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15 March 2018 – Eje Prime
Sant Cugat del Vallès is growing strong in Barcelona’s slipstream. In addition to being one of the most sought-after cities in the residential market, the office sector is also strongly committed to this location, where 130,000 m2 of office space has been leased since 2015. Those figures place the city as the second location of choice for this segment in the province of Barcelona.
Currently, there are more than 3,100 companies installed in the city, with a financial district containing 49 hectares of business parks and more than 62,000 professionals working in its office buildings, according to the Marketshot report prepared by the consultancy firm Cushman&Wakefield.
According to the research, Sant Cugat del Vallès has played a fundamental role in the expansion of Barcelona’s office stock in recent years, evolving from a dormitory city into a nucleus of activity for the services sector, bringing together workers and residents alike.
Since 2015, the number of office rental operations in the city has soared. During that year, a record volume of office space was leased, with more than 75,000 m2 signed. In 2015 and the following year, 54 transactions were signed in the office market, spanning a leasable surface area of 104,000m2, which represented 27% of all the office space leased in the entire province of Barcelona.
In recent years, large operations have been carried out with the arrival of Stradivarius into an office building that spans 26,400 m2; and the leasing of offices to Echevarne, Mapfre and Natura Bissé Internacional, which contracted 12,000 m2, 10,000 m2 and 9,200 m2 of space, respectively.
In terms of the type of office being demanded, in Sant Cugat, prime products stand out. Quality A-rated offices account for 93% of the total space leased in the city, whilst properties rated Quality A/B+ represent 96% of the leasable surface area. These records have generated a significant decrease in the space available in the city.
In 2017, the shortage of available office space in Sant Cugat became clear with the leasing of just 22,000 m2 of space, a much lower figure than had been recorded in previous years. And, currently, the available surface area has been reduced to just 25,500 m2, which represents an availability rate of 4.9%, when just a few years ago, it stood at 30%.
Sant Cugat is a sought-after enclave for sectors such as pharmaceutical, R&D and technology, due to the services, communications and technical quality of the buildings, according to the report. It also highlights the location in the city of the Esadecréapolis knowledge and innovation centre as a “powerful” magnet for those types of companies to set up shop there.
1,800 m2 on average
Since 2015, the average rental operation in Sant Cugat has amounted to around 1,800 m2, when between 2010 and 2014, the figure was less than half (750 m2).
Today, in Sant Cugat, there is more than 115,000 m2 of potential office space, of which 100,000 m2 is located on buildable land, without a construction start date. The potential for growth in the stock is significant, and if all the projects were to be completed, the office supply in the city (the capital of the office market on the outskirts of Barcelona) would increase by 22%.
Original story: Eje Prime
Translation: Carmel Drake