International Real Estate Investment | Eye on Worldwide

Overseas is Tough, UK is a Gold Mine

Posted on 20. Jun, 2009 by Alan Forsyth in Investment Guru

I hope are continuing to have success picking up some bargain properties!

One of the big things over the last 6 months we have seen is many investors and companies that were buying overseas are back buying in the UK. This is for 2 main reasons.

1. Lack of finance overseas – yes while we think getting finance in the UK is tough – for UK investors, it is now far harder to get finance Overseas and relatively easier in the UK. The reason for this is, just as with UK banks, foreign banks are happy still lending to the local market, but anyone slightly outside the norm eg a foreign national they are less likely to lend as for them this carries unnecessary risks. We are still getting finance in some countries eg Czech Republic 85% lTV, but with things changing so quickly it is prudent to always get finance organised first before committing to an investment.

1. The affordability of UK property and the strong rental returns available. With prices dropping an average of around 15% across the UK from their peaks in 2007, and with experienced investors or sourcing companies getting further discounts of between 15-30%, then there really hasn’t been a better time to buy in the UK in the last 5 years. The drop in prices, and the rents staying fairly level, has seen rental yields (your return on investment) increase by 1-2%. We have also seen a large increase in ex-pat investors, who now number around 25% of our investors, who are attracted by the UK market, and often if are getting paid in another currency can further gain on the exchange rates.

While we have sourced properties overseas, we have always had a strong presence in the UK, sourcing investment properties – always concentrating on cashflow – for over 5 years – in fact we have sourced over 1000 UK properties!

Due to concentrating on cashflow, while many companies were promoting expensive new build that only yielded 3-4%, our investors have done very well over the years, and even where one or two values have dropped back, the strong cashflows have meant they and ourselves have continued to do well.

We are different to some newly formed sourcing companies in the fact that we have full time teams on the ground across the UK, who are all local experts. Many of them have been sourcing for my company and our investors for 3-5 yearsand they know exactly what we want!

For example I have Richard in Scotland – owner of over 40 properties himself who has sourced over 100 properties for us over 5 years, and then takes care of the ongoing management for investors.

I have Dan in South Wales who owns over 60 properties, and has a very strong team locally and who currently sources around 2-3 properties a week for us.

I work directly with a small developer in the North West and we have managed to do some outstanding deals.

I have a team that has been securing non status finance opportunities- and we have exchanged or completed on over 80 of these deals over the last 6 months.

Every week we also have at least 5-8 houses secured by our local teams so we are in direct control of the deals, not through 5 different middle men which you seem to see more often these days, and as mentioned we can take care of everything from low money down finance through to ongoing management! We pride ourselves on working with investors for the long term to build up strong portfolios to suit their strategies.

For a free One to One consultation with one of our Portfolio Development Managers, call us on 0115 9474155, or email us at info@property-investment-deals.com.

Join over 10,000 investors who receive our free email alerts and have benefited from my team’s strong experience of sourcing excellent deals in the UK!

Best Regards

Alan Forsyth