Moving house can be a tedious business, with all the packing, unpacking, paperwork and financial upheaval. Imagine how much more tedious, then, is the process of moving an entire corporate headquarters, given the huge extra scale of the packing, unpacking, paperwork and financial upheaval.
So, given the amount of other things occupying the minds of C-suite executives at the moment, it is perhaps surprising that so many of them are moving their head offices. According to research from real estate advisory group CBRE, 96 companies relocated their headquarters either to or within the US last year — that’s a big increase on the 18 in 2023 and 20 per cent higher than the seven-year average.
And it looks like the trend will continue. Real estate consultancy Knight Frank surveyed 300 corporate real estate leaders this year and 40 per cent of them said that a move of core HQ facilities was “fairly likely”, “very likely” or certain to happen within the next three years.