Healthcare market ‘ripe for development’

Research from property consultancy Knight Frank recommends building care homes in Greater Manchester to meet untapped demand.

Greater Manchester rose 25 places to rank 12^th out of 45 UK county areas for healthcare development according to the third healthcare hotspot report from Knight Frank.

Chris Wishart, associate at Knight Frank, said: "The marketplace for care home development opportunities in the Greater Manchester area has remained strong over the past 12 months, which is why we have seen a jump in its ranking to 12th place.

"Greater Manchester is the highest rated location outside the South and Midlands. Despite a small number of care providers, often groups, operating high quality purpose built homes in this area, there remains a lack of top end facilities to which operators aspire. The result of this is the demand for further development within good locations throughout Greater Manchester."

Knight Frank researchers said healthcare valuations have held up better than those of other property sectors due to the greater end value derived from owning a trading property in a sector which is, to some extent, occupationally recession proof and often offers indexed rents on very long leases.

This has resulted in more sites being made available for healthcare development, as the sector is able to attract higher land values at a time when there is little competition from other uses.

The hotspots model is a county-based assessment using a matrix of eight carefully selected criteria incorporating economic, demographic and healthcare specific commercial factors. Buckinghamshire tops the league by a significant margin, performing strongly across most of the criteria, particularly in its current relative under-provision of beds and its outlook for long-term economic growth.

The top 12 in full was as follows

Note: number in brackets indicates 2008 ranking