Birmingham is booming, and a strong 2023 looks like it will be followed by more years of success in the future.
The Deloitte Birmingham Crane Survey 2024 highlights that construction in Birmingham has reached record heights – literally – with a 51-storey building being added to the city skyline. That joins 31 other residential schemes that are currently under construction in the city, and 1,908 homes that were completed last year. Of the city’s various districts, the Jewellery Quarter was home to more than 25% of those completions.
The city’s pipeline of future homes is also at a record-breaking level. 8,848 homes are currently in construction and set to be finished over the next three years with demand for Birmingham city centre living only growing.
The city as a whole is undergoing a transformation that is arguably unmatched anywhere else in the UK. There are more than 20 schemes with planning permission ready to start, all of which will contribute to the skyline of Birmingham taking on a brand new form by the end of the decade.
However, almost none of these are in the busy city centre market, meaning that anywhere within reach of the centre will see demand increasing rapidly in the years to come. Adding to that theme, the Our Future City 2040 framework aims to redraw what counts as the city centre and expand it outwards, meaning that schemes currently on the edge of the city centre are going to become central sooner rather than later.
This is something that investors should bear in mind, especially when buying off-plan. What might technically be classed as on the edge of the centre now might not come completion, and certainly not in a few years. Rents are set to rise in Birmingham by almost 20% in the next three years – how much more might they go up in those developments which will end up being classed as city centre?
Overall, Birmingham is in a good place and the delivery of commercial space quadrupling in the last year suggests that economic success will continue. With that comes more population growth and more people who will be competing for the available housing stock. Even with high rates of residential construction, housing can’t keep up and that is likely to mean growing property values and rents ahead.
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