Anyone buying a first investment property in Essex ends up asking the same thing sooner or later: should it be new or old? Speaking to estate agents in Colchester early on is arguably the quickest way to find out which schemes are actually letting and which are just being marketed loudly. There’s no shortage of options to weigh up, because the town has been building for years.
That growth is worth paying attention to. Colchester is widely described as the fastest growing town in the east of England, with the borough’s population estimated to have risen by roughly 14 per cent between 2011 and 2020. Growth on that scale doesn’t guarantee a return for a landlord, but it does mean tenants keep arriving, and they all need somewhere to live.
Why the north of town keeps coming up
Most of the newest building has landed north of the centre, in the wards of Mile End and Highwoods. Chesterwell, in Mile End, is one of the biggest names there. Mersea Homes has been releasing later phases, Chesterwell Oaks and Chesterwell Park, and the listing describes them as three, four and five bedroom homes, with parks, schools, shops and a supermarket planned into the wider community.
Here’s the catch for a first-timer. Larger family houses mean bigger deposits and, generally speaking, a different kind of tenant from the one who takes a one-bed flat. It’s a slower, steadier type of letting, and to be fair, that suits plenty of new landlords who’d rather have a family staying for years than a churn of short tenancies. It just isn’t the cheapest way in, and that’s not nothing.
Northern Gateway and the long view
Close by sits the council-led Northern Gateway project, which is the scheme with the most ambition attached to it. It’s split into three parts, a sports park, a leisure park beside the A12 near the Jobserve Community Stadium, and a southern site off Axial Way. That southern site is meant to deliver up to 350 homes, 30 per cent of them affordable, along with a private hospital and a medical centre on the old rugby club land. The affordable share matters, since it shapes how many homes reach the open market.
Progress hasn’t been quick, though. Local reporting suggested the housing side was moving slower than first hoped, with work still to start a year after planning approval. So if you’re weighing this up, treat any completion date with a pinch of salt, and don’t stretch your budget on the assumption that it’ll all be finished on time.
And yet some investors like exactly that. Buying into a place that’s still being built out can pay off, because surroundings that look bare today often look very different in five years. The council points to the Park and Ride and new walking and cycling routes as links into the city centre, which is the sort of detail that helps a rental listing later on.
Older ground, newer homes
Not every appealing new development is brand new. The former Severalls Hospital site off Boxted Road closed in 1997 and was replaced by more than 700 homes, so there’s now a settled estate there with some track record. That’s useful, because you can look at what similar homes have actually rented for rather than trusting a brochure.
The area around the Colchester Garrison tells a similar story. The army’s presence has shaped that part of town for a long time, and the local primary school there needed a significant extension to cope with demand, which hints at how many families settled nearby. Homes on established developments like these are often resales rather than fresh releases. For a first-time investor, arguably, that’s a feature rather than a drawback.
Who’ll actually rent from you?
It helps to picture the tenant before you pick the postcode. Colchester station is on the Great Eastern Main Line, and the faster services reach London Liverpool Street in roughly fifty minutes. That draws commuters who want more space than the capital offers, and they tend to look for homes within reach of the station or the A12.
Then there’s the University of Essex at Wivenhoe Park, plus the garrison, and both bring their own rental demand. But be careful with student-led thinking. The Alumno scheme in the Cultural Quarter, approved on appeal, includes 336 student rooms, and purpose-built blocks like that compete directly with small flats bought by private landlords. Which is worth more to you, a quiet family let or a busy student one?
Questions to ask before you reserve anything
Whatever the scheme, the paperwork deserves as much attention as the show home. Check whether the property is leasehold or freehold, what the service charge and any ground rent look like, and how many similar homes will be released around the same time. If forty identical houses come to market together, the resale and rental market can feel crowded for a while.
Ask, too, about the build phase you’re buying into. A house in the middle of a construction site rents differently from one on a finished street, and you’ll want a realistic idea of how long that gap lasts. More often than not, a good agent will tell you plainly which phases are tricky, and that honesty is worth more than a glossy price list.
Final Thoughts
The developments that suit a first investment aren’t always the ones with the biggest names or the longest lists of planned facilities. They’re usually the ones where the numbers hold up even if the promised extras arrive late, and Northern Gateway is a good example of a scheme that rewards that kind of thinking. If you can afford to wait, it might reward you; if you can’t, an established estate probably makes more sense.
Looking further ahead, the real test for any of these places will come once the diggers leave. Schools fill, shops open, roads settle, and the sort of tenant who stays for years starts to appear. A first investment is often as much about learning what you like owning as it is about the return, so picking a development whose surroundings you’d be happy to see finished is probably the sturdiest starting point.
