Exit Strategy

An alternative investment, property is an alternative to cash and other liquid forms of investment. Arguably, commercial property is more of an alternative … For further reading please visit LandlordZone

Misreading the signs

Despite the future being naturally uncertain, we live in an age, fearful of change, when wanting or needing to know in advance what will happen has become a social norm. To know what will happen is… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Uncertainty and Growth

On the subject of Brexit – don’t say I didn’t warn you – http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/industry-expert-guest-writer/michael-lever/brexit-aftermath - we are now being told that businesses including but limited to property investors do not like uncertainty. That’s a myth, surely? For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Brexit aftermath

I hesitated whether to contribute my tuppence-worth to this momentous occasion. Of the three taboo subjects – religion, sex, politics – that one is not supposed to talk about in polite society…For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

The Ultimate Break Clause

Let’s imagine you’ve bought a prime shop property let to a blue-chip multiple retailer on an institutional lease for term 20 years, with 5 yearly upward-only rent reviews to market rent and tenant break clause at year 15. The initial yield …For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Investment in Investment

Commercial property, as with all types of property, is an illiquid asset whose highest value depends on the availability of a ready supply of credit. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Susceptible to groupthink

Commercial property has a reputation as a long-term hedge against inflation; a reputation that most investors take for granted. But not all property performs and increasingly more isn’t. A reflection partly of … For further reading, please visit LandlordZone, click here.

Truth will out

Over the years, the growth in popularity of the property market reflects its consistency as a store of value. The value of an asset is only worth what a buyer is willing and able to pay for it. An asset doesn’t necessarily appreciate… For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Gambling on the future

Whenever I count from numbers 1 to 10. I find it easier to count up, rather than down. If you don’t know already, try this for yourself: count from 1 to 10: do you find it easier to…For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Critical Thinking

Ever since property started being thought of as a business, rather than a game – although why when one is not a full-time investor property should be thought of as a business is beyond me – the need for critical thinking has become more of a pre-requisite than ever before. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone

Investing in Commercial Property - (2) for Growth

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

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?

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

Privacy - a big issue

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 …

Commercial Property Crash

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.

Self-service at auction

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

Expectation for Commercial Property Growth

Unlike residential property, the factors that determine prospects for commercial property growth are much more dependent upon specific tenant demand, rather than demand and supply generally. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone newsletter issue 30 - click here

Is most commercial property ex-growth?

Successful investment in commercial property is all about art and timing. The art, which might be described as judicious choice, is the skill needed to discern whether the particular property is likely to continually head in the same direction as the market. For further reading, please visit LandlordZone.

Conflict of Interest

In a period of 'retailing revolution,' one wonders how advisers to pension funds can be so confident that the rate of growth essential to justify low initial yields on purchase price will materialise at the review date.

Many funds are already becoming increasingly disillusioned with their agents' failure to achieve the anticipated rental value. When the same agencies also act for multiple retailers, how do they reconcile their objective for the lowest rental when they may also be acting for the landlord of adjoining property with a brief to get the highest rental?

This conflict exists for all valuers, likely to receive instructions to advise landlords and tenants in the same area, but it surmountable when there is no vested inyerest in the progress of the investment.

Detailed knowledge of a multiple retailers' property affairs must be very useful when advising a fund on investment purchase (not to mention on the company's take-over potential) and the solution appears to aim for a balance, tilted in favour of the landlord, whereby 'comparable evidence,' to back a recommendation to settle, is presented in such a form as to convince the tenant that the conclusion is indeed the right figure, in line with 'the market.'

I cannot understand the business philosophy of major multiple retailers who appear unconcerned that their retained advisers actively market a positive involvement in the investment market. Surely it is better to use a selection of different valuers or, at worst, to deal with negotiations internally.