It's Friday, and there's nothing like a good sentiment survey to get us in the mood for the weekend. So how thoughtful of the lovely people at
Drivers Jonas to oblige and a Crackerjack pencil to them for their trouble. They've proudly been pushing their result on
Twitter today - the snappily-titled
Office Trends - Birmingham Occupier Survey 2009. Obviously going for the "it does what it says on the tin" approach there. Fair enough, now let's focus on what the report has to say...
Well, the key finding from the survey of 100 senior managers of businesses in Birmingham city centre appears to be that "more than half ... said their businesses have been affected by the credit crunch". Eh? Who are these businesses in the other (slightly-less-than) half that have survived the global economic downturn unscathed? Sadly, the survey doesn't say, but it does go on to reveal that 15% (yes, that's fifteen, not fifty) are planning to move within the next five years (my italics). Woo hoo. But I'm not sure that this level of occupier churn is going to save the market.
To be fair there are some interesting nuggets, such as the emergence of cost as the prime consideration for occupiers, after many years of having been told by tenants that other things like staff availability and transport were far more important.
Talking of which, no-one should be surprised that the biggest gripe among those surveyed for the DJ report was the poor transport infrastructure in the UK's second city, something that EG will take up in its Birmingham Focus, due to published on 27 June.
Now in case anyone thinks I'm being harsh on DJ here, I'm really not, and I recommend you download a copy from the DJ website and have read yourself. They've produced an excellently presented piece of research; the brochure is slick and extends to the news page on DJ's website, fronted by that popular doyen of the Birmingham office market, the glamorous and ever-so-slightly-pouting Philippa Pickavance (see right).
But to bang on about things being "upbeat" and "positive" is surely a bit premature? After all, EG's own sentiment survey, conducted around the same time and published on 7 March, found that the majority expected no improvement in the market in the coming six months and many feared that it would get worse. Admittedly the sample was smaller and covered the gamut of property-related businesses, not just occupiers.
Then again, it wouldn't be like an agent to talk up the market now would it? Like I said, it's Friday. Have a good weekend...!
Next month the schools break up for another year. In Saturday's Estates Gazette's Birmingham Focus we published an early end of term report on the city's transport system. Unfortunately, it scored a D minus - not good.
