Almost a third of commercial property in the heart of Birmingham — over four million square feet — is under some form of foreign control, claims a new report.
Compiled by real estate management consultancy GVA, the Who Owns Central Birmingham? survey reveals that 30 per cent of all offices, shops and restaurants in Birmingham city centre are wholly or part-owned by overseas investors. The report is based on a range of factors, including nationality of ownership, office stock by grade, ownership by type of investor and length of ownership. More than 15m square feet of commercial space is analysed.
Surprisingly, the size of the city’s commercial sector held by foreign consortia has dropped slightly, down a point from 31 per cent. This year’s report shows that of the sites owned by overseas investors, 17.5 per cent is in sole ownership, with 12.2 per cent part-owned. The remaining 70.3 per cent is in UK hands.
Ian Stringer is senior regional director at GVA. “Since we launched the first report in 2012, we have seen some significant changes to the ownership of properties within the city core,” he explained. “This includes an increase of just over two per cent in those properties that are fully owned by UK investors as the UK funds have come back into the market. Given the difficult economic period that they have endured, the amount of Irish-owned interests in the city has fallen by half.”
Middle Eastern ownership is low, at around two per cent, as is property owned by Far Eastern investment funds which stands at only 0.9 per cent. However, these institutions have begun to make forays into the market and, given Birmingham’s growing business links with China, this is a trend that is expected to grow.
In the 12 months since the publication of the 2013 survey, approximately 1.2m sq ft of office accommodation and 70,000sq ft of retail space has been sold. The study also examines the length of time that office and retail properties have been under their current ownership, indicating a slight rise from 9.1 years to an average last year of 9.6 years.
The GVA study, defines Birmingham city centre as the area contained within the old Inner Ring Road, but extended marginally at the Eastern and Western extremities to encompass Westside — including Brindleyplace — and the as-yet largely undeveloped Eastside region. Development sites are excluded, as are buildings owned and occupied by the public sector, civic buildings, universities or other educational establishments.
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