 47,572 sq ft. This sector’s consistent demand highlights the importance of educational institutions in the city’s office market.
The take-up results for Q1 2025 represent the best performance in a first quarter since 2020, indicating a continued recovery and sustained demand for office space.
Positive Outlook for 2025
The outlook for the remainder of 2025 remains positive, with several sizable Grade A requirements under offer and a healthy pipeline of occupier demand. This trend suggests that Manchester’s office market will continue to perform, driven by the demand for high-quality, refurbished workspace.
Matt Shufflebottom, Director in the Advisory and Transaction team at CBRE, commented:
“The first quarter of the year has started strongly, and we expect this to continue across the remainder of 2025. Occupiers continue to focus on best-in-class workspace, and this is reflected in the take-up across 2024 and Q1 2025. Whilst new build availability is diminishing, Manchester has a healthy stock of high-quality refurbished workspace, which we expect to capture the majority of interest in the coming months and years until the next tranche of new build space is delivered. Encouragingly, we are having productive discussions with developers who are gearing up to commence the next wave of new build development”.
Out-of-town
Looking beyond the city centre into the out-of-town markets, South Manchester recorded a healthy 129,206 sq ft across 63 deals, sitting above the 5-year quarterly average. Key transactions included NES Group taking 9,900 sq ft at Foundation in Altrincham, Bruntwood’s latest comprehensive out of town refurbishment. Close Brothers Ltd also committed to 8,775 sq ft at Jackson House in Sale.
MOAF also reported take-up in Salford Quays & Old Trafford at 28,737 sq ft across 14 transactions and, although down on the 5-year average, it’s broadly in-line with last year’s Q1 performance. The largest deals took place at Media City with Money Wellness taking 8,204 sq ft in Blue and Intelligent Lending Ltd committing to 6,773 at Orange.
Matt Pickersgill, associate director at Avison Young, said: “After what was a fairly subdued 2024 there are some signs of a bounce back in the first quarter of this year with South Manchester recording its highest quarter of take-up in 15 months and back above the 5-year quarterly average.
“With a healthy number of larger out of town office requirements already circulated this year we anticipate a good proportion of these will also transact during the course of 2025.”
MOAF is made up of Avison Young, BE Group, CBRE, Colliers International, Canning O’Neill, Cushman & Wakefield, Edwards, Fisher German, Hallam Property Consultants, TSG Property Consultants, JLL, Knight Frank, LSH, OBI, Savills, and Sixteen.
