In 2024, London was still the most expensive UK city for office construction. This was true at least for the cities included in the list, and it applies to prestige and A-Grade offices. Both A-Grade and prestige offices in London were more expensive than any type of office construction in Birmingham, Manchester, Glasgow, or Leeds. After London, Cambridge and Oxford are also some of the other UK cities with the highest house prices in 2023. Office rents in London Not only did London prove to have high building costs, rents for prime offices were equally high, with the West End core as the most expensive districts in the city. The area to the North of Buckingham Palace is known for its exclusive townhouses largely owned by the foreign elite and upscale hotels and restaurants. Stratford and the rest of the Docklands were the cheapest districts in London. Office investments in the UK In the last quarter of 2023, the value of office investments in London increased slightly in comparison to previous quarters. Investments in the City and Southbank, however, dropped in value. The volume of investment in commercial real estate in the UK fluctuated a lot in the past months, with some years showing high volumes of investment in office real estate, and other months where those values fell rapidly.

In 2020, the average cost to build a warehouse or logistics center varied significantly by country. In New York, United States the costs were on average 117 U.S. dollars per square foot. However, the costs in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil were significantly lower at 75 U.S. dollars per square foot. The costs to build a warehouse or logistics center depend on several factors, such as, location, materials, and unionization of the labor force.

Logistics and Warehouse Construction

Despite the various considerations for warehouse/logistics construction, the demand for warehouses is apparent. Since 2016, the percentage of U.S. warehouse space that is available has generally been on the decline. To meet the decline in available space, there has been a push to build more warehouses, especially in the U.S. Between 2007 and 2018, the U.S. saw a rise in warehouse construction that resulted in over 3,500 additional warehouses being built to meet the demand. In other countries the value derived from warehouses is also clear. In the UK, the value of new industrial warehouse construction outputs has been dramatically increasing since 2013.

Logistics Construction in the U.S.

In the U.S., a vast majority of new warehouse/logistics constructions are dedicated to building large warehouses. The share of large warehouse construction projects as a percentage of all new warehouse construction has increased in recent years. The market and competition among construction companies can be quite competitive. As of 2017, Inland Empire, in Southern California, had the largest amount of warehouse space under construction, followed by companies located in Dallas and Fort Worth Texas.

London was the city in the United Kingdom with the highest costs for constructing a general hospital in 2024. Meanwhile, among cities included in this selection, Leeds was the cheapest one to build that kind of structure. The expenses of such a construction in London were over 500 British pounds higher than in Glasgow. The capital of the UK is the most expensive area for public building construction. Hospital bed numbers still in decline The number of hospital beds in the UK has been declining since 2000. Between 2000 and 2020, figures decreased from 240,144 to 162,723 number of beds. The reduction in hospital beds is, among other reasons, attributed to technical improvements in surgery rooms, patients with mental health problems being treated in different settings, and most importantly, cuts to NHS funding. However, the number of beds increased slightly again in 2021 and 2022. Increased healthcare spend Despite past funding cuts and declining availability of hospital beds, healthcare spending has significantly increased in the past twenty years. In 2022, expenditure reached a peak of nearly 282 billion British pounds, whereas in 2000, this figure amounted to 79 billion British pounds. The value of healthcare expenditure as a share of GDP also increased significantly in the past years.

In November 2024, the average weekly salary and bonuses of construction workers in the United Kingdom (UK) reached 794 British pounds. This was higher than the salary in the same period of the previous year. The number of construction job vacancies in the UK in that quarter had an even sharper decline.

Geneva, Switzerland, was the most expensive city to buy an apartment in Europe in the first quarter of 2024. The square meter price in Geneva was nearly 15,650 euros in that quarter, about 2,000 euros higher than the second city in the ranking, Zurich. Cost of rent Rents across the major cities in Europe increased significantly in 2023. One of the main factors driving high rents across European cities is the same as any other consumer-driven business. If demand outweighs supply, prices will inflate. The drive for high paid professionals to be located centrally in prime locations, mixed with the low levels of available space, high land, and construction costs, all help keep rental prices increasing. Mortgage rates The average mortgage interest rates across Europe in 2023 were all under five percent, except in Czechia, Romania, Hungary, and Poland. On an individual level, a difference of one percent would most likely mean thousands of euros in interest on the mortgage a person is paying, making timing key in house purchasing. Mortgage interest rates tend to be lower in Nordic countries due to the financial stability and reliability of its borrowers. Other factors that influence the mortgage interest rates include inflation, economic growth, monetary policies, the bond market and the overall conditions of the housing market. More stable markets also tend to have higher average prices.

France was the country with the highest number of construction starts of homes in 2023, followed by Germany, Poland, and the United Kingdom. There were at least 140,000 housing construction projects starting and a similar number of projects being completed that year. Meanwhile, Bosnia and Herzegovina had less than 3,000 construction completions, and Hungary had 18,500 home completions in 2023. A hiccup in residential construction in Poland Not only was Poland amongst the countries with the most homes built on overall terms, but, along with Ireland, it also had the most housing completions per capita in Europe. That was despite the number of housing units completed in Poland declining significantly in 2023. Nevertheless, the trend in residential construction has been very positive in the past years, rising from under 144,000 in 2014 to slightly under 238,500 in 2022.

France’s capital region had the busiest residential construction segment France had one of the largest construction sectors in Europe.Although the construction starts of residential and commercial buildings in France decreased in 2023, they still covered nearly 46 million square meters. Most of that corresponded to housing. However, that activity was unevenly distributed across the country. The revenue of the building construction and renovation industry in Île-de-France was nearly twice higher than that of the second region in the ranking.

London West End - Bond Street is the most expensive location for prime high street rents in the UK, with prices reaching 2,250 British pounds per square foot. The West End was ranked ahead of the London City, which came in third. In Manchester, the annual costs of rental per square foot of prime retail real estate amounted to 225 British pounds. Retail warehouses Retail warehouses typically range from fifty thousand to hundreds of thousands of square feet. They are used for keeping and distributing inventory. Retail warehouses include loading docks, truck doors and large parking lots; also, they may contain a limited amount of office space. Prime retail warehouse properties belong to the wider category of industrial property, along with other real estate types, such as distribution buildings, showroom facilities, manufacturing buildings, cold storage facilities, telecom or data hosting centers, "flex" buildings denoting more than one industrial or commercial facility housed in the same building, and finally R&D buildings. Prime yields of high street retail across Europe Retail real estate prime yields in Europe were the lowest in Zurich, Switzerland, and the highest in Istanbul, Turkey in 2022. As could be expected, larger cities in Europe tended to produce lower yields, due to the lower risk associated with these markets. Locations with lower yields tend to have steady occupancy rates and rental growth.

In 2023, land for the development of industrial real estate in some of the most sought after markets in the UK exceeded one million British pounds. In the third quarter of the year, the land value in London ranged between 4.25 million British pounds in East London and 7.75 million British pounds in West London. The Golden Logistics Triangle, referring to the area between Nottingham, Birmingham, and Northampton, had a per acre land value of over one million British pounds. The source points out that land values dipped significantly compared to the previous year.