Jennifer's blog

This company has aquired the leases to a number of Oil Fields in Oklahoma and will be offering up to 250 wells across several projects. They will be launching the investment details in the next few weeks which is likely to confirm the price per Well at around $110,000 with the option to take a 30% or 10% share.

Foreclosures still a problem across the US, as the number of new foreclosure filings rose by 14% in December, which is usually a slow month for foreclosures, new filings climbed to affect more than 349,000 homes which is an increase of 15% from 2008’s levels in the same month.

By far the largest number of all foreclosure filings, more than 50% occurred in California, Florida, Arizona and Illinois, which means these states which led the boom are still suffering badly.

Until recently the collective view has been that property in Australia, like that in the UK is overpriced. Why then are associates in Australia reporting a strong growth of interest from US and UK Investors?

This interest seems to be confined to the upper end of the market; prices at the top end had slipped backward during 2008 – 9 some by as much as 50%! A lot of downward pressure came from a serious tightening in bank lending practices with LTV’s of around 60% being offered many local buyers just found it impossible to get into top end property.

With the recession over is now the time to look at broadening an investment portfolio with a dabble in a property fund

If perfect vision is 20/20, then a great investment is 25/25, that’s £25,000 investment and 25% Return. Of you need 20/20 vision to spot the wrinkles in the small print of the investment proposals.

A 25/25 passed over our desk the other day so without much ado I sent our Investments Director round to their offices to push the flesh and check it all out.

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

•100% Financed – Guaranteed Rental - Cash flow positive.

As the recession bites so do the scammers, in 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,

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

A whole apartment block or sale for €27,000 in Saxony, there must be a catch..

During the past 18 months if mentioned Florida property to anyone it would go very quiet, almost as quiet as it goes if announce in the Golf Club bar that you intend to Labour again….

I happened across an old blog of mine about how Florida was the must have place to own a property, I mused in 2007 that the combination of great value property, world class attractions and golf plus 50 million tourists every year made a buying a property in Florida irresistible.

So it's over at long lastToday a flying saucer landed in Trafalgar Square and the Alien stepped out and said “live long and prosper” and that was it, the recession was over.

The newspapers reported this event with a special late edition which reported our leading politicians waving triumphantly at the crowds gathering outside Parliament waving union flags and cheering whilst many young ladies queued to kiss a policeman.