It has been claimed that Leeds is now the best investment opportunity outside of London following the news that over the course of 18 months there has been around £30 million pumped into the city’s property market, and now the appeal of Leeds in terms of property investment is likely to significantly increase both in the UK and overseas as a result of this.
One of the main sources of the recent investment has been from the Middle East, with investors jumping at the opportunities that arise in the city, partly based on the high demand for more student accommodation to cater for the many students who move to any of the three universities in Leeds on a yearly basis.
The current financial situation in the UK regarding the instability of the pound on top of the London’s constantly rising real estate prices has also contributed to this Middle Eastern influx of investment in the area, and accountancy and advisory specialists Hentons is a company based in the city that has noticed these changes at first hand.
“Leeds is seeing some significant developments with major office and retail schemes launching this year” commented Nadeem Ahmed, the managing partner at Hentons. “These, plus longer term developments like HS2, are driving a spike in interest from investors.
“We are seeing overseas money moving into residential developments around the city core, aimed at students and young professionals. This is supplemented by some real opportunity in the office market, where Leeds is still poorly served in the serviced sector.”
Leeds is the home to significantly more affordable property and land in comparison to London, and a residential forecast conducted by Savills earlier on in the month has predicted that despite the expectation that the average house prices in the UK will remain the same in 2017, house prices in Yorkshire are expected to fall by 2%.
So it looks very promising for both the Leeds property sector as well as Yorkshire as a whole, and there will more than likely be even more investment to come.