NovaLoca Blog

Further to my blog in January, “NovaLoca ranked ahead of EG Property Link”, our rankings have now improved even further! Thanks to our continued efforts we now rank a massive 104,572 websites ahead of EG Property Link.

We are really pleased with this result and are inspired to reach even greater heights. We have an ongoing programme of investment in SEO (search engine optimisation) and our current success is testament to this. The most exciting part is that our latest SEO work will not even be released onto our site until next week.

Much of the SEO work carried out by various websites is a long-term investment, as results are often not realised for six months. Beware of listing on sites that draw traffic from sponsored links – although they can increase traffic this way, it is not a long-term investment for them and can be switched off quickly if the site can’t keep up with payments. 

We have been lucky enough to get a sneak preview of some research conducted by The Technology Studio, which reveals NovaLoca.com as the leader of all UK portals and as number 3 in the UK for all commercial property websites in the UK. We will update you when the full league tables are released.

Miranda

Many of you have been loving Novaloca.com’s “pay per property” system and the ease with which charges can be made direct to clients. However, subscriptions that include all properties, automatically fed by an internal system where available, are becoming the favoured alternative.

Quietly released in January 2010, our “new deals” have proved popular. In order to accommodate budgets of all sizes, we are allowing agents to cherry-pick the features they want their listings to contain.

Already this year NB Real Estate, Haslams, Richardson Commercial, Phoenix Beard, Derrick Wade Waters, Anthony J Lewis, Timothy Lea & Griffiths, Maxwell Brown, New Ballerino, Howkins & Harrison and Westbridge & Co have signed up.

Call Chris on 01767 313 380 to get your own tailored quote.

Data collected by the Novaloca.com team shows that our search tools are making our database of available commercial properties for sale and to let even more effective.

Visitors to Novaloca.com are finding exactly what they need more quickly. Each visitor to the site in January 2010 viewed a similar number of pages showing full details of properties on Novaloca.com compared with a year earlier, but a higher percentage of these viewings are becoming leads. In January 2009 an agent needed 51 views of its property details pages to result in a lead but in January this year the figure had dropped to 44, showing that the value of property views has risen by around 13% year-on-year.

And with traffic to the site growing well, the number of leads remains on an upward track. There has been a jump of 45% in the number of unique visitors to Novaloca.com year-on-year as well as continued growth in traffic since the start of 2010 – we have already recorded a 10% increase in site traffic in February compared with the previous month. So while fewer occupiers overall are enquiring about property amid the current economic downturn, the number of enquiries on Novaloca is actually rising.

We have noticed that the number of leads generated per unique visitor is down, perhaps reflecting market conditions, with occupiers interested but not yet ready to commit to a new property. But the good news is that we are attracting so many more unique visitors to the site that this more than compensates for the cautionary climate, as the site is actually delivering 19% more leads to agents.

Agents have told us that with budgets coming under restriction there is generally a lot less money available at the moment for marketing properties in more traditional ways, and this has added to the growing interest in online options, as these are proving to be much more cost-effective.

There are now well over 20,000 properties registered on Novaloca.com including office space, retail properties, industrial units, leisure facilities and land opportunities. To get all your properties listed on NovaLoca call Chris on 01767 313380 or click here to register and start adding properties today.

Miranda

The US National Association of Realtors has published its outlook for the commercial property market there and it doesn’t make for very happy reading. The NAR, a vast trade association with more than a million members, says that the fourth quarter of 2009 remained affected by the recession, but it does have some hopes of improvement in 2011.

The NAR’s chief economist, Lawrence Yun, expects rising demand for office space and industrial properties as the job market improves – but not until next year. He also expects stronger consumer confidence in 2011 to boost the market for retail property to let.

The NAR’s report, published on Tuesday, includes details of how the organisation sees the office, retail and industrial sectors of the commercial property market in the US.

Oliver Whitehead, chairman of property investment and development group Minerva, says that there is “real and growing evidence to show that we have now passed the cyclical low in the commercial property market.”

Whitehead was speaking as Minerva reported half-year results today, showing growth in its investment property valuation of 9.7%, compared with a decline of 26.5% a year earlier. Its trading property valuation jumped 12.2% (2008: down 7.7%).

Property highlights during the six months to December 2009 included activity at two properties in the City of London. Minerva noted it had pre-leased 145,000 sq ft of the St Botolph Building to the law firm Clyde & Co at £48 per sq ft on a 20-year lease with upward-only rent reviews and no break clause. The group added that about 45% of the office space in this building is now pre-let. Minerva also achieved practical completion on its Walbrook Building earlier this month and says it is confident that the building will be let on attractive terms, given the extremely limited supply of new office space in the City.

