Leicester is one of our dozen biggest cities, but many people would be hard pressed to describe it. With a population of 330,000, it’s one of the most diverse places in the country: less than half the population call themselves white British, compared to 80% nationally. Yet the East Midlands city is a poster child for multiculturalism. While Burnley, Oldham and Bradford experienced race riots in 2001, it rode out the years following 9/11 without any such violence.
Nothing better symbolises the ancient and modern melting pot that is Leicester today than its market area. On one side, there’s a swish new £2.9m glass and steel food hall, while next to it stands the 700-year-old outdoor covered market, the largest in Europe.
“Outsiders still see Leicester as a concrete monolith, when it is no such thing,” says Frank Jordan, director of city development. “Go to that market and you’ll find a traditional English butcher next to a Polish delicatessen. This is a diverse, vibrant city where the different cultures are fully integrated.”
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It’s known for good curries, as Gary Lineker’s home town and, more recently, as the place where the remains of Richard III were unearthed in a car park. It’s also a rugby stronghold — Leicester Tigers are one of Europe’s leading teams, and in October the city will host three Rugby World Cup matches. But it’s never really been on the tourist trail, and until recently it was far from visually appealing. Dominated by a ring road, it had no logic to its layout, and any interesting Victorian architecture was marred by heaps of 1960s tat.
Things have improved beyond recognition in the past decade, thanks to a vast regeneration project spearheaded by the mayor, Sir Peter Soulsby. The shopping area has been spruced up — it now flows easily from one quarter to the next — and priority has been given to pedestrians, not cars.
The hub of the reborn city is Jubilee Square. Formerly a car park, now an area of lawns and terraced gardens, it’s large enough for an ice rink at Christmas or a Ferris wheel in summer. It acts as a gateway to the main shopping district, a mix of pedestrian thoroughfares and little lanes.
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Data sourced from Hometrack, Residential property market analysts
Other improvements include the Cathedral Gardens, formerly a scruffy patch of ground strewn with empty cider bottles, now a neat, restful green space with a statue of Richard III, who was reburied inside the cathedral in March. Then there is St George’s, also known as the Cultural Quarter — once dominated by factories and warehouses, now a buzzing neighbourhood with music venues, bars, restaurants, new blocks of flats and businesses, to say nothing of the wonderful Curve theatre.
Leicester’s resurgence is all the more remarkable because the economic tide has seldom been in its favour in recent years. Many of its textile and shoe manufacturing companies lost out to foreign competition; then, of course, there was the recession. But Jordan says its economy is bouncing back: “There are 600 more businesses here than there were three years ago. We have created 5,000 jobs and 120,000 sq ft of workspace since 2012.
“This is a great place for employers to bring companies. The average wage is only £25,000, nearly £2,000 below the rest of the country.”
IBM Services is setting up a base in the city later this year, recruiting 300 personnel; and the insurance firm Hastings Direct will be hiring 300 people to work at its new customer-services centre.
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The property market has echoed the city’s changing fortunes. “The transformation came around 1998, when we suddenly cottoned on to the fact that the factories and warehouses in the city centre would make wonderful apartment buildings,” says James Sellicks, a local estate agent. “Prices slumped by as much as 35% in the recession, but for the past 18 months, the market has been buzzing.”
The most exclusive area is near the Leicestershire Golf Club, southeast of the city centre. Here, buyers think nothing of paying up to £1m for a house just to knock it down and build a new one from scratch — a practice more commonly associated with the millionaires’ rows in swanky Sandbanks, on the south coast.
Clarendon Park, South Knighton and Stoneygate, to the south of the city, are pleasant suburbs where three-bedroom semis typically cost £250,000 and four- or five-bedroom Victorian houses go for about £600,000. If you’re looking for a flat, two-bedders with 750 sq ft of living space sell for between £160,000 and £200,000; in Highfields, a student hub, you can buy a two-bedroom terrace for about £100,000.
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It could prove a good investment: as Sellicks puts it, the buy-to-let market is “on fire”. Leicester was recently named the country’s leading rental hotspot by the landlord insurance firm HomeLet, with a 45% increase in rents last year. The average monthly price is £611, compared with £421 a year ago. This is down to supply and demand: there’s a big pool of tenants thanks to the city’s two universities and hospital. Nearly 37% of residents are employed in education, health or public administration.
“Property prices are comparatively low here,” Jordan says, “and when the introduction of high-speed electric trains brings us less than an hour from St Pancras, we’ll be within easy commuting distance of London.”
Leicester living
City centre £485,000
Leicester can do period charm: this grade II listed home in New Walk, a conservation area near the station, has four bedrooms, a wrought-iron gate and sash windows. De Montfort Hall, the city’s biggest arts venue, is nearby. 0116 242 9922, andrewgranger.co.uk
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Birstall £720,000
Ideal for a family, this Victorian house is on a tree-lined street in a village north of the city. It has six bedrooms, two bathrooms, four receptions, a sun room, half an acre of gardens and private off-road parking.
0116 285 4554, jamessellicks.com