12-month rolling City take-up has begun to outstrip total supply.

■ Take-up for July was 654,177 sq ft in 40 transactions, bringing the year-to-date take-up to 4,504,446 sq ft, which is 6% up on this point last year. 84% of all transactions have been of a Grade A standard.

■ An analysis of the rolling take-up and total supply figures over the last 12 months, demonstrates how take-up and current supply, having intersected at the end of 2014, continue to diverge. This weight of demand against a fall in supply is borne out through rising City rental growth (see Graph 1).

■ The largest deal in July was the 275,204 sq ft pre-let of The London Fruit & Wool Exchange, E1 by Ashurst on a 20-year lease from M&G Real Estate. The new sole occupier will look to sub-let circa 100,000 sq ft.

CLICK ON IMAGEs BELOW TO ENLARGE

GRAPH 1City rolling take-up vs total supply

^{Source: Savills Research}

■ Following the Ashurst deal, Professional services have now accounted for the majority of take-up in the City so far this year at 25%, while the Insurance, Financial & Banking services sector has accounted for 23% combined.

■ As a result of this transaction in the City Fringe, the percentage of take-up in the City Core against the Fringe has dropped to 62%. This is 7% below the long-term average.

■ Total supply at the end of July stood at 6.2m sq ft producing a vacancy rate of 5.9%. However, there is currently 2m sq ft of space currently under-offer, of which 1.6m sq ft is for current supply, meaning there is just 4.6m sq ft of space that is fully available.

■ Supply will remain constrained in the short to medium term. There is an estimated 685,708 sq ft of space scheduled to reach PC in Q2 2016, which will be added into our supply figures come the beginning of Q4 this year.

■ The top rent achieved in the City in July was at The Sugar Building, 5 Cheapside, which saw London Executive Offices taking the entire building (40,126 sq ft) in excess of £80/sq ft.

■ Serviced office providers were very active in July, as in addition to the above, The Office Group pre-let 41,300 sq ft of the White Collar Factory EC1. They took the 1 - 3 floors on a 20-year lease at an average rent of £58.11/sq ft with 24 months rent free. Total take-up from serviced office providers in the City has already reached 528,719 sq ft (see Graph 2).