BBC move set to spark mini-boom in Manchester house prices

Just when they thought the pressure could not get any worse, BBC employees caught up in the planned relocation to Manchester received some uncomfortable news yesterday: they face inflated property prices in the north unless they get an early foothold in the market.

The property boom has recently been slowing in Manchester, a city where so many Victorian mills have been converted to loft apartments that developers have had to start building brand-new imitation ones. But house prices in the city and its surrounding towns and villages will rise amid the BBC upheaval, according to Country Life magazine's premium property forecast for 2005, which identifies prospective property hotspots.

Manchester's share in the northbound relocation of a further 220 civil servants from the Inland Revenue and Customs and Excise, announced last year, will also help its property scene, according to the magazine's Premium Property Report, which lists coastal areas of Kent and Sussex among other likely places for growth.

"Various reports in the past three months point to Manchester growth and we have also examined prospective developments in regional plans," said the Country Life property analyst Penny Churchill. "The agents are all talking about the BBC move and we can expect to see it having reverberations right out to Chester [20 miles to the south]. I'm just amazed that people down here [in London] don't appreciate what is on offer."

Estate agents in Manchester have been rubbing their hands since the BBC director general, Mark Thompson, announced last month that BBC Sport, children's programming, new media and most of Radio 5 Live would relocate, increasing the corporation's Manchester workforce from 700 to 2,500. "This influx could have an impact of between five and 10 per cent on prices," said one agent, Michael Groves, the managing director of Thornley Groves.

The Manchester Evening News is touting the bohemian southern suburb of Chorlton as a "media village", while Manchester city council estimates the knock-on effect of the move would create up to 2,000 extra jobs in related industries across the north, generating economic activity valued at £750m.

Though the move will not take place for five years, one of the property developers instrumental in boosting Manchester's city-centre population, Urban Splash, said yesterday that it had already received e-mails from BBC staff making enquiries.

The experience of other cities provides ample corroboration for the predicted boom. Since the move of 1,000 Met Office employees to Exeter was announced in 2001, the average price of a property has risen by 72 per cent to £195,285, according to the Land Registry. By contrast, the average price of a property in Bracknell in Berkshire, where the Met Office moved from, has risen by only 30 per cent.

Mancunians are bemused by the resistance to the move among BBC staff, for whom a special area of the corporation's intranet has been established to offer information on the city's social and cultural life, jobs, housing and education. Urban Splash has provided properties beyond most journalists' reach in London but affordable in Manchester - from those at the Moho site, Britain's first prefabricated apartment development, to Will Alsop creations in the redeveloped New East Manchester area.

BBC staff may also flock to the adjoining city of Salford, for decades Manchester's poor relation but now the site of riverside property developments such as Greengate, where 400 homes are to be built with steps down to a riverside "beach" along the River Irwell.

Other places on the up, according to Country Life, are the Kent and East Sussex coasts, which will benefit from the high-speed rail link into St Pancras station in London. The South-west is described as "positively incandescent", with four West Country cities among the 10 fastest-growing in Britain.

A TALE OF TWO CITIES

Population

Manchester - 2,482,000

London - 7,172,000

Most fashionable district

Manchester - city centre or Didsbury

London - Islington or Kensington & Chelsea

Average house prices

Manchester (city centre):

Semi-detached - £95,992

Terraced - £46,927

Flat - £132,070

London (Islington or Kensington & Chelsea:

Semi-detached - £679,220

Terraced - £528,684

Flat - £262,396