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Mortgage Approvals Rise Ahead of ‘Help to Buy’

This engaging article by Lucy Tesseras of Marketing Week on October 24th, 2013 tells us that Help to Buy scheme could open doors to brands but could damaged consumer trust.

A rivival in the property market thanks to government schemes such as Help to Buy could open new doors for brands, but damaged consumer trust and squeezed disposable incomes requires a fresh marketing approach. 

 

Above: Furniture company BoConcept is tapping into the market where people can’t afford to move and so need to use the space they do have more effectively. It has seen a huge uptake of its free interior design service it launched to raise its brand profile

Signs that the property market is recovering may feel like a boon to businesses related to the sector, but brands must meet this potential mini-boom with new strategies, according to marketers from companies including Santander, retailer Furniture Village and estate agent Savills.

Mortgage lending, house prices and transactions are beginning to bounce back thanks in part to government incentives including the Help to Buy scheme, which means marketers will have to adapt quickly. House building was up 6 per cent in the second quarter of the year, while mortgage debt dropped by £15.4bn, according to the Bank of England. This will greatly affect industries beyond those that deal solely with the buying and selling of houses.

The £12bn Help to Buy scheme continues to be the cause of much debate both inside and outside government. Some parties expect it to fuel recovery and open up the market for first-time buyers, while others are against it, fearing it could create another pricing bubble.

Despite a Bloomberg survey of 31 economists finding that two-thirds believe it is a “bad” move, there is interest from consumers. The Royal Bank of Scotland is offering loans under the scheme and booked 5,000 mortgage appointments within three hours of the scheme being launched on 8 October; appointments doubled to 10,000 after four days – twice the number it typically expects.

Either way, there is movement in the sector so a level of adjustment is necessary in the way brands communicate with consumers.

Santander, which will begin offering mortgages under the scheme in the new year, has embarked on a big marketing push for its existing mortgage products. The ads are fronted by Formula One champion Jenson Button and their tone is very different from previous ones.

“The market has realised that price is not the be-all and end-all,” says Keith Moor, director of brand and communications. “Consumers are much more savvy. It’s a value judgement now. They understand that going with the cheapest doesn’t necessarily mean going with the best.

It’s still a competitive market and you have to be priced in the game to play it but companies are increasingly realising that leading on that one dimension is not wise. Banks have a big job to do to rebuild trust and part of that is not forcing people to make big decisions based solely on price.”

This year, Ikea launched its ’Make small spaces big’ campaign in the UK and Ireland after finding that homes here are 15 per cent smaller than in Europe

Santander’s approach this time is based on insight about how consumers feel about mortgages. As they are a long-term investment, people fear it will be a noose around their neck.

“To answer that concern we have launched a range of mortgages that give people more freedom. People are free to overpay within the mortgage, but people are also free to leave whenever they want. It’s tapping into insight rather than the commoditised approach based on price,” says Moor.

Other banks are taking a similar tack. Lloyds Bank kicked off a £30m marketing campaign following its rebrand from Lloyds TSB in September, which focuses on the ‘moments that matter’. One example is an ad that tells the story of a 31-year-old man who is relieved of the frustrations of having to live with his parents after getting a mortgage through the bank. Barclays has based its proposition around listening to customers’ ideas, while TSB has relaunched with the message: ‘welcome back to local banking’.

Signs of initial recovery in the housing market have sparked renewed interest from investors too, encouraging estate agents Foxtons and Countrywide, as well as housebuilder Crest Nicholson, to float on the stock exchange. There has also been speculation that property website Zoopla is contemplating an IPO after it appointed Credit Suisse to explore “strategic opportunities”, though the Daily Mail and General Trust-owned business has downplayed such talk.

Zoopla estimates that the second phase of Help to Buy could reduce mortgage debt by £22.1bn. Its research finds there are 665,000 eligible homes on the market with an average price of £222,168. Under the mortgage guarantee scheme, the deposit needed to buy a property has dropped by two-thirds to £11,108.

As a result, property searches are going to be at an all-time high over the next year, according to the company, so it will be investing heavily to tap into consumer interest.
“First-time buyers are arguably the most important segment of the property market, as they allow those further up the chain to move, which creates supply and fluidity in the market,” says Charlotte Harper, marketing director of Zoopla Property Group. The company also owns PrimeLocation and has acquired four property portals from Trinity Mirror to compete with market leader Rightmove.

