The industrial sector extended its lead as the UK’s most enquired-after commercial use type last month, according to exclusive data from EG’s Propertylink listings site.

The October Demand Barometer shows enquiry levels across the three major sectors up and down the UK as a percentage of all cases in which potential occupiers either picked up the phone or sent an email after searching for properties on the site.

Sector overview

Industrial properties accounted for 44.9% of all Propertylink enquiries across the UK, making it the sector’s strongest performance since May. Its lead over retail now stands at 2.8 percentage points, following a summer spell when the two sectors were almost neck and neck.

However, retail enquiries still represented a higher proportion of the total than they did in September, and October’s 42.1% is second only to the sector’s 2024 high-water mark of 42.3% which it hit in August.

With both industrial and retail up, the office sector was inevitably down. October saw office enquiries account for just 13% of the total, their lowest proportion in the year to date and 1.5 percentage points down from September.

Sector demand by region

The South East and Greater London traded places at the top of the office and retail categories. Greater London saw a two-point upswing in offices compared with September and accounted for more than a quarter of the UK’s office enquiries on Propertylink (25.3%), enabling it to overtake the South East, which moved four points in the opposite direction.

Conversely, retail enquiries were up 1.7 points in the South East to 21.8%, enough to see it leapfrog Greater London (which saw enquiries fall by the same amount) as the country’s most sought-after destination for potential retail occupiers.

The South East remains the most popular region for industrial enquiries as both it and Greater London saw their proportions grow last month (to 21.3% and 19% respectively), while the chasing pack of the East of England, Scotland, the East Midlands and the West Midlands all dipped compared with September.

Regional cities

Top performer Glasgow saw a 1.1-point upswing against the previous month, accounting in October for 16.1% of all Propertylink enquiries across the major cities outside London, its highest percentage of the year so far.

Edinburgh also saw an upswing compared with September and was able to jump above Birmingham into second place, with 10.8% of enquiries. Birmingham fell from second to fourth as it was also overtaken by Leicester, which managed an 8.8% share of October enquiries, also a personal best for 2024.

Key movers

Brighton saw a particularly noteworthy increase of 2.7 points on the previous month, and its October figure of 7.1% is more than double the level it was at just three months ago.

There was positive news in the North West, where both Liverpool and Manchester saw upswings in their share of Propertylink enquiries, to 4.7% and 3.1% respectively. On the other side of the Pennines, Leeds was down by 0.8 points, Sheffield remained level and Bradford saw a small increase.

Further north, Newcastle dropped to 1.3%, which is its lowest tally of the year so far.

Bristol saw a slight dip compared with September to 7.9%, while further west Cardiff was up by 0.5 points to 1.5%.

Cambridge, Nottingham and Southampton all saw dips in their share of enquiries last month.

EG’s demand insights are powered by activity across our industry-leading commercial property listings platform – Propertylink