Property Investment in Liverpool: A Guide
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We published our original location guide for Liverpool in Q1 2020.
Since then, much has changed, so we have included a number of important updates.
Turn to any property investment publication these days and you’ll undoubtedly find Liverpool ranking as one of the most hotly tipped destinations for buy-to-let. The reasons are plain. Numerous reports have shown that the city is delivering some of the best yields in the whole of the country – for both short-term and long-term rentals – which means it’s following exactly the same pattern as it has since 2018.
Affordable properties and excellent rental demand have produced dependably strong performances and, as one of the UK’s fastest-growing economies, Liverpool has rightly been dominating the headlines. Add to this a growing population and forecasts of some of Britain’s strongest capital growth, and it’s easy to see why many experts regard Liverpool as the country’s single most attractive property investment market.
Your free guide to Property Investment in Liverpool
One of the UK’s top cities for capital growth
Some of the best yields in the country
Rising rental values
One of the UK’s fastest growing economies
Strong growth in high-value sectors
£14bn of inward investment
A rising population
Job creation on a massive scale
Rising standards of living
Four reputable universities and a robust student rental sector
Local planners and employers are keen to maintain Liverpool’s economic momentum, and the city is therefore benefiting from huge investments from the local authority, the private sector and academia.
Contact our Experienced Investment Consultants to discuss Property Investing in Liverpool
Inward Investment in Liverpool
In 2019, the FT reported that “private-sector led investment (in Liverpool) has topped £1bn annually for the past four years.” In 2023, the pace of investment seems only to be accelerating.
The most substantial inward investment programme in Liverpool is Peel Holdings’ Liverpool Waters development – a £5.5bn scheme that is set to transform the city waterfront, creating 20,000 new jobs. Already, it has prompted the construction of new tower blocks, offices and public realm, but residents are just seeing the start of this 50-year transformation.
Associated with the project is the construction of a new Isle of Man ferry terminal, close to the city centre. The £38 million development will serve passengers, vehicles and freight traffic, and is nearing completion. Also close by, subject to planning approval in 2024, will be the new £55 million Liverpool Cruise Terminal 2, which will greatly enhance the city’s capacity to attract larger cruise ships with more tourist visitors.
Another high-profile waterfront development is the construction of a new home stadium for Everton Football Club at Bramley-Moore Dock. Costing an estimated £500 million, the 52,000-seater stadium is progressing steadily and scheduled to open later in 2023.
Ongoing projects alone are worth over £800 million, and they coincide with more than £50 million of local road improvements.
Business Growth in Liverpool
Merseyside is home to more than 65,500 businesses, many of which are based in and around central Liverpool. In 2019, data compiled by Inform Direct using ONS and Companies House figures, found that the number of businesses operating in the city had risen by nearly 4% over the previous 12 months – a faster rate than at any time in its history.
In early 2020, the city’s mayor, Steve Rotheram announced the launch of a £75 million fund to support business growth. The biggest such cash injection for 20 years, it aimed to provide business loans, fund training and apprenticeships, and provide direct support to fast-growing enterprises. It is expected to help create 2,000 new jobs overall, especially in higher-paid, knowledge-based industries.
Other important regeneration schemes in Liverpool include:
Liverpool2 deep-water container terminal – a multi-million-pound expansion of the £400m deep-water facility at Liverpool SuperPort.
Lime Street Gateway, a £39 million scheme which has improved the area around Lime Street Station, the arrival point for millions of visitors every year.
Paddington Village - a £1bn expansion site, which is creating 1.8 million square feet of modern facilities for science, technology, education and healthcare.
Liverpool Upper Central, a 56-acre development site designed to give the city’s Knowledge Quarter room to expand. It is expected to kick-start £2bn of further regeneration, and to support the creation of 7,000 new jobs.
The Baltic Triangle, Liverpool’s digital and creative quarter, which has seen £128 million of new development work, with an additional £62 million now in progress.