People spend more on their homes in the first 6 months than in the next 5 years so any growth in the property market is good news for us

Although the government schemes will not affect Zoopla’s marketing activity directly, says Harper, it is likely to influence some of the content it produces to ensure consumers have up-to-date information and understand the likely consequences of being involved in such a scheme (see Q&A).

The company became a sponsor of Premier League team West Bromwich Albion last season, which has helped it widen its reach and profile in the UK. It also launched its largest marketing campaign to date at the beginning of September, which incorporates outdoor ads for the first

time in addition to a major TV push. The multi-million pound ‘Smart’ campaign illustrates key features of the website’s property search, such as data about proximity to local schools and transport links.

“With the property market beginning to turn, consumers are looking for guidance and information in order to help them make better property-related decisions,” she says. “Our Smart campaign seeks to own the rational side of home-buying and help people to make confident and informed choices within that process.”

While some analysts have predicted the Help to Buy mortgage guarantee initiative will lead to another property boom, specialists at Savills and Knight Frank believe that idea might be premature.

Yolande Barnes, director of residential research at Savills, said in the firm’s Q3 market analysis: “Despite all the talk of an artificially induced housing boom, resulting from Help to Buy and other government measures, this infant housing market is far from performing like the previous housing cycle did [in 2006/2007]. We are still far from a housing market boom, although the next three years may look like a mini boom in relation to the past five.”

Knight Frank associate John Waters has a similar view but nonetheless is positive about the market.

“I don’t think it is likely to cause a pricing bubble,” he says. “Central London has been quite solid for the past few years in terms of pricing, but outside of London it is a very different story. As the broader economy improves, prices will begin to rise outside of the capital a lot more than they have done for a long time. I think it will help the market to recover and it will certainly help many people outside of London that are in negative equity to get back to where they were.”

Santander will offer mortgages under the Help to Buy scheme from early next year

Lynda Clark, editor of First Time Buyer magazine, which hosts the First Time Buyer Home Show in London, confirms that consumer’s interest is on the increase as both registrations and exhibitor numbers are “markedly up”.

“Help to Buy is making the prospect of owning a home more affordable for people, even in central London where prices are much higher than elsewhere in the country. I know there’s lots of controversy about it, but anything that helps somebody buy their own home, which will be one of the biggest purchases of their life, has got to be a good thing,” she says.

An uplift in the property market will benefit home retailers too. Charlie Harrison, marketing and ecommerce director at Furniture Village, says: “We know that people spend more on their homes in the first six months [after moving in] than in the next 5 years, so any growth in the property market is good news for furniture retailers.”

He expects to see many more first-time buyers entering the market following the launch of the second stage of Help to Buy and has been scaling up accordingly.

“We have been increasing our range of fast delivery items and introduced more lines that are available to take home the same day, such as vacuum packed mattresses that fit into a car. Furniture Village offers an interest-free credit option, which is also popular with customers furnishing their first home, and we will continue to include this as a key promotional message.”

While budgets might be tight, Capital Economics property economist Matthew Pointon does expect the fortunes of home retailers to bounce back if the housing market improves.

“When the number of transactions rise you tend to get an increase in spending on things such as white goods and home improvements as people do up their homes. I’m not sure we’ve seen much evidence of that occurring just yet but it is certainly what I would expect to happen if transactions really take off,” he says.

However, he is doubtful the mortgage guarantee aspect of Help to Buy will help to fuel the industry as much as the government believes, since the monthly payments on a 95 per cent mortgage could make it more expensive than renting.

“We’re not convinced it’s going to lead to a huge increase in buyers. Even though you can get a mortgage with a 5 per cent deposit, you still need to pass strict affordability checks in order to obtain them. Concerns that there is going to be a stampede of demand are exaggerated,” he adds.

Retailers may have another crack at the whip though, because over the past year while transactions have been down, people have turned their attention to renovating existing homes by building extensions, redecorating and generally improving their home environment.

Furniture Village, Ikea and BoConcept have all tapped into the idea of making better use of space in the realisation that not everyone has been in a position to move up the property ladder.

Harrison says: “As a result of the ‘don’t move, improve’ trend, Furniture Village has expanded its range of items that help homeowners make the most of their existing space. Products with hidden storage, such as ottoman beds, are proving popular and we have also seen an increase in sales of compact kitchen dining.”

Likewise, Ikea launched its ‘Make Small Spaces Big’ campaign in the UK and Ireland this summer after learning that homes in Britain are 15 per cent smaller than in Europe. Its global sales jumped 3.1 per cent to €27.9bn in the year to the end of August, although it does not separate UK figures.

