Paris tops for student property - what about Edinburgh?

In a recent poll by Knight Frank, Paris just topped London for the title of best place to invest in student property, closely followed by Vienna, Dublin and Barcelona. So where does that leave Edinburgh? Should we take our eyes off the city and look for investment opportunities elsewhere?

Not so fast. First, the Scottish capital comes fourth in Knight Frank’s UK-wide student property report – after London, Kingston and Brighton – and is far ahead of St Andrews and Glasgow. No other Scottish city made the top 20.

Second, the UK student property market has been a safe investment throughout the credit crunch, not just according to our own findings which have seen Edinburgh properties delivering constant high rental yields. Knight Frank’s Head of Student Property James Pullan agrees that student accommodation has delivered solid and consistent returns throughout every year of the economic downturn.

Third, property investment in Edinburgh is by far more accessible than in London: there’s a larger number of suitable properties available and they can usually be purchased at more reasonable prices. Another advantage is the capital’s size – whilst it offers all the amenities of a large cosmopolitan city, it’s also easily navigated on foot or by bike, making Edinburgh more accessible and affordable for future students. The growing applicant numbers across Edinburgh’s universities prove the city’s popularity even further.

So, while Paris might have topped this survey, Edinburgh is certainly more than second best when it comes to student accommodation.

How many trees to buy?

Last week, we introduced our partnership with Trees4Scotland, aiming to neutralise the carbon footprint of all 320+ properties managed by us.

We've done our figures and here are some of them: initially, we'll be investing over £1,600 on behalf of three clients which will buy us 232 trees. Those trees will also offset the carbon footprint of our office and the company vehicles.

The properties are rated depending on their size: a 2 bed flat with kitchen, bathroom and living room would need 5 trees whereas a 5 bed flat with 2 bathrooms and a combined living kitchen would need 9 trees in total.

So far, so good! Over the next couple of weeks, the team will be hands-on at Teaghlach Wood, planting trees and we're delighted to be joined by a couple of clients based locally.

We can't wait to see with our own eyes what our contribution will mean to Trees4 Scotland's project and pictures will follow.

It's all Chinese to me...

Normally, we're blogging about topics close to home, especially Edinburgh properties. There are some intriguing news from China today though which made a digression worthwhile. Chinese construction company Broad Group is poised to break a few records over the next few months, creating the world's tallest building in record time at less than half the price of the world's current tallest building, Dubai's Burj Khalifa Tower (pictured).

They've vowed to achieve their goal in 90 days. Sky City One's 220 stories will be 838 metres high, 10 metres taller than the Dubai property. The tower will accommodate 100,000 people in a mixture of offices, apartments and shops. It's not the first time Broad Group have broken records for speedy building, so we'll be watching closely.

Cullen Property goes green(er) with Trees4Scotland

No matter what industry a business is in, each will have an impact on the environment. At Cullen Property, we're well aware that our responsibility stretches beyond our offices and company vehicles to the over 300 managed properties we look after in Edinburgh.

To do our share for the environment, we've set an ambitious goal - to offset the carbon footprint for all of our managed properties.

It's not something we'll be able to achieve on our own, so we've teamed up with Trees4Scotland, a fantastic initiative to restore native Scottish woodlands. For each property, Angus Crabbie of Trees4Scotland will help calculate the amount of trees we need to plant to offset its carbon footprint.

We're starting with three clients initially, but all of our investor and landlord clients will be invited to join us with their properties and go carbon neutral.

In our blog we'll follow the progress of the project, i.e. the growth of the trees quite literally and will keep you updated on how it all goes.

Let us know if you have any questions at all!

Asking prices on the up = property prices increase?

A story posted by Rightmove yesterday suggests that property asking prices are now higher than they were in August 2007 - before the Northern Rock crisis.

Does that mean that property values are increasing as well and are now higher than they were in 2007? Not necessarily. First off, Rightmove's figures for asking prices are still far higher than the Nationwide's and Halifax' average house prices. In fact, the difference is over £70,000.

However,  it's certainly an investor's market out there, with sellers keen to move properties on at reasonable prices and landlords looking to increase portfolios. The statement we agree with most in Rightmove's story, however, is that it is a 'very local market' were property values are more than ever determined by location and demand specific to that location.

Featured on Myiproperty.co.uk - Update on tenancy deposit schemes

We're featured on property website myiproperty.co.uk with an update on the soon-to-be-launched Tenancy Deposit Schemes in Scotlands. It's less than a month until 2 July when the schemes become mandatory. Find out what landlords and investors with Scottish properties need to know now here

Second toilet anyone? 41% say yes!

During the week of the Diamond Jubilee, statistics wizards at Lloyds TSB have looked at what’s happened to the private rental market over the past sixty years. Whilst their findings are specifically for England, it’s a similar picture in Scotland showing that not only do 41% of households now have a second toilet – but also reminding us that renting a home was very popular in the 1950s. The number of home owners grew in the 1970s and 1980s, but now renting’s on the up once again.

And as renting is getting more expensive overall, landlords are being warned that they can’t increase rents much more as affordability is becoming a problem. Having said that, one residential lettings agency is seeing a decline in rents today. Overall though, rents are still on the up, especially for high quality properties. What’s important, both in the interest of the tenant and the landlord, is to ensure that the tenant can afford the property long term and while checks on income and employment status may feel intrusive, they benefit all parties in the long run.