2015
Rent Review Matters | Michael Lever - The Rent Review Specialist

Investing in Commercial Property - (2) for Growth

23/12/2015
Commercial property is a depreciating asset whose rate of depreciation can be slowed or offset by appreciation over a period of time. For a property to go up in value between one date and another, one or more things would have to happen. The first question when buying for growth is why should your choice… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Thinking inside the box

15/12/2015
2015 hasn’t been kind to retailers. True, a few have done very well and are continuing to do so, but most have not. Most, including major supermarkets, are… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

More money than sense?

26/11/2015
In the private investor sector, the commercial property market is experiencing a disconnection between pricing and the underlying investment value of the property based on property fundamentals.

A difference has… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

A different perspective

17/11/2015
Amongst my spare-time (if only!) interests is photography. I became  interested in photography as a quick way to write poetry. I wrote reams of poems during my teens, my writing style a combination. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Stands to Reason

28/10/2015
The more you pay for a commercial property investment, the less you are likely to make out it at least in the short term, and quite possibly long-term too. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Retail Property Investment Valuation

02/10/2015
Valuation is an opinion, Not merely anyone’s opinion, but an informed opinion; an opinion based on a knowledge of the subject.
The starting point… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Investing in Commercial Property - (1) for Income

18/09/2015
There are probably only three reasons for investing in commercial property, of which one does not apply to most landlords. The exception is…For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

RICS Dispute Resolution Fee Increase

27/08/2015
On 1 October 2015, the RICS Dispute Resolution Services (DRS) is increasing its fee for applying to appoint an arbitrator or Independent expert to £395.00 (inclusive of VAT).

Commercial Property - an Unregulated Market

27/08/2015
The relationship between the UK property market and the London Stock Exchange is close, both markets heavily depending upon money-supply liquidity and credit provided by the banks and money-markets. Considering their respective importance as stores of assets and regarded as barometers of the economy, it is interesting that whereas the Stock Market is regulated, the property market is … For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Liquidity

19/08/2015
Whether better to invest in quoted property companies on the Stock Market or property direct is a matter for debate: each has advantages and disadvantages and… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Base Rate and LTV

07/08/2015
It wouldn’t surprise me to learn there are investors whose borrowing is so close to the edge that a nominal increase in Base Rate (and LIBOR) would tip them over the cliff,  but … For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Business Rates 2 - Spare a thought?

31/07/2015
Following on from my article about Business Rates in the LandlordZone Newsletter, business rates are a tax on non-domestic property, but spare a thought for the recipients… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Business Rates

30/07/2015
The oldest of the UK’s taxes, with the possible exception of stamp duty, the origins of rating can be traced to before… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Tax and Property

13/07/2015
Some years ago, an overseas investor enquiring about my services suggested that most surveyors do not understand tax and property. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Negotiating Rent Review with your Tenant

07/07/2015
It is not compulsory to instruct a surveyor to deal with the rent review and many landlords prefer to have a go at negotiating rent reviews direct with their tenants, particularly local traders and small businesses. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Poso kani - πόσο κάνει - (how much?)

06/07/2015
The people running a country are sitting-targets for the sort of people who, themselves not in charge of anything of very much importance, are fond of criticising, that is until… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

The Smart Money

01/07/2015
The smart money is getting out of property. The smart money has long regarded property to be treated like any other commodity, to be bought and sold whenever the time is right. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Privacy - a big issue

05/06/2015
Privacy is a big issue.  Data-mining, technically the extraction of information from a dataset to  transform it into an understandable structure for further use, or in buzzword parlance the extraction of patterns and knowledge from large amount of data, not the …

Traffic Congestion

02/06/2015
This story may be anecdotal, but at the beginning of the 20th century a leading motor vehicle manufacturer predicted that there would never be more than 1 million cars in the world, because… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Stoop to Conquer

28/05/2015
Despite evidence that many shrewder landlords are selling up while the going is good, the booming market in retail property investments is showing no overt signs of abating. Money to invest is one thing, but money to provide a return on capital is another so it is time to wonder how those tenants that are just about keeping their heads above water are going to manage when their own rents come up for review. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Due Diligence

30/04/2015
Due diligence is an investigation of a business or person prior to signing a contract. Verifying to make sure that everything you’ve been told is correct and above board. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Yield and Return

30/04/2015
A concern for investors in commercial property is how well the investment is performing or how it is expected to perform. Knowing how to gauge performance is essential which is why it’s important to understand the difference between yield and return. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Friday afternoon ramble

10/04/2015
If you’re into creating a balanced portfolio then a bit of residential property and commercial property is necessary, but what happens if you’re not? And even if you are, what happens if you later discover that you’re not cut out for residential or commercial, or vice versa? For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Commercial Property Crash

07/04/2015
Predicting the next commercial property market crash is not something to do for the fun of it, but to enable forward-thinking investors to bide their time in readiness for the next buying opportunity. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Comparable Evidence

13/03/2015
Amongst the ways to agree or ascertain the (open) market rent at rent review or on renewal of a lease, (per s.34-s35 Landlord and Tenant Act 1954), is the use of comparable evidence. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.


Self-service at auction

05/03/2015
Every year, millions of pounds of retail, commercial and industrial property investments changes hands, far too often to buyers whose expectations never materialise after completion. …For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Bubble and squeak

27/02/2015
Let’s face it, if you took my advice then you’d never buy anything! Which is what a client used to tell me before mentioning he’d bought another shop property and wanted…For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Boot on the other foot

26/02/2015
Whether residential or commercial property, there is a considerable amount of money to be made by playing your cards right. It’s not only investors that can play the property game, so too can banks. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Tenant Break Clause

08/02/2015
It is fair to say that landlords dislike tenant-break clauses for their own sake, but are generally accommodating. The tenant’s right to break gives the tenant … For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.


New Year Resolution

29/01/2015
For the uninitiated, commercial property is a steep learning curve. For the inexperienced landlord, commercial property is like a minefield, full of pitfalls for the unwary. Whereas residential property is a political hot potato, commercial property is … For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Investment Strategy

15/01/2015
It is said that if you want to travel from where you are now to where you want to go then you need a map… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Rent and Inflation

11/01/2015
Whether landlord or tenant, it might be of interest to check whether the rent you are receiving or paying has kept pace with inflation, as measured by the Retail Price Index.
I have designed a calculator that calculates the percentage change in the RPI and the adjusted rent. It;'s a two stage calculation. You don't have to calculate the adjusted rent. The calculator is free of charge and may be found at Research>Retail Price Index {RPI)

Index-linking - RPI

04/01/2015
The Retail Prices Index or Retail Price Index - RPI - is a measure of inflation published monthly by the Office for National Statistics. It measures the change in the cost of a representative sample of retail goods and services. RPI was first calculated for June 1947 and was once the principal official measure of inflation. It has been superseded by the Consumer Price Index (CPI).
For the indices since 1974 and to calculate the RPI percentage change and apply the percentage to the rent for the adjusted figure, please visit RPI and Rent Calculator.

With commercial property, rent reviews are generally to the open market rent, but sometimes the rent would be adjusted to the Retail Price Index (RPI). For further reading, please visit LandlordZone