BoConcept has seen a “huge increase” in the uptake of its free interior design service in the UK, according to country manager Zoe Shields.

“A trained member of the BoConcept sales team visits the customer’s home, measures the space and works with them to find the best possible solutions,” she says. They are then invited back to the store where they are presented with “mood boards, 3D design drawings and a set-up to reflect the products they have selected”.

As the market picks up, BoConcept will be looking to partner with local estate agents to offer the service to their clients and will also promote options such as deferred payment.
In June, B&Q launched a campaign urging homeowners to turn their attention to ‘unloved’ rooms. The retailer struggled in the early part of the year, blaming bad weather for the poor sales. But B&Q owner Kingfisher was more positive at the half-way point with a 4.3 per cent rise in group sales.

”With the property market beginning to turn, consumers are looking for guidance and information in order to help make better decisions.” - Charlotte Harper, managing director, Zoopla Property Group

Group chief executive Ian Cheshire says: “We remain ready to capitalise on any improvement in conditions or opportunities as they arise, including the potential pick-up in the UK housing market.”

However, Sainsbury’s chief executive Justin King is not so positive. He believes UK consumers are likely to have less disposable income this time next year as inflation will be around 3 per cent, while average wages will increase by 1 per cent. Despite the bleak outlook, the retailer has posted a 4.4 per cent lift in total sales for the first half of 2013.

“Although we are starting to see encouraging signs in key economic indicators, our customers’ approach to savvy shopping, which started at the beginning of the downturn, has persisted and continues,” he said in a statement.

The economic downturn has made consumers more cautious, which means companies need to be smarter in their communication.

“Whether there is a boom or not, I don’t think we will see organisations promoting in the same way,” says Santander’s Moor. “It is incumbent on us all to be responsible in the way that we lend and the conversations that we have with customers. Everyone is much more responsible than they used to be and that’s partly because consumers are more cautious but also because organisations need to address some of the concerns, fears and trust issues that people have, particularly with banks.”

Article Source: http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/trends/propertys-path-of-potential/4008241.article

Home Owners Across the UK Confident About Property Price Rises

This article by Property Wire on October 22nd, 2013 reveals that UK homeowners are confident that property price rises over the next 12 months.

Households in every region across the UK expect the value of their property to increase over the next 12 months, with those in London the most confident about price growth followed by those in the South East.

The latest House Price Sentiment Index (HPSI) from Knight Frank and Markit, which reflects the opinions of 1,500 households across the country, illustrates the localised nature of the market at present, with households in the North East and Wales expecting more modest rises in values.

October’s survey is the first taken since the government brought forward the second phase of its Help to Buy scheme and, while the jump in price perceptions since September was relatively muted, the overall level of confidence about house price gains remains at unprecedented levels in the survey history.

Only one in 14 households expect the value of their home to decline over next 12 months and mortgage borrowers and those who own their home outright anticipate the largest rise in the value of their home in the next year.

Overall it is the seventh month in a row that the index has increased and more than 23% of the home owners surveyed said that the value of their home had risen over the last month, up from 6.3% in October last year. Only 5% of households said the value of their home had fallen over the last month, giving a HPSI reading of 59.1. Any figure under 50 indicates that prices are falling, and the lower the figure, the steeper the decline. Any figure over 50 indicates that prices are rising.

This is up from last month’s record reading of 57.9 and marks the highest reading since the index began in February 2009. This is the most sustained period of upward price movements in three years.

The future HPSI, which measures what households think will happen to the value of their property over the next year, rose to a new high in October at 71.1, up from 69.6, in September. On a smoother three month average basis, the future HPSI reading was 68.8, up from 68.2 in the previous three month period.

‘The momentum in house price expectations gained over the past few months continued this month, with households across the country expecting the value of their home to rise over the next 12 months,’ said Gráinne Gilmore, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank.
‘This is the latest evidence of increased confidence in the market, which has been boosted by the Government’s Help to Buy mortgage guarantee scheme, introduced at the start of the month,’ she explained.

‘The difference in the rate of growth expected in the regions is quite pronounced however, reflecting the localised nature of the housing market at present. Households in London and the South East expect the largest rise in prices over the next year, an indication of the strength of the housing market in the capital and in surrounding areas within easy commuting distance,’ she added.

