Town or country? It is a question many of us ask ourselves. Would we like to live in a vibrant, moving and exciting city, or would we rather snuggle up by a log fire in a cottage and wake up to the sound of bird song?
Some people are townies, others out-and-out country squires and dames. In the end you are one or the other. Yet Britain's great cities of old are making a pitch for our attention firmly believing that we can all be won over. The days of cities belonging exclusively to the young and the fast- living are fading.
Britain built some great cities during the days of the industrial revolution and they flowered in the heyday of the Victorian age before going into decline. Now these giants of our past are making a comeback and becoming increasingly popular places to live.
TEXT Chris Dighton PICS Arcaid
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| © Richard Bryant / Arcaid.co.uk |
Terrorists or no terrorists London will always be vibrant and diverse. And what more would you expect from a city of over 11 million people.
Rich to the point of priceless in regards of its history and character, London can be all things to all men and women. But like other international cities it can be expensive.
And should you ever grow tired of London, although Samuel Johnson would never have it so for, 'when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford', there is the bonus of easy access to the continent via the airports at Heathrow and Gatwick and the Eurostar out of Waterloo.
With the Olympics coming in 2012 and the regeneration of the east of the city, London is adding to its rich fabric. With so much to offer, of course it is expensive. It is just a case of some parts being more expensive than others.
London needs more homes and in particular it needs more homes Londoners can afford. The reality is that to buy the average home in London requires a household income of £55,000, but the average salary in London is £34,777.
The trend of 2005 for prices to fall ' or at least stabilise ' has not really helped in bridging that gap.
To get an idea of the costs in 2005 in London there were 207 streets that had an average price of just over £1,000,000. That might seem a lot but the figure represents less than 0.5 per cent of the total number of streets in Greater London.
At the opposite end of the Greater London rankings are Bexley, Lambeth, Havering and Enfield where properties averaged just below £100,000.
Stamp Duty a few years ago affected 25 per cent of sales, today it is 75 per cent and quite frankly it is strangling the market. We need to encourage people to buy homes, not keep them at bay until they are well into their 30s before they take the plunge and end up with a mortgage up until the day they retire
Kirstie Allsopp
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| © Martine Hamilton Knight / Arcaid.co.uk |
Birmingham
During the last ten years Britain's second city has undergone a dramatic urban renaissance making the option of living in the city centre much more attractive.
From canal-side apartments and luxury penthouses to a new generation of affordable homes and studio apartments, there has never been a better time to move into a home with a city centre postcode.
Birmingham's superb shopping facilities are amongst the best outside London and include the iconic Selfridges, four other department stores and over a thousand other shops.
Other attractions including art galleries, theatres, the museum, many fine restaurants and bars and Birmingham's vibrant Broad Street, Arcadian Centre and Chinese Quarter are just a stroll away. On top of all that, Birmingham is the hub of an international transport network, with three city centre railway stations, 129 bus routes, 26,000 car parking spaces ' and is only five miles from Birmingham International Airport.
Like many cities, Birmingham has embraced city living in a big way. Much of the development has been around the city centre's network of canals or in the traditional Jewellery Quarter, but plush residential schemes are now springing up at the heart of the city in New Street and Hill Street. Even the iconic Rotunda building, next to the Bullring, is being redeveloped as upmarket living accommodation.
The plethora of developments has meant that prices are still relatively competitive. A two-bedroom flat at Royal Arch in the swanky Mailbox development can be bought for £250,000.
Those who prefer a more suburban lifestyle might look to the northern suburb of Sutton Coldfield or to the south of the city to Solihull or Hampton in Arden. A five-bedroom house in its own grounds in Old Station Road, Hampton in Arden, can be purchased for £799,000. Good-sized, four-bedroom houses in the relatively affluent inner suburbs such as Moseley can be had for £350,000.
Liverpool
The docks have gone but Liverpool is a city of international renown that has reinvented itself. The waterfront is instantly recognisable; there is that unique accent and those famous faces from the Beatles through to Wayne Rooney.
According to the national tourist board Liverpool is Britain's favourite day-trip destination. The waterfront area attracts millions of visitors each year to admire the rejuvenated Albert Dock. Liverpool is the European Capital of Culture for 2008 and Liverpool FC are the holders of the Champions League trophy.
Average prices for the Merseyside area in 2004 were a staggering 79 per cent greater than 2000 ' this equates to a compounded annual growth rate of approximately 16 per cent. In other words a Merseyside house bought for £100,000 in 2000 was worth on average £179,000.
This growth is higher than the likes of London and the South East, which traditionally have had a much more vibrant property market. The growth in property prices at the lower end has been more pronounced than in the upper end of the market.
Secondly, there has been a strong consistency in the relative desirability of areas. The most and least expensive areas are the same year after year.
There is no pronounced change in the market place of particular areas moving up the rankings.
Manchester
Seen as the shining light of the North, Manchester has an unrivalled nightlife and arguably one of the best football teams playing in the Premiership. Manchester has a population of 460,000 and has a large student population.
