Obelisk Client Talks to The Sunday Times

Acclaimed property editor, Peter Conradi, recently reported on the latest trends in property investment with first hand experience from an Obelisk client.

Eric Potts from West Sussex began his quest for property investment in the UK before moving into the overseas property investment market.

During his interview, Mr Potts told The Sunday Times that since picking up his first buy-to-let property in London’s Docklands, back in 2002, he has amassed a portfolio of 41 properties, in Britain and abroad, with an estimated value of well over £8 million.

Mr Potts funded most of his purchases after selling a family run website - Jobsite - in the UK and now owns property in countries such as Latvia, Turkey, Brazil, Northern Cyprus and Bulgaria.

Mr Potts said, "My fiancée keeps a spreadsheet showing how many properties I have and what their status is. It’s very reassuring every couple of weeks to take a look at it. It makes you feel good and you sleep well. There is always money in property; you just have to feel in your stomach that it’s a good deal."

Peter Conradi of The Sunday Times reported, "Potts' portfolio, bought largely through Spanish-based Obelisk International, is considerably larger than that of the average property investor. But his journey from Britain and then on to the emerging markets of central and Eastern Europe and beyond is a familiar one."

Looking at both the overseas and domestic UK property markets, Mr Conradi’s article showed that even the yield tables from Knight Frank and Hometrack clearly indicate that overseas property investment far out-weighs the UK property market.

Mr Conradi highlighted, "Since the introduction of specialist buy-to-let mortgages by British lenders in the mid-1990s, hundreds of thousands of investors have turned to bricks and mortar as an apparently safe and easily understandable alternative to pensions or other financial investments.

According to the Association of Rental Letting Agents, the buy-to-let market in the UK is now worth at least £150 billion. Investors have also become far more adventurous; as the market in much of the UK slowed in 2003 and 2004, many looked abroad in search of the capital gains and yields no longer achievable at home."

Liam Bailey, Head of Research at Knight Frank commented, "It’s very hard to find easy money in the market in the UK. You’ve got to search areas that will outperform the average, since the average won’t be good enough for most investors. It’s like picking stocks rather than buying the index. You have got to look for a place where the local market dynamic is changing dramatically, perhaps because of regeneration or improvements in infrastructure."

Further extracts from The Sunday Times article showed many overseas countries and cities are indeed performing well. Knight Frank’s global property price index confirmed that many parts of the world "are still rising at a considerable rate and, in some cases, have even been accelerating."

Mr Conradi adds, "…the list is headed by Bulgaria, where prices rose 34% last year, compared with 17.4% in 2006 — although the sharpest growth has been not on the Black Sea coast or in the mountains, both of which are suffering from oversupply, but in Sofia, the capital, where property inflation reached 50%."