Overseas opportunities
Andrea Kirkby identifies some interesting possibilities in the overseas property market.
B
ritish buyers piled into overseas property during the boom years, whether it was villas in Spain, or flats
on the Turkish coast, ski chalets in Bulgaria or condominiums in Florida. But the credit crunch gave the market a nasty scare, and also made finance scarce. Nearly five years later, is there still a market for selling overseas property to British buyers? According to Giles Beswick of
Select Property, there is, but it’s a very different market from what it used to be. While in the last twelve months he’s seen customers coming back to the market, “with interest rates at half a per cent, they’re saying what else can you do with your money?” The off-plan market where Select started out has shrunk dramatically; it’s resale properties that make the market. Ray Withers, director of Property
Frontiers, says the UK now has attractions for yield investors, particularly in asset classes such as hotels and student accommodation.
40 MARCH 2012 PROPERTYdrum Above:
Florida offers bargains all over again.
Right:
Bulgaria, perhaps not.
Below:
Istanbul has ‘strong
fundamentals’.
But he believes other countries should not be overlooked. “Overseas property investment is as important as ever,” he says. Portfolio diversification, for instance, remains an important objective for many wealthier investors. The markets which are desirable
are no longer those which dominated the final years of the boom. Ray Withers picks out the USA, particularly Florida, Boston and Las Vegas, from a value perspective, and also mentions Istanbul and the Far East, as well as Central and South America, and non-euro European destinations such as Poland. But he says there are also competing new asset classes available, besides residential property, such as bamboo, an investment Property Frontiers believes will do well. Eurozone property is a tricky sell
right now. While property investors might not have been too worried about currency movements back in the boom, now that the problems of the eurozone lead the financial news
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