Former Man United star Gary Neville seeks buyers from Hong Kong for branded property units in Manchester

The W Residences is jointly developed by Relentless Developments, which has been co-founded by former Manchester United star Gary Neville
The 41-storey tower in Manchester will house the city’s first branded residences and a five-star hotel, the city’s first

International Property

Cheryl Arcibal

Published: 5:11pm, 8 Nov 2023

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Gary Neville, the former Manchester United star and one of the most decorated English footballers of all time, has his sights on a different goal this time. Selling to Hongkongers a portion of 213 flats in a 41-storey tower in Manchester that will house the first branded residences and five-star hotel in the northwest English city.

The W Residences, scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2027, is jointly developed by Relentless Developments, co-founded by Neville, and Salboy, a Manchester-based developer.

“We have worked hard to create a development that is distinctive in both its imaginative design and heritage as well as its location connecting the city’s business district with the historic civic quarter,” said Neville in a statement, ahead of his visit to the city while on a marketing campaign which includes a trip to Singapore.

The brand is owned by the Marriott International group, a US-headquartered hotel company whose hotel brands include Ritz-Carlton, St. Regis, JW Marriott and W Hotel.

Gary Neville’s W Residences flats have a starting price of £341,000. Photo: Handout

“Salboy and Relentless share a passion for delivering this new world-class development in the centre of Manchester,” said Simon Ismail, Salboy co-founder. “When complete this long-awaited development will raise the bar for the city’s residential, hospitality workspace and leisure offerings.”

The project is the second component of a mixed-use development called The St. Michael’s, which will also include a retail and office building, funded by the US-based private equity firm KKR & Co.

The first 16 floors of the estimated £150-million (US$185.7 million) development will host the five-star hotel, and the remaining floors will house residential units, which will be offered at a starting price of £341,000 for a studio, according to Knightsbridge Partners, the group that is marketing the property in Hong Kong.

The flats are billed as the most expensive in Manchester.

“This is the first time that Gary Neville’s Relentless Developments is selling projects in Hong Kong, overseas,” said Carmen Ching, managing director and global head of sales of Salboy. “Manchester has not had a five-star hotel, a proper one, as well as proper branded residences, so this is going to be a landmark and a game-changer for the city.”

As someone who was born in Bury, part of the Greater Manchester region, Neville “is one of the local lads that want to make a difference to the Manchester community”, said Ching.

Hongkongers who are eligible for the fast track residency scheme in the UK under the British National (Overseas) or the BN (O) visas are also a target market for the flats.

The UK in 2020 made it easier for 3 million Hongkongers, who qualify for a BN (O) passport and their dependents, to relocate to Britain and stay and work for extendable periods of 12 months, creating a path to citizenship. It was London’s response to Beijing’s imposition of a sweeping national security law that is perceived to have eroded Hong Kong’s guaranteed freedoms under a Sino-British pact.

As of March, more than 139,000 applicants were granted BN (O) visas and 113,500 people have arrived in the UK on the scheme since it began, according to the latest available official data.

A 2021 survey by civil society group Hongkongers in Britain showed that outside the Greater London area, Manchester is the preferred destination of Hong Kong residents who moved to the UK under the BN (O) scheme, getting the approval of 8.2 per cent of the 720 respondents.

“Manchester is a preferred destination of BN (O) immigrants,” said Kingston Lai, CEO of Knightsbridge Partners.

“We have been receiving many enquiries even before we started launching this project,” Lai said, adding that Manchester is the largest city-region economy in the UK outside London.