There has been a significant influx in the number of Chinese and Hong Kong buyers purchasing homes in Liverpool between 2017-2021, up by 170% in that time, which has been attributed to a 60% discount compared to buying in London.
A new survey carried out by Beauchamp Estates, in partnership with Logic Estates, found that some 35,000 homes (circa £8.75 billion worth of property) in the city are now linked to Chinese and Hong Kong residents.
Liverpool, the new investment hotspot
With homes being an average of 679 sq ft in size, or 775 sq ft in size for a premium unit, the new survey discovered that properties in Liverpool average £237 per square feet and average £228 per square feet for a premium new home – the top 25% per sq ft by value.
The data compiled for Liverpool can be compared to equivalent figures of £678 per square foot for London (£802 per square foot for premium units) at an average size of 688 square feet (or 775 square feet for a premium unit).
Broadening the scope to Manchester units go for £353 per square foot (£399 per square foot for premium units) at 664 square feet or 753 square feet in size and if we look at Birmingham a unit will be £300 per square feet (£351 per square feet for premium units) at 632 square feet or 742 square feet in size.
An attractive city to invest in
With a hefty average budget of £1.5 million to invest in UK residential property, the price comparisons underline that buyers from China and Hong Kong can typically buy one apartment in Prime Central London, two in London Docklands or five or six apartments in Liverpool.
Additional benefits include that the units in Liverpool are both cheaper in terms of cost per square foot and more prominent in size than the equivalent properties in London. Other regional cities such as Manchester and Birmingham also offer price and size advantages over the capital which is why there has been a drastic uptick in Chinese and Hong Kong investors buying UK real estate over the last five years, investing in regional cities beyond London.
Of the homes in Liverpool linked to Chinese and Hong Kong residents, 27,600 (worth £6.9 billion) are either purchased buy-to-let investment units or investment properties rented to Chinese and Hong Kong students or businesses.
Other homes that are linked to Chinese or Hong Kong residents (7,400 homes, worth £1.85 billion) are owner-occupier or pied-a-terre units used by Chinese/Hong Kong nationals, or descendents who are now naturalised, British passport holders.
Europe and Asia collide
The survey highlights that Liverpool is also appealing to Chinese and Hong Kong investors because it has the oldest and most established Chinese community in Europe.
The first presence of Chinese residents in Liverpool dates back to 1834 when the first vessel direct from China arrived in the city and by the 1860s there were many Chinese migrants living in Liverpool as a result of Alfred Holt & Company employing large numbers of Chinese seamen in the Blue Funnel Shipping Company.
Beyond the 1890s, Liverpool’s now-famous Chinatown centred on and around Berry Street started to be established, and by the late 1940s, there were over 5,00 Chinese residents in Liverpool, a figure which has grown to some 35,000 to date.
The survey highlighted other factors which had drawn Chinese/Hong Kong real estate investment to Liverpool, namely the city’s growing population and good educational facilities, both essential features for attracting tenants and ensuring no/low void periods.
The University of Liverpool is a UK top 40 studying facility, and the city is a leading UK hub for computer science research and IT innovation firms.
This is just so wrong . Our over inflated rental markets are boosting pension pots in other countries. It infuriates me that young families can’t get on the property ladder. People need visas to visit China. Do you think they would allow foreigners to buy property at will in their country? Whole swathes of the country are owned by other nation states.
Yes and this is one of the main driving factors in why house prices are so high. They’re high because demand is high due to supply being low. Supply is low because foreign investors are buying them by the load. This is not in Liverpool alone. Take a look at BlackRock also. We have been sold out by the Tory government for allowing this to happen.
Edit: also BTL scheme which was a disaster for the average person as they benefit only the wealthy.
> Liverpool and the city is becoming Shanghai-on-the-Mersey.
Mimicking us didn’t quite work so they want the real deal
This does not surprise me at all. I am aware, through a friend who works in a University in the North West of England, that the government is encouraging investment from Chinese and Hong Kong.
His job is to teach them how to start businesses.
Students come to study at his university and they are encouraged to start businesses, buy property and so on. I think that there might be a scheme where visas are conditional on them doing that. Property is cheap and I expect that these areas will have a large Chinese presence as, without being unkind, they are going to do much better than the locals.
This is incredibly diverse, stunning and brave. This sort of diverse investment really strengthens the country somehow.
