England's Hot Tech Towns: Where Growth Means More Houses are Needed

If salaries are an indication, cities with the highest tech salaries are also the growth areas. Is this a shift in the winds for London and the South East?

 

The global growth of information and communications technologies – ICTs – is breath taking and disruptive. From a dark perspective it can mean jobs and industries go to markets outside the UK. But without question ICTs benefit all industries here in the British Isles and create new jobs along with new companies.

 

The reason this may matter to those investing in UK land, and in strategic land in particular, is simple: the highest demand for new housing, and the likelihood of selling those new homes, is where job growth is most robust. You can’t ignore tech industries, and established businesses being transformed by tech (the “internet of things”), if you are interested in maximising your return on assets.

 

Drill down to where ICTs are job generators in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and a surprising picture emerges. As might be expected, the bulk of “tech jobs” are in London: the recruitment firm Experis found in 2015 that seven in ten such positions are there. But in a report titled “Tech Cities Job Watch Report” it appears as if the rate of growth in tech is a bit higher elsewhere. Cities that offer relatively high average salaries for technology work are Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Bristol, Birmingham, Sheffield, Brighton and Newcastle upon Tyne.

 

Looking at non-salaried independent contractors and their compensation averages, London actually ranks below or at a near par with other cities in absolute compensation (pound for pound) for certain specialised skills. For example, cloud technologies reward the Bristol and Brighton workers with £520 and £500 per day, respectively; in London it’s £436. Security specialists in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Brighton also do better than their London counterparts. Factor in the cost of living for these freelancers and it’s easy to see how better money is often made outside the Capital.

 

This might be due to the high cost of doing business and living in London. An industry where many of the jobs need not have a physical address seems perfect for placing workers where the commutes are shorter and where they can spend their money on something other than stratospheric house prices or rent.

 

Those engaged in joint ventures that seek land to buy and convert to housing already are investing outside of London. The devolution is on – a younger generation of educated workers are finding the economics in places such as Manchester, Birmingham, Southampton, Peterborough and elsewhere to provide a better quality of life because their money stretches farther.

 

And for enterprises in the property and estate agent fields, City A.M. reports that property sector-specific ICTs are rising in the UK. The newspaper cites the 2015  £1 billion listing of Zoopla, a property portal, among several companies that wed digital technology with real estate transactions and industries. Others are GetAgent, Splitable, Trussle, Purplebricks, eMoov, Homeshift, Buzzmove, Fixflo, Property Partner, Uniplaces and Rentify.

 

As technology and the economy grow overall, so too does interest in land assets. But to make a rational investment relative to your individual portfolio, speak first with an independent financial advisor.