From Manchester, you can be in the Lake District, the Peak District, the Yorkshire Dales or North Wales within an hour's drive. Here you can be both townie and country squire.
The growth in property prices at the lower end has been more pronounced than in the upper end of the market. Hale remains the place for millionaires with property prices breaking the £1m barrier but in Bolton homes are available for less than £100,000 and the same is true of Oldham and Warrington where the price was under £70,000.
Leeds
With a population of 455,000 and once a jewel in Victorian England, Leeds has recently benefited from major redevelopment. It is a busy place with a large student population, which ensures loads of nightlife and good times.
Leeds' legacy as a centre of wealth dating back to the wool industry means it attracts financial, legal and accounting firms' headquarters in the North. With that comes good cafe bars and excellent restaurants, plus getting around is made easy with an effective integrated bus and train network.
Over 5,000 new flats have been built in and near the centre since 2000, mostly aimed at investors relying on young professional renters. But local agent Allsops says between 900 and 1,200 are up for resale as landlords are hit by rising voids and falling yields.
'It's difficult to predict whether there are enough tenants out there in the market to fill these,' said Andrew Wells of Allsops.
Such situations lead to invention and one city centre developer has tapped into the grey pound by creating Leeds' first trendy retirement apartments.
Developer Kevin Linfoot has pioneered the idea of Prime Pads and is aiming to put up to 180 warden-controlled apartments in his latest landmark building in Leeds city centre.
His plans for the 51-storey glass towered development on Wellington Street include 12 storeys of trendy private retirement flats, which will be aimed at the young at heart who prefer bistros and wine bars to tea dances and whist drives.
Buyers, who will have to be aged over 50 to qualify for a Prime Pad, will be able to opt for a fashionable Phillipe Starck designed interior, though the apartments will also include emergency pull cords, extra wide doorways to accommodate wheelchairs, larger than average kitchens and bath rails.
Newcastle
The largest city in the North East of England with a population of 210,000. The city has a Metro system that makes it easy to get around. It is famous for its beginnings as a coal export port and in the 19th century became an important steel and shipbuilding centre.
These days Newcastle is more famous for its nightlife and is indeed known as the 'Nightlife Capital'. At the upper end of the market Jesmond is the place to live but a benefit of life in the North East is that for the same money you would need to spend on a two-bedroom flat in London, a spacious family house can be yours.
As with the rest of the UK, house prices are high, but in the North East buyers get much more for their money. The average price for a detached house is £149,000 ' according to the Office for National Statistics. Upmarket houses costing £500,000 can be found within a short distance of the major towns and cities.
Bristol
Homebuyers are heading west for 'rural city' living and Bristol is one of the most popular places for newly built property hunters in Britain. Its popularity could fuel long-term property price rises in the area.
'Greenshifters' ' professional couples moving out of large cities for a greener lifestyle ' are finding their rural city lifestyle in new developments west of Bristol.
The SmartNewHomes migration monitor, which measures the number of homebuyers moving in or out of an area, shows that the South West has the highest number of homebuyers looking to move into the area, with a migration figure of 3.6 per cent.
This backs up figures from the Office of National Statistics that shows that the South West has the highest net migration of any UK region with an influx of nearly 25,000 people each year. SmartNewHomes data also reveals that the Bristol area has seen new home prices rise by around 15 per cent over the last year whilst nationally, prices are on average 4 per cent lower than 2004.
Bristol has long served as the prime city for large parts of the South West, but in recent years the city has grown and redeveloped and is now attracting visitors and residents from further a field. A number of factors can be seen as contributing to its new-found popularity, including the regeneration of the city centre and harbour side areas with new office schemes, shops, bars and restaurants.
Areas such as Clifton, West Hill and Downend are amongst the most sought-after parts of the city, but towns on the outskirts of Bristol are also proving popular. Portishead, along the coast to the south west of Bristol, is one such area. A £500 million development project has been undertaken to create Port Marine docks where Crest Nicholson are currently marketing a full range of properties, including apartments, town houses and houses.
Cardiff
There was a time ' one which many who live there now can still remember ' when the place stank permanently of coal, fume and ash. The vast East Moors steel works at its centre turned the air dark. Most of the south Wales valleys' coal output clanked its way through the city's heart to leave through its port.
Today, however, it has all changed. Cardiff is looking smart. The stonework has been washed and the streets are full of trees. The old industry has been replaced by call centres, leasing agents, insurance companies, utility providers, transport undertakings, plc head offices, banks and building societies.
Hardly anyone gets their hands dirty. There are lots of suits and cellphones. It is a rare metropolis in Wales.
Windsor Place and Duke Street have average prices of around £500,000. Lower your sights and at Cyncoed Road, where the average cost is around £285,000, you will find Cardiff's busiest street for property transactions during 2005. If you really are struggling to climb on the ladder, a small place in Caerau Court Road can be yours from upwards of £36,000.
The cities, as always, belong to the people who make them what they are.
