27th March 2006
THE TROUBLE with dipping your toe in the property-investment waters is that if you don't know what you are doing it is very easy to get drenched, no matter how much money you have. Buying a property is the easy part; furnishing it, finding a tenant and maintaining the flat are what takes the time and causes the aggravation.
Marc Lafferty said that "there is an opening in the market for a company to make it easy for people to get into property investment" and he feels that Imagine Homes, for whom he is the group sales and marketing director, can fill that gap.
Imagine Homes was founded three years ago by Grant Bovey, who is better known to most people as Mr Anthea Turner and Ricky Gervais's punchbag. The company has been buying up developments across the country, a block at a time, and sells them on to people with the enticement that they will pay them a "guaranteed 15 per cent rental over two years". This is delivered in two chunks, half on completion of the sale and half a year later.
Great, you might think, that saves me the trouble of finding a tenant. Lafferty pointed out that the rental yield is better than you will find on the open market, although you also have to factor in that 10 per cent of the rent has to be paid back to Imagine Homes as a management charge. Imagine Homes make their profit on the difference between what they pay for the house off-plan and what they sell it for when built.
Cynics might suggest that Imagine Homes make their money by overcharging on their properties by approximately 15 per cent, and then giving this amount back to customers over a two-year period. But every property is subject to an independent valuation to protect customers, while Imagine Homes' business centres on their significant buying power - ensuring that their portfolio of properties are sold at market value.
You also have to buy a furniture package from them, which saves on the hassle of a trip to Ikea but restricts your options somewhat. Imagine Furnishings, their sister company, will kit out a one-bedroom flat for £7,000 and a two-bedroom flat for £9,000.
All well and good, but what does this have to do with golf, this being a corporate golf supplement and all that? Well, it is the sort of people who work for companies that throw lavish golf days that Imagine Homes wants to target.
"We have a broad range of customers from buy-to-let virgins to people with big portfolios but we find that our typical customer is male, aged 35 to 50 with disposable income," Lafferty said. "The sort who will play golf regularly or with their company."
Imagine Homes source property only in the UK - "It's where our experience is" - but they sell to people all around the world. Many of the developments are in London, but at any given time they are looking at 100 new sites, with developments in Portsmouth, Bristol and London's Docklands about to come on line.
Lafferty sees the pre-packaged buy-to-let concept - which he describes as "buy already let - expanding exponentially. The company more than doubled its turnover in the past 12 months. And he intends to become the market leader in this concept. "We don't believe that there is a brand yet that people associate with the buy-to-let market," Lafferty said. "We want to become that brand." As big a brand for golfers as Titleist or Calloway maybe?