Assetz® News - Where to invest in Brum

Where to invest in Brum

25th March 2008 |

If anything is certain about Birmingham, it is that the city has historically suffered from something of an image problem. The city of a thousand trades has paid a heavy price for its industrial rather than cultural heritage (even as the home of Tolkein) and the negative reaction to everything from the local accent to Crossroads.

Yet for serious property investors looking beyond such superficial issues, other matters take centre stage. After all, Birmingham is a city of a million people, the largest local authority in the country and a major economic and educational centre. As with other regional cities, economic growth, urban development and image makeovers have gone together.

However, local estate agency Robert Powell & Co has warned, the story is not all positive and investors will need to be sure where they are setting up.

A spokesperson for the firm said: "Birmingham itself has transformed in the last 20 years. You can tell that it is becoming the second city. It used to be cultural backwater, now it has a lovely symphony hall, it's the home of the Royal Ballet which used to be Sadlers Wells and the National Opera." She added that it had become "trendy and cool" for those in their 20s, which of course is the age range from which the sort of young professionals who enjoy city living is drawn.

However, she said, the development of this type of accommodation had gone too far, with a "saturation" of flats in the heart of the city which had prompted the firm to look at other areas of Birmingham.

She explained: "A lot of people have bought flats and have sadly made a bad decision because there haven't been tenants to let them to. There has just been such a glut of them on the market".

As a result, the spokesperson noted, the area Robert Powell & Co has been looking to is Edgbaston, a large and leafy area of fashionable suburbia, an area containing a golf course and widespread parkland.

This was one of three leading suburbs for any buyer in the city, she said, with Edgbaston being "popular but expensive", neighbouring Harborne good for first-time buyers and Moseley being the other.

While these three suburbs lie to the south and west of the city centre, it is further down the A38 that one future investment hotspot may lie. Longbridge, on the south-western outskirts of the city, is synonymous with the Rover car plant, which has now closed. But the council announced recently that it has major plans to revitalise the area, with the creation of 1,400 new homes, 10,000 new jobs, a new business district and the possible development of an eco-town in the locality, something the authority hopes to replicate in four other areas inside the city boundary.

This eco-town bid may or may not be successful, but such a blueprint - driven by the desire to regenerate an area hit by a high profile loss of industry - may just turn Longbridge into one of the second city's areas of choice. If so, investors may do well to look further than the city centre or Edgbaston.