New private rented sector (PRS) developments totalling £150 million are expected to be announced for Liverpool in the coming months, as property experts call for more “proper residential stock”.

City Residential’s managing director, Alan Bevan and Adam Challis from JLL revealed the plans and discussed changes needed to improve Liverpool’s property future at the JLL Residential Predictions Seminar yesterday (3 February).

Speaking during the event at the city’s Hilton hotel, Alan revealed that “three or four” PRS announcements are coming over the next quarter totalling up to £150m, saying: “We need proper PRS. We’ve got everything going for us, we’re starting to get institutional interest for the first time in 100 years.”

The Liverpool agent, who has been part of a panel reviewing student accommodation in the city, says the new schemes would come at a time when more focus is needed on building homes that aren’t being developed for people studying in the city.

During the presentation he added: “We’ve seen a lot of student stuff but we’re starting to see residential cranes go up. The city needs proper residential stock.

“There’s a huge concern about the amount of student development that’s going up and rightly so, and we’re big believers that we’re getting to the point where we’ve got to try and focus those student schemes in the right locations, style, design and height. That’s what’s come out of the review panel.

“We’re starting to say to student developers, ‘you just can’t build a 400 or 500 unit scheme on any large piece of land in the city’.

“More importantly, what came out of the review panel was to try and save those sites that could potentially get build for students and point developers into the areas where the city wants student developments to be built, protecting those sites that are ideal for PRS.”

Adam Challis, head of residential research at JLL, gave a forecast on Liverpool’s growth patterns for the next five years and highlighted the city will only just lag behind the national prediction as sales and rental growth become closer, with both markets seeing the same growth in 2020.

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