If you are interested in moving to the UK and have investment funds of £2m+ the best option is the Tier 1 Investor Visa. There are also various other options as detailed on the UK Government website. You will obviously need to take proper legal advice on this and we work closely with Sanjay Kalra Associates of New Delhi who can provide all necessary assistance.
Beresford Properties Limited (owned by myself and my wife) has been trading for 20+ years and has a property portfolio in Brighton and the surrounding area. We also manage properties, including blocks of flats, for other people. The Accounts of Beresford Properties Limited are available here.
For many years my property development skills were concentrated on the healthcare market through my healthcare development business United Healthcare Limited where I was involved in projects from £3m to over £100m, but due to a change of UK Government policy that market is no longer available.
As a qualified civil engineer and experienced property developer I have been looking for an appropriate specialist development niche to concentrate on for the next five years.
The UK Government has recently announced new planning regulations to encourage the construction of new homes under permitted development. One of these is the development of up to two additional storeys of new flats above existing blocks of flats. The Statutory Instrument permitting this is available here.
Although we are looking at many development opportunities I have identified this airspace extension as being a good specialist development niche for us.
The basic legal structure is that we either (a) buy the blocks of flats at their ground rent investment values (i.e. less than £50k per block), or (b) take leases of the airspace above the blocks (with an initial payment of a similar amount). Then we obtain planning permission and develop the blocks giving the existing block owners a pre-agreed share of the development profits.
Each development is undertaken using an SPV, with a first charge over the block being available as security for the development finance.
We are working on a number of these projects at the moment and the funds to buy or lease airspace above some of the shortlisted blocks, but do not have sufficient funding in place to take advantage of all the opportunities currently available to us. Whilst there continues to be little competition in this market we want to take advantage of this window of opportunity to buy/lease as many of the available & viable local blocks as we can. Once the purchases/leases have completed we will obtain planning permission etc.
The construction of the new flats above each block will then follow when the post-Covid property market indicates that it is viable to proceed with construction. There would also be scope to sell on some of the blocks at a profit with the benefit of planning permission.
There are several financing possibilities that we are interested in discussing:
- To enable us to buy/lease as many viable blocks as possible we are looking for loan financing to enable the purchase/lease and planning etc costs of a number of blocks. We are suggesting that this financing is structured as loans to our development company, which will be buying/leasing these properties. This will leave the first charges over the blocks available as security for the development funding.
- In due course we will be looking for development finance secured by first charges over the blocks to enable us to develop the additional storeys of flats.
- We may also be looking for mezzanine financing to the extent that the development finance is insufficient to cover all the build costs.
- We are also open to discussing all and any other viable financing proposals.
As a qualified and experienced chartered accountant, I have learned that trying to pay a share of profits, or percentage overages to investors can lead to misunderstandings when these come to be paid. We will be making all the key decisions and will be taking all the risk on whether they are the right or wrong decisions. In these circumstances we believe it is fair and reasonable for investors to receive a pre-agreed fixed return on their investment rather than a share of profits or sale proceeds. This leaves the risk of cost over-runs, and market forces etc with us, which I believe to be a fair arrangement.
Although most of our focus is currently on the airspace developments above flats, we are also looking at a number of other viable opportunities. We are offered properties almost daily, and have a team of advisers who work with us in selecting and progressing the best opportunities, where we can minimise risk and maximise returns.
In addition to the development funding requirements we are also looking to expand our investment portfolio. We are offered good quality “off-market” investment properties on a regular basis and if you are interested in providing long term investment loans to assist us with this aspect of our business we can give you security over the relevant property and agree a long term loan agreement with you.
I always work with investors on a personal one-to-one basis to ensure that I structure arrangements that work best for them in every way and fit with the specific requirements of our individual projects.
Each arrangement is individually agreed with the investor(s) and I am committed to developing long term profitable relationships with all of our investors.
If you would like any further info or a chat about any of the above please contact me on mike@beresfordproperties.co.uk or call me on +447900915432. I am also on WhatsApp so look for me there.
