£5m TO SPEND?

Here's an extract from a very focused interview I just read online.


Question: If you had £5m to invest in commercial property tomorrow, what would you buy?


One response was particularly impressive I thought.


Len Rosso, Head of Logistics & Industrial at Colliers:
I would start by purchasing a site for development as a small multi-let industrial scheme. These are currently in demand and difficult to acquire as a standing investment. For this, I would pay around £1 million with a build cost of circa £600,000 as once fully let it would be worth substantially more hopefully.

I would also acquire five smaller industrial warehouse units at around £300,000 each, ideally brand new or modern, which had been sold over the last 12 months at a discount due to the lack of liquidity within market. When the market improves the capital value of these would go up, but in the meantime a prospective yield of circa seven per cent still looks very attractive.

I would also purchase a mixed-use development site and then apply for commercial usage planning with retail on the ground floor and, ideally, residential above. This would be in a good M25 town or alternatively within one of the London boroughs. I believe this could be purchased for in the region of £1.5 million and once you have achieved planning the value could be raised significantly.

Finally, I would look for small retail/offices within town centres which would have potential residential use above ground floor, spending up to £1 million on these or potentially one unit.


I like the last option - especially the number of pubs that are coming onto the market for conversion to offices below, residential above. So there you have it, after the Lottery this week click back here and take Len's advice. Or not, as you wish.


Full article is here


Good luck.