UK regeneration opportunities ranked

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Property Development:

Birmingham
is
the top council
area in
a new ranking of re-development opportunities
for
investment in empty residential and commercial properties.

New
research by UK fibre broadband specialist Glide, based on a series of
FOI requests to local councils, identifies the extent of empty
dwellings and commercial properties in these localities, and for
councils across the UK.

Collectively,
says
Glide, across
both categories of buildings,
in the month of September 2019 there were 617,527 empty properties
across the UK.

Of
those councils which held this
detailed
information, Birmingham has
been ranked by Glide as the
leading council
area offering
the most
potential space, with 8,086 residential properties and 7,622
commercial buildings in the city and its suburbs being empty.

Liverpool
comes second with 15,339 buildings currently unoccupied, while
regions across the north dominate the top five; Manchester, Leeds and
Bradford also ranking highly.

Bradford
has the highest number of commercial properties currently empty, with
7,908 business premises currently unoccupied, which means that 4.5%
of all empty commercial properties in the UK are located in that
council
area.

Birmingham
has the second highest number of empty commercial properties (7,622),
followed by Leeds (4,528) and Liverpool (4,266).

The
FOI requests found that there are a total of 172,217 empty business
units across the UK, which perhaps suggests a huge potential for
investment, particularly in cities and regions that have felt the
harshest effects of recent financial uncertainty.

Whilst
this information points to potential opportunities for investment,
redevelopment and re-purposing in many
cases, especially given the possibility of a post-election boost to
the economy, some locations are still
suffering
severe economic decline.

Nevertheless
opportunities still exist. To take one example, after
the government’s sell
off of county court buildings following moves to modernise
the court system, relying
more on IT to reduce the need for face to face hearings, and to
cut
down the need for travel to the court, many
were sold off at what now look to be bargain basement prices.

Between
2010 and 2017 the Ministry of Justice has sold off £223 million in
court real estate and in London alone £175 million has been raised
by selling these
buildings off, many of which have become hotels.

The
250-year-old
Bow Street Magistrates was
sold
to Qatari investment firm BTC, with planning permission to convert
into a 100 room hotel, and
both
Old Street and Tower Bridge courts are
already
converted into luxury hotels. The
Bloomsbury
and Central London County court have been demolished, to
be replaced with 73 homes, selling at
around £15
million each.

In
fact Bow
Street Magistrates was sold off
in
2008 for £17 million and
was re-sold
on again in 2016 without
the developer doing a thing for
£75 million, a
nice litter earner for them; but one should bear in mind, this was a
risky buy at the height of the great recession.

These are all large scale development but there have been plenty of smaller commercial buildings across the provinces sold for much smaller sums, and representing very lucrative opportunities for investor developers big and small.

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