Chris Richards's blog

With Oil prices almost certainly on the way up for the foreseeable future wouldn't it nice if you could set up your own hedge fund that meant the more the Oil price went up the more money you'd get paid.

We have just taken on this new investment product in which you can invest from around £3000 in an Oil Well and get paid a Royalty of 3.5% of the price every barrel of Oil it produces. Recently Oil has been around the $50 per barrel which means for every barrel you well produces you get £1.75, let’s call it a £1. Today (16th November 2009) it is $71 so that’s about £1.50

In this world of low interest rates, there’s a lot of people searching for low risk investments that can generate not a huge return, but a good return. Investments that generate income with property at that their core are many and varied, and frankly range from the dull to the downright ridiculous. For this blog I’ve decided to have a look what’s what an what’s hot. 

The most common property related investments we see in the current post credit crunch scramble are

As the recession bites so do the scammers, if fact it sometimes feels like the only people making any money are the banks and the scammers.

I don’t now what it is about a web site like ours that attracts scammers, from the quantity of emails/enquiries we get perhaps they think must be stupid to be in this business at this time or just plain desperate. Here’s one that came in the other day that made me chuckle

Dear Mr or Madam,

How are you?

It has been a while.

Why is Turkey bubbling to the top of the “where’s worth closer look” discussions between property investors these days? Well if you nip and get your atlas and study closely the strategic location of Turkey, it's slap bang in the middle of major trading blocks of the Eastern and Western economies, no wonder the EU are encouraging Turkey to throw it’s economic chips in with theirs! 

If the reports coming out of the 7CI creditors meeting are true, and I stress “if” then it is surely a sad day for our Industry, and I for one hope that the rumours that client money has been used to support the business transpires to be a bit of gossip mongering rather than a fact.  

A fall of 16-20% in UK Property values and very low interest rates is stirring UK based investors into action, but surely when you combine these bargain basement prices with weakness of Sterling against the Dollar and Euro there will never be a better time for Overseas Property Investors to make a move into the UK property market.

Our America’s expert advisor Simon has just returned from a property inspection trip to Panama and he is raving about what he saw and learned.

As the pound homes in on parity with the Euro inevitably property priced in Euros looks expensive when compared to its price 6 months ago, however I sometimes wonder if some of our investors have a crystal balls?  

New research by Cater Allen Private Bank, part of Santander suggests that over three million British Citizens are likely to buy a property overseas within the next two years as economic conditions in the UK make strong returns for other types of investment less likely

Its survey of UK clients found that some 2.3 million people already own a property abroad, with around 500,000, or less than 25%, having bought for investment purposes.