Property News

The city of Sheffield is often overlooked as a buy-to-let hotspot in favour of more well-known regional cities like Manchester and Liverpool. But Sheffield has proved time and again its position as a prime buy-to-let location, namely because of the area’s high yields, burgeoning population and a supply-demand imbalance that leads to high demand for rental accommodation (particularly in the city centre).

What makes Sheffield a top destination to live, work and invest is the city’s dynamic population and its reputation as a key employment hub. Sheffield’s city region encompasses more than 1.8 million people and is home to more than 700,000 jobs, as well as nearly 65,000 students across the city’s two acclaimed higher education institutions, The University of Sheffield and Sheffield Hallam.

This goes some way to explaining why Sheffield has a reputation for being a young and innovative city—over 30% of Sheffield’s entire workforce is under the age of 30, and almost a third of those are educated to a degree level or higher. This makes Sheffield a hotbed for young professionals, who are looking to make a name for themselves in one of the employment areas in which Sheffield excels. Taking pride in its industrial past, Sheffield still to this day is a pioneering city geared towards innovation and technology, with its most successful sectors being aerospace, automotive and healthcare to name just a few.

Sheffield is many things to many people. First and foremost the city has an incredible cultural, infrastructural and talent offering, which is why Sheffield has earned its place as a key player in the Government’s much-buoyed Northern Powerhouse initiative. The city was one of the few major Northern cities to be granted a devolution deal—an agreement that will see an additional £30m per year pumped into the city to spend on infrastructure, transport and other growth catalysts for at least the next 30 years. The deal alone provides the chance for Sheffield to add over 70,000 new jobs to their already impressive employment offering, making the city even more attractive to the current and future workforce.

If this isn't enough, retail and recreation are at the heart of Sheffield’s future regeneration plans, with plans underway to create a new £430m city centre ‘Retail Quarter’ to go alongside the city’s already wildly popular Meadowhall shopping centre, the 8th largest shopping complex in the UK. This investment into the city’s retail infrastructure will also include revamping the existing The Moor shopping centre, with plans in the pipeline to breathe new life into the oft-overlooked complex by enticing new retailers and food outlets to make a new home there.

Another feather in the city’s cap is that Sheffield is a diverse and very well-connected city. The M1—a major motorway spanning 193 miles linking London to Leeds—is very close to Sheffield, making motoring easy from such a central location. For those reliant on public transport, Sheffield has one of the best light-rail networks in the UK, with its aptly-named ‘Supertram’ network beloved as one of the largest networks of its kind in the UK (at 18 miles long), servicing the immediate city centre and beyond.

Furthermore, Sheffield also benefits from easy access to most UK cities as well as direct access to the capital, with two trains per hour making the two-hour journey to London every day. If the proposed HS2 high-speed rail plans come into motion, this could see the journey time between London and Sheffield reduced by 34% to just 79 minutes. As well as giving Sheffielders the opportunity to travel quickly and easily to the capital, it also further widens Sheffield’s ever-growing talent pool, allowing the city to attract people from further afield.

With tenant demand at an all-time high and with available supply unable to satiate the growing number of young professionals desperate to live and work in the city centre, the stage is set for Sheffield to become the UK's newest buy-to-let destination. According to Hometrack data, Sheffield recorded house price growth of around 6.3% in 2015—compared to an average of 4.5% in London—and in the 6 years to 2016 recorded yields 1.2% higher than its southern counterpart, with the average yield fixed at 5.2% based on an average annual rent of £6,292. This more than explains why Sheffield is growing in popularity from tenants and investors alike, rising up the ranks as a tangible and profitable destination rivalling the likes of Manchester and Liverpool as a lucrative place to invest.

Palatine Gardens is the newest buy-to-let property on the Sheffield market, providing 54 much-needed luxury residential apartments and offering yields of circa 5.7%. Click here for more details.