The first 3 were Cape Verde, Barbados and Barcelona.

Below are the last 2, and perhaps the most interesting.

4. Mallorca:

Known to many, invested in by few….

Mallorca is one of the most visited islands in Europe, most of us have been there be it on a lads holiday or a family one!

What many people don’t know is that because of building restrictions prices have not been effected by the global downturn anywehere near as much as their close neighbour Spain.
We have a villa in Puerto Pollensa and in 15 years have not seen it lose money, also long term lets are easy to obtain in the winter, it yields around 11% per year AFTER mortgage payments!

Combine this with an average 3 weeks use per year and it looks like a great investment.
As the cost of far away holidays spiral and many long haul operators upping prices or going under altogether, holidays closer to home tick boxes for many people.

The fact that more and more people are buying second homes in Mallorca combined with laws on future building means that prices are sure to steadily increase in the near future and with a vibrant holiday market rentals will follow suit.

Conclusion:

Risk = Low

Returns = Medium

Yields = Medium

Minimum cost to invest = £30,000

5. The UK

Well you knew it was coming didn’t you!

Ok the returns may not be as much as the countries mentioned earlier BUT many of you will have the market knowledge to know a “good deal” when you see it.

In this market many property investors that do look to invest are loking at minimising their risk as much as possible, for the masses that means not moving out of their comfort zones.

I’ll always tell you that using a property investment company is the way to go, they charge very little, normally get paid by the developer and have market knowledge and contacts that can only be gained by years in the business.

We have seen some really great stock recently, from tenanted apartments in Chorley yielding over 8% to townhouses in Chichester (where we are based) yielding close to 9% when let to students under an HMO license.

Check out our UK property investments for more information.

Conclusion:

Risk = Low

Returns = Medium

Yields = Medium

Minimum cost to invest = £20,000

To Finish……These are my 5 places to invest in 2010, i would hope that by 2011 i will have invested in at least 3 of them. If you have a location you are looking at and a reason why, post it below!

Cape Verde property prices have been rising on average by 30% pa over the past 10 years and the occupancy of the only 5* hotel on Sal is currently around 95%.

If these trends were to continue you could put as little as £27,986 into a property on the fantastic Dunas Beach Resort now and on completion you would be able to recoup your £27,986 deposit + £19,579 on top as Cashback! Then to top it off a Net Profit of £8,117 pa from rentals!

Obviously this is the best case scenario but the figures speak for themselves.

Why would these trends continue?

Cape Verde is an archipelago of islands off of the North West coast of Africa it has:

• Year Round Sun (yes 360 days!)
• 107% rise in tourism over the past 5 years.
• No hurricanes.
• Temperatures of 22-30 degrees.
• 1 hour time difference from GMT.
• 5 hour flight from the UK.
• “EU special status” – granted $1.5 billion for infrastructure and tourism upgrades.
• A mostly Christian society.

Why Sal?

• Sal accounts for 69% of Cape Verde’s total rental market.
• It is the home of the new international airport with fantastic connections to the UK flights from Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham.
• 2 “Ernie Els” golf courses are currently being developed on the island.
• Pristine white beaches.
• Beautiful clear sea.

Why Dunas Beach Resort?

• Dunas Beach Resort is a development of 1135 properties ranging from studios up to 5 bed villas.
• This is a European quality 5* resort with an astronomical build cost of €1,400 psqm (double that of the comparables used in our figures.)
• All properties are eligible for entry into a “self invested personal pension.”
• The resort operator is the fantastic Sol Melia group. Sol Melia are the biggest resort operators in the world and have a turnover of €100 million per month! With 150,000 hits on their reservation systems per day.
• The constructors of the resort are the San Jose constructors; they are the largest construction group in Europe with a turnover of €1.35 billion pa.
• Savills red book valuation on “bare land value” of €46 million.
• Being located on the South West coast of Sal, Dunas Beach Resort is in the best position to capitalize on this islands emergence.
• Completion mortgages readily available from many large banks.
• A cash flow positive developer (most developers handle a €60,000,000 negative cash flow throughout construction.) Phenomenally good performance through pre-sales has put them in this position of strength.
• The developer has an unused facility of €9,000,000 with Banif bank.

As you may well know we try our hardest to offer investments, where the risks are minimized as much as possible.  Of course you could lower your risks even further by investing in a country that is already fully developed but at the same time you better also stretch your budget because this will not come cheap!

The best way to invest will be to choose the country that is yet to emerge, whilst ensuring that all risks have been covered and the country is infact emerging… This is exactly what we have done for you.

