Maguire Jackson Property Blog

The lure of Edgbaston & Harborne for the City set (13/07/2010)

The recent headlines regarding the giant new Birmingham Queen Elizabeth hospital with its 1213 beds, 30 operating theatres , 3800 parking spaces and £627m bill, located on the Harborne Edgbaston, Selly Oak border have barely mentioned that it will employ 6900 members of staff once it is fully functional next year .. This 24 hour major suburban employer is starting to account for a large number of sales & lettings that are within very easy commuting reach. The contrasting near neighbourhoods will each of course each benefit as new members of staff locate into the area and existing relocating staff from the closing hospitals decide to move closer.

Maguire Jackson as established city agents with two city centre offices is now stretching out its reach towards these suburbs including Moseley and Kings Heath. Sam Meeten has recently joined to focus his experience & attention solely towards the area. ’There have always been applicants of ours searching in & out of the City Centre, often renting in the Centre if they were new to the City plus vendors & former tenants deciding to move a little further out as they got to know the areas of Birmingham plus those starting families and wanting something a little quieter than the buzz of city centre urban life’.

With a concept modelled on the York based Hunters franchises Philip Jackson of Maguire Jackson reports that ‘the key of having a specialist living & working in the area , a high profile brand and a City Centre pro active style is already starting to win friends locally. The sales market overall continues to be improving across the City albeit with some current concern regarding the correct pricing. There continue to be applicants looking to buy, moving through work and family reasons, wanting to be guided and that is where we step in.’

Lettings Lifts Off (31/05/2010)

The Birmingham City Centre lettings market is now winding up en route towards its mid summer peak. Maguire Jackson through high profile marketing, a highly optimised web site ,plus an in house specialist Mandarin speaking negotiator for the graduate Chinese student market ,are attracting potential professional & graduate tenants in increasing numbers. We are actively now looking for more well presented one & two bedroom apartments to offer to let. This year promises to be busy and we are already seeing pressure on rental prices to rise because of the limited number of new apartments coming into this sector alongside Birmingham’s increasing popularity as a City to work & be educated in.

Our push into Harborne & Edgbaston continues and we are now seeing our distinctive red boards highlighting properties 'for sale' & 'to let' around the area. There has always been a stream of potential buyers & tenants who decide at various points to move away from the heart of the City Centre into the established greener suburbs on the collar of the City. We hope to be able to bring this wider market to those vendors and landlords searching for motivated applicants. Sam Meeten as our specialist knows the area well is now in both areas daily. He can be contacted on 0121 634 1520 (sam@maguirejackson.com)

Election Worries (20/05/2010)

The post election hiatus has not impacted the City centre housing market as much as the cold weather! I believe many people had already factored in the possibility of a hung parliament or minority Government post May 6th. The reality this time of all three parties sounding remarkably similar prior to the election without giving the fear post election of a possible sharp political veer to the right or left has meant that buyers have in fact largely carried on viewing and potential tenants carried on registering and making offers.

Clearly there could be a benefit if the Home Information Packs were dropped, because more stock probably would be brought to the market and if stamp duty was brought down but these things are not going to happen fast. It is the mortgage market & the first time buyer market in particular which needs to be eased & I suspect which ever face is in Government will want to try to unlock the brakes on the mortgage sector as soon as possible because of the obvious repercussions of driving spending through the economy.

There is concern about overall increased taxation or increased National Insurance but we are not currently seeing any major effects . It may be that we are still , in the City Centre, in a recovery mode from a very sharp recessionary bite and the overall volumes of transactions are still low ,with many purchases continuing to look good value. The possible increased unemployment from the talked about Public sector cuts mentioned from all the leaders will have an impact but we have to see at what level. The bigger fear though across the property market is probably that an increase in inflation will lead to increased Interest Rates. It is the latter which undoubtedly is going to hit those highly geared individuals & investors who are currently under pressure but not necessarily to sell. They might be if there outgoings increased sharply.

Are our prices low? (24/04/2010)

Having recommended this week to a local vendor that he place his property for sale by auction jointly with ourselves and a London based auction house instead of going down the conventional sales route I thought I might discuss the merits of this form of sale for other parties.

When a property has an existing income ,particularly commercial, which is solid for a number of years ahead ,rather than months, the market for it becomes that of an investment rather than simply a bricks & mortar purchase. The consequence is that whilst a buyer still could be that of a neighbour, it is quite possibly is also going is to be a property investment company or individual looking to protect his cash. The latter perhaps currently sitting with cash on deposit & receiving very weak bank returns . At the moment there is a big market looking for this type of solid fixed rate return.

At the top end of the investment market margins are being tightly squeezed by the competition by the Pension giants for the very best covenanted tenants. Lower down the scale especially with investment properties below £1m there is a wide market from potential buyers across the UK not only from those trying to obtain income from pension monies but also smaller family monies which perhaps is not wanting to be currently placed into the slightly uncertain stock market.

It is for this reason that mid priced investments in the City fringe of Birmingham can be sold well, away from this city. I am fully aware that the local Birmingham property auction houses are currently buzzing with activity & we will always recommend vacant poor condition residential /commercial properties plus unusual houses go this way, when the prices are difficult to determine & where we know there is steady stream of developer builders looking for their next job. Another reason for London is that stock in the West Midlands continues to look very good value in comparison particularly with the South East. When the average price for a residential property in Chelsea is now £2.207m (Average £4.1m if you want a terraced house !) a small investment from an individual might look from this end as very large!