Tim Moore, senior economist at Markit, said the outlook is positive. ‘Looking ahead, only one in 14 households forecast a decline in their property value over the next 12 months. In London, the number of respondents expecting a price fall between now and October 2014 stands at around one in 30 households, and across the wider South East this proportion has reached just one in 20,’ he pointed out.

Article Source: http://www.propertywire.com/news/europe/uk-property-price-outlook-201310228373.html

Future of London: The New York Times on the Foreign Rich Buying Up Property

This article by Michael Goldfarb of theguardian on October 20th 2013, tells us that property in the capital has become a global reserve currency for the elite.

Aerial view of Tower Bridge and the River Thames at night. Photograph: Jason Hawkes/theguardian.com

 

Our neighbours Lauren and Matt and their kids moved out of London to Cambridge the other week. Bibi, Andy and their two left for Bristol in June. Another of my eight-year-old's classmates and her family are heading out after Christmas. In my book this is a trend.

The moves are not examples of the lifecycle of the striving middle classes. Nor are they examples of middle-class folks being thrown on hard times by the sluggish British economy.

The families moving out had good incomes. Matt, who had been looking for a house for more than three years, summed up the reason for leaving best: "I don't want to be a slave to a mortgage for the next 25 years." Given the astronomical rise in house prices here, he wasn't speaking metaphorically.

This is what happens when property in your city becomes a global reserve currency. For that is what property in London has become, first and foremost. The property market is no longer about people making a long-term investment in owning their shelter, but a place for the world's richest people to park their money at an annualised rate of return of around 10%. It has made my adopted hometown a no-go area for increasing numbers of the middle class.

According to Britain's Office for National Statistics, London house prices rose by 9.7% between July 2012 and July 2013. In the surrounding suburbs they rose by a mere 2.6%. The farther away from London you go, the lower the numbers get. When you finally cross the border into Scotland, house prices actually decline by 2%.

The gap between London prices and those of the rest of the country is now at a historic high and there is only one way to explain it.

London houses and apartments are a form of money.

The reasons are simple to understand. In 2011, at the height of the eurozone crisis, citizens of the two countries at the epicentre of the cataclysm – Greece and Italy – bought £400m of London bricks and mortar. The Italian and Greek rich, fearing the single currency would collapse, got their money out of euros and parked it some place where government was relatively stable and the tax regime was gentle – very, very gentle. Considering that tax evasion in Italy and Greece was a significant contributory factor to their debt problems, it just seems grotesquely cynical to encourage this kind of behaviour.

But that's what Britain in general, and London in particular, does. The city is essentially a tax haven with great theatre, free museums and formidable dining. If you can demonstrate that you have a residence in another country, you are taxed only on your British earnings.

And the savings on property taxes are phenomenal. The property taxes on New York mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's $20m London home come to £2,143.30 a year. That's $3,430.

Clearly, the mayor bought in at the right time. The Google executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, is reported to be house-hunting here – he's looking in the £30m (about $48m) price range. Yet he will pay a similar amount in property tax as Bloomberg does.

There are other facets of London real estate as a medium of exchange. British gross domestic product has yet to return to pre-crash levels, but the financial services industry has roared back. Banks are paying out big bonuses again, and anyone looking for a safe investment is getting into London property.

From the top of Parliament Hill, on Hampstead Heath, look eastward. Out around the Olympic Park and beyond you see clumps of highrise apartment buildings sprouting like toadstools in a meadow after heavy rain. These aren't being built to meet the calamitous shortage of affordable family housing in the city; they are studio and one- or two-bedroom apartments.

The developments are financed by "off plan" buying. Bonus babies look at the blueprints and put their money down with no intention of living in what they've bought – just collecting decades of rent. And it's not just those who work in London's financial district, the City, who buy in. Hot money from China, Singapore, India and other countries with fast-growing economies and short traditions of good governance is pouring into London.

When I say property is money I mean it. An astonishing £83bn of properties were purchased in 2012 with no financing – all cash purchases. That's around $133bn.

I suppose the development that houses equals medium of exchange isn't all bad. I have friends who were very successful "creatives" (architects, cinematographers, commercial and television directors, etc) in their 30s and 40s. They bought houses when houses were places to live in. Once they turned 50, they passed through a mirror that turned them invisible. Work dried up. They have survived in London via the magic of remortgaging. They accept that their children will never be able to afford to stay on in the city.

