While many are beginning to call at least the start of the top of the market in London, beyond the M25 the talk is still of recovery rather than boom… and in some cases even that is nascent (as you’ll realise if you’ve walked up Margate high street, as I do most weekends).

However, there is growing cause for optimism.

If Bank of England boss Mark Carney needs further proof of people’s mounting confidence in the economy, he need look no further than the growing appetite for speculative development in the regions. After years of virtually no activity anywhere - let alone the regions - there has been a major spurt in the last six months.

Not so long ago, Leeds office stalwart Andrew Duncan, who runs developer Opus North, thought he’d never again see the day when he’d consider a spec office build in the city, but such is the shortfall of prime office stock and the growth in occupier demand, he’s seriously weighing up his options (he’s even found a suitable site), as we reveal on page 28.

There’s plenty going on in Cardiff too, with two privately owned developers, Rightacres and JR Smart, going head to head with Welsh government contractor Balfour Beatty on competing office schemes (Markets, page 37).

Clive Boultbee Brooks, who made his mark with wise acquisitions of secondary space in London, is also looking to the regions as he attempts to repeat his London trick in cities such as Bristol, Leeds and Manchester.

And encouragingly, activity is not confined to offices. Industrial big hitters Prologis and Tritax have spotted that demand for top-class space is on the up and are backing a range of spec schemes. Then there are the housing and burgeoning student accommodation markets (as we report on page 24, there’s no shortage of investment flooding into the student market to build spec accommodation).

The key as far as the likes of Duncan are concerned is to drive rental values up in the regions to a sufficiently high level to justify the risk of speculative development - although rents are improving, they are simply too low at the moment in some markets to make spec viable.

The other challenge is to get the banks lending properly to developers again so they can undertake such schemes. No matter how strong the will is to meet demand - or at least begin to address some of the imbalance with supply - without the way, the unprecedented gulf between the two could well grow further rather than narrow. You only have to look at the latest DTZ figures showing £1.9bn-worth of regional office deals in Q2 versus just £843m in the same quarter last year to appreciate how sharp the uplift in demand for investment stock has been — and how acute the need for further development is.

That said, even if the steady stream of speculative development does turn into a torrent in the regions, you can be sure not all regions will benefit. Yes, activity is likely to continue picking up in growth towns and cities such as Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds and Manchester, but what of the likes of Plymouth, Newcastle and Belfast - all big cities, but arguably lagging behind the rest of the country in terms of development and investment?

One can only speculate, but it doesn’t look as though some are going to be able to jump on the speculative bandwagon quite as easily as others.

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