Unless people fucking wise up and understand that foreign investment of this type is going to ruin everyone who earns under £100k
Why do we allow non residents to own residential property ? Should be a law that if you arent a permanent resident you can’t own residential property.
Brexit and BJ’s consitent subsequent fuck ups have pushed the pound so low，buying a property in the UK for Chinese investors is like buyings a packet of crisps now.
A two bed flat with a maid‘s room in the mid-levels will cost about 20m quid，a similar apartment in a good area of Shanghai or Beijing will be as much，if not more. If i’ve got that cash lying about，i’ll buy 40 houses in Liverpool，in a relatively safe and stable （hah） country，and be done with it.
This doesn’t surprise me. I sold my house in Liverpool last year – I had 12 viewings on one day, at least three of them were Chinese investors. They also offered the least though.
Liverpool is in the unenviable position of having low house values combined with high rents for family homes – most rentals are for students.
At one point when we were moving I thought we might have to move into a rental and (just to give you a flavour of numbers) the amount I would have to pay for an equivalent property would more than triple.
My then mortgage was £250 for a small 3 bed terrace. My now mortgage is £600 for a 4 bed semi. Rent for a 3 bed terrace in the area I needed it for, for school etc. would be £900+
This is why Tory free market ideology does not work in 2022, because it’s great (from their POV) when UK was doing it to other countries.. but now it’s the other way round.
Reverse colonialism sucks, who would of thought it?
As someone from Ireland who has watched these investment funds decimate the housing market over the last 10 years by mass-buying swathes of property for far higher bids than any person can afford, I wish you all the best of luck.
Liverpool (as well as Manchester) is one of the fastest moving property markets at the moment. This explains a lot.
Estate agents are regularly holding viewings to people on the other end of a camera phone, with an assistant talking in mandarin/Cantonese walking them around the property.
Everyone should consider this a threat to the economy. There is a reason why China itself has restricted foreign ownership of homes, they cannot be rented out, it was to prevent a housing bubble. What exactly do we have right now with no restrictions on foreign ownership of homes? You guessed it a bubble.
It’s not xenophobic, fascist or racist to call for regulation on foreign ownership, its merely protecting your own citizens from speculators that are draining money from British citizens and funneling it abroad. Tax the landlords to high heaven or out right ban foreign ownership until the market has balanced itself out.
I think this pales in comparison to how much Arab countries own, but I’m sure that’s mostly in London.
It’s worrying to hear the Tories have been carving up the country (I know labor did it too) more so over the last few years.
I work in higher education in London. My university alone gets like 1000 Chinese students a year and huge swathes of them will just outright buy an apartment to live in while they study. It’s no wonder young British people can’t buy a place.
Seize all Russian and Chinese-owned residential property in the UK and auction it all to UK citizens.
Thoughts?
The other question should be how many of those properties are empty…we have over half a million empty homes in this country. Go on any social media platform and see stuff about homeless people and the comment section is always about immigrants. We should be housing our own first. People don’t seem to connect the dots, government created most of this homeless and have zero intention of housing any of them. How many homes in London are owned by Russians left empty.
Then idiots who charge so much rent…makes it impossible for people to save any money. Banks then won’t give a mortgage to someone who needs to pay like £300 a month but is paying £600 a month in rent
How is that legal? There’s literally a housing crisis
35,000 homes in one city – what’s it like across the entire country?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a party that opposes this. Ahhh to dream. Come to think of it… a single Labour policy would be nice.
The UK is not so much a country as it is an investors trade fair.
How is this not a national security risk? What if China made it illegal for its citizens to hold British real estate and everyone sold up at the same time?
New Zealand brought in partial measures to prevent this back in 2018. Under a fairly left leaning progressive government. It can be done!
This is comparable to people buying holiday homes and thereby preventing locals getting owning their own homes.
I have no chance of owning my own home anyway.
For China investors it will be more and more difficult for them to buy foreign properties as China government actually is tightening up on foreign currency exchange since RMB is not free traded currency. Therefore you will see less new Chinese investors coming in. As for hongkongers, over 100000 applied the bno visa with over 90000 approved so they have to find somewhere to live in normally, and the housing price is 50%-70% lower than Hongkong so we you can easily find someone from Hong Kong who can easily afford a new build in Liverpool/ Manchester/ Nottingham etc
This shouldn’t be allowed
Maybe fuck off and let whoever lives somewhere actually live there, Whitby had the right idea just ban owning multiple homes, it’s all for money and leaves bugger all for the actual residents.