Ten Streets – a 1 million square foot development area close to the docks, set to become a new ‘creativity district’ for start-up businesses. It is expected to support the creation of around 2,500 new jobs.
A new tidal-power barrage in the River Mersey, awarded development funding in February 2020.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre – a new specialist treatment centre, now being built as part of a £162 million investment in improved cancer care for Merseyside and the wider region.
More examples are listed in our Liverpool Property Investment Guide, but these help to illustrate the scale of work now taking place in the city. Ultimately, this should mean rising employment, a new influx of people seeing good jobs, higher average disposable incomes and, of course, greater demand for property.
The Covid pandemic struck in spring of 2020, at which time, Liverpool was the UK’s fastest-growing city region economy. Like everywhere else, it saw a reduction in activity during the lockdown periods, but since then, it has also seen one of the country’s fastest recoveries. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority writes that supporting measures have included:
The launch of the Metro Mayor’s £150m COVID Recovery Fund – “the largest package of business support the region has seen in a generation”
More than £44m in emergency funds distributed to more than 4,000 businesses
Increased flexibility for local authorities to use the £6m Town Centres Fund to support local high street recovery
A £3m Future Innovation Fund Pilot programme to support Liverpool City Region’s small and medium sized enterprise (SME) community
A £2.5 million crowdfunding campaign to support community organisations
The authority’s Build Back better programme aims “unlock £8.8 billion of projects … creating 94,000 permanent jobs, with a further 28,000 jobs in construction.”
Growth Sectors in Liverpool
Manufacturing in Liverpool is worth over £3bn per annum. It supports three thousand businesses and 50,000 jobs. Now, academia, life sciences, pharmaceuticals and digital industries are all working with advanced manufacturing businesses to add value and create centres of excellence in smart-automation and virtual engineering.
Major employers include Unilever, Pilkington, Ineos, Astra Zeneca and Jaguar Land Rover. However, smaller, high-tech businesses are growing fast, thanks to investments such as the Materials Innovation Factory - a £65 million collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Unilever. Designed to accelerate the expansion of knowledge-based industries, it is drawing together around 300 researchers to help lead new scientific and commercial innovations.
The creative, digital and media industries contribute £1.8bn per annum to the city economy and have grown by 7% per annum since 2010. Responsible for one of the UK’s fastest rates of new business start-ups, they have been supported by strategic investments such as Sensor City – a £15 million enterprise zone – a new £50 million film studio, and a £7 million commercial development known as Giga Village.
The life sciences are another important sector in Liverpool, which is home to Royal Liverpool University Hospital, numerous specialist medical facilities and The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Consequently, its life-sciences sector is now one of the biggest and most successful in all of Europe, generating £3bn of annual revenues and supporting 6,000 specialist jobs.
Focused around the waterfront, Liverpool’s energy and sustainability cluster is driving important innovations. It has already created one of the world’s largest offshore wind farms and it is now driving progress on an innovative tidal energy barrage. In all, Liverpool’s low carbon sector is worth around £2bn per annum and supports a workforce of well over 27,000.
Liverpool’s professional services sector is valued at £8bn per annum, sustains 12,000 companies and supports over 107,000 jobs. Growth in the sector is expected to create more than 20,000 new jobs by 2040. A report by Oxford Economics for the local enterprise partnership notes that the city's business and professional services will be worth an extra £4.6bn by 2036.
Liverpool has seen a pronounced strategic shift in its economy. No longer defined by its maritime history, Liverpool has a thriving economy, with growth focused on high-value sectors such as:
Advanced manufacturing and engineering
Creative and media
Digital and ‘big data’
Education
Health and life sciences
Logistics
Low carbon energy
Professional business services
Tourism
Contact our Experienced Investment Consultants to discuss Property Investing in Liverpool
Why Invest in Liverpool?
For property professionals, shortlisting an excellent investment destination begins with a simple check-box exercise. In Liverpool’s case, the city can put a clear tick beside every point.
