NYC & London: Not So Distant Neighbors

NEW YORK CITY-While competitors on a global scale, London and New York’s commercial real estate markets share a similar economic driver: media and technology. As Manhattan continues to emerge as the Silicon Valley of the East, London is also diversifying its tenant base, seeing a rise in activity from non-financial services tenants in the wake of the Eurozone crisis, Digby Flower, partner and head of London markets at Cushman & Wakefield, explains to GlobeSt.com.

“The London market, post-Lehman and the credit crunch, bounced back quickly, and 2010 was really a record year in terms of take-up,” he says during a visit to C&W’s Manhattan offices on Sept. 10. “But that very quickly switched off as we came into 2011 with the Eurozone crisis, so the market has become a lot more subdued since then.”