For more information on Dunas Beach Resort Request the latest brochure here

The main reason this is a good question for us to hear and how it relates to our investment is that, our opportunity is to purchase the freehold of an apartment which is run by the top resort operator in the world. Your rental yields will be governed by the occupancy that your resort operator can achieve and in Cape Verde this should lead to some outstanding rental yields.

The yields we have worked out on our investment come in somewhere around 10%, now this is working on a 68% occupancy. However the current on island occupancy is 80% and the only other 5* resort on the island is seeing occupancy levels of 98%. This could mean rental yields of around 20%+ for our investors.

Rental yields are not the only attractive part of this investment. For the last 10 years Cape Verde has seen an average capital growth year on year of 30%. Now if we were to assume only 15% growth pa, we have worked out that upon completion you could have equity in your property whilst still retaining up to a massive £100k cash-back!

Why would this continue? Well here are some points you may or may not know about Cape Verde and the developer of Dunas Beach Resort:

• Cape Verde has EU special status ($1.2 billion investment from the EU for tourist development)
• “It has been weathering the global economic crisis from a position of strength.” IMF
• The number of direct flights is increasing everyday.
• Tourism figures rose 27.5% last year and are still rising with more flights from new countries everyday.
• The resort has double the build cost of any other “on island” development at €1400 psqm.
• Land is fully unencumbered.
• Developers can only build 4 floors high. This means that land available for building on will deplete quickly and therefore it is likely that prices will rise quickly, as supply and demand tips in favour of demand.
• 1 hour time difference to the UK.
• 5 and a half hour flight time from the UK.
• Phenomenal white sand beaches

See our Cape Verde Investment

Want to hear more? e-mail or freephone Fresh Invest on 0800 043 69 56

Property Investment….over the last 18 months probably the furthest thing from your mind!

So why start investing now?

1. Mortgage rates are relatively low.

Ok so the ltv rate isn’t great but the actual rates are pretty good and with our economy suffering i believe there is little chance of the boe base rate increasing.

An average 65% ltv mortgage on a new build flat is around 5% with second hand property mortgages available from 75% at 5% rate.

In historical terms the rate is a lot lower than it has been for a long while.

As ever, if you are building a property investment portfolio you need the mortgage rates to remain fairly low to allow you to repay the mortgage loan, another up shot is that when buy to let mortgages recover the ltv rates will increase, allowing you to remortgage.

2. Property supply is at an all time low!

With most new build developers choosing to stop building last year we now face the fact that it will take these housebuilders a year to get new schemes out of the ground.

This will mean that for around a year from now new properties will be some what of a rarity. New build property accounted for a massive part of the property bought last year, without this supply and with increasing demand prices are sure to increase.

UK Property Investment has always relied to a large part on developers willing to discount their property for either bulk sales or quick completions but if they have no stock….

3.  It’s cheaper to buy than rent.

Recent research has shown that for the first time in ages it is actually cheaper to buy than rent, well outside of London anyway!

Abbey found the average rent of £434pm compares to a mortgage payment of £382pm (with a 25% deposit). That’s a saving of £52pm. People in Wales and the north west would save on average £90pm. We can also overpay or save whilst interest rates are low.

So for those looking to start in property investment now looks like an ideal time.

Wow

One day prices are rising, the next falling, i think the property investment market needs some stabilisation so investors can find their legs again!

Personally i think this may be right around the corner.

I believe that for once the government may have actually got the result that they wanted, even if they will achieve it in a way i doubt they could have expected!

What do i mean?
It’s quite simply a matter of demand and supply and it’s one which could impact us all so pay attention!

Around 12-15 months ago the vast amount of new build property developers stopped starting new developments and started land banking. No property developer would start a site that they thought would actually lose them money!

This was fine at the time, there were more than enough new build developments going to keep most property investors happy, in fact if we are honest there were probably too many!
It’s easy to say that the UK needs to build x amount of housing to keep up with demand, but if that housing is mostly luxury apartments in city centres, way out of the price range of joe bloggs then it does not really equate!

What we are now seeing is the end of many large property developers redundant stock, most sites are now finished and developers are just about to start building again.
This will dramatically impact on property investors and property investment companies, how? because for the next 12 months + we will see little to no new build developments being offered.

“What of all the off plan deals” i hear you say.

Well if you put your hand in the fire and it gets burnt, you don’t go back for a second go do you?
If developers start offering off plan opportunities that is exactly what they will be doing!
It is a lose lose situation for a developer.

1. They offer the property off plan and the prices continue to rise – Result – they have lost out on potential profit.
2. They offer property off plan and prices drop – Result- what seemed a smart bet turns into disaster as property investors decide not to complete as the promised 25% discount has been eradicated by price decreases!

Summary – Developers can’t win!

