Investing in Cornwall has always been a great idea. Now, Covid-19 means it’s an absolutely fantastic one! (You’d better get in quick though - the estate agents all tell me that their phones are ringing off the hook…)
Now, before I get too excited about the property opportunities this pandemic has brought, please don’t think I’m being flippant about the gravity of what has happened, and what is continuing to happen. It’s brought tragedy to the lives of many, and we all wish things were different. In the words of J.K. Rowling’s Hagrid though, “what’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does.” It’s all we can do – meet what comes, accept, and make the best of the hand we are dealt. 20 years in the military has certainly taught me to look on the bright side, and there really is a very bright side for the Cornish property market.
Coronavirus has forced a realisation that working from home is much more widely possible than we’d thought. If we don’t want or need to commute to an office in a busy city each day, then our home workplace can be located - within reason – absolutely anywhere we want. So why not somewhere wonderful? Somewhere that makes us happy, somewhere that gives us near instant access to the places we’d normally only visit on holiday.
Picking Samphire for dinner
I decided to cook a linguine dish with samphire for yesterday’s supper, but I had no samphire (first world problems, I know!). It’s obviously best to avoid the supermarkets as much as possible right now, so I quickly checked the tide times, dragged the children away from their Zoom lessons (this bit wasn’t hard!!) and we all hopped on our bikes. After less than 5 minutes off-road cycling in the warm late-afternoon sun, we were stood at the shoreline in the stunning village of Devoran, listening to the gentle lap of the water and drinking in the view, while competing to see who could pick the juiciest stems of this delicious sea veg. I feel incredibly lucky and happy that Cornwall is my work from home place. It also gets me excited about one of the huge ‘coronavirus bright-sides.’ That bright side is the fact that the pandemic has started a work from home revolution. It means that many more people will also now be able to make the choice to live where they’re happiest. (And in case you’re wondering, of course the children picked the samphire out of their pasta and left it on their plates, this is real life, not the movies!).
Don’t get me wrong, I love a city, but I’d personally rather live 5 minutes from the sea, and hop on the London-bound train when I need (it’s only a 4-hour trip, with some stunning views on the way). We’ve got a well-connected airport in Newquay too, and ferries to the continent from Plymouth around an hour away, so you could definitely argue that we’ve got it all :)
All that many of us actually need for home working is a kitchen table and a laptop. With ‘Superfast Cornwall’ making the county one of the best-connected places in the world, we already have a fibre-based network covering 90% of premises, with speeds of over 24 Mbps. So, why not put that laptop on a kitchen table looking out on a beautiful view of the ocean? The view from the kitchen table of my holiday cottage in Falmouth is amazing, there’s a fab foodie pub next door too. There are worse places to work :))
I guess for me it comes down to the fact that within an hour of finishing work on a beautiful day, a Cornwall-dweller could squeeze in a run on the beach, a coastal stroll or just sit and watch the waves wash in.
My after-work haven
Working hard!
…while for the same hour, a city-dweller might be stuck with a packed tube ride, nose to armpit with your fellow passengers.
Or this!
Cornwall has never struggled to please, but with the ever-present danger of coronavirus looking set to be the new normal, a quiet, beautiful, less densely populated place to live is sure to look more appealing than ever. This is already borne out by plenty of evidence. Aside from the anecdotal, there has been a well-documented surge in online searches in coastal and remote locations. Of course, some of this will be day-dreaming, but some will translate into a much increased demand for property in beautiful Cornish destinations.
