It’s About to Get Easier to Turn U.K. Warehouses Into Apartments

(Bloomberg) -- The U.K. is set to make it easier for owners of empty shopping malls, warehouses and factories to bulldoze their properties and replace them with apartment blocks.

Speaking in Parliament on Thursday, housing chief Robert Jenrick said the government was considering looser rules for commercial property landlords that want to demolish their properties and replace them with homes. Though owners would still have to go through the planning system, Jenrick indicated applications would be expedited and their approval simpler to get.

The move could be a boon for investors like Blackstone Group Inc. that have piled into U.K. warehouses, betting that demand from online retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. will keep rents rising. While that’s seen the prices of those properties surge, they remain well below residential land values. By making it easier to change such sites to residential use, the land values could increase.

“It has the potential to create lots of value,”said Neal Hudson, a housing analyst for Residential Analytics. “Though clearly it needs careful implementation to avoid developers gaming the system.”

The U.K. has already experimented with similar conversion laws, allowing office blocks to be converted to apartments without planning permission starting in 2013. Some opposition politicians have said that the rule change allowed large numbers of sub-standard flats to be built.

To contact the reporter on this story: Eddie Spence in London at espence11@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shelley Robinson at ssmith118@bloomberg.net, Chris Bourke, Patrick Henry

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