Llana Beach Hotel and Spa – The Resort Group’s Latest Project
Following the massive success of Tortuga Beach and Dunas Beach Resort, The Resort Group will launch Llana Beach Hotel and Spa early next year.
The Resort Group seem to be transforming the face of the island of Sal in Cape Verde single handed!
As you will remember, Tortuga and Dunas Beach Resort offered guaranteed returns on deposits, fully managed properties in a 5* Hotel Resort.
With Dunas and Tortuga Beach Resorts, investors could choose from purchasing fully in cash, whereby they would benefit from an additional 15% discount, or deposit options of both 35% and 45% with a mortgage on completion to cover the remainder. Investors could even invest with an existing pension through a SIPP.
Many of our clients decided to utilise redundant pensions that were not giving them the returns they had expected, they spoke to our SIPP provider who moved various pension pots into one Self Invested Personal Pension scheme.
Payment plans on the new resort are likely to be just as innovative as before, so we are waiting with baited breath!
As with all Overseas Property Investments it pays to invest early and benefit from the capital growth that this will bring with it, as more and more investors jump on board through the build period, prices will often rise quickly.
For further details on overseas property investment opportunities please contact us!
We at Fresh Invest are happy to be a main agent for The Resort Group and as such, will be offering Llana Beach Hotel and Spa, the moment it becomes available… so register your interest with us ASAP!
SIPP’s, The leaders debate and the £59 pension
After watching the leader’s debate last night, one thing stuck in my mind, it wasn’t any particular party policy (at the moment it seems they all have flaws somewhere) it was… the poor old lady that is currently having to live on £59 per week as her state pension!
The thing that I find the worst about this is that, we all know that by putting our pension in the hands of the government, we are never truly in control. I, like many others, like to be in control of my finances and this is where I would like to make the case for the Self Invested Personal Pension (SIPP) known.
Not only do I like to know how much of a pension I will have to live on come retirement age, but I would also like to be able to increase this amount which will either mean me retiring earlier than originally planned or living a more prosperous retirement period. The only way you can truly take control is by utilising the money in the form of a SIPP. There are fantastic benefits available for people putting money into a SIPP such as attracting tax relief at your tax rate; this means that if someone is taxed at 40% the government will add 40% to any contributions they make towards their SIPP!
Another advantage to a SIPP is the ability to borrow up to the value of 50% of your SIPP to increase your buying power this means; if an investor has a pension value of £100,000 they can then borrow a further £50,000 against this, giving a purchasing power of £150,000.
I believe that the only real way to have a secure and happy retirement is to use a SIPP to invest in property, be it in the UK or Overseas. The returns available in our Cape Verde Investment for example, show that if an investor had a pension value of around £84,000 they could increase this figure to around the £300,000 mark in 10 years, and still have an apartment providing a net profit per year of £12,000! This is based on pessimistic figures, assuming that growth isn’t as good as it has proven to be over the past few years.
We think now is a fantastic time to invest in any property with your SIPP, especially those in Cape Verde; which is a real emerging country currently receiving 15% growth per annum and tourism increases of around 27.5% pa expected to top 1,000,000 per year by 2015.
For more information on investing in property with the use of your pension including unlocking frozen pensions contact info@freshinvest.co.uk
Invest In UK farmland for financial security!
Farmland as an alternative investment is a relatively “untapped” market at present.
Why is this? Well investing in farmland often means that you will have to be of a high net worth so unless you can scrape together a few million pounds it is… I’m afraid to say out of most individuals reach.
This is because farmland is currently selling at around £5,000 per acre. This doesn’t sound too bad but farms are normally sold in massive lot sizes.
Why would you want to invest in farmland?
Firstly let’s look at what the prices of agricultural farmland are governed by:
- Increasing demand from house builders as the population of the world increases.
- Increasing demand from farmers that need to provide food for this growing population.
- Increasing demand from power stations that need to decrease their non renewable resource consumption to help the UK stay in Line with the Kyoto Protocol.
- Decreasing resources as more and more planning permission is granted for new homes, renewable power stations and renewable energy projects such as wind farms. The supply of bare agricultural land is running out and one thing is for sure we cannot create more!
The cumulative result of this has been values increasing by 15% year upon year.
Farmland is something which every human being needs to live. In its purest form it provides us with a means to grow food and rear cattle therefore providing the means to eat for the whole population.
A quote from H.R.H Prince Charles recently in the Richard Dimbleby lecture read “That which sustains us must itself, also be sustained” This means that the whole ecosystem of this world needs to be restored at the same or at a faster rate than it is diminished. The Amazonian rainforest alone releases 50 billion tonnes of water vapour into the atmosphere every day! This makes our climate cool and makes this planet inhabitable. Deforestation is currently operating at a rate of; the size of a football pitch every 4 seconds! One of the great problems with deforestation is the rate at which it impacts on our environment. Not only does all of the CO2 sunk by the trees get released into the atmosphere when they are burnt. But there are now less natural CO2 sinkers in the environment and when trees are not sinking CO2, they are not producing oxygen, the very air we breathe.
Our reliance upon nature’s non-renewable resources is 25% greater than nature can self sustain. Fossil fuels such as coal, petroleum and natural gas are being used at too fast a rate. The sustainability of these fossil fuels is something which is being tackled by the Kyoto Protocol.
The Kyoto Protocol is an obligation made by all countries to cut their use of non renewable resources by 80% by 2050. Here is where we can come back to farmland and the growing market that is renewable crops and the land underpinning it. As Power stations throughout the UK start to follow the trend and invest heavily in harnessing the power of renewable resources, this may well drive up the prices of green energy crops such as Miscanthus grass which is a co-burner to be used with coal in the production of electricity. Now this may well increase your annual yield through higher revenues, but with this, the land itself should increase in value as it is now worth more to the investor.
So let’s recap
- The price of farmland is steadily increasing as demand increases and supply decreases.
- Farmland value has increased on average by 15% year on year.
- It is a diminishing resource that needs to be sustained.
- It will help the UK contribute to their Kyoto protocol obligations.
- More and more people are starting to see the benefits of being “Armchair Farmers”.
- There is around £11 billion of borrowing secured on assets worth over £170 billion, excluding stocks and growing crops.
- It is the foundation of the built environment!
Remember the secret to success is to balance your portfolio. Where better than UK farmland?
Could you live on £500 a month?
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.