And if you’re very wisely looking for a new place to invest rather than a new place to live, would you rather find an excuse to pop to Cornwall to ‘check on your portfolio’, or to Stoke-on-Trent or Slough? I’ll leave you to ponder that one…
While a Covid-19 related dip in the property market does look to be a very real possibility, limited supply, coupled with sharply increased demand across Cornwall should help shore up the market here. As an estate agent put it to me in a recent conversation, “there just aren’t enough chimney pots.” This fact means most property strategies work well here. We need more housing, so new builds and conversions are appealing. Once the lockdown can be safely lifted, summer 2020 looks set to be the ‘summer of the staycation’, so holiday lets should make a strong recovery. An increase in ‘work-from-homers’ relocating to new properties across Cornwall will provide a ready market for the resale of property flips and of tenants for the standard ‘Buy, Refurb, Refinance’ single-let model. The Cornish property market really is a landscape of opportunity.
Aside from a Covid-19 related boost to relocation and staycation tourism though, the county has plenty going on to ensure high demand for all property classes, and particularly for multi-lets/HMO’s and serviced accommodation.
Truro is home to Cornwall’s county hospital, which supports thousands of staff and hundreds of thousands of patients.
Falmouth boasts a busy port and a large, ever expanding student population.
The Camborne/Redruth corridor, of past mining wealth and fame, now offers cheap housing and excellent yields, while playing host to a burgeoning tech-industry (and as for a resurgence of mining there in the future to increase housing demand still further, watch this space!)
Newquay is home to Cornwall’s international airport, with a Spaceport set to follow by 2021. This alone will bring high numbers of well-paid direct jobs into the area. The town is also a huge tourist draw and surf mecca in itself, with attractions including Britain’s most famous surfing spot, Fistral Beach.
Offshore renewables are on the horizon in both senses, set to bring a huge boost to the county and its economy. Wind turbines the size of the Eiffel Tower - able to power up to 23,000 homes - are planned off the north coast, possibly to be constructed in Falmouth, bringing further economic benefits to the area.
County-wide, Cornwall is an exciting place to be, with an extremely bright future. There is so much untapped potential here, passing beneath the radar of the vast majority of investors. Now is absolutely the time to tap into the Cornish property market.
So, what of the ‘lack of chimney pots’ issue? Will there be any houses to buy? Well, sadly, the pandemic will provide plenty of new purchasing opportunities for those of us who know how and where to look. It gives me no pleasure whatsoever to highlight that many properties will become available for sale due to repossession and divorce. It is a sad, but simple fact that an inevitable increase in unemployment will eventually lead to a sharp increase in forced sales. Equally, many couples who weren’t necessarily happy before all this, will have found a couple of months of exclusive togetherness too much to bear. The resulting divorce spike means many houses will be sold in a hurry. Much as I would love to, I can’t stop any of that from happening. What I can do is help ensure that their houses are bought by a caring and sensitive company which always acts ethically, and remains true to its word.
Here at Greenway, we have a wealth of experience in most areas of the property market, gained collectively over many decades. We have sourced, flipped, developed, converted, bought, rented, run multi-lets, student lets, single lets, holiday lets. You name a property TLA (three letter abbreviation), we’ve probably done it (and in fact with two ex-military officers and one ex-airline pilot in our team, we love a good abbreviation, so SA, HMO, AS, BRR, BMV, DTV, EDC, PLO, BTL, BTS etc all sit comfortably within our areas of expertise).
Essentially, we can help you with all things property, from sourcing the best property deals, to helping you to find your dream home in Cornwall, to converting and managing your HMO’s, through to JV’s on larger conversions and everything in between. The one thread that runs through everything we do is providing great homes for happy tenants and buyers, while making sure that everyone who touches our company has a positive experience.
The coronavirus pandemic has brought terrible hardship and great challenges across the globe, but it does catalyse the already fantastic opportunities for Cornish property investment.
As many asset classes falter, property endures.
Property in the southwest looks more appealing than ever.
The need for a home is a basic human need that will never falter.
If you invest in property, and if you care enough to do it well, it offers rates of return that the banks can’t come close to.
As well as fantastic yields, it offers capital growth in the longer term.
If you invest in the right properties in the right locations, it can offer this in the short-term too.
People need property and people need people. We love both.
If there is any way you feel we can help you, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
