Office occupier
demand
411
PRACTICE PAPER
Office occupier demand
reflected by the Birmingham
market
Peter Dent
School of Real Estate Management, Oxford Brookes University,
Headington, Oxford, UK, and
Alan White
School of Land and Property Management, University of the West of
England, Bristol, UK
Introduction
The aim of this paper is to offer a different perspective as to the use of
information technology (IT) in the workplace. Topics will be discussed
including: corporate philosophy regarding space, employee characteristics, use
of IT and the demand for office space. It is hoped that by weighing up these
issues a wider perspective for this area of property occupation will be gained.
The basis of this work is a research exercise carried out early in 1997
investigating occupier demand for offices in Birmingham, and has
been supplemented with the authors’ experience of this and comparable
marketplaces.
Office occupiers survey
The study concentrated on commercial office occupiers within the inner core of
the Birmingham Business District and the Broad Street corridor, Five
Ways Island and the larger purpose-built office developments along the Hagley
Road. In this way it was possible to include all occupiers within the established
city centre and those occupying premises in newly emerging commercial office
locations.
A questionnaire was mailed to every occupier identified with a follow-up
letter to non-respondents. The initial mailing, sent out in November 1996, went
to 709 organisations who occupy commercial office accommodation in
Birmingham. This produced a response of completed questionnaires of 25.7 per
cent. A further mailing, sent out in January 1997, was distributed to the
organisations which had not responded to the first request. This produced a
further return of 15.7 per cent. The total response rate from the two mailings
was 37.4 per cent (including returned incomplete questionnaires the final
response rate from the initial population was 46.5 per cent).
Journal of Property Valuation &
Investment, Vol. 16 No. 4, 1998,
pp. 411-418. MCB University Press,
0960-2712
© Peter Dent and Alan White