Why 2026 is the Year to Rethink Underutilised Commercial Property
The idea of using commercial buildings more flexibly is not new. But a number of factors are converging to make 2026 a particularly important moment for owners of secondary or underutilised commercial property.
Planning policy is becoming more restrictive, with a strong focus on the re-use and retrofitting of existing buildings rather than new construction. Building costs have increased significantly, making demolition and redevelopment less financially viable for many secondary properties. There is a growing policy expectation that more value should be extracted from what already exists, rather than building new.
Sustainability has moved from a nice-to-have to a material factor in property value and liquidity. Sustainability features now impact lender terms, occupier demand, achievable rents, and disposal values. To meet the increasing standards being set by regulation — including the tightening of minimum energy efficiency standards — compliance often requires costly retrofitting and upgrades. But the buildings most in need of these improvements are often those that are vacant or heavily underutilised, frequently owned by smaller landlords or individuals who may notbe in a financial position to carry out extensive works. The retrofitting is expensive and sees very little short-term payback.
This is where the attribute-based approach connects to the sustainability agenda. If licence income from solar panels, EV charging, and other uses can fund or contribute to the cost of upgrading a building’s energy performance, then the building improves its EPC rating, its regulatory compliance, its attractiveness to future occupiers, and its capital value — all funded by income from attributes that would otherwise sit unused. The building earns its own improvement, rather than requiring the owner to fund it from elsewhere.
There is also an embodied carbon argument. A building that is kept in productive use is a building that does not need to be demolished and replaced. The carbon already embedded in its structure — in its concrete, its steel, its bricks, its timber — is preserved rather than released. Making use of what already exists, rather than defaulting to demolition and new construction, is not just economically rational. It is environmentally responsible.
On the demand side, the occupier market has shifted structurally. The rise of self-storage, flexible workspace, co-working, dark kitchens, EV charging networks, and solar-as-a-service all point to a market where businesses increasingly want specific attributes of space, not whole buildings. This demand is not cyclical. It is a permanent structural change in how commercial space is consumed. The buildings that can respond to this demand — by offering their attributes flexibly through licensing — will attract income. Those that continue to wait for a traditional single tenant may wait indefinitely.
For owners of secondary commercial property, the choice is becoming clearer. Hold a vacant building and hope the market returns to a model that suited it. Or recognise that the market has moved, and find a way to meet the demand that actually exists. 2026 is not the first year this has been true. But the convergence of regulatory pressure, sustainability requirements, changing occupier demand, and rising building costs makes it harder to justify inaction than at any point in the recent past.
