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!

The IMF have stated that they believe Cape Verde’s growth will continue through 2010 with inflation remaining low. This is good news for the islands that are already showing very strong growth indicators and are becoming a real investment hotspot.

The IMF have shown that they believe that “Real GDP” will be increasing at a rate of around 6-7% pa over the next 5 years (“Real GDP” is the size of an economy with allowances for inflation) meaning that the value of all goods and services produced or passing through the country will be increasing by 6-7% and therefore the size of the economy will be growing and people, on average, will be able to benefit from a better standard of living and companies can begin to grow, allowing more money to go back into the development of infrastructure.

Lots of the growth for these islands comes from increased Tourism and an increased level of investment in property and then infrastructure. Property prices on the island have been rising on average by around 15% per year.  The islands have remained a relatively undiscovered gem in comparison to the Caribbean and its northern counterpart, the Canary Islands, where property prices can be as much as 40% higher. They are only a 5 hour flight from the UK, have a time difference of only GMT – 2hours and benefit from 360 days of sunshine per year. Tourism figures have been increasing year on year and the island of Sal has seen increases of around 27.5% per year, as the only island with a truly international airport.

All of this information leads to a great location for investment in property serving the tourist industry. The investment we are presenting at Fresh Invest takes full advantage of the increasing tourism figures and can realistically provide investors with a net rental income of £12,133 per year for an investment as low as £32,294. All of this in a beachfront, 5* resort that gives purchasers 5 weeks free use per year.

To find out more about our investment in Cape Verde click here.

For the report by the IMF click here.

If your looking at property investment as an alternative to stocks and shares then the time may be ripe to invest.

Below are my top 5 places to invest.

1. Cape Verde:

When looking for an overseas investment opportunity the first thing you should always ask yourself is “would i go there”. If the answer is no, the chances are your not in the minority.

The next question is, if you would go there, why?

For me Cape Verde offers a unique proposition, 360 days worth of sun that you can access via a 5 hour flight.
Combine these 2 points and it narrows the field down considerably; quite honestly the competitors i’ve either been to or i’d never want to.

The reason for this is as follows, not only does Cape Verde have a Caribbean climate but also a laid back lifestyle unlike many of its competitors.

The Prices are still relatively low compared to the likes of Tenerife and some Caribbean islands, this is mainly due to the infancy of the islands that make up Cape Verde.

This will not be the case for long, already some major 5 star hotel operators are building on the islands of Sal and Boavista, this will increase tourism and put more pressure on Airline operators to increase their flights.

One such 5* hotel operator is Sol Melia – the worlds largest hotel resort operator, they are taking over the running of our Dunas Beach Resort investment opportunity.

Conclusion:

Risk = Medium

Returns = High

Yields = High

Minimum cost to invest = £33,640.

2. Barbados:

If you have deeper pockets abd want slightly less risk then Barbados may be for you, offering the true 5* lifestyle with prices to boot.

The reason i think this is a good investment is that even though prices are high, you can still achieve yields in excess of 10%, as witnessed in our opportunity on the West Coast Barbados.

Yields this good along with the knowledge that you are investing in the holiday makers favourite Caribbean island means that occupancy rates should remain strong. Most other Caribbean islands are so far behind that no threat to this crown seems anywhere near appearing.

Demand is Barbados is so high it has become the place for celebrities to have second homes, as proved by a host of premier league footballers, golfers and tv personalities.

Conclusion:

Risk = Low

Returns = Medium

Yields = High

Minimum cost to invest = £64,990.

3. Spain – Barcelona:

I love Barcelona, its my favourite city by a long ways.

Sea, Sun, Football, Great Beaches, Great Nightlife andf now a grand prix! I don’t know another city that offers so much.

I also think its a bit of a hidden gem, 1 bed apartments on the outskirts of Barcelona can be picked up for around €160,000 and if you can rent them for 40 weeks of the year you should be on for close to a 8% yield. Not bad for one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world.

Demand will always be strong because of the sheer size and climate of Barca.

Combine this with the fact that house prices in Barcelona have hardly been effected by the global financial crisis and you know that values will remain robust in all but the most dire of circumstances.

Conclusion:

Risk = Low

Returns = Medium

Yields = Medium

Minimum cost to invest = £27,111

Too see what numbers 4 and 5 are, click here!

Investors are of course and rightly so, more tentative about investing overseas because of the reputation that some overseas developers have given the market when they, ran out of money or built a development that was subpar and then scarpered before the investor could so much as ask for their money back. But the thing that attracted investors to the overseas market in the first place is that chance of finding the property in a location that will provide you with capital growth and a large positive cash flow to line your pockets every month, with the added benefit of a free holiday.

