The Property Know Team personally love Edinburgh as a city and we were pleased to hear that Edinburgh is UK’s Best Place to live in. Channels 4 - 4Homes 2007 “Best and Worst Places to Live” has ranked and rated the beloved Edinburgh as the number one city to live in.
For those worried about the current UK Property Market, our personal advice is to stick with Edinburgh and London. They are investing over £20 million to redevelop the city’s “Old Town” (refer to The New; Old Town of Edinburgh) and are regenerating Edinburgh’s Northern Waterfront (refer to Edinburgh’s Waterfront - Granton Project). The Northern Waterfront named, the Granton Project, encompasses over 120 hectares of land to be redeveloped!
An excerpt from the 4Homes Guide of Edinburgh - it covers the redevelopment of the “Old Town”:
Edinburgh’s beloved Old Town, with its medieval road plan and Reformation era buildings, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But a £20 million regeneration programme announced in June 2007 will see a series of rundown buildings between the Royal Mile and Market Street transformed into a brand new quarter, set to include 80 flats and a budget hotel. Locals aren’t pleased, but if you’re planning to move, you could snap up some brand new housing in the picturesque heart of the city.
The South side, Edinburgh’s less famous and primarily residential district, can nevertheless boast famous residents: if you like the sound of having authors J. K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, and Alexander McCall Smith for neighbours, this is the place to be. To the east, the port of Leith was controversially merged with Edinburgh in 1920 and has enjoyed a growing profile since the 1980s as an excellent environment for white-collar workers.
A visitor site posted a comment on the article (London Property Prices: Are they dropping?), about our views of why the London Property Market is still strong and why it will always be.
“London is the financial heart of the European Union (EU) and capital of one of only four trillion dollar economies in the EU with an infrastructure to match. The business infrastructure is being improved even further, because of London being selected as the venue for the ultimate global sporting occasion.”
So we are going to expand on the comment raised, and look at several points on why London is a financial hub. We will cover the “ultimate global sporting occasion” i.e. the Olympics 2012 later. London is one of the worlds Financial Hubs, even though there is a big uproar about the credit crunch and fears of a looming recession. Estate Agent Savills, estimates that £2 Billion will be spent from the “City Crowd” for 2008. This means that desirable areas in London such as South Kensington, Kensington High Street, May Fair etc will still be in high demand, even though there is a great deal of speculation and dropping property prices with the overall UK Property Market.
London has become a strong financial hub in the EU, due to its strength in Banking and Finance. Areas such as Canary Wharf, and more traditionally “The City” (Bank, Liverpool Street etc) have been centres of Banking and Finance for decades. And with the strength and stability of the UK Sterling (£) it has many advantages over other countries when it comes to the Exchange Rate and Forecasting.
Looking at London, and why companies like to conduct most business in London. We are going to take a simple look at Time Zones. The world has now become so small and to do business internationally is becoming increasingly easier. London is GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), and if a business has to call Asia it is only 6-8 hours ahead and if the company has to call North America it is only 5-8 hours behind. However if you are in Asia and want to do business with North America, it is roughly 12 hours ahead/behind - and vica versa. So if you wanted to contact your business associate in Asia and you were in America at 9am, that would mean that you would have to be in the office at 9pm however if you were in London/UK you would have to be in the office at 2pm-4pm, which is within normal working hours. Something as simple as that has a big impact on why many companies want to base their Head Quarters in London.
For the past century there has been a great deal of speculation on whether the property bubble will burst in the UK, but mainly will the magic bubble burst in London. For the past several years house prices has gradually increased. Every year there would be a big “Woo Haa” over whether the market was too saturated and if the house prices were over inflated.
The concept of inflation (rising house prices) derived from the fact that people had started buying London property market at a fast pace compared to properties being built. Thus using the Supply and Demand chart; Demand would become greater than Supply creating an in equilibrium in the market, further resulting in increasing property prices (“inflated” prices) compared to the real value of the actual property. A great deal of buyers were scared of the fact that if they didn’t buy now the prices would increase threefold and by then they would not be able to enter the market.
The Rent A Home London Teams personal view on this “bubble bursting”?
Well, land is land, the Earth is the Earth. With our currently technology we have no possible way of creating more land. So land (supply) will always stay the same, but demand is another story. The more people there are, the higher the need for houses. And with the ever increasing booming population, we are doomed! Just kidding – but the only way demand is going to go is upwards, especially with the exponentially growing population. Supply, may increase with man made landfills or man made islands but it will not be able to keep up with the worlds population. In short, demand will always out weigh supply. Consequently increasing the price of property because as we know if something is in higher demand people will want it more and be more willing to pay for that “something”, in this case land!
With regards to London, in our opinion – (just to cover our backs) emphasis on in our opinion, price will not go down or “burst” – it may stabilise. Right now in the news commentators are stating that workers in the UK are unable to afford a house until they have worked for X amount of years. Yes, and we will agree with that – BUT it is London, the capital of England. So the demand is not just restricted to UK, it is world wide. Outside the UK, there are a large group of wealthy individuals who want and are willing to purchase in property in the sought after capital of England, London. The foreign investment will create a demand even when local demand is weak or decreasing.
Buy, Rent & Invest wisely!
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