It’s not just Liverpool. There are apartments and houses being built in Cambridgeshire that have been bought up in vast quantities by the Chinese as well. :/
People think our housing crisis is due to UK residents buying an extra property to rent out. No this is the issue, putting an extra tax on buying additional property to stop the working class move to middle class is just keeping the poor poor. Then they allow China to do this? We are all treated like mugs.
At least the development of the failed new China town fucked a lot of them over.
I was looking at apartments in West Tower and around Old Hall Street etc and holy fuck do they look like shit.
Its like the French owning out Nuclear power stations – there is fucking no need for that shit to happen.
Same happening in Salford, next door had their house for sale droves of Chinese investors came lying about buying it for their elderly relatives to live in. They was offed 50 grand over the asking price in cash. It’s a joke here. Luckily they seen through it but they was turning up without a house viewing demanding to see the property, cars parked up outside our house constantly. Was mental
This is not only terrible for our economy, but also a security risk
I rent a small 2 bed flat in zone 4 in London. The flat is owned by a Chinese dude who I have never met. I transfer the rent to the agency every month and deal with them for everything. Apparently the flat is valued at nearly £500,000 despite being in a shitty part of London. How are people even supposed to get on the property ladder.
As usual you will see a lot of people complaining and very few admitting the UK needs a property tax. Anyone from anywhere who owns any property that isn’t their sole main residence should pay this tax.
generation rent, generation slaves
Short sighted fools. Let the foreign ‘investors’ buy up the property and then slowly drain money out of the UK.
Why the fuck are we allowing this?
Canada housing market has been absolutely fucked because of this shit
Pretty soon there will be competition between Chinese or Russian language to become the official language of Britain.
Did anyone on this this thread hear me shout ‘FUCK OFF’ from my window?
Gosh, what could possibly be causing this persistent housing crisis
This is the reason for allowing Hong Kong immigration; not human rights. It’s packaged as human rights – but no; it all boils down to money. The process to facilitate this was extremely sophisticated PR, including on Reddit.
41 comments
Another article reporting the same: https://www.propertyinvestortoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2022/7/pricy-liverpool-property-snatched-up-by-asians-investors–up-160-since-2017-survey-finds
There has been a significant influx in the number of Chinese and Hong Kong buyers purchasing homes in Liverpool between 2017-2021, up by 170% in that time, which has been attributed to a 60% discount compared to buying in London.
A new survey carried out by Beauchamp Estates, in partnership with Logic Estates, found that some 35,000 homes (circa £8.75 billion worth of property) in the city are now linked to Chinese and Hong Kong residents.
Liverpool, the new investment hotspot
With homes being an average of 679 sq ft in size, or 775 sq ft in size for a premium unit, the new survey discovered that properties in Liverpool average £237 per square feet and average £228 per square feet for a premium new home – the top 25% per sq ft by value.
The data compiled for Liverpool can be compared to equivalent figures of £678 per square foot for London (£802 per square foot for premium units) at an average size of 688 square feet (or 775 square feet for a premium unit).
Broadening the scope to Manchester units go for £353 per square foot (£399 per square foot for premium units) at 664 square feet or 753 square feet in size and if we look at Birmingham a unit will be £300 per square feet (£351 per square feet for premium units) at 632 square feet or 742 square feet in size.
An attractive city to invest in
With a hefty average budget of £1.5 million to invest in UK residential property, the price comparisons underline that buyers from China and Hong Kong can typically buy one apartment in Prime Central London, two in London Docklands or five or six apartments in Liverpool.
Additional benefits include that the units in Liverpool are both cheaper in terms of cost per square foot and more prominent in size than the equivalent properties in London. Other regional cities such as Manchester and Birmingham also offer price and size advantages over the capital which is why there has been a drastic uptick in Chinese and Hong Kong investors buying UK real estate over the last five years, investing in regional cities beyond London.
Of the homes in Liverpool linked to Chinese and Hong Kong residents, 27,600 (worth £6.9 billion) are either purchased buy-to-let investment units or investment properties rented to Chinese and Hong Kong students or businesses.
Other homes that are linked to Chinese or Hong Kong residents (7,400 homes, worth £1.85 billion) are owner-occupier or pied-a-terre units used by Chinese/Hong Kong nationals, or descendents who are now naturalised, British passport holders.