On the question of yield, Liverpool is undoubtedly one of the country’s top performers. Nowhere does an investor’s money work harder. And when it comes to prospects for capital growth, the city shows all the right signs: a strong economy, vast sums of inward investment and rapid employment growth in high-value sectors that attract large numbers of well-paid staff.
In March 2022, the Zoopla House Price Index ranked Liverpool the UK’s top city for capital growth, witnessing gains of +10.3% compared to a UK average of +7.8%. A year later, the agency published its February 2023 House Price Index, which showed that Liverpool had produced annual gains of 6.5%, which compared against UK average of 5.3% and a 20-city average of 4.6%.
Property prices tend to rise in tandem with average disposable incomes and, here, in this most ambitious of Merseyside cities, there is every reason to expect a continuing improvement. This has not been lost on institutional investors, who have been pouring increasing sums into the Liverpool build-to-rent market over recent years. Looking ahead, the real-estate specialist JLL is forecasting 13.1% capital growth in Liverpool between 2020-2025, with rental growth of 14.8% over the same period.
Liverpool’s Economy
Liverpool’s economy is one of the fastest-growing in the country. According to the Centre for Cities, its GDP in 2018 was around £19 billion. However, Oxford Economics has predicted that a successful implementation of the Local Enterprise Partnership’s regional growth strategy could see the economy expanding to a staggering £50 billion by 2040. With that would come an estimated 100,000 additional jobs, 20,000 new businesses and 50,000 new residents.
This is a lofty ambition, but the city is well on its way to achieving it. In January 2023, InvestLiverpool published an article based on research by the Centre for Economics and Business Research undertaken for Irwin Mitchell’s City Tracker report. It wrote:
“According to the research, Liverpool’s employment level is expected to increase by 1.7% in the final quarter of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. It estimates that employment at the end of 2022 stood at 334,500 and by the end of 2023, this figure will be 340,300. Annual growth of GVA by the end of next year in Liverpool is expected to be 0.6%, which will take the size of the economy to £14.4bn. This is higher than all the other locations in the North West covered by the report.”
This follows an earlier (2022) report by EY, which predicted that the city would see average GVA growth of 2.8% per year until 2025.
These and other reports all point to continuing economic growth, more jobs and a growing population, all of which bode very well for property investors.
Contact our Experienced Investment Consultants to discuss Property Investing in Liverpool
Inward Investment in Liverpool in more Detail
One of the reasons that forecasters can be so confident of continuing economic growth is the scale of inward investment in Liverpool. Some of this has taken the form of publicly funded infrastructure projects, but a great deal of it has come from developers and other private businesses.
Importantly, investments have been large and essentially continuous. In 2019, the FT reported that “private-sector led investment has topped £1bn annually for the past four years.” This has undoubtedly been helping to cement the city’s place as a great place to do business.
In a study of the ‘Best Cities in Britain for Business 2019’ Management Today ranked Liverpool in its top 10, noting that “Regeneration projects worth £14bn are in the pipeline in a city that is already home to major global brands and a world leader in sectors as diverse as maritime and logistics, health and life sciences, energy and the environment, creative, digital and tech, and advanced manufacturing and engineering.”
In the same report, it pointed to some notable new schemes including the Pall Mall development in Liverpool’s commercial district, which is witnessing the construction of hotels, office blocks and new public realm facilities. It also identified Paddington Village - a £1bn expansion site, which was creating 1.8 million square feet of modern facilities for science, technology, education and healthcare. Scheduled for completion in 2030, it will ultimately house the new headquarters of the Royal College of Physicians, a further education college, medical research units and a hotel.
More recently, many other important schemes have advanced in the city. Examples include:
Liverpool2 deep-water container terminal – a multi-million-pound expansion of the £400m deep-water facility at Liverpool SuperPort.
A new tidal-power barrage in the River Mersey.
A new low-carbon hydrogen production plant in Ellesmere Port.