Now we carry out a full due diligence test on all of our developments and our due diligence test on overseas property is second to none. However without any request from ourselves or our investors, we have just received one of the best partners for our due diligence tests that money could buy. The hotel operator!

When you purchase an investment property in an overseas development that is due to be run by a hotel operator, as soon as the agreement is made the developer is not now building to the standard of the investor, they are now building to the very high standard of a hotel operator and if they don’t, they risk losing the operator. Not only will the standard of your property be of the upmost quality but you now have somebody with a large web presence to promote your apartment for you, meaning that your apartment or villa is tenanted as often as possible and you are therefore provided with a handsome return. The hotel operators will of course also carry out very strict due diligence on the location to make sure that it is in a location where occupancy can be maximised and therefore your return can be maximised which will, in turn, add value to your investment.

We have 2 overseas developments that fit this bill exactly at present:

Dunas Beach Resort

The developer of Dunas Beach Resort has recruited “Sol Melia” to run the resort upon completion. Sol Melia are the largest resort operator in the world and are constantly winning awards for their dominance in the market and the quality of their resorts. The build cost of this resort in relation to any others on island is double and they have already completed one resort on the island and the results speak for themselves.

West Coast Property, Barbados

The developer of our properties on the West Coast of Barbados has recruited Mango Bay Resorts to carry out the hotel operations on site. Mango Bay constantly receive fantastic reviews for their operations on Barbados and their average occupancy is 80% which, in our resort, would give investors a return of up to 23% per year! The developer also offers purchasers the chance to help with the design of their apartment on line throughout the construction period.

Ladies and Gentlemen this is the future of overseas property investment!

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

We thought prospective investors may like to hear what previous buyers had to say about this investment.

Mrs Carole Winters – Shrewsbury.

“In 2009 we approached Fresh Invest initially looking for a holiday home, we had a budget in mind but were aware that we were stretching ourselves, however we knew that if we did not buy now then we may never have!

Over the next month or so i had various conversations with Dan regarding various properties in various locations. In the end we settled on Cape Verde and Dunas Beach Resort. We loved the idea that we could invest in a good size 1 bed apartment with just £32,000. We were also very interested in the equity release scheme which mean’t that we used £30,000 worth of equity in our home and topped up the £2,000 ourselves!

Seeing as we had set aside money to buy the flat, to know that we could use equity in our house was a massive relief to us.

Dan gave us a financial breakdown on the apartment based on comparables in other developments showing that we should look to make at least £6,000 per year after all costs including mortgage payments. He also showed us what we could mortgage the property for on completion, at the moment it looks as if we should actually be able to pull out all of our deposit on completion!

We have decided to enter into the hotel agreement meaning that Sol Melia will take care of all rentals ensuring we get the best rates for our apartment. We also get 5 weeks use of the apartment for free.

Since then we have found out that Dunas Beach has been upgraded to a 5* resort which was great news.

I have to admit the investment was a little daunting in the first instance but once we got our heads around it the process started to make sense.

Now we are looking forward to a lovely apartment that has cost us £32,000 that  we didn’t even know we had and receiving 5 weeks use and £6,000 per year! thanks Fresh Invest!”

….Just one investor that took advantage of the various money saving options on Dunas Beach Resort!

With the credit crisis hitting most, holidaymakers are looking closer to home. Spain and the Canary Islands have both seen increases in tourism as well as many locations in the UK. However, if you really want year round sun in a secure location Cape Verde has to be at the top of the list!

Now Cape Verde is looking to boost tourism by implementing a Tourism Strategy Plan which will aim to increase tourism by 500,000 visitors by 2013.

Between the year 2000 and 2008 the total holidaymakers visiting Cape Verde rose by 11.4%!

This plan has been given the green light by ministers and looks set to boost tourism sector employment by as much as 60%!

This will obviously have a knock on effect for holiday apartments and villas, many average builders have fallen by the way side leaving some select developers to take up the baton. None more so than The Resort Group and it’s Dunas Beach Resort, the first developer in Cape Verde to sign up with a 5* developer. Sol Melia is the largest resort hotel group on the planet and their 5* hotels are widely recognised as some of the best in the world.

The best part is that you can purchase an apartment on this select development from just £72,326.

Deposits needed are just 35% so just £27,986 gets you an apartment in a 5* resort in Cape Verde; due to be the best hotel resort on the island! Check out Dunas Beach Resort Now!

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

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.

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.