Eye On Manchester blog by Aidan O’Rourke Tutor Photographer

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Comment by Aidan O’Rourke

For months now I have been hearing about a slump in the Manchester property market: Rents and sale prices down, repossessions up and incredibly, apartments in the Beetham Hilton Tower going for knock-down prices.

All this was confirmed in an article in the Manchester Evening News of Tuesday 29 April 2008 entitled ‘City property bubble bursts‘ (written by Yakub Qureishi, Deborah Linton and Ian Wylie).

It states that following an investigation by the Manchester Evening News, apartments in Manchester have been overvalued by an estimated total of 450m pounds.

For years I have been wondering where the property boom in Manchester was taking us. Are there really enough people to live in all those new apartments? What about the lack of facilities for families? Is it a good proposition to buy an apartment in Manchester city centre.

Last year I looked at the possibility of moving into the city centre. It was a definite no for a number of reasons not least: No (free) parking, no schools, no play areas. It was as simple as that. So we stayed in the suburbs.

Though many apartment developments are still under construction – the Green Quarter by Cheetham Hill Road, others that have been completed are a long way from being fully sold.

By the Mancunian Way, there is an abandoned construction site. The partly completed structure with its bare concrete floors and pillars has an eerie and maybe symbolic quality.

In the Hilton (or Beetham) Tower, which I called ’symbol of the new Manchester’, apartment prices are down – on the grapevine I’ve heard that many just aren’t big and plush enough for the target clientele.

Is the tower going to be a ’symbol of the new Manchester’ for all the wrong reasons?

But I don’t accept it’s all doom and gloom as the media portrays. If prices were overvalued, then they had to come down sooner or later. And it now means that lots of people who previously couldn’t afford certain types of property may now be able to.

The economy, like waves on the sea, goes up and down, and I’m sure the property market in Manchester will pick up again.

But Eye On Manchester would like to see more cautious development, less of a ‘jump on the bandwagon’ approach, with fewer and better designed buildings and please, oh please, facilities for children in the city centre, where there is still not one public play area.

Maybe ‘the patter of little feet’ might bring some life back into the city centre property market.

Any thoughts? Discuss this topic on the Manchester Forum