The latest research from Cushman & Wakefield suggests that while average retail property rents continued to fall in 2009, the pace of decline is slowing and some stabilisation can be expected this year.

In the final quarter of last year rents dipped a further 1% overall, although London bucked the trend with Bond Street rents topping out at 9.7% growth. The continued influx of newcomers to the capital and the limited supply of high-quality retail space available to let has kept rental rates high in the West End and in other parts of central London. The weaker pound has also boosted tourist shopping levels.

Cushman & Wakefield’s research shows that while occupier activity increased towards the year-end, availability remained at just over 10%, compared with 12% in October. Remember that temporary lettings in the run-up to Christmas may have boosted that figure. The survey also shows that landlords are agreeing healthier incentive packages to achieve lettings, which has helped activity levels as there are now some good deals around.

So if you are seeking retail space to let or for sale and want to find out how Novaloca can make your life easier, contact us on 0844 3575 260.

The latest survey of occupier trends published by King Sturge last week shows that demand for office space in the UK fell by 21% in the second half of 2009.

There were sharp differences between sectors, with the financial services sector taking up the most office space during the third quarter of last year, boosted by Nomura’s 540,000 sq ft letting at Watermark Place in September. In the last quarter of 2009, the most active occupier sector was accountancy and legal services.

There were signs of strong activity in regional centres, led by the 145,000 sq ft letting to Manchester City Council in Ask Developments’ First Street Manchester in December and Tesco Finance’s 100,000 sq ft deal at Newcastle’s Quorum business park in October.

In total, the take-up of office space in the final quarter of 2009 was 2.3 million sq ft, which was a drop of 5% from the third quarter, but a jump of 60% from the level in Q4 2008.

Some economic news for you to digest this Friday: Global ratings agency Fitch Ratings today says in a report on the UK commercial property sector that a “double dip” in capital values for UK commercial property is possible, as rents are still falling and as the recent growth in values has been supported by a large amount of investment capital chasing a limited amount of quality assets, rather than a material positive shift in long-term fundamentals. Fitch believes that any further capital falls will be limited to 5%-10%.

In a negative or low-growth rental market environment, REITs are now under pressure to drive shareholder value, either by re-starting capital-intensive development programmes or by diversifying into related but potentially untested areas of activity, Fitch says.

About £250bn of UK commercial property bank loan exposure is outstanding with domestic and foreign banks, the agency notes. The general trend towards bank de- leveraging could create a “funding gap” when maturities arise (a large increase in maturities will occur from 2011). Fitch expects the rated REITs to be able to attract enough finance, but this is likely to be at a materially increased cost. It does add, however, that there remains “considerable uncertainty” about the availability of debt capital to the UK property sector.

Are you an occupier? Do you want to use the latest technological developments and ideas to help you in your business? Here at Novaloca we are always on the lookout for helpful stuff, and we especially love it if we can tell you about it at no cost to you.

Do you know about Google Docs? If you don’t already use these, you really should check them out.  They essentially provide an online store of files that you can access from any PC and share with anyone (allowing multiple people to edit or just view the contents).

At Novaloca we use them all the time for tracking all sorts of things such as marketing, IT development plans and actions, budgets, ideas and suggestions – whenever you would use an Excel spreadsheet or a basic Word document that you would like more than one person to access, you might want to consider using Google Docs.

The facility allows you to keep backups of previous editions, and you can also use auto saves to be on the safe side. You can create forms and questionnaires, enabling applicants to complete these and send the results directly to your spreadsheet.

To get started, just go to the Google home page. In the top right hand corner you will see options including “Sign in” or “Settings”/ “Google Account Settings”. Get yourself registered with Google if you have not already done so, then choose “Docs” in the section under “Try something new”. You may have to choose the “More” option to find them and just have a play…. If you get stuck, there are some helpful guides to using Google Docs if you need particular tips. Tell us what you think and how this application has helped you!

Miranda

The largest office sale in the West End of London since 2007 completed this week, with the purchase for about £175m of Art Deco building Victoria House on Bloomsbury Square by Lebanese Group M1 Real Estate from Ireland-based commercial property investors Moritz Group.

Jones Lang Lasalle, which advised M1 Real Estate, said its client had secured the deal ahead of 10 other institutional bidders – indicating the market’s attractiveness to this type of buyer.

The purchase of the 300,000 sq ft office, retail and leisure investment is the latest deal to be struck by M1 Real Estate – it has also recently purchased Credit Suisse’s HQ in Canary Wharf. Victoria House is more than 50% let to government-backed tenants, with a weighted average term of 9.5 years. CB Richard Ellis advised Moritz Group on the deal.