UFO Info Week-End

They have the highest prices on the lough shore

They have the highest prices on the lough shore.” The seven-mile wide Belfast Lough lies between Counties Antrim and Down and is 15 miles long.With its spruced-up riverside, Belfast echoes Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, and the massive Laganside rings of the ambitious barrage scheme that transformed Cardiff. Belfast’s docklands evoke the Royal Victoria Docks and Surrey Quays in London.Belfast also has echoes of another industrial city with a glorious shipbuilding past and supposedly no future, Glasgow, European City of Culture in 1990.The low-downTransportBelfast is 112 miles north of Dublin and is linked by ferry with Liverpool, the Isle of Man and Stranraer, with summer service to Troon. Belfast International Airport handles more than three million passengers a year and the regional Belfast City Airport is near the town centre.PricesA four-bedroom house requiring extensive renovation in BT15 is selling for £10,000, and a seven-bedroom semi in BT14 is £70,000 The maximum achieved in Belfast has been about £1.5m. Rubane House, a listed six-bedroom mansion on 20 acres with separate three-bedroom, two-bathroom gardener’s house, menage and equestrian outbuildings in suburban Kircubbin, BT22, is on sale for £1.25m at Templeton Robinson.PropertiesA two-bedroom ground-floor conversion flat in Malone, BT9, is selling for £185,000.

For £10,000 more, there is a new, detached, four-bedroom home overlooking countryside in Donaghcloney, a suburb in BT66. In the city centre, new two-bedroom flats start at £100,000 to £125,000, and penthouses at £200,000.PostcodesThe BT postcode applies to all of Northern Ireland as well as the city, which is BT1 to BT15. Malone and Stranmillis, BT9, are the most expensive, followed by Knock and Belmont in BT 4, 5 and 6. The formerly industrial BT1, 2 and 3 postcodes now have luxury waterside flats.One-stop shopThe free monthly property tabloid Property News covers all of Northern Ireland and has an average of 220 pages.

It is allied to a similarly well endowed website: RejuvenationThe new Odyssey complex has a 12-screen cinema multiplex, 370-seat Imax cinema, and 10,000-seat venue for entertainment and sporting events. It is the home ground for the Harp Lager Belfast Giants ice hockey team.Market newsThe Smithfield Market, completed in 1986, replaced the pre-fabricated units of the old Victorian market that was bombed in 1974 St. George’s Market is a Friday craft and antique market that also hosts a twice-monthly farmers’ market as well as special exhibitions and shows.Arts newsThe new Waterfront Hall complements Belfast’s Victorian Opera House. The Belfast Festival at Queen’s is 10 years old, and the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival was founded last year. The Crescent Arts Centre on the Golden Mile offers workshops and music.Reference deskLaganside: Property Development: and Convention Bureau: Belfast International Airport: (formerly City) of CultureOther contenders for 2008 are Birmingham, Bradford, Brighton, Bristol/Bath, Cardiff, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Newcastle/Gateshead and Oxford.Templeton Robinson, 028-9066 3030 (Malone), 028-9042 4747 (Holywood); Robert Wilson, 028-9050 1167.