Thanks to Thailand’s relatively relaxed foreign exchange regulations, whereby direct foreign investments by Thai residents not exceeding US$10 million yearly do not require authorisation, the idea of Bangkokians buying property abroad isn’t far-fetched. The problem, though, tends to be prohibitive prices.
But before you laugh off the idea of buying a place in England, let’s say, consider the offer that award-winning Manchester Apartments, a wing of Mancunian property developer Beech Holdings (http://www.beechholdings.co.uk), put on the table over a recent weekend hosted with its local agent, Landscope International Property (www.landscopethailand.com/ tel. 02 670 8288), at the Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel.
With a social media-spread tagline screaming that you could get a foot on the UK property ladder for 3.31 million baht (157,844 baht/sqm), the proposition sounded too good to be true. But they were not kidding. To get that price, as opposed to the full price of 4.36 million baht, for a remarkably uncluttered 21 sq m studio, all you have to do is pay up front now and Beech Holdings, the brainchild of self-made mega-landlord Stephen Beech, will effectively immediately start to pay you a 3-year guaranteed 8% rental yield: that’s 24% residual income in the first three years which with expected capital appreciation (Jones Lang Lasalle sees 28% growth in the next 5 years) gives you an annualised 50% ROI. At the top end of the scale at Hollywood, the largest unit is a 40 sqm 1-bed for which you effectively pay 5.434 million baht instead of the actual price of 7.29 million baht.
What do you get for that? If only half the points Stephen and Sales Director Howard Lord made in their mesmerizing presentations were true, you’d be hitching your wagon to a serially-successful developer with a 16+-year track record of spotting opportunities in areas of Greater Manchester as they’re just about to get gentrified and see their prices rise to the levels of already “desirable” locales.
In essence, Hollywood is a 4-storey office conversion, “stripped to the brick”, refurbished for energy and space efficiency and fully furnished to last. To maximise the space of each unit there’s a communal area for laundry, a central underfloor heating system instead of space-gouging radiators, central hot water supply, dedicated strong internet and popup device charging stations – plug and play for the tenants Beech guarantees you will see.
Located on the edge of MediaCityUK (with excellent transport link – it’s beside a Metrokink station 9 stops from Old Trafford!), an 81 hectare mixed-use property development site on the banks of the Manchester Ship Canal which is about to expand into phase II, Hollywood is seen as a cert to attract strong rental demand from students and young professionals.
Sold with 250-year-leases dating from completion, each purchase is rented on a weekly, all bills inclusive basis at GBP150-GBP255/THB6,500-11,000). Beech handles every aspect of the lettings and management and claims 100% occupancy in all its projects.
If ethics concern you, Beech, who started out renovating a rundown terrace house and renting to university students, is on an idealistic mission to make Manchester better with an approach to property development and lettings based on “passion, innovation, efficiency, sustainability and consistently exceeding expectations.”
Can Beech be believed? Its rise and rise has taken place under the scrutiny of the city’s hawkish local press which is generally unsparing in outing dodgy operators and the Manchester Evening News made Beech its 2016 Business of the Year.
As for Landscope, it represents lots of UK properties, from Manchester to Liverpool to London, where the pickings are rather pricier, starting around 24 million baht for a 1-bed at Marine Wharf East in SE16. It’s also active in the local market and finding that its Hong Kong office is doing good business hooking up mainland Chinese would-be buyers of a bolthole in Bangkok, though they do complain that the prices are rather high!
