Inside Look: The Property Investor Show

Inside Look: The Property Investor Show




An expo meets industry praise following its two day schedule that featured over 100 exhibitors and 70 seminars from knowledgeable figures including Peter Bolton King from RICS.

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p>An expo meets industry praise following its two day schedule that featured over 100 exhibitors and 70 seminars from knowledgeable figures including Peter Bolton King from RICS.

The Property Investor Show had its final show of the year last week where industry professionals gathered to absorb the most recent property market information and possible business opportunities.

Nick Clark, Managing Director of Property Investor Media said: “A very good weekend for the show with a healthy investor turnout on both days.  Main topics of visitor interest on the UK side were ‘traditional’ buy-to-let, student investment and finance.”

“The seminar programme recorded the largest number of attendees since 2008, with Peter Bolton King (of RICS) session on the ‘property bubble’ attracting the largest single attendance.  All in all a very positive 2 days for both the industry and the UK’s longest running property investment event …”



The expo saw investors in UK and overseas property, landlords and other professionals visit the event with over 100 exhibitors and more than 70 seminars.

The event touched on many topical debates including: the question of the UK housing bubble, the rise of peer-to-peer lending and the Help-to-Buy scheme.

In his seminar on the UK property market, Peter Bolton King, Global Residential Director of (RICS) brought his crystal ball along and concluded there is no housing bubble in the UK.

When talking about hysteria around the rises in house prices, he said: “Rises from what? They are rising from a considerably lower base than they were in 2007. Now many of you will say ‘we don’t want to get back to 2007’, but I’m purely just explaining we’ve got a big gap still, we are a long way away from where we were.”



Stuart Law, founder of peer-to-peer (P2P) platform Assetz, said in his seminar: the P2P industry is going to find April’s regulation “very tough”. He added: “Our estimate is that 60 to 70 per cent of platforms will go out of business.”

 Karen Bennett, Commercial Mortgages Sales & Marketing Director at Shawbrook Bank, said:  “We really enjoyed the show. It was a good opportunity to meet professional property investors personally and discuss plans for their portfolios, as well as understanding their views on the market more widely. This helped to confirm what we believe investors are looking for from a progressive lender in this sector.”

“We also generated a significant number of client referrals that we have passed to our strategic partners, and we hope this demonstrates how committed we are to intermediaries.”

 Stephen Johnson, Commercial Mortgages Managing Director at Shawbrook Bank said: “I particularly enjoyed discussing the hot issues of the day with the landlords directly in our Q&A.”

He added: “One of the points we discussed is the buzz around the buy-to-let market at the moment. The fundamentals are really strong but landlords need to make sure they have a sustainable business and are not over-gearing when interest rates return to normal.”

John Philip of Kingswood Association said his time at the event was manic, as he was struggling to jot down all the details of each visitor he spoke to.

Louise Hoade, Managing Director of commercial investment experts Principal international, discussed the rise of Student accommodation investments. She also mentioned how people are buying investments in units, She said: “So they can expand their portfolio without buying a whole building, they can just invest in one room or flat.” On the expo itself, she said: “There are a lot more people here this year”

The event was based in the EXCEL centre and took place on the 11th and 12 of October.

Exhibitors of the expo included: broker networks, lenders and developers. Around 40 per cent of the event was focused on investing in property overseas.

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