Insider has held its first-ever East Midlands Real Estate Investment Summit in London.
The half-day event, which took place at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, gave London-based investors key insights into the huge range of investment opportunities in the region.
The event heard about the potential of the East Midlands Freeport, the 1,300-acre investment zone centred on East Midlands Airport, which aims to create 61,000 jobs and add £8.9bn to the economy.
Other projects to be highlighted included the £1.2bn, 36-acre Island Quarter scheme in Nottingham, the £233m Space City cluster in Leicester and the £200m Becketwell regeneration scheme in Derby.
Potential investors spoke afterwards about how much they were impressed with what the East Midlands had to offer.
The half-day event, which took place at the De Vere Grand Connaught Rooms, gave London-based investors key insights into the huge range of investment opportunities in the region.
The event heard about the potential of the East Midlands Freeport, the 1,300-acre investment zone centred on East Midlands Airport, which aims to create 61,000 jobs and add £8.9bn to the economy.
Other projects to be highlighted included the £1.2bn, 36-acre Island Quarter scheme in Nottingham, the £233m Space City cluster in Leicester and the £200m Becketwell regeneration scheme in Derby.
Potential investors spoke afterwards about how much they were impressed with what the East Midlands had to offer.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Hello, my name's Ian Griffin, Deputy Editor of Midlands Business Insider, and I've just
00:13hosted the East Midlands Real Estate Investment Summit here at the Connaught Rooms in London.
00:22It's been a fantastic event. We've basically talked about all the investment opportunities
00:29there are in the East Midlands, the Freeport, the space sector in Leicester, the huge opportunities
00:36happening in Nottingham and in Derby. We had a panel event with seven speakers and they
00:46talked about, obviously they gave a lot of details on what those investment opportunities
00:51were in the logistic sector and in the urban regeneration sector. We talked about build
00:57to rent, we talked about student accommodation, we talked about investing in workspace. And
01:04we also talked about life science, which is a big driver of the economy in the East Midlands.
01:09There's a lot of opportunities there. And then before that panel session, we had two
01:17off the record roundtables where we basically allowed London-based investors who were here
01:24today to basically pick the brains of the place marketing experts and the agents and
01:31basically the professional advisors who could give them the insight into what the opportunities
01:36were in the East Midlands. And they got some really, really good stuff to take away from
01:41them. And I know that a lot of people have left this event with a lot of excitement about
01:48the East Midlands, about the potential. And I'm sure there'll be some phone calls and
01:51emails made in the next few days following up those conversations and hopefully some
01:57investment will follow. So let's hear from what some of our audience members and contributors
02:05had to say.
02:07My name's Fred Burstall. I work for Urban Logistics REIT. We're a real estate investment
02:12trust and we focus on acquiring high quality last mile logistics assets. Mid-box, so anywhere
02:20between 20,000 and 200,000 square feet. We have around 140 assets within the UK. We've
02:30got about 1.1 billion AUM at the moment. We're a FTSE 250 company. And I came here today,
02:38I work in the asset management team. I came here today to really sort of boost Urban's
02:42exposure and meet key stakeholders in the East Mids. We've got an investment bias
02:50towards the Midlands and the South East. And our main intention really is to try and sort
02:59of understand a little bit more about what's happening in the East Midlands. As an asset
03:04manager, we obviously have to have a broad knowledge of what's happening around our assets.
03:11This has been a really good opportunity to sort of drill down in greater detail on some
03:19of the projects that are sort of happening around the East Midlands. And yeah, as I said,
03:24to meet some key stakeholders. And it's really something that you wouldn't get to, you often
03:32have these sort of, since COVID, you have these sort of online conferences, online seminars,
03:36you just don't get the same out of it. So coming here and meeting people and having
03:42these sort of face to face conversations has been really beneficial.
03:47My name is Richard Starr. I'm the Managing Director of Acorn to Oak Property. We're a
03:53strategic investment advisor. I invest all over the country, from Sunderland in the north
03:59to Truro down in the south. And we buy, we're sector agnostic, and we're generally buying
04:05property where we think we can add value. I came to understand about the East Midlands
04:14because I'm an investor in Nottingham. And I've been looking at other opportunities in
04:21Derby and Leicester. And I wanted to understand how those cities all interact with each other.
04:27I was very interested to understand and learn from occupiers like Freeth who are in Nottingham
04:33about what their requirements are, and how they interact in the city, and the island quarter,
04:39Broadmarsh, good updates from the local mafia about what's happening there.
04:49It's been really interesting to understand that actually the East Midlands has the same
04:55opportunities and threats that the rest of the UK has. The opportunities being that there's lots of
05:02investors and occupiers who all want to take space in places, but actually nothing's been
05:09built. And the reason why nothing's been built is obviously from the Brexit, COVID, and other
05:16wider geopolitical issues, which have all affected pricing.
05:20I'm Paul Lloyd. I'm a partner in the commercial real estate team at Freeth. And my background
05:29is industrial logistics, both development and investment. So there's obviously a lot of
05:36commonality here with the topic today. And from Freeth, we've got 13 offices and a number of them
05:41are in East Midlands. So again, it made a lot of sense for us to be involved and sponsor this
05:46event. So it's been great, like really, really good. It started off well because the Mango
05:51Delice was lovely and big, big fan of that. But also just having so many people around the table
05:58who you've got your occupiers, investors, developers, and just hearing them interact
06:04with each other and look at what are they considering, what are their opportunities,
06:08you know, looking for what the pitfalls, what they're thinking about. And seeing that happen
06:15is great. It really is invaluable. You build your network, you learn a lot yourself. There's a lot
06:19of exposure. There's a lot you can add as well from a legal perspective and knowing a lot of
06:24agents, clients as well involved in those markets. So really, really enjoyed it. And also
06:31got to learn a lot more around what Freeport is, which was nice because a lot of my knowledge was
06:36kind of based off, as I mentioned earlier, the rest is politics around Freeports. And hearing
06:40a lot around the opportunities in East Midlands, it's brilliant. Coming from Nottingham University,
06:44I love to hear how that is put forward as a really big opportunity. And the other universities here
06:49is great. So it's been nostalgic and also helpful. You can see by the types of clients that
06:55are here, you know, Rolls-Royce is probably the most obvious example. The fact that you get so
07:01many people coming and investing in such massive opportunities, the Freeport, and it's not just the
07:06tax breaks, the rates relief that it offers, but the fact that it's, you know, located, you've got
07:12the East Midlands Airport, which has huge freight, huge logistics opportunities for the likes of DHL
07:18that are next door, you know, Seagrove to the north as well with the gateway there, you know,
07:22it's next to the M1. So from an infrastructure perspective, it's absolutely brilliant. And if
07:27you're looking at additional logistics, whether that's just the actual manufacturing or it's the
07:31e-commerce aspect, you want to have access to international markets, you want to have access
07:39across the entirety of the country. So being based right in the middle where, you know, it's probably
07:44four hours almost everywhere in the UK, it's ideal. And so that's the infrastructure perspective.
07:51And obviously just the cost of value of land compared to around the M25, it's going to be a
07:56lot better value. And also as well, you know, with so many universities here, there's the fact that
08:03you've actually got top talent that are coming out of there and the apprenticeships as well.
08:08And we just need to work a bit better on retaining that, but there's still a great opportunity there.