Europe and Asia collide
The survey highlights that Liverpool is also appealing to Chinese and Hong Kong investors because it has the oldest and most established Chinese community in Europe.
The first presence of Chinese residents in Liverpool dates back to 1834 when the first vessel direct from China arrived in the city and by the 1860s there were many Chinese migrants living in Liverpool as a result of Alfred Holt & Company employing large numbers of Chinese seamen in the Blue Funnel Shipping Company.
Beyond the 1890s, Liverpool’s now-famous Chinatown centred on and around Berry Street started to be established, and by the late 1940s, there were over 5,00 Chinese residents in Liverpool, a figure which has grown to some 35,000 to date.
The survey highlighted other factors which had drawn Chinese/Hong Kong real estate investment to Liverpool, namely the city’s growing population and good educational facilities, both essential features for attracting tenants and ensuring no/low void periods.
The University of Liverpool is a UK top 40 studying facility, and the city is a leading UK hub for computer science research and IT innovation firms.
This is just so wrong . Our over inflated rental markets are boosting pension pots in other countries. It infuriates me that young families can’t get on the property ladder. People need visas to visit China. Do you think they would allow foreigners to buy property at will in their country? Whole swathes of the country are owned by other nation states.
Yes and this is one of the main driving factors in why house prices are so high. They’re high because demand is high due to supply being low. Supply is low because foreign investors are buying them by the load. This is not in Liverpool alone. Take a look at BlackRock also. We have been sold out by the Tory government for allowing this to happen.
Edit: also BTL scheme which was a disaster for the average person as they benefit only the wealthy.
> Liverpool and the city is becoming Shanghai-on-the-Mersey.
Mimicking us didn’t quite work so they want the real deal
Liverpool: https://imgur.com/a/Tzr8BHc
Shanghai: https://imgur.com/a/UYsfRuc
This does not surprise me at all. I am aware, through a friend who works in a University in the North West of England, that the government is encouraging investment from Chinese and Hong Kong.
His job is to teach them how to start businesses.
Students come to study at his university and they are encouraged to start businesses, buy property and so on. I think that there might be a scheme where visas are conditional on them doing that. Property is cheap and I expect that these areas will have a large Chinese presence as, without being unkind, they are going to do much better than the locals.
This is incredibly diverse, stunning and brave. This sort of diverse investment really strengthens the country somehow.
Unless people fucking wise up and understand that foreign investment of this type is going to ruin everyone who earns under £100k
Why do we allow non residents to own residential property ? Should be a law that if you arent a permanent resident you can’t own residential property.
Brexit and BJ’s consitent subsequent fuck ups have pushed the pound so low，buying a property in the UK for Chinese investors is like buyings a packet of crisps now.
A two bed flat with a maid‘s room in the mid-levels will cost about 20m quid，a similar apartment in a good area of Shanghai or Beijing will be as much，if not more. If i’ve got that cash lying about，i’ll buy 40 houses in Liverpool，in a relatively safe and stable （hah） country，and be done with it.
This doesn’t surprise me. I sold my house in Liverpool last year – I had 12 viewings on one day, at least three of them were Chinese investors. They also offered the least though.
Liverpool is in the unenviable position of having low house values combined with high rents for family homes – most rentals are for students.
At one point when we were moving I thought we might have to move into a rental and (just to give you a flavour of numbers) the amount I would have to pay for an equivalent property would more than triple.
My then mortgage was £250 for a small 3 bed terrace. My now mortgage is £600 for a 4 bed semi. Rent for a 3 bed terrace in the area I needed it for, for school etc. would be £900+
This is why Tory free market ideology does not work in 2022, because it’s great (from their POV) when UK was doing it to other countries.. but now it’s the other way round.
Reverse colonialism sucks, who would of thought it?
As someone from Ireland who has watched these investment funds decimate the housing market over the last 10 years by mass-buying swathes of property for far higher bids than any person can afford, I wish you all the best of luck.
Liverpool (as well as Manchester) is one of the fastest moving property markets at the moment. This explains a lot.
Estate agents are regularly holding viewings to people on the other end of a camera phone, with an assistant talking in mandarin/Cantonese walking them around the property.
Everyone should consider this a threat to the economy. There is a reason why China itself has restricted foreign ownership of homes, they cannot be rented out, it was to prevent a housing bubble. What exactly do we have right now with no restrictions on foreign ownership of homes? You guessed it a bubble.
