Mention Manchester’s Moss Side and the first image that may come to mind is of drug gangs battling for control of its streets. The area is now achieving another kind of notoriety, however: as a property hot spot.

Jonathan Ash, partner at Ash Residential, an estate agency in nearby Rusholme, has seen house prices in the area double over the past three years, with particularly intense competition in the east side of the area — the only part of Moss Side dominated by Victorian terraces. “First-time buyers now have to go to areas that were originally classed as the cheaper end of the market,” says Ash. “They can’t afford to buy anywhere else.”

Medical staff in particular, who used to buy in Rusholme and Fallowfield — the traditional student lands of the city — are now beginning to look at Moss Side, where, Ash says, Victorian terraced houses are now “touching £100,000”.

Peter Green, an agent at rival firm Faulkner & Faulkner, agrees. He says some properties on his patch have quadrupled in value since the start of the millennium. “We are selling anything there incredibly quickly,” says Green. “We have sold three-bedroom houses from £90,000 to £120,000, while flats in new developments are going for between £139,000 and £169,000. It obviously does carry some negative connotations, but people are increasingly prepared to buy there.”

Chris Jones, an IT consultant, is among them. He bought his Victorian three-bedroom terraced house “right in the centre” of Moss Side for £67,000 in July 2004. One of the main attractions, he says, was that he “got a lot of house” for the bargain price tag — and is now sitting on a property valued at about £95,000.

“I work in Northwich, just south of Manchester in Cheshire, but often visit customer sites around the UK, so the location is handy for the M56 and M6,” he says. “I can also walk into Manchester city centre.

“It is also close to places I’d like to buy in and I figured that the area would be gradually gentrified — so it would be a good investment.”

To Jones’s relief, he has yet to experience the area’s darker side. His neighbours are friendly and, at the risk of tempting fate, he says he has yet to suffer vandalism or theft in the two and a half years since he moved in. “The reputation comes from incidents that will never affect me,” he says. “It seems to be either kids trying to make a name for themselves, or business I’m not involved in — namely crack cocaine.”

Meanwhile, Manchester continues to go from strength to strength, building on its successful hosting of the Commonwealth Games five years ago. The BBC’s decision to move swathes of its staff to Salford Quays, just north of the centre, and the government’s decision last month to grant the city a “super-casino” licence, have been seized on as proof that Manchester has overtaken rival Birmingham as England’s “second city”.

Unlike other big conurbations, though, Manchester lacks a truly affluent inner district to match Bristol’s Clifton or Birmingham’s Edgbaston. Moss Side forms part of what city officials call a “doughnut of deprivation” that separates its resurgent centre — all trams, gleaming office blocks, designer boutiques and fashionable bars — from the desirable leafy suburbs that begin at Didsbury, about five miles to the south.

A significant catalyst for change is the transformation of Manchester City’s former Maine Road ground, which lies at the heart of Moss Side. In 2003, the club relocated to the City of Manchester stadium, originally constructed for the Commonwealth Games, and the Maine Road stadium was demolished.

Two years later, the city council selected Lowry Homes to redevelop the site into 400 new homes of between one and four bedrooms, “all built to the highest environmental standards”, together with shops and community facilities. The scheme is still at an early stage, and prices have yet to be released.

Ash, who has worked in Moss Side for 25 years, nevertheless has reservations about the hype surrounding the area. Much of its core is still social housing, he says, pointing out that the rise in prices is driven mainly by landlords seeking returns from rental properties amid booming prices elsewhere in the city.

“We do get plenty of people buying there who are fairly well-heeled, although they are mostly buying for investment purposes,” he says. “About 95% of houses we are selling in that area are to investors.”

Although Moss Side has improved greatly since the dark days of the 1990s, even agents selling property there say it still has a long way to go before shaking off its gangland associations. The area’s dark side was highlighted by the shooting earlier this month of an 18-year-old man outside a community centre in Raby Street, yards from where Jessie James, 15, was killed last September.

Buyers further south, in London, have long learnt to live in close proximity to gun crime if they are to afford a place of their own in the capital. It is a measure of their own city’s success that young Mancunians, priced out of the leafy suburbs, are having to do the same.

On the market

This three-bedroom terraced house in Moss Side is for sale for £145,000 with Faulkner & Faulkner, 0161 881 6087,
www.rightmove.co.uk

Five minutes from Moss Side, this three-bed, semidetached house is for sale for £170,000 with Ash Residential, 0161 225 2500, www.ashresidential.co.uk

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