Southsea Bubble

Knight & Lee close in 2009 and the site will either be redeveloped or sold to Wetherspoons for conversion. Debenhams say they have no plans to close in Southsea but nobody believes there is any future there when they have the old Allders in Commercial Rd now. Would-be developers have already had a plan to redevelop the site turned down but they will come back. I've been looking around in a rather casual way and having seen a couple of places on the Seafront and overlooking the Common it's clear that there is quite a premium. Southsea is compact enough that something of comparable condition a few streets back is much better VFM.

A purely subjective observation, but in a city like Portsmouth with a fairly decent stock of flats of a variety of ages, new-builds represent poor value for money. http://*******.com/hfvvf £189k but you do get a "secret walled garden" thrown in! You should be able to get a 2-bed flat in a pleasant location in Southsea in a converted large house for miles less, although as with everything else in the housing market there is some tat on offer.

There is a major refurn going on as you'll probably have sussed out since Feb. I used to work for a retailer who closed a store in Cascades entirely unrelated to the refurb. IIRC the landlords were the City Council and the rents were always astronomical in relation to the quality of the centre and the footflow through it. Portsmouth has a real problem as a retail centre and I am not convinced that the new development in place of the Tricorn will solve it. It is coming years too late and the city has fallen far behind the likes of Soton and Brighton. What became Cascades should have been far bigger and should have replaced the Tricorn. Gunwharf is more successful but talking to retailers there again the rents are high and while some do very well, there does seem to be quite a quick turnover ot tenants in many of the units.

The City Council has been consulting residents on the future strategy for the area of Southsea around Palmerston Rd and a constant complaint that has come up is that too many shops have been converted into EAs. As a result PCC are looking at a quota to limit further conversions should there be planning applications coming in for the change of use. We may need to add to the list of "pubs criminally replaced by flats" the Townhouse, which has had a couple of unsuccessful planning apps for the site for demolition and flat-building. The latest ones were for 42 flats on the site. Utter madness.