So we are faced with developer not offering discount on their property until they have completed the site and explored every other selling option!
This has to be at least 12 months from now for even the quickest builders!

So what would i do?

Buy now!! Were on the way to a mini price rise where property investment demand suddenly rockets past supply!

If you can get it right you can grab the last of the good discounts now and sell or remortgage in 12 months time when prices have risen.

Is your pension working for you?

With the recent drop in shares values, do you know the real value of your pension?

A combined state and private pension amounts to an average monthly income of just £500, so if you don’t want to live your retirement in poverty it’s time to do something about it!

The situation is down to many factors. Few people know exactly how much they need in their pension to achieve a comfortable standard of living.

Pension values have dropped by as much as 40% over the last 2 years, the result of the recession is that many people have not increased their contributions in order to offset this drop. In many cases they have actually scaled back in order to pay for important every day goods.

In order to draw the most basic of incomes we need to accumulate a fund of at least £184,704 which would provide a monthly income of roughly £1,000 gross.

Want to know what the average private pension size is at the moment….just £25,000! That will pay roughly £125 per month. Add state benefit of £90 per week and you have a monthly total of less than £500 gross to live on.

To give you an idea of how little this is, most individuals need a retirement income of two thirds of their pre retirement income after they retire. To calculate what you need take your current monthly income and times it by 0.75. More than £500 isn’t it!

If we take a basic income of £1,000 per month, so £12,000 per year, times this by 25 (the average amount of years we are currently living after retirement) that’s £300,000!

If you aren’t already investing in a pension or you have sat back and ignored this problem, perhaps now is the time to take note and do something about it?

To make up the deficit pension providers normally ask you to divide your age in half and invest that amount of your salary into your pension, so a 40 year old will be expected to invest 20% of his salary into a pension.

So what are your options?

We have already discounted stocks and shares, only the most high risk share dealing we enable you to obtain the funds you need by retirement.

The answer in my opinion is property.

By purchasing a property and putting it in your Sipp you will gain all the advantages of high capital growth and rental income and be able to do so without dipping into your existing savings or re-mortgaging any properties you own.

Our properties on Dunas Beach Resort start at just £82,000, you would need a pension value of about £55,000 to purchase it outright or alternatively you can use part of your pension and top up the rest via cash or a loan.

We have calculated that it would take just 10 years for the value of an £82,000 property at Dunas Beach to increase to over £300,000!

That’s on an initial investment of just £55,000.

This is based on very pessimistic figures including:

• A 10% increase in prices per annum (15% for the last 3 years)
• A room cost of €110 per day (currently €150)
• An occupancy rate of 68% (currently 95% in 5* hotels)

As you can see Dunas Beach offers an incredible opportunity to get the run on your current pension plan and boost it to more realistic figures!

Transferring your pension:

Many of you will have a few pensions with different companies and moving all of these into a SIPP can be a long term project. Our IFA can take care of that for you; all you need to do is fill in some information on your current pension plans and they do the rest!

When this is complete (average time is 6 weeks) you are free to purchase a unit of your choice dependent on money available.

For more information on funding your investment with a SIPP click here.

If you have a pension and are interested in seeing how this works, e-mail us for more information.

These are our thoughts.

Well it’s simple supply and demand really.

As the market started to drop last year and various buy to let mortgages disappeared off the market many developers either land banked of sold off previously earmarked developments.

We are now starting to see the impact of this.

Less property coming onto the market means more potential buyers for the property that is left.

This in turn means that a new sense of confidence has appeared in the market.
Before, sellers may have had one or two viewings; they now have ten or twelve.

The only reason we have not seen a massive surge in prices is the remaining problem, which is loan to value rates.

However, this is also due to change.

We have it on good understanding that the Government is due to force a “must lend” initiative on lenders which is due in the next 6 weeks.

When this comes around I think we will see the end of any discounts whatsoever.
Until builders start to build again there simply is not the need for the developers to do deals.

Property Investment companies have always based their success on bulk selling units for a greater discount than an individual will obtain direct.

When the developer simply does not have the units to bulk sell our service becomes obsolete, for the time being anyway.

My Conclusion:

Buy at a discount whilst you can, you may not get another chance for a long while and you can bet that the investors that are prudent will have to take a massive hit on mortgage interest rates in the future, let’s face it, they won’t go down any more!

Well lets look at the positives.

As my nan always says….you’ve always got your health!

To which i respond …..I’ll need it when I’m sleeping rough!

Seriously though, many people face the very real prospect of having to increase their pensions and savings to the level they were previously at, the only trouble is, they have even less time to do it!

2 Years ago your savings and pension values would most probably be well on their way to keeping you in the style you had become accustomed.

