IPD/H2SO: West End office sales hit £5.1bn

Retail vacancy rates have dropped to the lowest rate in four years. According to the Local Data Company, the number of empty shops dropped in 2013 below 14% but Matthew Hopkinson, director at the company, warned there was a stark north south divide. In February's monthly market update podcast, he told EG: “London, the south east and the midlands are getting better but the north and north east are getting marginally worse,”

Stewart Forsyth, development director at Mountgrange talks to Estates Gazette about the firm's first joint project with M&G Real Estate - the 143,000 sq ft spec office block 1 West Regent Street in Glasgow. With the official tour last week, activity is hotting up at the scheme...

David Partridge, managing partner of Argent, tells Estates Gazette that commercial rents in King’s Cross, N1, are set to keep on climbing.

UK property exceeded the industry’s expectations in 2013, returning 10.5% in 2013 according to IPD’s UK’s quarterly index. Not only are values moving in the right direction, but the recovery is starting to look more broad-based, with value and rental growth coming through in the regions as well as central London. Phil Tily, executive director and head of UK and Ireland, IPD, talks Estates Gazette's finance reporter Sophia Furber through the numbers

EG talks to Innes England director Tim Garratt about its latest research into the East Midlands market, which last year saw the industrial sector hit record take-up levels, while offices struggled.

Savills pipped CBRE to the top of EGi London Offices Research’s first annual investment agents league table. Despite being more than £2.2bn behind CBRE at the end of Q3 2013, Savills finished top by a single percentage point after acting on three of the four largest deals in Q4.

The chairman of BNP Paribas Real Estate, Philippe Zivkovic, was joined by non-executive UK chairman Steve Norris, and UK chief executive John Slade at the launch of 6 Pancras Square, King’s Cross, N1. They talk to Estates Gazette about how success at King’s Cross will contribute to group plans for increasing UK turnover.

EG talks to Ravi Govinder, leader of Wandsworth Council on the investment of Chinese developer Greenland into the Ram Brewery project in Wandsworth

EG talks to Deputy London mayor Ed Lister on the £1.2bn investment of Chinese developer Greenland into two residential sites in London and what this means for the rest of the capital

Guy Grainger, UK chief executive of JLL, talks to EG about growth predictions for the UK property industry in 2014.