Bouyant sectors boost property developer
AN appetite for student accommodation and residential builds is helping a Yorkshire property and development company tap into new markets and target further growth.
Headquartered in York, S Harrison Developments was founded by the late Stanley Harrison in 1952. Today, under the leadership of Stanley’s son Martyn, the group has marked almost a decade of consecutive growth in net assets with strong results announced last month for the firm .
Now, the group, which has a small team of 10, is looking at opportunities in the leisure, retail, student accommodation, social housing and residential markets.
“This where we see the growth coming from,” chairman Martyn Harrison said.
The group is currently working on a conversion of a building in York to turn it into residential apartments with some commercial space and has a site on the fringe of Leeds city centre (which is currently in legal discussions) but S Harrison is hoping to progress the site for private rented accommodation which will see 200 new apartments built.
Managing director, Anne Scott, said: “Residential is a sector everyone is talking about at the moment. But the challenge is to make the numbers add up.”
According to global property group Savills, there are now 4.14m people renting privately in England. Savills expects the private rented sector to reach 5.7m by 2018.
Harrison added: “This market is something we see ourselves going into, if it works on this project, we will look to launch similar projects elsewhere.”
“We’ve got good cash reserves to enable us to do this, but we have got to invest wisely. Having cash reserves and investing wisely has really helped us get to where we are today,” Scott added.
Looking at the student market, research from Savills said student housing was one of the best performing sectors during the global economic downturn and is becoming a significant asset class in the world stage. Growing demand from internationally-mobile students, combined with low levels of competing supply in many world-leading university cities, is creating new opportunities for investment in premium purpose built accommodation, Savills said.
This buoyant market is also a key part of the firm’s business. It delivered the new 258 student accommodation for York St John University adjacent to the Hungate development site. Also in York, the team partnered with independent student accommodation provider Student Castle to bring forward plans to provide around 650 student units on the site of The Press offices in Walmgate.
S Harrison has now moved into Edinburgh and made its first acquisition there earlier this month. The firm is also looking at Glasgow as a new market to tap into.
