The Emptying Out

Walk down any British high street right now and count the empty units. Not the ones that have always been a bit ropey — the ones that used to be banks, building societies, estate agents, phone shops, mid-range retailers. Count the offices above them with darkened windows at 2pm on a Tuesday. Count the retail parks where anchor tenants have pulled out, leaving behind nothing but faded signage and empty car parks.

This is not a blip. This is not a post-pandemic hangover. This is the beginning of the most significant commercial property correction in modern British history, and it is being driven by something that is not going to reverse: artificial intelligence.

The numbers are stark. Goldman Sachs estimates that AI will displace up to 300 million jobs globally. McKinsey puts it at 400 million roles “significantly disrupted” by 2030. In the UK alone, the Office for National Statistics reports that 1.5 million jobs are at “high risk” of automation in the next five years. The Institute for Public Policy Research goes further: up to 8 million UK jobs could be affected.

Every single one of those jobs currently occupies physical space. A desk. A counter. A warehouse station. A call-centre headset plugged into a wall. When the job goes, the space empties. And the space is emptying fast.

The Numbers on the Ground

UK office vacancy rates hit 9.7% in 2025, the highest level since 2014, according to CoStar Group. In some regional cities — Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester — vacancy rates in secondary office stock are running above 15%. London’s Canary Wharf, once the beating heart of financial services, has seen HSBC announce its departure from its landmark tower. The ripple effects are enormous.

Retail is even more dramatic. The Centre for Retail Research recorded over 17,000 store closures in the UK in 2024 alone. The British Retail Consortium reports that one in seven high street shops now stands empty. In some towns — Stoke, Blackpool, parts of South Wales — that figure is closer to one in four.

Commercial property values are softening across the board. Capital Economics reports that UK commercial property values fell 3.2% in real terms in 2025, with secondary office and retail stock falling significantly further. Savills notes that asking rents for secondary office space outside London have dropped 8-12% in the past 18 months.

And this is just the beginning. AI adoption in UK businesses doubled between 2023 and 2025. The wave of job displacement — and therefore space displacement — has barely started.

Why This Matters for You

If you run a gym, a leisure centre, a wellness studio, a martial arts academy, a climbing wall, a swim school — if you operate any business where people come together physically to move, sweat, connect, and belong — then what is happening in commercial property right now is the single biggest opportunity you will see in your career.

Here is why. The fitness and wellness sector has been constrained by property costs for decades. The best locations — high footfall, good transport links, visible from the street, adequate parking — have always been priced for retail or office tenants who could afford to pay top rates. A gym paying £20 per square foot simply could not compete with a retailer paying £40 or an office tenant paying £55.

That equation is changing. Fast. The retailers are leaving. The office tenants are shrinking. The call centres are automating. And the landlords who own those buildings are staring at a future where the tenants who used to queue up to pay premium rents are simply not coming back.

This creates a gap. A beautiful, wide-open gap between what commercial space used to cost and what it is about to cost. And fitness operators who understand this — who move decisively while the gap is at its widest — will secure locations and terms that would have been unthinkable three years ago.

The Spaces Becoming Available

Let’s be specific about what is coming onto the market, because different types of space suit different types of fitness operation.

High street retail units. These are the bread and butter of the coming correction. Units of 2,000–10,000 sq ft, ground floor, glass frontage, high footfall locations. Perfect for boutique studios, yoga spaces, Pilates studios, personal training facilities, small-box gyms. Many already have the services you need — three-phase power, accessible toilets, goods entrances for equipment delivery. The previous tenant (a fashion retailer, a phone shop, a bank) has already paid for the fit-out of basic services. You benefit.

Office floors. Upper floors of commercial buildings, typically 3,000–20,000 sq ft. Open-plan layouts that translate brilliantly to functional fitness spaces, dance studios, martial arts dojos. The challenge is access — you need a lift for accessibility and ideally a street-level entrance — but many office buildings already have both. Structural loading is the main consideration: office floors are typically rated for 2.5–4 kN/m², while a gym with heavy free weights needs 5–7.5 kN/m². Get a structural survey before you commit, but reinforcement is often simpler and cheaper than you think.

