Head of Granger & Oaks, Jonathan Detheridge, tells OnTheMarket.com about the benefits of living in the first ‘City of Football’.
Nottingham is lucky to have some first class sporting facilities, though the same high standards aren’t perhaps currently echoed by its two football league teams. With Nottingham Forest and Notts County not having troubled Gary Lineker on Match of the Day for some time, it says a lot that Nottingham was recently named as the country’s first City of Football, rewarding it with lottery grants to get people playing the beautiful game. This, and the film “I Believe in Miracles” which is opening this month, promises to further enhance the city’s heritage as a sporting hot spot. With the Ashes being won at Trent Bridge this summer and the area boasting a huge variety of top quality facilities for tennis, watersports, squash, and swimming, Nottingham has a well deserved sporting reputation.
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Away from sport, the city is of great renown for its shopping which is being cemented with the current refurbishment of its two indoor shopping centres, Broadmarsh and Victoria Centre. Both are easily accessible via the extended tram network, which in years to come should connect HS2 at Toton. With London only a couple of hours away and the two railway lines – Midland Mainline and the East Coast Mainline – both passing through the county, Nottinghamshire is well connected, another factor which makes it a great place to live.
The regeneration projects that were mothballed in 2008, are now showing signs of life. On the whole prices are picking up as modern first time buyers snap-up flats in town, rather than the traditional terraces in the suburbs that they might have opted for at the turn of the millennium.
For landlords, Nottingham continues to be popular as prices in the city are still below 2008 levels, providing excellent rental yield opportunities compared to many cities. The number of renters in Nottingham is also higher than the average and the population is bolstered by nearly 50,000 students each year, attending one of its two successful universities.
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The return of first time buyers over the past 18 months has been welcomed but the story across the board in Nottingham generally is one of a shortage of choice with a healthy supply of buyers but nowhere near enough properties coming to market to satisfy demand. The inevitable result is that ‘in demand’ property is selling at a premium, as property prices in Rushcliffe and in particular West Bridgford portray. While the shortage of choice is not good news for many buyers, it can be great news for sellers, particularly those who are keen to downsize or who are flexible about their next move, because prices are significantly rising in selected pockets of the city.
Of the properties coming to market, it’s no surprise to see the best presented homes achieving the best prices. It is perhaps a side effect of the aftermath of the recession but the requirement for houses to be presented exceptionally well is becoming more and more pronounced every year. Dressing and presenting your home when you’re selling is very much the way forward and we are finding that it can have a dramatic effect on the price that vendors are achieving. Kerb appeal in particular is something that every vendor should be focussed on!
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