What will happen to city centre apartments?

Ike1

Hi - the credit crunch has already affected the price of the new-ish city centre apartments in Manchester.

The cheapest new(ish) city centre apartments in Manchester (M4) at the moment on Rightmove are around £100,000 (http://www.rightmove.co.uk/search.rsp?lo_u=1593&lo_t=2&lo_n=M4&se_c=1&poi_e=0&poi_n=0&nh_st=1&stc_s=false&mi_b=2&tr_t=buy&pa_n=1&re_s=price&eventsubmit_dosearch=1&initial_search_time=1213376457287&s_tat=false#prop-17929285) and I'm guessing that their prices will drop a lot further in the coming months.

What do you think will happen to these type of apartments once their prices have bottomed out? Will there be a massive rush to purchase them or will buyers stay well clear?

My partner and I are currently working and living (renting) in the city centre and we find city centre living to be very convenient. We've been quite spoilt by the city centre living lifestyle and we have no plans to move to the suburbs anytime soon! There are 3 nursery/daycare centres that we know of in the city centre so having children probably won't affect our city living plans too much in the future!

Would buying a city centre apartment (once the prices have bottomed out - of course!) be a good move or would it be a total no no?

Ta in advance for any opinions,

Ike

brit1234

They are going to fall massively, more than the other properties by far.

tradetime

Personally I think you should buy whatever suits your lifestyle best, I would consider that to be the priority. I have generally always been an aparment kind of person, although my last property was a house My sister and brother both have houses. The one thing I have noticed visiting them, especially in the summer is that it is nice to have your own outside space (garden) This may be even more the case with children, just something to consider.

Zammo

I'm going to buy up several when they bottom out using my HPC war chest that I built up over the last 3 years.

bluejake

Not only are there lots of apartments in places like Manchester city centre but lots and lots of apartments have been built in the outlaying areas in places like Wigan advertised with a Manchester postcode - but a long way from the city centre. I saw flats on sale for 120 or 130k - you can still buy a semi-detached house in the same area for that price. They appear to have dropped to about a 100k but still you can be a terraced house for 65k or 70k in the same area.

Because of my job I have visited many of these flats and noticed many are owned by people who live far away in places like London - I guess investors who thought they were buying Manchester city apartments but were actually buying a flat in Wigan on the outskirts of Manchester with a Manchester postcode. Complete idiots. Many of them are empty, of the ones that are occupied, they are occupied by housing benefit claimants.

To answer the original posters question, 'Would buying a city centre apartment (once the prices have bottomed out - of course!) be a good move or would it be a total no no?' Yes if you want to live next door to housing benefit claimants, families on Income Support and everything that goes with that, and be stuck there because I don't think prices are going to be rising for a very long time in that type of property.

City centre living I can understand in London which is a big city where your next door neighbours will be employed people who simply cannot afford a house. In the north of England, Manchester is a lot smaller and less interesting city to live in, and why not if you have the choice to buy some kind of house instead which is more flexible, more likely to increase in value at some point in the far future, and more likely to appeal to a wider variety of buyers.

The second question, 'What do you think will happen to these type of apartments once their prices have bottomed out? Will there be a massive rush to purchase them or will buyers stay well clear?' - Housing benefit claimants, anti-social behavour, tatty flats in poor state of repair....

[Deleted User]

I have heard on the grapevine that many will be bought by councils for dss

neverdespairgirl

I live in a flat in central London, and we love it. We have a toddler son.

thriftybabe

This has already happened in Glasgow. One particular new build of flats has so many immigrants that they are actually using the stair landings to cook. They have moved lots in together and every room in each flat is being used as a bedroom. The penthouse flats were going dirt cheap before Christmas and we wondered why? Now we know!

m00m00

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

I live in a flat in central London, and we love it. We have a toddler son.

not quite the same as the crappy new builds being thrown up in most city centres though is it


your walls are probably actually made of bricks for a start, and not plaster board and paper.

Snooze

If I worked in the areas where they'd be going cheap then I'd probably buy one as a second home for work (like London for example, as I live in the Leeds area), but they'd have to be seriously cheap for me to do that and also include an allocated parking space in the price. Other than that, I can't see any reason why anyone would want to live in one. My hallway is bigger than the entire floor space of most of them. :rolleyes:

Rob

Bogof_Babe

There's one for sale in our town centre, over a new build shop, about 20 yards from Tesco and right next to a noisy pub. It has been up for sale since being built a couple of years ago, and is already starting to look tatty - wood cladding on the exterior which probably looked "interesting" at first has started to discolour and crack in places.

They are asking £279K for it, which is ludicrous. For an extra £1K you can get a four bed detached with garage and garden in a very pleasant residential suburb. I can't believe their optimism - it would be hard to sell for half the price.