Leeds office market registered its biggest deal of the last five years in 2009. Despite the fact that the overall take up of office space declined from the average take up in last ten years, the trend has witnessed significant improvements.

According to the CB Richard Ellis publication, the Leeds Offices Market View, the average take up in the last decade reached up to 496,000 sq ft. However, the take up of firms to rent desk space last year were a mere of 403,800sq ft, showing a decline of around 20%.

However, the analysts pointed out that the year ended on a positive note with a number of good deals leasing out over 160,000 sq ft of office space. This is inclusive of the biggest deal in last five years that involved Yorkshire Water and Livingstone House wherein the former took up about 55,000 sq ft space in the Clarence Dock owned by the latter.

Director of the CBRE Leeds office agency, Jonathon Shires pointed out that it was Yorkshire that proved to be resilient even at the time of economic meltdown and kept up the hopes of improvement in the overall situation. The newfound economic improvements inspired the smaller start ups to come out of their cocoons and create more opportunities across the industry. It also downsized the participation of established businesses with the subleased deals.

He also pointed out that the business services sector held a major market share of the office space market in the area with over 30% of the market, closely followed by the public sector that remains to be one of the major players on the demand side.