The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre – a new specialist treatment centre, now being built as part of a £162 million investment in improved cancer care for Merseyside and the wider region.
Liverpool Upper Central, a 56-acre development site designed to give the city’s Knowledge Quarter room to expand. Connecting key locations including Liverpool Science Park, Central Station and Liverpool University, it’s expected to kick-start £2bn of further regeneration, and to support the creation of 7,000 new jobs.
The Baltic Triangle, Liverpool’s digital and creative quarter, which has seen £128 million of new development work, with an additional £62 million now in progress.
Lime Street Gateway, a £39 million scheme to improve the area around Lime Street Station, the arrival point for millions of visitors every year. There will be a further £11 million allocated for the conversion of a former cinema into a live performance venue and TV studio.
A scheme to convert the former International Festival Gardens site into a new mixed-use zone comprising retail facilities, housing, open spaces, cafes and restaurants, and other amenities. The scheme has already attracted £10 million of government funding.
Ten Streets – a 1 million square foot development area close to the docks, set to become a new ‘creativity district’ for start-up businesses. It is expected to support the creation of around 2,500 new jobs.
A new Isle of Man ferry terminal, close to the city centre. The £38 million development is close to completion and will serve passengers, vehicles and freight traffic.
The proposed Liverpool Cruise Terminal 2, a new £55 million facility at Princes Dock, which will greatly enhance the city’s capacity to attract larger cruise ships with more tourist visitors. Plans were delayed by the pandemic but are expected to be approved in 2024. JLL reports that the “council is also investing a further £32 million in upgrading the A565 to support the new cruise facility and north docklands, and is gearing up to create a £20 million link road to extend Leeds Street to the waterfront.”
Liverpool Waters
The preceding list would be impressive by any standards, but there is one more major development taking place in Liverpool, and it dwarfs virtually all of them. Liverpool Waters is a £5.5 billion redevelopment programme that will transform the city's waterfront over the coming decades. Led by the Peel Group, it will be the biggest urban regeneration project in Liverpool's history and will surely have a massive impact on the city’s economy.
City planners predict it will ultimately boost job numbers by 20,000 and create approximately 3.4 million square feet of office space. Construction began in 2018.
The Liverpool Waters vision sees skyscrapers lining the banks of the Mersey, together with hotels, restaurants and a variety of leisure spaces. Two notable early projects are Moda Living’s £82 million, 34-storey skyscraper, known as the Lexington, and the Regenda Group’s £21 million Plaza 1821. Both are situated on Princes Dock.
Despite having made significant progress already, the scheme is a long-term venture, expected to support ongoing urban regeneration for the next 50 years. This is important for property investors because it means Liverpool should continue to enjoy strong economic regeneration, not just over the coming years but for decades to come.
One of the highest profile developments on the waterfront will be a new home stadium for Everton Football Club at Bramley-Moore Dock. Costing an estimated £500 million, the 52,000-seater stadium is slated to open in 2023. This will leave the club’s existing ground, Goodison Park, empty but plans have now been submitted to use the area to create a mix of new housing, public health facilities and a youth enterprise zone, together with modern retail and leisure spaces.
Contact our Experienced Investment Consultants to discuss Property Investing in Liverpool
Let’s Look at Business Growth in Liverpool in more Detail
Merseyside is home to more than 65,500 businesses, many of which are based in and around central Liverpool. In 2019, data compiled by Inform Direct using ONS and Companies House figures, found that the number of businesses operating in the city had risen by nearly 4% over the previous 12 months – a faster rate than at any time in its history.