The ripple effect of this frankly demented situation is felt all over town. The foreign rich and the City rich (there is some overlap) have made most of the centre of London unaffordable to any but their own kind. Those who were once considered rich – in the top 10% of earners – now can barely afford to move to my neighbourhood, where a typical row (terraced) house, with three bedrooms (the third bedroom wouldn't qualify as a closet in Manhattan) and a total living space of around 950 square feet tops a million dollars, three times what it cost in 2000.

The overall economy of Britain certainly doesn't justify these prices. Bank lending for businesses is flat, but mortgage lending? Hoo-ha, it's soaring up and up and the bulk of it is concentrated in London. It's as if the whole British economy is based on housing speculation in the capital.

David Cameron's government seems to think that is the case. Cameron may be pursuing austerity policies elsewhere in the economy, doing virtually nothing to help subsidise employment or industry, but his government has just started a "help to buy" scheme. The government will guarantee up to 15% of the purchase price of a house up to £600,000 ($960,000), if you have a 5% down payment.

The ordinary uses of the city have been changed beyond recognition. London was never a cheap place to live, but now more expensive property means more expensive everything else: restaurants, cinemas, bars and theatre tickets.As for services, the minimal tax paid by those who have made property into money means that a city whose population has increased by 14% in the last decade can't afford to build new schools. There will be a capacity shortfall of an estimated 90,000 places by 2015. Children won't be turned away from school, but class sizes will grow to untenable proportions.

So younger people, like my former neighbours, feel compelled to leave – even though they were making a very decent living. The delicate social ecology that made London's transformation into a great world city over the last two decades is past the tipping point, I fear.

For the quarter of a century I have lived here, a sense of community has defined my life. A very organic sense of London pride has allowed this city to withstand substantial shocks – some welcome, like its transformation into a true cosmopolis; some unwelcome, like jihadist terrorism.

Now it is beginning to feel that the next phase of London's history will be one of transience, with no allegiance to the city. I wonder whether those just parking their money here by buying real estate will ever be able to provide the communal sensibility to help the city survive the inevitable shocks it will experience in years to come.

How this story will end doesn't bear thinking about. It seems a very reasonable bet, though, that those who use London property as just another form of money aren't thinking about it at all.

Michael Goldfarb is a writer whose most recent book is Emancipation: How Liberating Europe's Jews From the Ghetto Led to Revolution and Renaissance
© 2013 The New York Times Syndicate

WHY MY STORY HAD SUCH AN IMPACT

When I wrote this piece in September, shortly after the ONS published its report showing a 9.7% increase in London house prices, I never thought to send it to a British paper. Everybody here knows the score – no one will publish it, I thought. Wrong. It went viral. Clearly, it spoke to people's fears.

They fear that property prices make no sense. It feels like 2005-07 all over again. People shake their heads and say it can't go on like this. Since nothing has changed in oversight of the City and the rest of the global financial system, people fear what the next property- driven crash will do to their lives.

People fear for their jobs. The time frame of productive economic life for the middle classes is growing shorter. People don't get into good full-time work now until their late 20s. By the time they are 50, they are living on borrowed time (it's more like 40 if they work at Silicon Roundabout). And anyway wages are not rising in line with house prices, so they have to take out massive mortgages.

Finally, they fear what I write about at the end of the essay. The balance in London's complex social ecology has been lost. The balance point in any society should be between stability and stasis. Stability is good; stasis is bad. What's happening in London has shifted the ground so dramatically that stability isn't something most people can contemplate. How do you raise your children knowing that the place they were born and raised is – on current trends – not a place they will be able to afford to live when they grow up?

Article Source: http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/20/london-new-york-times-foreign-rich-property

Opportunities as the UK Property Market Comes Back to Life

This article by Richard Watt of Money Observer on October 16th, 2013 reveals that property market in the UK has now regain its life and eager for further developments.

Housing has a unique place in the UK economy. There is a special sense of fulfilment in home-ownership.

‘First-time’ buyers have a priority on the political agenda, while rising home values translate to near-instant voter gratification. A revival in the housing market is front-page news.

This national attitude to our homes creates a number of anomalies. One is the traditional approach to investing in the housing market through direct purchase, buying or upgrading a home or taking on buy-to-let. Home-ownership can be immensely rewarding, but a house is a particularly illiquid investment, while mortgages create a conduit from Bank of England base rates to disposable income that is short, brutal and sometimes nasty.

The flotation of Foxtons, the London-area estate agent, is a sign that the equity market is increasingly providing an alternative route to participation in the property market. A basket of shares might not keep you warm at night, not in a literal sense, but it is a lot more liquid, shouldn’t require a six-figure mortgage and its sensitivity to interest rates is a little less direct.

