Mersey Ferry Crossing: Shoppers Choose Liverpool Waterfront

From her new flat in Tobacco Warehouse – the largest brick building in the world – Charlotte Beddows, 29, relishes her front row views on Liverpool’s waterfront. “It’s amazing to see cruise ships lit up at night on the River Mersey and water polo on Stanley Dock,” says Beddows, an administrative assistant who moved from Coventry to Liverpool with her husband Alex, a game designer , earlier this year.

“We are only one kilometer from the city center. . . but you get a calm here from being slightly set apart. In a massive move decided during confinement, a dozen of their friends joined them in town.

“We’re all in our late 20s and felt that Liverpool seemed like such a young city with so much going on and we could have a lot more room for our money than Coventry,” says Beddows, who paid £350 £000 for a two -bedroom with brick walls and exposed steel beams.

Built in 1901, the former tobacco warehouse was at the heart of Liverpool’s thriving docks, where 40% of the world’s trade at the time passed, along with millions of emigrants seeking a new life in North America. North and Australia. Now the waterfront – part of Liverpool Waters, Peel L&P’s £5bn 30-year project to transform the city’s northern docks – is taking on new life itself.

“I walked past these warehouses for 30 years thinking it would be awesome when they did,” says Nick Goldsworthy, co-owner of Logic Estates, the real estate agency that markets Tobacco Warehouse. “The entire waterfront was awaiting development. It is the only part of the city center that remains to be extended because the rest has been done.

But not everyone is in favor of regeneration. Unesco stripped Liverpool of its World Heritage status in 2021, blaming years of development as an “irreversible loss” in the value of the Victorian docks. “I’ve met quite a few people who would rather the docks didn’t experience as much gentrification as they do, mostly because of a sense of overpricing,” says Tom Garcia-Bridgeman, 29, a public relations consultant who recently moved from London to Liverpool when his partner moved for work.

He pays £950 a month for his one-bedroom rental flat in the Baltic Triangle, an area between the city center and the seafront that has been undergoing regeneration for a decade. “I contribute in some way to the problem, because I live in a brand new block of apartments which are all rented by a company that manages it. But there’s a thriving community here now, with lots of cafes and microbreweries, and I love it.

“From [the 1980s] Liverpool has seen the construction of many rental apartment buildings,” says Goldsworthy, and landlords dominate the Liverpool property market. Mike Chrysokhou, franchise partner of Hunters Liverpool, estimates they account for three-quarters of sales, most of them capitalizing on the city’s 70,000 students.

Owners of short-term rentals and vacation rentals are expecting a big payday this weekend, with the city hosting the Eurovision Song Contest in place of Ukraine. Analysis by online gambling company BonusCodeBets reveals that on May 13, the night of the Eurovision final, the average price of an Airbnb listing in Liverpool was £579, 360% more than the average of the weekend.

However, for buyers with longer-term ambitions, it is difficult to find high-end family homes for sale in the city center. Canning – also known as the Georgian Quarter – is a prime pocket for 19th century homes, although there are never more than a handful for sale at any one time. Current listings range from £650,000 to £900,000 for homes with four to seven bedrooms.

Liverpool’s entry-level prices are still relatively low among the UK’s biggest cities – 30% cheaper than Manchester and 65% cheaper than London, according to Beauchamp Estates’ Liverpool: Northern Powerhouse report, based on Dataloft figures. But prices have risen recently, says Marcus Dixon, director of residential research at JLL. The average price in the city has risen 39% over the past three years (in the northwest, the average has risen 30%), according to JLL data.

In March this year, the average house price was £181,278, up 9.3% on last year, and average rents were up 10.2%. Prices are now easing and transaction levels across all property types are down as rising mortgage rates and household bills persuade potential buyers not to budge.

Land register figures show a drop in the number of transactions for all types of properties, with single-family homes being the hardest hit. Their sales volume has fallen by 58% and prices by 12% in the year to February 2023, now averaging £370,027.

The affluent suburbs of Allerton and Woolton, a few miles south of the city centre, are sought after by families for their schools, parks and large detached houses which can cost upwards of £1million.

“House prices have skyrocketed, shocking neighbors who have lived here for decades,” says Kamal Arkinstall, a content strategist who returned to the town where she grew up in the 1990s and lives in a four-bedroom house. bedrooms in Allerton with her husband and two children.

“But there are more cafes, bars and restaurants in local shopping streets like Allerton Road and there is a sense of community and togetherness here that I have never experienced anywhere else,” she adds. .

Home prices have skyrocketed, shocking neighbors who have lived here for decades

Otherwise, senior managers and executives tend to live in the suburban belt of Cheshire or North Wales, “mainly due to the shortage of large family homes near their jobs in the city,” says Natalie Kenny, a scientist who moved from London to Liverpool in 2015 and founded BioGrad, laboratory and clinical training centre.

“I hope more people will start to choose to live in our city in the future, instead of looking for property further afield. But the expansion of universities in the city center has led to the development of accommodation buildings for students and HMOs. [houses of multiple occupancy] all over town,” says Kenny. It pays a company minimum wage set at 20% of the local price of a two-bedroom house to help staff entering the housing market.

What Liverpool city center does not lack, however, are grand historic buildings. Albert Dock has more Grade I listed buildings than anywhere else in the UK, and the nearby Three Graces – a majestic trio of early 20th-century buildings – define the city’s skyline. As with the tobacco warehouse, sensible conversions of some of the city’s older buildings may be key to providing smarter, centrally located homes.

It may help solve another problem in the city – the lack of high-quality office space, says Sam Lawson Johnston, co-founder of Kinrise, an investment firm focused on restoring historic buildings.

“Liverpool is full of great people who have nowhere to work,” he says. “Interesting and creative companies. . . going to Manchester instead because they can’t find what they need here,” adds Lawson Johnston, whose company is transforming one of Liverpool’s most notable buildings – the Grade-listed former Martin’s Bank Building. II*, a giant 207,000 square foot seven-storey building that sits next to Liverpool Town Hall – in Grade A office space with co-working and event space.

According to Lawson Johnston, reusing old properties is not only better for the environment than building them from scratch, but they are also “integrated” into the city and can meet its changing needs. “Gentrification shouldn’t mean that everything creative, cultural and historical moves out of the city centre.”

With its historic docks home to creative hubs and high profile arts events preparing to launch – including the Liverpool Biennale from next month – the city is clearly trying to keep culture center stage long after that Eurovision has left town.

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