The largest transaction to complete this quarter saw Netflix acquire 87,150 sq ft at The Copyright Building, 30 Berners Street, W1, on a nine year lease. Following this, City University of London completed a lease at 33 Finsbury Square, EC2 taking 74,379 sq ft at £55.12 per sq ft. Demand for best quality space continued to dominate throughout the year with pre-lets accounting for a 22% share of take-up in 2020.
The Professional Services sector closed the year representing the largest proportion of take-up across Central London at 26%. Largely attributed to Linklaters 307,195 sq ft deal at 20 Ropemaker Street, EC2 and Baker McKenzie's 152,690 sq ft pre-let at DUO, 280 Bishopsgate, EC2 earlier in the year. The Media Tech sector followed accounting for a 17% share. Usually at this time of year an average of 1,234 transactions would have completed however, we only saw 680 transactions having completed by the end of December, a 45% reduction. Over half (56%) of transactions comprised <5,000 sq ft spaces on par with 2019.
As expected, supply across Central London continued to rise during 2020 standing at 17.6m sq ft in Q4, up (+39%) from 12.7m sq ft in Q4 2019. This equates to a vacancy rate of 7.8%, up on the long term average of 6.2%. Southbank and Midtown are the only sub markets with a vacancy rate below its long term average. The growth in supply is attributed to an increase in tenant-controlled space this year reaching 6.2m sq ft, equating to 35% share of total supply. Since the first lockdown in Mid-March, there has been an additional 4.5m sq ft of tenant supply arrive across Central London and this trend is expected to continue throughout Q1 2021.
COVID-19 related construction delays meant that only 3.8m sq ft of office developments reached completion in 2020, 53% had already been pre-let. Looking ahead, newly developed and refurbished stock remains limited, of the 4.0m sq ft due to be developed in 2021 43% is pre-let. Prime rents have held firm across all submarkets in Central London as a result of Low Grade A vacancy and a constrained development pipeline.