Warehouse and logistics space. The rise of AI-driven logistics optimisation is making some distribution centres redundant. These spaces — typically 10,000–50,000 sq ft, high ceilings, concrete floors, loading bays — are absolute gold for CrossFit-style boxes, climbing walls, indoor cycling velodromes, trampoline parks, and large-format gyms. The fit-out cost is minimal because you are working with a shell. High ceilings mean you can install mezzanine levels, climbing structures, aerial rigs. Parking is usually abundant. The downside: they are often on industrial estates with lower footfall. But if your model relies on destination visits rather than passing trade, this is your sweet spot.

Bank branches. The big four UK banks have closed over 6,000 branches since 2015, and the pace is accelerating. Bank branches are fascinating for fitness operators because they sit on prime high street corners, they have strong rooms that can be repurposed as specialist studios (the soundproofing is already done for you), and they are built to an extremely high structural specification. A typical bank branch is 1,500–4,000 sq ft — perfect for a boutique operation.

Big-box retail. When a Homebase, a Staples, a Toys R Us, or a Carpet Right closes, it leaves behind a unit of 15,000–40,000 sq ft with massive car parking, loading access, high ceilings, and a location that was specifically chosen for regional accessibility. These are the spaces that budget gym chains like PureGym and The Gym Group have already been targeting. If you are planning a large-format operation, keep your eyes on big-box closures in your area.

Why These Spaces Often Have Exactly What You Need

One of the underappreciated facts about commercial space is that the infrastructure requirements for fitness operations overlap significantly with retail and office use. You need:

The fit-out cost for a gym in a former retail unit is typically 30–50% lower than building from scratch, because you are inheriting infrastructure that cost the previous tenant (or landlord) hundreds of thousands of pounds to install. You are not starting from zero. You are starting from sixty.

The Window

Here is the part that matters most. This opportunity is real, it is significant, and it is time-limited.

Right now, the commercial property sector is still in denial. Many landlords, agents, and investors are clinging to the belief that this is a cyclical downturn — that offices will fill up again, that retail will bounce back, that the market will “normalise.” They are wrong, and deep down many of them know it, but the institutional machinery of commercial property moves slowly. Valuations are sticky. Expectations lag reality.

This denial is your friend. It means that landlords have not yet repriced their expectations to reflect the new reality. They are offering discounts, rent-free periods, and flexible terms because they think they are making temporary concessions during a downturn. They have not yet grasped that the downturn — for their traditional tenant base — is permanent.

But they will grasp it. Within 18 to 36 months, the narrative will shift. The property press will start writing about the “wellness economy” as the saviour of the high street. Institutional investors will start allocating capital to fitness and leisure. The big chains will announce aggressive expansion plans. And when all of that happens, the deals that are available today — the 40% rent reductions, the 12-month rent-free periods, the reverse premiums — will evaporate.

The operators who move now, while the property sector is still confused and scared, will lock in terms that give them an unassailable cost advantage for the next decade. The operators who wait will pay full price and wonder why their margins are so thin.

Your Unfair Advantage

You are reading this before the mainstream property press has caught on. You understand the macro forces — AI displacement, the belonging crisis, the coming fitness boom — before the landlords, the agents, and the institutional investors do. That knowledge gap is worth real money. Not in theory. In practice. In the lease terms you negotiate, the locations you secure, and the cost base you lock in for the next ten to fifteen years.

The commercial property market is about to undergo its most significant correction in decades. The question is not whether this will happen. It is happening right now, in every town and city in Britain. The only question is whether you will be one of the operators who saw it coming and acted, or one of the ones who read about it afterwards and wished they had.

Start looking. Start walking high streets. Start noting empty units. Start talking to agents. The next article in this series will show you exactly how to read the signals that tell you when the time is right to move.

Keep reading.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial or legal advice. Always consult a qualified professional before making financial or legal decisions.