HS2 is set to breathe new interest in the housing market, but where should you buy?
How fast do you think trains will travel on the new High Speed 2 line between London and Birmingham? One hundred miles an hour? One hundred and twenty-five miles an hour? No, they will be going at a countryside-blurring 200 mph, and will take just 45 minutes to reach their destination.
Other statistics revolve around the expected cost (£50billion) and the amount of time the construction of the line will take (20 years). And the fact that, at Birmingham, the HS2 trains will then run to Manchester in the west, and Leeds in the east, via a spectacular, new station at Curzon Street.
Meanwhile, another high-speed line will be built from west to east across the north of the country, joining Leeds, Manchester and Hull. The whole job is to be finished by 2030, bringing (according to a report by private consultants KPMG) a boost to the economy of some £15billion.
Even though the finished project is a decade-and-a-half away, the project is already generating interest and property sales too. Click here to view the HS2 interactive map.
‘We launched 14 properties very close to where the HS2 terminal is going to be [in Birmingham], and sold 10 of them in just two and a half weeks,’ says Mark Evans, a partner at Knight Frank.
‘The project is breeding strength and confidence in the market that we haven’t seen since the whole UK property picture changed in 2007-8.
‘We are talking about genuine re-generation, and HS2 is at the heart of it. We spoke to one big fund, for example, and their reaction was that if a city was not going to be on the HS rail line, then it was not somewhere they would want to invest in.’
Clearly, then, there will be a lot of people looking to re-locate because of the quicker rail journeys. In addition, businesses will be happy to have people based in Birmingham. This is because the connectivity will be so good, not just with London, but with Manchester and Leeds. Also because of the low cost of office space.
‘Firms can pay just £350 per square foot, rather than £1,000 per square foot in London,’ adds Evans.
At the same time, though, homeowners have been slower than businesses to grasp what’s going to happen. Which means there is still time for buyers to get into the market at the bottom end, and then watch prices rise over the next decade.
It is expected that rental prices will increase in line with selling prices.
‘I don’t think people have quite caught on to what this is going to mean for the city,’ explains Matthew Smith, of Andrew Grant estate agents, who have offices in Solihull and Stourbridge. ‘It still seems a long way off, and I think it’s going to need a bit more of a buzz before everyone realises what’s going to happen.’
No question about it, says Jamie Goodman, of Billingham Taylor estate agents, who have branches in Stourbridge, Dudley and Halesowen. All of which, like many other districts of the city, will be within easy reach of the new Birmingham HS2 station at Curzon Street, a short distance from the existing New Street Station.
‘People aren’t really discussing it, yet there’s no doubt that this will be a good thing for the area. At present, you can buy a house in Halesowen or Dudley for under £100,000, but we expect prices to rise.
‘We think we will see three-bedroom houses in smarter areas going for £185,000. If people can get to London in under an hour, they are going to find themselves attracted to the Midlands by those kinds of house prices.’
There’s no doubt about it. Bigger houses at more affordable prices, and the same length of commute as many Londoners already have during their daily journey.
Many people are going to be doing their sums, and the answer is going to be the West Midlands.
If you’re in the market for a home close to the new HS2 terminal in Curzon Street, Birmingham, check out these homes OnTheMarket.com for £100,000 or less:
Dudley: https://www.onthemarket.com/details/518078/
Stourbridge: https://www.onthemarket.com/details/914039/
Halesowen: https://www.onthemarket.com/details/949800/
Aston: https://www.onthemarket.com/details/1134887/
Birmingham City: https://www.onthemarket.com/details/641450/
