Luxury homes converted from West End offices

West End offices are increasingly being converted into chic homes for urban multi-millionaires, a study showed today.

Applications have been lodged with Westminster council for about 1.8 million square feet of offices to be changed to other uses, with residential expected to be one of the biggest, according to property consultants H2SO.

This marks a sharp increase in the overall trend. In the years from 2001 to 2009, about 4 million square feet of office space was turned to other uses, of which around 3 million was residential. Other conversions were to to hotel and leisure uses.

Although more office space has been built in developments like Paddington Basin, Westminster is suffering from a shortfall of decent business premises, particularly in the West End, where H2SO calculates a net loss of more than 320,000 square feet of office space was lost between 2004 and 2009.

H2SO partner Paul Smith said many period office buildings in the swanky districts of the West End which started life as private homes were struggling to find commercial occupiers and so were being converted back to their original use.

He added: "While on the face of it this apparent loss of stock might appear to be bad news for the West End office market, it should actually be welcomed as it repositions a whole raft of buildings back to their appropriate use, brings new life to them and also funnels demand to the office buildings that work best for contemporary occupiers. The trend puts the West End in better shape to meet the needs of those who either want to do business or live in the location."