The Covid pandemic struck in spring of 2020, at which time, Liverpool was the UK’s fastest-growing city region economy. Like everywhere else, it saw a reduction in activity during the lockdown periods, but since then, it has also seen one of the country’s fastest recoveries. Liverpool City Region Combined Authority writes that supporting measures have included:
The launch of the Metro Mayor’s £150m COVID Recovery Fund – “the largest package of business support the region has seen in a generation”
More than £44m in emergency funds distributed to more than 4,000 businesses
Increased flexibility for local authorities to use the £6m Town Centres Fund to support local high street recovery
A £3m Future Innovation Fund Pilot programme to support Liverpool City Region’s small and medium sized enterprise (SME) community
A £2.5 million crowdfunding campaign to support community organisations
The authority’s Build Back better programme aims “unlock £8.8 billion of projects … creating 94,000 permanent jobs, with a further 28,000 jobs in construction.”
This accelerating pace of investment should support a continuing economic rebound, and enhance all the attendant social and economic benefits. For landlords, more entrepreneurs and more people in work tends to translate into growing rental demand and a greater capacity to pay rentals on higher quality accommodation.
What’s more, those prospects improved still further, when the city’s mayor, Steve Rotheram announced the launch of a £75 million fund to support business growth. The biggest such cash injection for 20 years, it is providing business loans, fund training and apprenticeships, and provide direct support to fast-growing enterprises. It is expected to help create 2,000 new jobs, especially in higher-paid, knowledge-based industries.
The announcement coincided with the launch of Liverpool’s own dedicated growth company, called the Growth Platform. The Liverpool City Region Combined Authority notes that “the company will co-ordinate, manage and promote a wide range of business support, growth, investment, skills initiatives and sector development services across the City Region.”
Growth Sectors in Liverpool in more detail
Liverpool has seen a pronounced strategic shift in its economy. Once, the city’s identity was defined by its docklands and all the industries associated with them, but today, Liverpool has a thriving economy, with growth focused on high-value sectors such as:
Advanced manufacturing and engineering
Creative and media
Digital and ‘big data’
Education
Health and life sciences
Logistics
Low carbon energy
Professional business services
Tourism
Manufacturing in general is big business in Merseyside. Valued at over £3bn per annum, it supports three thousand businesses and 50,000 jobs. But in the field of advanced manufacturing, many of the city’s other growth sectors are converging to create added value. For example, academia, life sciences, pharmaceuticals and digital industries are all coming together in Liverpool to create centres of excellence in smart-automation and virtual engineering.
Merseyside hosts some very well-known manufacturers that are major employers in their own rights. Unilever has facilities here, as do Pilkington and Ineos. Astra Zeneca is part of the city’s £1.5bn chemical and pharmaceutical sector, which supports over 7,500 jobs, and Jaguar Land Rover is a key player in the area’s £850 million automotive sector.
However, a new generation of businesses are coming up to join these top-flight brands, thanks to investments such as the Materials Innovation Factory - a £65 million collaboration between the University of Liverpool and Unilever. Designed to accelerate the expansion of knowledge-based industries, it is drawing together around 300 researchers to help lead new scientific and commercial innovations.
In historical terms, the creative, digital and media industries have only just arrived on the scene but already, they are worth £1.8bn per annum to the city economy. According to LCR Combined Authority, the sector has expanded at a compound annual growth rate of 7% since 2010. It supports more than 22,000 jobs and nearly 4,500 businesses, and it’s responsible for one of the UK’s fastest rates of new business start-ups. Their success has been encouraged by strategic investments such as Sensor City – a £15 million enterprise zone – a new £50 million film studio, and the recently launched Giga Village, a £7 million commercial development on the former Cains Brewery site.
The life sciences are another sector that is being buoyed up by synergies with big data, artificial intelligence and advanced engineering. The city is home to Royal Liverpool University Hospital, numerous specialist medical facilities and The Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine - a world-leading centre for research into tropical diseases. As a result, the city’s life-sciences sector is now one of the biggest and most successful in all of Europe, generating £3bn of annual revenues and supporting 6,000 specialist jobs. More generally, healthcare sustains upwards of 100,000 jobs across the city.