So if you are hunting for a 9% + yielding mixed industrial building of 35000ft talk to me. We are going to be guiding £800k.

The Jewellery Quarter continues towards becoming the 'urban village' (22/03/2010)

The Jewellery Quarter continues to move steadily towards becoming the 'urban village' it has always promised to become. The area on the coat tails of the City Centre has always had the potential of becoming more than just a secondary office & manufacturing location for jewellers. Undoubtedly helped by the strong local planning & conservation policies it now has the opportunity of becoming one of those rare European inner city neighbourhoods with genuine mixed use, including housing at both ends of the social spectrum and a strong community involvement.

The news just announced at the MIPIN property exhibition that four acres bounded by George Street, Charlotte Street & Holland Street is to become the new UCB campus (former College of Food) is tremendous news locally. The first 80,000ft will be ready to occupy by 2013 with two further phases to follow. Currently the College operates from accommodation slightly closer to the City Core in Summer Row & Newhall Street. Local accommodation for undergraduate & post graduate students must be good for landlords and prices in this area. Interestingly we have now registered this year several serious applicants looking locally for both individual houses & flats close to & over £500k. This level was unheard of a year ago & undoubtedly reflects the increasing confidence of the area The success of the Minories nine house development located in the heart of the Quarter has also highlighted that there is a clear & increasing market for well finished freehold properties. Minories houses started from £365,000.

Other recent announcements include the 'Golden Square', being the area immediately in front of The Big Peg becoming landscaped as a focus area in the heart of the Jewellery Quarter where the bulk of the retailers are located. Currently this area is a sad looking car park. The work is planned for next year along with that of 'Albion Square' another local landscaping exercise on Albion Street which will soften the harder street view and improve local amenity space. The Jewellery Quarter future is looking up.

Landlord Woes (24/02/2010)

Some people are forgetting we are now over two and a half years from the height of the property market and the beginning of the property slump, when not only prices slumped but also new apartment building in the City Centre effectively ended with banks foreclosing on a wide range of developers, large and small.

Part of the driver of prices were the 'buy to let' landlords, with the banks help, encouraging individuals to build up portfolios of flats to let as investments. The implications of this, now for many well over three years on, is that some of these apartments are starting to now need some TLC. This was highlighted this week after a new tenant in a nearby block complained of her fridge smelling despite it having a thorough cleaning and the landlord stating that he’d in fact never actually been into the apartment since he bought it, some four years previous !

With average city tenancies lasting only nine to ten months the amount of wear and tear a typical apartment can take is quite large. We all know how it is at home. Tenants still expect immaculate 'new' apartments in the City centre and landlords have to be aware that they have to now take more interest in their portfolio if they are to secure the same rental levels and more importantly the same short voids between tenancies. My management team advise that they should be regularly looking to update linen, appreciate mattress protectors need to be renewed between tenancies, regularly renew cooking pans and thoroughly inspect the crockery for chips and missing pieces .Kitchen extractors are another item alongside oven cleaning than often get overlooked . Finally my team recommend busy bathrooms needing regrouting and shower seals needing replacing as complaints about water leaks plus the ingress of mould are becoming increasingly common.

The rental market continues to be strong in the City and our advice to landlords whether they are managing their tenancies or leaving it in the hands of an agent is not to become too complacent. Tackle these small jobs now before they come expensive big ones!

A Few Days In San Francisco (05/02/2010)

Having just had a few days in San Francisco to escape from the cold & grey I was interested to learn how their planners there have managed to create such retail diversity throughout the city ,which help give the place such uniqueness and a draw to return. Each Quarter within the City has its own character alongside of course stunning scenery. This retail offering is quite unlike so many UK Cities ,with Birmingham being no exception ,which mirror each other in the retail offering both in the centres and in the neighbouring retail parks.If you didn’t know which City you were in you’d sometimes be hard pushed to tell.

The answer though is remarkably simple. In certain zoned areas they simply just don’t allow retailers with more than ten outlets nationwide to become tenants. This means the landlords have to look for successful independents to be tenants. Whilst I am sure the property/investment companies owners are not always comfortable with the extra management involved with weaker covenanted tenants the areas invariably have increased appeal because of there uniqueness & this in turn pulls in additional tenants looking, keeping pressure on the rents & meaning the voids are minimised when tenants leave.

Why don’t we do the same here & have a culture of looking up to smaller traders & the qualities they can bring to an area rather than down on them ? its an interesting thought !

International Students (29/01/2010)

Did you know there are over 10,000 international students now in the West Midlands? Over 4000 in two Birmingham Universities alone & over 70,000 Chinese students in the UK with clear signs suggesting this sector will increase further. These amazing statistics highlight the huge potential impact on the centres of Birmingham, Wolverhampton & other leading local cities, adding vibrancy, and showing how city Centres are becoming beacons of excitement for students out of hours. With many overseas students , coming here for only one or two years , they are often spurning student digs for City Centre flats close to amenities .Local landlords are therefore having to wise up to the requirements, with rents inclusive of bills being one of them. One of our lettings negotiators is fluent in Mandarin Cantonese & English just for this market .The combination of weak spoken English by tenants, especially in the beginning of the tenancy is often offset by the ability of many to pay six months rent in advance! Interesting times for some landlords.

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