Big thaw in Belfast

If pedestrian-only shopping areas were the measure of a market's sophistication, then Belfast would have long been ahead of the pack. Today, the steel barriers erected during the Troubles to keep car bombers from the city centre are coming down, as the North returns to normal in the wake of the current peace process.

The improved security situation has brought a wave of new interest in the property market.

There are still some London fund managers who talk of Belfast as if it were Berlin or Beirut - a market where values are distorted by the high levels of subsidy, and where a local clique has tied up much of the best opportunities. But the reality is different, as UK stores multiples look for retail space, hotels open, and UK companies are lured to relocate their back offices to Belfast.

"Where Glasgow, Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool would have seen dramatic changes in land use in the past two decades, Belfast was effectively frozen," says Ted Webster, a senior partner of Richard Ellis, the UK surveyors which last week opened a joint venture company with the Gunne estate agency in Belfast. "There's a huge opportunity as it catches up."

The economic fundamentals have always helped sustain the property market even through the worst of the civil strife. With housing and rental costs lower than on the UK mainland, and with a third of the workforce employed in the state sector - most of them on salaries on a par with the UK - the level of disposable income has helped buoy the retail sector.

Retail property yields have been ahead of the UK average for each of the past 16 years, according to Investment Property Databank, the UK research group.

In a survey of the sector carried out in the wake of the first IRA ceasefire in 1994, Lambert Smith Hampton, the international chartered surveyors, reported that some investors believed the risks had actually increased with the onset of peace.

The argument was that, during the Troubles, a yield premium fully discounted the possibility of terrorist action. Moreover, any losses relating to bomb damage were fully compensated by the government, "often within a few weeks or months". In practice, Lambert Smith Hampton concluded, Belfast was a "high-yield, low-risk investment".

Today this is considered a slightly eccentric view. But in some respects, the Troubles did result in what one chief executive describes as "a city planner's utopia". As a result of the "ring of steel" cordoning off the heart of the city, Belfast developed in a more orderly way than other UK cities of its size.

Prime retail assets are now confined to a compact area, which during the Troubles became a secure zone after dark. The city-centre pubs, restaurants and cinemas which rely on after-work hours trade, had to move out to Botanic Avenue, and other locations closer to the university. Offices were located closer to the river, outside the security zone in an area still accessible to cars - an important consideration for business.

Today, because of the shortage of prime property in the city centre, the demand for retail space is pushing up rents close to average UK levels.

Perhaps the best indicator is the number of buildings in the office sector - described in the trade as "dead frontage" - which have been converted for retail use.

First Trust Bank in Royal Avenue - a listed building - is now occupied by Tesco, where it has introduced one of its Metro stores. The deal was handled by Healey Baker, the UK agents, and sold by Legal General, the insurer. In a similar deal, the Ulster Bank branch in Cornmarket is now occupied by Graham Tiso, the Scottish store company.

David Erwin, partner with Healey Baker, says funds are looking for short-term income and long-term performance. "Northern Ireland has offered both," he says, pointing to the recent deal where the Universities Superannuation Fund bought the Belfast Forestside site from Sainsbury for a reported £60 million sterling.

"A lot of retailers are starting to look to get in," says James Petit of Morgan Grenfell, the bankers. "But to be quite honest, if you took the time to understand where the Troubles actually happened, you could have made money even then." Sainsbury's search for sites as it pushes to open nine out-oftown stores - an investment of £100 million - has created considerable interest among local developers.

EWART, Northern Ireland's only public listed property company and one of the most conservative operators, has said it is "trading down" its UK portfolio to concentrate more on the home market.

Ewart has rights for the £160 million Lanyon Place development, and is a major equity investor with Ladbrokes in the new £23 million Hilton Hotel, which is under construction as part of the government-funded regeneration of the River Lagan area.

Barry Gilligan, chief executive, believes the development has been a huge success and well worthy of the risk taken by government. "Every pound of public money has triggered three pounds from private sector investors," he says.

Ewart says it is now looking at a speculative office building investment for the first time since the late 1980s. The government's Industrial Development Board has broken with tradition, investing £2.5 million in a purpose-built tele-services centre, without first identifying a client. In May the IDB invited proposals from private sector developers.

"The availability of suitable property within a short time frame, sometimes three to four months, is a big factor in enabling the IDB to attract these sort of projects," says Bruce Robinson, IDB's chief executive.

There are still serious constraints. In the office market, there is a shortage of good grade properties. "They still have to get their product right. The majority of the office stock is 1960s and 1970s development," says Richard Ellis's Mr Webster.

His forecast is that the next phase of development will be in out-of-town business parks - an area where the North lags far behind.