Hello!

I am looking to move into a Studio / one bedroomed apartment located in Manchester city centre in around 4-5 months time.

Parking is essential for me

I figure I can afford one at around 600 p/m at the most, there seem to be some nice ones around for that mark!

Do you think the prices will be down atall by September when i'm ready to take things further.

Also i'm concerned about service charges and find it difficult to estimate what they're going to be.

Does anyone have any advice etc (i'm 21 and this will be me flying away from the nest!)

Thank you in advance

Thank you Manchesterwill for starting this thread, although it didn't turn out to be quite what I expected.

This is my first post and I thought this forum would be raging with the debate about what's really going on in Mancs. I moved to Manchester for work (subsidised relocation) and a better life, leaving behind my own place in London, now tenanted. So I became a landlord by default rather than BTL. Letting flats to nice tenants in London is not difficult if the area is right and the price is reasonable. It raises enough to cover either rent or a mortgage here in Manchester city centre, and choice is usually preferable to no choice. But having been through the last three recessions, I have never seen such a chaotic market as here. It's lawless, unless you count the laws of supply and demand. It is so volatile that I doubt anyone knows the best thing to do (except BTL of course!)

The city centre (northern quarter at any rate) is fun, funky and bohemian and it seems that most flats are occupied in buildings already established. This one is in good nick and has a steady turnover except where the landlord is greedy and unrealistic.

It is the new-builds outside the city centre (or a "stone's throw" as they will have you believe) which amaze. Massive new developments going up at "New Islington" (clapped out Old Ancoats), the "Green Quarter" (you'd have to be green), Chips (cheap as chips? not yet) and so on, flooding an oversaturated market teetering ont the edge of mass repossession. Then moving out into Salford and "Sportscity"), great behemoths still going up on the horizon. The planning permissions were granted aroud 2003-04 before the downturn set in and people had got greedy. So they are priced accordingly: £270k+ not uncommon for an average flat at the very time that BTL and even first-time buying is coming to an end. Some of them are already being mothballed, others vandalised. No rents or service charges, no TLC. It is nothing short of a modern urban disaster.

It also illustrates the extreme regional, even zonal, nature of the housing market. I am an urban economic geographer whose priority is to have a nice roof over my own head first before I think about subsidising someone else's through buy to let. There is gross oversupply on the sites I mentioned, and Albion Mills is agood illustration of what the will look like. Chilly, windswept, no facilities: 2-bedroom hutches for the middle-income tenants who no longer exist. Meanwhile Chorlton, Didisbury and older city centre flats look buoyant.

I think I'll sit on my hands and admire the view of the Pennines while my poor old landlord pays for a city centre life that I'd struggle to afford out of my own pocket.

Does anyone have other suggestions, and might this in fact be a good time to buy?

Mancunian Way

Well I seem to have strangled this one at birth.

Try any of the manchester threads in the house prices in your area sub forum. No one seems to frequent this area, it didn't catch on.

http://www.housepricecrash.co.uk/forum/ind...e=%2Bmanchester

I rent in Manchester city centre, a nice - brand new one bed flat with parking. costs me £600. Service charge is covered by the landlord - this is normal practice in my opinion.

One piece of advice is to negotiate on asking prices for rental flats. You should expect to get £50 - £75 knocked off. If you want to spend £600, look at flats advertised up to £700 - there are so many developments being finished its crazy, so lots of competing landlords.

might be this link useful, there are few properties for rent in manchester

http://propertytorent.whatahome.co.uk/tole...p?id=Manchester