Hubble, the office and coworking space marketplace, today announces new data which shows startups and growing SMEs are leaving typical tech hotspots, Shoreditch and Soho, for south of the river. The data can be seen in a heatmap available for media here not yet available.
Hubble’s search data shows London Bridge (29% of all searches) is the most popular location in London for companies searching for flexible office space in 2018 (a sharp rise from 3.7% of searches in 2017), beating Shoreditch with only 27% of all searches.
More than 37% of searches were for office space in south London, counting London Bridge and the Southbank (8.5%). The boost in popularity for London’s Southbank is particularly surprising given it only made up 7.3% of office space searches a year ago (a 413% year-on-year increase since April 2017). Meanwhile Soho’s market share dropped from 45.2% in 2017 to 23.5% in 2018 and Clerkenwell dropped from 26.7% to 2%.
“This data is really exciting. Where startups and SMEs previously wanted to be in established creative clusters, this shows signs of a maturing scale-up market. UK businesses are increasingly comfortable to move to newer, developing areas. Once dominated by the public sector, the Southbank has become a truly diverse London market attracting Tech and Media Companies and corporates alike, including News International, Omnicom and Ogilvy. The introduction of the Crossrail and cheaper prices are likely fueling the boom” says Tushar Agarwal, Hubble’s co-founder and CEO.
Startups and SMEs are branching out to different creative “hub-spots” within London, but most prominently is an unprecedented shift to south of the river. Searches for London Bridge specifically make up 29% of all searches and the Southbank, as a whole, making up 37.5% of all search queries.
Hubble’s data is backed up by the recent Knight Frank report which named the Southbank as London’s newest commercial hotspot: “South Bank has followed the trend in brownfield regeneration. Former industrial buildings have been put to new uses, from the Tate Modern art gallery in the Bankside Power Station, to the Harvey Nichols restaurant in the Oxo Tower, to Borough Market adding a delicatessen market at the weekends. High quality offices have been developed in recent years, and new transport infrastructure built, which has opened up the market to businesses seeking new headquarters buildings.”
A heatmap of Hubble’s search data which shows London tech companies are migrating south of river is here: https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/xi7xw/1/
This table shows the which areas are most popular for startups/SMEs searching for office space April 2017 – April 2018
London Bridge 3.7% 29.0%
Shoreditch 14.9% 26.9%
Soho 45.2% 23.5%
Southbank 3.7% 8.5%
West London 5.6% 2.7%
Clerkenwell 26.7% 2.0%
City of London 0.20% 1.0%
Other 0.00% 6.40%
Notes to editor:
[1] This data was across 340,970 total searches on the Hubble platform from April 30th 2017 to April 30th 2018.http://www.knightfrank.co.uk/blog/2017/08/24/londons-newest-commercial-hotspot-why-londons-south-bank-is-a
About Hubble
Hubble (hubblehq.com) is the largest digital platform for helping large SMEs as well as growing startups rent office space without the use of a broker – with over 3,000 offices in London. Hubble’s mission is to help companies love where they work. We empower companies by using technology to reduce wasted time; data to reduce risk; and we fully align ourselves with them to get the best deal. We look after them from their first office to their last.
Hubble was launched in 2014 and notable existing investors include Starwood Capital, Concrete VC, Seedcamp, Entrepreneur First, Spire Ventures (PiLabs), James Caan (Dragon’s Den), Jackson Hull (student.com, Onefinestay, GoCompare), Christian Faes (LendInvest), Brad Altberger (GI Partners), Jonathan Galore (Wonga, Silverlake), Brett Akker (Streetcar / Zipcar, Lovespace) and Roualeyn Cummings Bruce (Jones Lang LaSalle).
Hubble announced a £1.2M funding round on 1st June 2017, which will be used to build the world’s first digital commercial property advisor.
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