Sep 09
21
August’s Property Hotspots
Here’s an interesting table showing FindaProperty.com’s hotspots in August.
The ranking is based on the most enquiries (sales and rent) generated per area, which, I think, is a more genuine measure of actual activity than, say, the number of pages or properties clicked on.
City centres and London dominate the list, and Bristol also seems to be doing especially well. Any thoughts on why this might be the case? If you live in one of these areas, we’d love to hear from you.
| Top 20 Hotspots for August 2009 | ||
| Rank | Area | Avg email enqs per property |
| 1 | Bristol City Centre, Bristol | 3.04 |
| 2 | Sheffield City Centre, Sheffield | 2.98 |
| 3 | London WC1, London | 2.65 |
| 4 | Leeds City Centre, Leeds | 2.38 |
| 5 | Liverpool City Centre, Merseyside | 2.27 |
| 6 | Redland, Bristol | 2.17 |
| 7 | Glasgow City Centre, Glasgow | 1.75 |
| 8 | London N1, London | 1.69 |
| 9 | Manchester City Centre, Manchester | 1.69 |
| 10 | Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire | 1.63 |
| 11 | London EC1, London | 1.58 |
| 12 | Brighton, East Sussex | 1.54 |
| 13 | London SW4, London | 1.54 |
| 14 | London E8, London | 1.53 |
| 15 | London SE11, London | 1.52 |
| 16 | Brislington, Bristol | 1.50 |
| 17 | Bedminster, Bristol | 1.49 |
| 18 | Whitton, Middlesex | 1.48 |
| 19 | London N16, London | 1.47 |
| 20 | London EC2, London | 1.44 |
| Source: FindaProperty.com internal data Aug’09 Note: Based on areas with 50+ properties on FindaProperty.com |
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Posted by 
Guess who?!
It sounds weird, but I think a lot of the Bristol upsurge can be put down to Banksy and his exhibition at the city museum! I’ll explain…
The exhibition ran for 12 weeks, ending at the end of August. It attracted over 300,000 people, from the local region, all over the UK and even internationally (bus ticket sales from the airport to the museum stop rocketed), adding about £10million into the local economy.
Local businesses and attractions benefitted too, with many having to actually take on extra staff to cope. Even local charity shops say their takings went through the roof. Hotel bookings were up and restaurants reported business being back to pre-recession levels.
This influx of visitors would have seen the new face of the city. There’s a new shopping centre, parks and gardens have been restored, the concert hall has just been extended, there are new public areas on the harbourside and there are still lots of building projects ongoing (quite different to the rest of the UK). There are lots of residential projects too – all integrated into the new city centre developments (houses and flats above the new shopping streets for instance).
The exhibition really put the city on the map and lots of these visitors would have obviously done some research before going and many would have seen that this year the city was voted a top 10 world city to visit by Dorling Kindersley guidebooks, was shortlisted for the first green capital of Europe and was winner of the fist UK Cycling City award.
It’s a great city and some of the visitors are bound to have wondered what it would be like to live there….
That is interesting – are the properties that are enquired about in london selling or just view? I think their is a renewed interest in the property market at the minute and that is definitely something I have noticed but I have noticed interest and I am not sure whether they are actually turning into buyers. Do you think the interest is for buyers? or lookers?