Property investment

AN INTRODUCTION TO PROPERTY INVESTMENT

It perhaps comes as no surprise that a significant percentage of the most successful people in Britain today have highly diversified business empires, with assets and interests in finance, sport, media, transport and technology, and many other markets. The Duke of Westminster, Roman Abramovich, the Rausing family and Lakshmi Mittal are amongst the most well-known billionaires, and although they have spread their assets far and wide, a significant proportion of their portfolio is held in investment land and investment property.

On a smaller scale, more and more individual investors are adding investment land and property to their existing portfolios of stocks, shares, gold and other forms of investment. Yet for the individual investor this is a relatively recent occurence; five years ago, the only way to build a portfolio was through the aforementioned "traditional" investment vehicles, with investment land and property being regarded as "alternative investment".

This is at least partly because in recent years, stock market returns and interest rates have been significantly lower than they were say ten years ago. Many investors have started to realise that they are in fact living in their best performing asset, namely their home. Extrapolating this idea to it's logical conclusion, it is possible to own or have interests invested in investment property of different types and in different locations around the country as a sizeable chunk of their investment portfolio.

But for many smaller investors, property investment can be a daunting prospect. While there are armies of IFAs almost queuing up to sell you life insurance there are very few advisors that you can to go for a thorough and impartial understanding in how to actively build and manage an investment property portfolio. So many investors have discovered that they can get impartial, free general advice from web sites specialising in different forms of investment, and this is where we aim to enter the fray as it were, providing a growing resource of independent advice for impartial experts.