Energy and sustainability are another important growth sector in Liverpool. In Liverpool Bay, the waterfront has become the focus for one of the UK’s most successful renewable energy clusters, with one of the world’s largest wind turbine farms lying just a few miles offshore. The city is also supporting cutting-edge research into renewables and it should soon see progress on its innovative tidal energy barrage, which has been making its way through the local planning system. In all, Liverpool’s low carbon sector is worth around £2bn per annum and supports a workforce of well over 27,000.
In March 2023, the government’s Spring Budget included an announcement about £20 billion of funding for carbon capture projects across Britain. At the time of writing, the funds have not been allocated to any specific city or region, but Merseyside, North Wales and the Yorkshire coast are widely expected to be among the key beneficiaries. The government expects the resulting projects to create up to 50,000 skilled jobs.
The professional services sector is another exciting growth sector in Liverpool. Valued at £8bn per annum, it sustains 12,000 companies that have created over 107,000 jobs. One especially fast-expanding market is wealth-management, which is worth £2bn alone, but other subsectors of the financial industry - insurance, marketing and accountancy - are also keeping pace and are projected to create more than 20,000 new jobs by 2040. A report by Oxford Economics for the local enterprise partnership notes that the city's business and professional services will be worth an extra £4.6bn by 2036.
Liverpool’s Port and Logistics
It’s clear, then, that Liverpool has embraced some high-value, future-focused industries, yet for all that, it hasn’t forgotten the value of its maritime heritage. Indeed, it is seeing a distinct revival of its ports and logistics industries.
A report, commissioned by Maritime UK and the Centre for Economics and Business Research declared Liverpool to be "stand out region" with respect to sea freight, and noted that the city will be crucial to the UK economy in the years following Brexit.
Liverpool’s Tourism Market
In August 2019, LCR Local Enterprise Partnership produced a study of recent visitor data, which highlighted the notable success of the city’s tourism sector. It stated: “The region’s visitor economy is now worth over £4.9bn… and supports over 57,000 jobs.” It also pointed out that the record number of visitors welcomed to the city in 2019 (over 67 million) marked a 5% increase on the previous year.
Up until the onset of the Covid pandemic, the sector had been making ever larger contributions to the city’s economy. The LEP reported that “over the last 5 years, there has been a 28% growth in the economic value of the visitor economy.”
Now, of course, the sector faces a period of recovery. To support this, further infrastructure improvements are being proposed – including the new cruise liner terminal and the possible expansion of Liverpool John Lennon Airport, which saw a 600% rise in passenger numbers between 1997 and 2017. In other words, this important sector could soon be seeing a resurgence in its momentum.
Irwin Mitchell’s UK City Tracker report (January 2023) notes that: “Liverpool has successfully boosted visitor numbers to the city in recent years. With the city set to host Eurovision in 2023, the accommodation and food services industry should see a boost despite wider cost-of-living pressures.”
For landlords with an interest in short-stay accommodation, this will all be good news. Staycations have been rising in popularity since 2020 and Liverpool is well placed to benefit from the trend. Rising numbers of overnight visitors will boost demand for serviced apartments and short-term lets, which – in Liverpool – are currently delivering some of the best yields anywhere in the country.
In its UK Rental Index for Q4 2022, SpareRoom reported that Liverpool saw annual rental growth of 16% on room rents, and an impressive 40% increase in rental demand between Q4 2021 and Q4 2022.
Liverpool’s Housing Market
Liverpool’s undoubted economic strength is key to the vibrancy of its housing market, which is proving exceptionally attractive to property investors. On all the key measures – affordability, rental demand, yields and potential for capital appreciation – the city is performing very well.
On the measure of capital appreciation, for example, Liverpool has proved itself to be an excellent performer. According to Zoopla’s House Price Index for February 2023, the city produced year-on-year gains of 6.5%. This came at a time when the UK mean was just 5.3% and the 20-city index stood at just 4.6%.
