1st February 2008
Bucks Free Press - In the right spot at the right price
The apartment block being sold in Wycombe town centre, from the company set up by Anthea Turner's husband is two thirds sold.
Sixty per cent of the 25 flats have been reserved since they came in the market last October.
Prices of the remaining two bedroomed pads range from £217,000 - £263,000.
The company's UK sales director Jason Jeggo says the success just goes to prove there's still a healthy demand for good quality buy-to-let properties in the right spot at the right price.
The Wycombe flats are being sold to landlords on an 'already let' basis.
Under the terms of the contract, purchasers undertake to lease the apartments back to the developer for the first two years and receive 15 per cent of the purchase price, equivalent to a rent of 7.5 per cent a year.
Bovey, chief executive and major shareholder in Imagine Homes, is a former market trader turned millionaire entrepreneur.
He founded his property development company in 2003, three years after his marriage to the former Blue Peter presenter.
In between filming commitments for her recent role as domestic superwomen in the TV show Perfect Housewife, she designed a furniture package available as an optional extra to investors so that properties built by her husband’s company can begin earning for the landlords as soon as the builders hand over the keys.
Bovey says he chose Wycombe for his latest scheme because it will "soon be one of the hottest new shopping and leisure destinations in the country."
The £500m redevelopment of the town centre is expected by retail analysts to Propel Wycombe 51 places up the UK shopping centre rankings.
Bovey had no previous experience of the property industry other than buying houses when he embarked on his buy-to-let venture.
He told an interviewer in 2006 : "I wanted to devise a scheme that takes the hassle out of buy-to-let and gives a comfy blanket to the novice."
"We do that by finding the tenants, checking their credentials, collecting the rent and buying developments in good locations."