The Foxtons IPO was heavily over-subscribed, rising 16 per cent on the first day, valuing the business at more than £650 million. Foxtons has some 40 offices, mainly in central London. It is an exceptionally well-run company, with special strength in marketing. The average price of its house sales is £400,000, which puts it in the sweet spot in terms of transaction growth as the recovery develops. It is the right section of the market for the second phase of Help to Buy, which will provide mortgage indemnity for homes worth up to £600,000. In our view, Foxtons is in a position to increase its footprint potentially to 100 offices and possibly more.

Foxtons is not the first estate agent to come to the market. Countrywide floated in March and has outperformed the FTSE All Share (ex investment trusts) by 40 per cent since then (to 24 September). Savills, since its near-term trough in the midst of the eurozone crisis on 4 October 2011, has outperformed the FTSE All Share by 134 per cent.

Estate agents are an interesting and expanding area of the equity market, but the heart of the sector in equity terms is the housebuilders. The sector has seen tremendous outperformance in recent years, with key companies such as Persimmon and Barratt Developments, which over the past three years have outperformed the FTSE All Share by 126 per cent and 156 per cent respectively. In our view, despite inevitable set-backs, the sector should continue to offer robust, market-leading returns.

Current demographics suggest the demand for new housing in the UK should run at around 260,000 units per year, but the market is only supplying half that, around 130,000. It is highly unlikely that supply will reach, let alone overtake demand, on almost any scenario.

The block has been financing, with capital constrained banks requiring significant cash deposits. The government – and everybody who reads a newspaper or watches television or listens to the radio – is aware of this and given the economic benefits of house-building it has taken some bold measures.

The first phase of Help to Buy, under which the government lends new home-buyers 20 per cent of the price towards a 25 per cent deposit, is already having a significant impact, with 30 per cent of new-built homes being reserved through the scheme.

The second phase starts in 2014, providing mortgage guarantees, and should stimulate the market further. The schemes are intended as temporary kick-starts, but the first phase is proving so popular its £3.5 billion funding is likely to expire at some point in 2015 – a date whose proximity to the next election suggests to us it could be replaced, should need arise, by something either as good or better. In the meantime, the banking sector should by then be further on the road to recovery, opening the possibility that affordable commercial mortgages will increasingly become available.

A less publicised but important change is in planning law. Under the new National Planning Policy local authorities are required to maintain a five year plan. In the absence of such a plan, where any planning application is denied, it will be automatically granted on appeal.

This has unleashed fresh tracts of buildable land, a flow unlikely to be completely staunched as plans come to be adopted more widely. So much for the environment – what about the stock specifics? Housebuilders have done well – is there more to come? In my view there is and the numbers tend to support a positive argument. The key decision is whether the UK property market will continue to recover into the medium to longer term.

Let’s take Barratts as an example. We believe it is capable of achieving a return on equity of around 18 per cent on a two to three year view as it builds out land acquired in recent years at attractive profit margins. We expect the industry to be building around 170,000 units a year by the end of this period, significantly higher than current levels but still well below the demographic requirement. From this level, it fair to assume that Barratts’ unit sales can continue to grow at relatively modest minimum of 4-5 per cent a year – given natural demand, government support and ongoing economic recovery – that would leave Barratts with around 75 per cent of its earnings free to distribute as cash to shareholders, which at current share prices implies a dividend yield at around 10 per cent. That is a high yield for a well-run business in a growing market and we would expect most investors to accept something significantly lower, possibly down to around 5 per cent – and that, in turn, implies a much higher share price.

One of the most satisfying aspects of investing in UK mid-cap equities is the dynamism and variety of the opportunities. As the property market comes back to life, it is likely there will be mid-cap companies there to reap the benefits. And as they say in the property business – we are eager for further developments.

Article Source: http://www.moneyobserver.com/news/13-10-16/opportunities-uk-property-market-comes-back-to-life

FREE Webinar with John Lee: "5 Instant Ways to Raise Finance for Your Property Deals"

FREE Webinar with John Lee: "5 Instant Ways to Raise Finance for Your Property Deals"

Tuesday 20th at 7.30pm (BST): Register here: http://bit.ly/fb-johnlee

Hi guys, I hope you’ve all had a great summer break. I’m really excited to announce that  my guest speaker for this months webinar is John Lee; (International Speaker, Best Selling , Author and Mentor in Entrepreneurship and Property Investment in the UK).

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