June 27th, 2016
Berlin River Scene – www.Next-Estate.de
‘Brexit’ and Berlin Commerical Real Estate
‘Brexit ‘ -after the UK voted to leave the European Union – means the loss of banking ‘passporting’ rights and will see Bankers move their headquarters from London along with ‘non-UK’ insurance companies that use the UK as their EU base.
Some banks have already begun moving their offices from London, and history has shown that when one bank leaves, others will quickly follow.
While most are lauding the cities of Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam and Dublin as possible ‘replacement’ cities, if it were up to the Banker’s and Insurer’s employees they would prefer to make a move to Berlin! But history has also shown that large banking and insurance institutions rarely listen to the preferences of their employees as to where they place their offices.
Not enough office-space in Berlin
While Berlin has sufficient retail space and manufacturing/logistics-warehouse facilities in 2016, ‘the ‘Bundeshauptstadt’ Berlin does not have enough affordable office space for its newly founded high-tech start-up companies. It is these many new and small-to-medium companies which are the driving force in Berlin’s present office market.
According to Florian Nöll, Chairman of the Federation German of startups/Bundesverbandes Deutsche Startups, that ‘Brexit’ will thwart enterprise creation energy in the London and has said that the Brexit will in fact bring more start-ups to Berlin.
This lack of office space for high-tech start-ups, be it for normal offices or large based former warehouses turned into large ‘co-working spaces’, is not just a Berlin phenomenon. In Dublin the problems are similar as in this article by Adrian Weckler in the Irish Independent called ‘Lack of office space handicaps our tech hopefuls’ .
We wrote about the possibilities of a Brexit earlier on this blog in April this year and last year wrote an article how the Berlin Tech Company Boom has helped lower Commercial Vacancy rates.