Awash with images of lush green hills and elegant stone buildings, castles, stately homes and cottages, often available at much lower prices than their city equivalents, the sales particulars for Scotland’s rural properties certainly make an attractive proposition for office workers suddenly freed from the daily commute.
“Maybe if we were having this conversation a year ago we would be talking about the densification of cities and liveable cities but, because of Covid and the lockdown and having to work from home, we are definitely seeing people now making a decision to move further out,” says Nicola Barclay, chief executive for Homes for Scotland.
“The sales have been phenomenal,” she adds. “With everybody locked down in their own houses, they’ve really taken a look at their own four walls and thought is this right for me? So those who have been able to have been looking to move to larger homes further out of town. But that’s obviously only a small proportion of the population who can afford to. We are beginning to see a real divergence in the market.”
Of course, for Scottish urban planners and developers the new trend brings its own set of issues of traffic congestion, infrastructure and access to high-speed internet, Barclay admits, and is moving many of those with the greatest spending power away from city centres just at a point when Scottish cities are already seeing commercial tenants of all stripes struggling due to the pandemic.
Undersupply of prime stock
Bruce Patrick, director UK development for Savills in Glasgow, agrees that the pandemic has thrown into question the future of many commercial buildings and development projects in Scottish cities, although an undersupply of prime stock in both Edinburgh and Glasgow means that the problem is not as acute perhaps it is in other major UK cities.
“The crisis is having a big impact on occupiers, particularly hotel, retail and leisure occupiers,” he says. “Developers who have large-scale mixed-use developments are now looking to put the commercial elements – offices, hotels, serviced apartments, retail, leisure – to one side for the moment while the occupational market considers how we are going to use these sorts of buildings going forward.”
But with crisis comes opportunity. Jenny Laing, co-leader of Aberdeen City Council, sees the crisis caused by the pandemic as a chance to rethink some of the key parts of her city by creating more homes in areas which for many years have been the preserve of other uses.
“Covid-19 certainly has reset things because of the uncertainty that it has thrown up around the question of what is the future of city centres,” she says. “In Aberdeen, the travel to work area has been fairly extensive for many years now because of the high prices within the city and the cost of housing. And I think we may well have an opportunity to reset some of that as we move forward by repurposing the areas we have within the city.”
Incentivising landlords
For Laing, the imposing granite thoroughfare Union Street, once the city’s main retail hub, which, even before the crisis was becoming increasingly run-down due to competition from internet shopping and nearby shopping centres, is a prime example.
In order to revitalise the area, Aberdeen Council is incentivising landlords to convert the upper parts of these grand old buildings back into residential use.
“It’s about us bringing in policies like the waiving of affordable housing contributions to try and stimulate that market and get people looking at the conversion of the upper floors of that street back into residential use,” she says. “It’s about us making sure that we can put those incentives on the table for the private sector to come forward with plans.”
Barry McKeown, a partner in Shoosmiths’ Glasgow office, says the best way for Scottish cities to increase footfall and bring vacant buildings back into use is through more housing conversions.
“The residential market or schemes with a residential element are the ones which have been pushed on. The more core single-use investment deals have really slowed down,” he says. “We are also seeing a lot of large-scale build-to-rent, conversion from existing office use, which I think is going to be key, around the refocusing of the space that we provide in the city centres. A lot of projects are being reassessed in the light of demand for the residential-led schemes.”
Meanwhile, Savills’ Patrick remains convinced that the lure of the countryside – and of home working – will recede for many office workers once the crisis ends.
“What Scottish cities definitely have to do post-Covid is find a way to bounce back as quickly as possible,” he says. “And the way that we look at it from a development perspective is similar to the reason to get back into the office. The reason to get back into the office is to collaborate, to sit down and speak with your colleagues, to have a team ethos and get that collective enthusiasm about what you do. And I think the best things about cities are the same.”