In terms of affordability, Liverpool also has great potential. Here, the average home cost just £155,800 February 2023, according to Zoopla, whereas the UK average was then a much pricier £260,800. This does two things: it helps insulate the market against any losses induced by the cost-of-living crisis and, by enabling investors to buy more cheaply, it makes better yields more attainable.
In March 2023, PropertyData estimated that, in the city’s central postcode districts, average yields ranged between 5.5% and 6.5%.
Buy-to-Let Investment in Liverpool
For all these reasons, Liverpool has earned itself a place among the UK’s top property investment destinations. Top-ranking yields, strong price gains and the prospect of further capital growth are factors that are hard to ignore.
But on top of all that is the city’s attractive short-stay rental market. Visitor accommodation is often a profitable form of investment and whether landlords choose serviced apartments or some other business model, Liverpool’s plans to revitalise its tourism sector make it an important market to consider.
Student Property Investment in Liverpool
No examination of property investment in Liverpool would be complete without also addressing the student property sector. Merseyside is home to four universities, all of which help to maintain a steady, profitable rental market. Patterns of demand are predictable and, in many postcodes, yields are extremely good.
The University of Liverpool is one of the world’s top 200 universities and is a crucial source of rental demand. It’s also a key driver of economic investment. In 2016, Oxford Economics found that the University generated £652 million GVA to the City Region, and supported one in ten jobs in the city.
Importantly, the University recently announced plans for a £1bn expansion of its estates over the next 15 years. This includes significant investments including the £8m Digital Innovation Facility and the £22m Arts and Humanities Centre, both of which are now under construction.
In all, Merseyside hosts around 75,000 university students, which amounts to a huge target market for landlords and developers of purpose-built student accommodation. In recent academic years, the student populations of Merseyside’s universities were as follows:
Universty of Liverpool: 35,000, including 8,000 from overseas.
Liverpool John Moores University: 18,945
Edge Hill University: 15,220
Liverpool Hope University: c. 5,100
What are Liverpool’s Property Market Predictions for 2023 and Beyond?
Looking at Liverpool’s economic strength, the steady growth of its industries and the massive inward investment now taking place, there is every reason for property investors to expect excellent returns in the coming years.
Here, perhaps more than in any other British city, regeneration plans are being measured in decades rather than years, so the prospects for sustained improvement could hardly look better. For example, the Liverpool Waters project is expected to run for a full 50 years, and important infrastructure improvements will be taking place alongside it, all helping to ensure that Liverpool’s resurgence is both dramatic and long-lived.
The evidence is convincing and major employers have certainly been showing their faith in the city’s future with huge new investments in the waterfront and other districts. Institutional investors have shown a similar conviction by committing money to new commercial developments and purpose-built student accommodation.
For individual property investors, all the indicators are strong and reassuring. Liverpool has a proven track record when it comes to delivering top yields but it’s also faring well with respect to capital growth.
Looking ahead, Savills expects the North West to remain the country’s joint-best location for capital growth. The company is forecasting price gains of 11.7% by 2027, which compares against a UK average of just 6.2% over the same period.
One longer term risk is that market demand will eventually push prices higher and that yields will gradually begin to erode. That could be an argument to invest sooner rather than later, but with current prices still so far behind the national average, they have plenty of room for growth.
Zoopla data
UK average price: £260,800
Liverpool average price: £155,800
Plumplot data
Median price – England & Wales: £275,000
Median price – Liverpool: £164,000
(Figures correct as at March 2023)
Realistically, therefore, prices look set to remain very competitive and the city should continue to produce strong yields for many years to come.
A Summary of Property Investing in Liverpool in 2023 and beyond
Liverpool is justifiably regarded as one of the very best places in Britain to invest in property. The city’s population is rising, as are its economic fortunes. It’s the focus of one of the UK’s largest ever urban regeneration schemes and market confidence is extremely high. Liverpool performs well on all measures and stands as a logical choice for buy-to-let property investment in the coming years.
Contact our Experienced Investment Consultants to discuss Property Investing in Liverpool
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