Tomorrow’s Warehouse 2025: Warehouse rents rising in Midlands
Warehouse rents in the Midlands are forging ahead with prime rents for midbox space pushing £12.50 per ft2 around Birmingham and big box warehouses topping £10.50 per ft2 but quoting rents reaching even higher – possibly £14-15 per ft2 for midbox space.
By Liza Helps, Property Editor, Logistics Matters
Avison Young’s associate director Alex Thompson galloped delegates at last week’s Tomorrow’s Warehouse event through what occupiers should be expecting when looking for logistics space in the Midlands.
The midbox sector consisting of properties between 30,000 – 99,000 ft2 has seen some 625,000 ft2 being taken up in Q1 2025 with a similar picture for big box warehouses consisting of facilities over 100,000 ft2 with eight deals recorded in Q1 totalling around 4.5 million ft2 and at least a further 10 properties under offer.
On a national basis Thompson reports that there is some 10 million ft2 currently under offer the vast majority of that space in the Midlands.
That does not mean there is a shortage of space – yet. Avison Young reports that there are 48 speculative units and 56 existing units currently available but the sentiment is that space is now moving.
The issue is that developers have not been replacing it with new construction and are only now beginning to bring forward speculative site starts meaning that there will be a potential ‘gap’ in availability until new speculative space is delivered.
In addition not all location are equal and there are localised supply issues either regarign the sizes of units available or indeed the quality of units avilable.
Because of these issues Thompson warns occupiers that with rents rising added to the mix as well, taking too long to agree terms could mean that those terms will change and that will include the rent.