It’s not xenophobic, fascist or racist to call for regulation on foreign ownership, its merely protecting your own citizens from speculators that are draining money from British citizens and funneling it abroad. Tax the landlords to high heaven or out right ban foreign ownership until the market has balanced itself out.
I think this pales in comparison to how much Arab countries own, but I’m sure that’s mostly in London.
It’s worrying to hear the Tories have been carving up the country (I know labor did it too) more so over the last few years.
I work in higher education in London. My university alone gets like 1000 Chinese students a year and huge swathes of them will just outright buy an apartment to live in while they study. It’s no wonder young British people can’t buy a place.
Seize all Russian and Chinese-owned residential property in the UK and auction it all to UK citizens.
Thoughts?
The other question should be how many of those properties are empty…we have over half a million empty homes in this country. Go on any social media platform and see stuff about homeless people and the comment section is always about immigrants. We should be housing our own first. People don’t seem to connect the dots, government created most of this homeless and have zero intention of housing any of them. How many homes in London are owned by Russians left empty.
Then idiots who charge so much rent…makes it impossible for people to save any money. Banks then won’t give a mortgage to someone who needs to pay like £300 a month but is paying £600 a month in rent
How is that legal? There’s literally a housing crisis
35,000 homes in one city – what’s it like across the entire country?
Wouldn’t it be great to have a party that opposes this. Ahhh to dream. Come to think of it… a single Labour policy would be nice.
The UK is not so much a country as it is an investors trade fair.
How is this not a national security risk? What if China made it illegal for its citizens to hold British real estate and everyone sold up at the same time?
New Zealand brought in partial measures to prevent this back in 2018. Under a fairly left leaning progressive government. It can be done!
This is comparable to people buying holiday homes and thereby preventing locals getting owning their own homes.
I have no chance of owning my own home anyway.
For China investors it will be more and more difficult for them to buy foreign properties as China government actually is tightening up on foreign currency exchange since RMB is not free traded currency. Therefore you will see less new Chinese investors coming in. As for hongkongers, over 100000 applied the bno visa with over 90000 approved so they have to find somewhere to live in normally, and the housing price is 50%-70% lower than Hongkong so we you can easily find someone from Hong Kong who can easily afford a new build in Liverpool/ Manchester/ Nottingham etc
This shouldn’t be allowed
Maybe fuck off and let whoever lives somewhere actually live there, Whitby had the right idea just ban owning multiple homes, it’s all for money and leaves bugger all for the actual residents.
It’s not just Liverpool. There are apartments and houses being built in Cambridgeshire that have been bought up in vast quantities by the Chinese as well. :/
People think our housing crisis is due to UK residents buying an extra property to rent out. No this is the issue, putting an extra tax on buying additional property to stop the working class move to middle class is just keeping the poor poor. Then they allow China to do this? We are all treated like mugs.
At least the development of the failed new China town fucked a lot of them over.
I was looking at apartments in West Tower and around Old Hall Street etc and holy fuck do they look like shit.
Its like the French owning out Nuclear power stations – there is fucking no need for that shit to happen.
Same happening in Salford, next door had their house for sale droves of Chinese investors came lying about buying it for their elderly relatives to live in. They was offed 50 grand over the asking price in cash. It’s a joke here. Luckily they seen through it but they was turning up without a house viewing demanding to see the property, cars parked up outside our house constantly. Was mental
This is not only terrible for our economy, but also a security risk
I rent a small 2 bed flat in zone 4 in London. The flat is owned by a Chinese dude who I have never met. I transfer the rent to the agency every month and deal with them for everything. Apparently the flat is valued at nearly £500,000 despite being in a shitty part of London. How are people even supposed to get on the property ladder.
As usual you will see a lot of people complaining and very few admitting the UK needs a property tax. Anyone from anywhere who owns any property that isn’t their sole main residence should pay this tax.
generation rent, generation slaves
Short sighted fools. Let the foreign ‘investors’ buy up the property and then slowly drain money out of the UK.
Why the fuck are we allowing this?
Canada housing market has been absolutely fucked because of this shit
Pretty soon there will be competition between Chinese or Russian language to become the official language of Britain.
Did anyone on this this thread hear me shout ‘FUCK OFF’ from my window?
Gosh, what could possibly be causing this persistent housing crisis
This is the reason for allowing Hong Kong immigration; not human rights. It’s packaged as human rights – but no; it all boils down to money. The process to facilitate this was extremely sophisticated PR, including on Reddit.