Dominic Curran
Head of Communications, Real Estate: UK
From residential properties that help meet housing demand to commercial properties that support industry, there are various ways — and benefits — of investing in real estate.
Around ten years ago, I was in a meeting with a Canadian pension fund, and they said that they wanted to invest in affordable housing because of “the UK’s perennial lack of problem in filling voids.” To me, it was a novel way of expressing that there are long waiting lists for affordable homes.
But it betrayed a key point about the country’s real estate market — we have huge demand for more homes of all tenures, for modernised offices and other workplaces, for logistics and advanced manufacturing, for revived town centres and renewed infrastructure. Our challenge is to create an environment where that demand can be matched to the supply of global and domestic capital.
Residential property investments
It’s striking how varied investment opportunities are around the country. There’s obvious demand for housing, particularly in urban areas, and build-to-rent homes aren’t just being delivered in major conurbations like Birmingham or Glasgow but also in previously unconsidered locations like Derby or Norwich.
Student accommodation also continues to be developed in many university locations around the UK, and we’re still chronically undersupplied for homes for older people in the so-called ‘later living’ sector.
we have huge demand for more homes of all tenures, for modernised offices and other workplaces, for logistics and advanced manufacturing, for revived town centres and renewed infrastructure
Commercial property investments
Pension funds and other long-term patient capital are key players in science parks and lab space, not just in the ‘Golden Triangle’ of London, Oxford and Cambridge, but also Liverpool, Newcastle and Manchester.
Logistics also has its own ‘Golden Triangle’ — the well-connected centre of the UK between Leicester, Coventry and Northampton — where huge investment is taking place to support our ‘just-in-time’ supply chains.
And retail has turned a corner in terms of viability — with prime retail centres in some cities and well-performing retail parks beginning to look like worthwhile investment again after a turbulent decade or more.
So, there are opportunities galore for real estate investment in the UK — and who better to ask if you want to know more than the newly formed trade body for the sector, Real Estate:UK?