No Longer, you now have to think fairly seriously about increasing the value of your savings, so whats the best way to do that?

As far as i can see, 2 options come to mind.

1. High risk, but potentially high reward share dealing.

2. Property

Let me discredit the first one quickly, if you have never dealt with shares before i wouldn’t recommend such drastic action, if you fancy giving your hard earned to a broker think seriously about the fact it will probably end up with a banker who had a large part to play in losing you that money in the first place!

So we come to property investment.

Hardly surprising as that is what you do for a living i hear you say!

True, it’s also what i know best.

However it also produces returns of between 6-13% along with the capital growth which will undoubtedly occur whilst investing at the bottom of the market.

Look abroad and the yield can sometimes be up to 20% with capital growth upwards of 15% per annum.

In the past, many investors have discounted property because of the “risk” attached.

Unfortunately these same investors now may not have much of a choice!

If you need your pension to return you a decent amount and do not have 40 years in which to grow it you may simply have to look at property as an investment vehicle.

I’m currently looking at property in London that returns 7% and overseas property in Cape Verde that returns 12%.

Similar London property was selling 2 years ago at £400,000, now on the market at £270,000. If we reach the prices of yesteryear there is £130,000 profit for you.

The units in Dunas Beach Resort, Cape Verde look set to return in the region of £10,000 per year; and if capital growth continues in the area, they should only cost me £2,000 to purchase outright!

If the circumstances above sound familiar, we can help. Find me at Fresh Invest Limited.

Or call me freephone on 0800 043 69 56.

What puts you off?

1. Price
2. Being able to let it out?
3. Security?
4. Flight times?
5. Guaranteed sunshine?

Well all may not be doom and gloom, there are a few overseas developers that have taken the step of building property that is packaged in such a way as to be affordable and relatively “hands off”.

Obviously the most important factor in purchasing an overseas property is price. Our most recent “fresh” investment is in Cape Verde, the units start from £72,000 and any prospective investor will need to find 35% deposit to purchase.

Where this development comes into its own is that you can release money from your existing home to fund the deposit or alternatively source a secured loan. The developer will then pay the interest on this loan for you until completion, at which time the interest will be added to your completion price.

An interesting point to note is that Cape Verde property has been increasing by 15% per annum over the last few years, even bucking the current financial crisis. If this continues you will have made 30% worth of profit on your investment before completion, as this is 2 years off. If you then want to secure a mortgage on your chosen unit, you can do so at 75% ltv of its valued price. Realistically you could find that you actually only need to find 5% deposit, as the other 30% will have been taken care of by the capital appreciation.

As far as letting the unit is concerned, you have the option of opting in or out of a rental pool, if you opt in, all management is taken care of, leaving you free to keep the profit. At the moment 5* hotels in cape verde are running at 95% occupancy, a recent study showed a 9.5% yield based on just a 65% occupancy. Best part, you get 5 weeks personal use per year! So now you have a holiday home that not only makes you significant profit each year but also only conceivably cost you £3,600!

Security? It’s a 5* resort so security will be of a maximum, their will be creche’s for your children and the entire community is gated. Flight times? if your from the UK your there in 5 hours, half the time of most Caribbean destinations! Guaranteed Sunshine? Yes, all year round dropping to 24 centigrade over Christmas! For more details of how we can source you a great investment contact Fresh Invest Ltd.

If you are looking at an up and coming emerging country that may make massive capital appreciation for you over the coming years i think Cape Verde is the place to be.

When investing myself i normally ask myself who would buy or rent the property i’m purchasing.

Well who would holiday in Cape Verde.

In my mind you have to submit to one of the following:

1. You want winter sun
2. You do not like 9 hour flights
3. Holiday is a rare commodity so you may only be able to take a week at a time
4. Nothing too in your face
5. Value for money

To be honest this has just summed up what i look for in a holiday.

Saying that, i consider myself an “average joe” without wild tastes.

Because of this i believe Cape Verde stands a real chance of taking off over the next few years.

I actually believe that the only reason it has not done so thus far is because of the economic crisis we have found ourselves in.

The reason for this, well do UK holiday makers really have a choice?

Unless you want to go to Egypt, where is close enough to get guaranteed sun in november through to february?

If flight costs continue to increase it’s going to all but price the UK holiday maker out of places such as the Caribbean and U.S.A.

With 1 beds at Dunas Beach Resort going from as little as £74,000 and only a 35% deposit needed it certainly looks inexpensive.

Add to this the fact that you can go for 5 weeks of the year and still command a 9.5% yield worst case, it looks even better.

The compound this with the fact that it’s 2 years off-plan and prices have statistically risen 15% per annum, meaning that in 2 years you may have 30% equity already built in!

Well i’m sold!