Open House, August 2015

The Open House series

This is the second in our Open House series, which shares data every month about our community, investment performance and measures of liquidity in our Resale market. The series reflects our commitment to transparency and we hope you find it useful.

All those that are signed up with us will continue to receive these Open House posts and other key updates. If you’re not already signed up, click below to do so:

Our Investors

Since our public launch in January, nearly 3,500 investors have started to build their property portfolio with us.

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In that time, investors have invested £7.55m with us, £6.37m of which is in New Listings, and £1.18m in Resale purchases. The Resale activity is particularly encouraging, providing investors a potential option to exit whenever they choose (in addition to the 5 yearly exit protections). We have more on Resale trading volumes and liquidity later in this post.

Investor portfolio size

Note: Data displayed includes all investors who made an investment before 30th August 2015.

Our investors have portfolios ranging significantly in size. 9% of investors have invested more than £5,000 and 37% more than £500. Our largest investor portfolios are well over £100,000 in size. Since investors typically invest regular amounts, those investors that joined Property Partner earlier tend to have invested greater amounts.

Our Properties

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Note: Properties in order of launch, from left (first launched) to right. Data correct at 30th August 2015.

Investors are coming back again and again, with 65% holding multiple properties with us. New investors represent 19% of all investors across the last 5 properties: more than 80% of investments in those properties were made by those who had invested with us previously and represent ‘repeat’ business.

Number of properties users have invested in

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Note: Includes all investors who made an investment before 30th August 2015.

31% of investors have invested in over three properties, and 6% have invested in over ten properties. Diversification is important, as it provides some protection against volatility of returns.

Rental Income

We have met – or exceeded – forecast dividend payments on all properties to date.

Forecast vs Actual Dividends

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(Excludes properties that haven’t been on the platform long enough to be paid a dividend. Properties highlighted green have exceeded forecasts).

In some cases, we have managed to secure higher rent than originally forecast when the properties were listed on the platform. This will result in higher dividends for investors in these properties.

Forecast dividends for properties whose first rental payment is in September

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Properties highlighted green have exceeded forecasts.
Note that the first dividend for our Scholars Way property is paid in October, so it is not included here.

In some instances, where properties were acquired vacant, it took us longer to find tenants than anticipated. As this was often down to us being highly selective, we chose to fund any such gaps ourselves rather than let this impact dividend payments. Whilst we do not guarantee this practice, we anticipate continuing it for the foreseeable future.

Property Valuations

Our properties are carefully selected by Robert Weaver, who is our Director of Property and one of the UK’s leading residential property experts, with a view to delivering capital growth as well as rental income.

All of our properties are independently valued by an RICS qualified Chartered Surveyor at purchase, and also every 3 months thereafter to provide a valuation update for that individual property. In between these quarterly valuations, we use the Land Registry’s House Price Index (HPI) to update valuations. All revaluations occur on the 5th of the month, or the nearest working day thereafter (for September it falls on the 7th). Bear in mind that the House Price Index (HPI) is not indicative of the individual property, but of the area in general and can be volatile month to month, so the Quarterly Chartered Surveyor valuations are a better guide to the specific property’s value.

Latest Valuation for each property

In grey – HPI based valuations. In black – Quarterly Chartered Surveyor desktop valuations.

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The above valuations feed into the Latest Share Valuation for each property, and fully account for purchase costs and other items. You can download an Excel tracker of the historic share price movements here. The Excel tracker is updated monthly and will be integrated into the platform in the months to come.

Total returns

Property is a ‘total returns’ product, whose performance combines income (in the form of dividends, as above) and capital gains (from valuation movements, also as above).

If you had invested equally in all of our properties to date, you would have earned an annualised total return of over 15% (after Property Partner fees and all costs, but before investors personal taxation).

This figure is calculated to the end of July, and available monthly in arrears after each revaluation and dividend payment on the 5th (or nearest working day thereafter). You can download the data behind the returns figure here.

The Resale market

Here we share key measures about the Resale market, including time to sell, trading volumes, and a download of trading activity allowing you to perform your own analysis.

The average time to sell shares, provided they are not priced at a premium to the Latest Share Valuation, is 4 hours. So whilst we do not guarantee buyers for shares in the Resale market – ‘reasonably priced’ shares tend to sell quickly. We also have 5 yearly exit protection mechanics, which you can read more about here.

Trading volumes have been meaningful: 18% of the total property portfolio has traded in the Resale market. This figure varies substantially by property, with ‘older’ properties (those funded many months ago) generally seeing more trading volume than more recent properties, since they have had a longer time in which to trade. Our first property has been more than 90% traded on the Resale market already (i.e. over 900,000 of it’s 1,000,0000 shares have traded in the Resale market).

The property-by-property data is below, in order of property launch (with the earliest launched properties at the top of the table):

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We have also prepared a full download of Resale trading activity which you can access here. This spreadsheet allows you to review trading by property, including the trade date, trade price and premium to Latest Share Valuation.

In Summary

Since our January launch, Property Partner has helped nearly 3,500 investors to build their personal property portfolios. Investor confidence keeps growing, with some users having already invested over £100,000 with us.

Our properties have consistently delivered rental incomes at or above forecast. Capital gains have also been strong. The result is that an equal investment across all properties will have delivered an annualised total return of over 15% (after Property Partner fees and all costs, but before investors’ personal taxation. Updated monthly).

We have already seen 18% of property shares trade on the Resale market and for our first-funded property, which has had longer to trade, more than 90% has already traded. The length of time taken to sell shares in the Resale market varies according to the price at which shares are offered. For shares that have been offered at a ‘fair price’ (in other words, with no premium to the Latest Share Valuation), the weighted average time to sell in the Resale market has to date been just 4 hours.

We will continue to share information and data, to give existing and prospective investors a clear view on which to base their decisions.

And as always, you can view our latest opportunities for investment by clicking below:
 

If you would like to provide any comments on this article, or offer your time for a call to provide general feedback, please call us on +44 (0)20 3696 5600 or drop us an e-mail on hello@propertypartner.co

We’d love to speak with you.



Important Note
The value of your investment can go down as well as up. Gross Rent and Dividends may be lower than estimated. You may have to wait until the next five year anniversary of the property’s listing on the Property Partner platform for an exit event. See Key Risks for further information. Property Partner does not provide investment advice and any general information is provided to help you make your own informed decisions. If you are unsure whether an investment is suitable for you, you should contact a financial adviser for advice. This financial promotion is made by London House Exchange Limited trading as Property Partner™, which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (firm reference number 613499).