Angels Den Blog

On Tuesday, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), those jolly chaps in pin-striped suits with a penchant for tape measures, calculators and telling us what’s happening in the property market, took time out of their less than busy day to tell us that they were “less than busy”.

The lowest residential property sales figures since 1978 is what all the fuss was about, as if we’d not all realised for ourselves that “safe as houses” was rapidly becoming a bit of a joke rather than an investment mantra.

But why am I writing about the property sector? 1996 saw the launch of one of the biggest investment crazes to hit these shores, buy-to-let. By the early new millennium the mortgage sector was offering a million and one ways to get into debt, and with property prices clawing ever skyward everyone and their financially astute dogs were getting in on the opportunity.

The result was a drought in the venture capital sector – with cash rich investors pouring their hard-earned coppers into bricks and mortar, rather than small businesses, and cash poor entrepreneurs setting aside comparatively risky business ideas in favour of the “dead cert” that was the property market. For a few years buy-to-let become the graveyard of the entrepreneurial spirit, but I’m glad to say that things are slowly returning to normal now.

With fears of slumps, slow downs, falls and declines on the horizon, and wonderfully motivating headlines like, “Home sales fall to lowest in 30 years”, “Recovery wont arrive until 2010” and “UK repossession orders rise 24%,” the discerning entrepreneur in 2008 will be looking once again for other means to make their fortune. Lucky for them, the one thing the property boom has done is to create many more millionaires who are now looking to invest their winnings in a good business concept or two, so I suppose buy-to-let isn’t all bad after all!

Image © tz1_1zt