Shanghai-on-the-Mersey: Survey finds Liverpool is UK’s top Chinese investment hotspot

£8.75bn worth of property in Liverpool is now linked to Chinese & Hong Kong residents, according to a new survey by Beauchamp Estates

Partnering with Logic Estates to analyse research from real estate intelligence group Dataloft, the so-called ‘Shanghai-on-the-Mersey’ survey has found that there has been a 160% rise in Chinese and Hong Kong buyers purchasing homes in Liverpool between 2017 and 2021.

The rise is reported to be in part due to a +60% price discount compared to buying in London, with properties in Liverpool being reported to average £237 per sqft, compared to equivalent figures of £678 per sqft for London.

Paul Finch, new homes director at Beauchamp Estates said: “buyers from China and Hong Kong with a budget of £1.5 million to invest in UK residential property can typically purchase one apartment in Prime Central London, two in London docklands or five or six apartments in Liverpool.”

The benefits of Liverpool units are that they are both cheaper in terms of £psf and larger in size than equivalent properties in London.

Other regional cities such as Manchester and Birmingham also offer price and size advantages over the capital which is why over the last five years there has been a dramatic upturn in Chinese and Hong Kong investors buying UK real estate investing in regional cities beyond London.

Of the homes in Liverpool linked to Chinese/Hong Kong residents, 27,600 (£6.9 billion) are either buy-to-let investment units purchased or investment properties rented to Chinese and Hong Kong students/business people. The other 7,400 homes, worth £1.85 billion, are owner occupier or pied-a-terre units .

The survey showed that Chinese and Hong Kong investors have also been attracted to Liverpool by price performance and attractive yields. Liverpool has seen annual price growth of 14%, compared to 5.1% for London; 6.7% for Manchester and 7% for Birmingham.

The survey looked at the example of Tobacco Warehouse at Stanley Dock on the Liverpool waterfront, a development currently under construction, where data found that Asian investors were buying Liverpool units that were over 60% cheaper yet almost double the size of their London counterparts.

The survey highlights that Liverpool is also attractive to Chinese and Hong Kong investors because it has the oldest and most well established Chinese community in Europe. By the late 1940s there were over 5,000 Chinese people in Liverpool, which has grown to some 35,000 currently.