{"id":14870,"date":"2016-05-30T23:11:12","date_gmt":"2016-05-30T16:11:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/?p=14870"},"modified":"2016-05-30T21:29:16","modified_gmt":"2016-05-30T14:29:16","slug":"final-resting-place-draws-uk-investors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/final-resting-place-draws-uk-investors\/","title":{"rendered":"Final resting place draws UK investors"},"content":{"rendered":"


\nLONDON \/\/ Not only is the British capital struggling to house its living population, it is also facing a crisis in finding homes for its dead.Or at least that is the message certain enterprising property developers would have you believe. London burial plots are being touted as an unmissable investment opportunity to savers who are keen to move away from buy-to-let property.With the population of the UK capital now past its 1939 peak of 8.6 million, the pressure on burial plots is increasing. Two London boroughs in particular – Hackney and Tower Hamlets – no longer have any land available for burial in their area and force people to go to other boroughs, at greater cost.This is where the developers of a new cemetery at Rainham, in Essex come in. They bought some spare land that already has permission for cemetery use from the Federation of Synagogues for \u00c2\u00a38 million (Dh42.9m). The Rainham site, which opens in September, is being pushed as the best place for burials for the large Muslim community of Tower Hamlets. According to its council, the borough is home to at least 60 mosques and has the highest percentage of Muslim residents in England and Wales at 38 per cent compared with a national average of 5 per cent. The economics of private graveyards can seem compelling. Depending on the nature of a site, you can get 650 to 1,000 plots on to each acre of land and the typical price per grave on a private site in London is \u00c2\u00a34,000. So, assuming an acre holds 800 plots, that is \u00c2\u00a34 million in gross receipts per acre before operating costs are deducted.Tony Dunn, the managing director of Ivory Stone Investments, is selling the Rainham cemetery plots to investors who are looking for an alternative to buy-to-let properties. “There’s no secret about the shortage in burial space and by 2021 all the boroughs could be exhausted,” says Mr Dunn, who operates from an office 300 miles away from Essex, in the North East of England. “The increasing population is driving up the cost of burial and Tower Hamlets is already advising people to go to Kent, where burial plots cost \u00c2\u00a34,100.”At Rainham you can buy four burial plots for \u00c2\u00a38,000 – the minimum investment – and the developer is guaranteeing a return on investment of 40 per cent in two years. If your plot has not been bought in that time – by a family needing a plot or by another investor – then the developer is offering to buy it back.It sounds too good to be true and, to some extent, it probably is. For a start, this is not a type of business that is regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, or any other regulator.Alan Plumb, the director of leisure and trading at the estate agents Savills, points out other potential drawbacks. Firstly, only a quarter of British people now opt for burial, which means that investing in crematoria – by far and away the preferred choice – is a better risk, although the advertised returns may not be so high, he says.Secondly, it is not always possible to know how much demand there will be for a new cemetery. Just siting it near a large Muslim population – or other group that requires burial – is not enough. “Some people choose to repatriate a body to the country of birth, particularly if the deceased has not been living here that long. Or someone in Hounslow [London] may have recently moved from Bradford [in northern England] and the body might return there to be closer to family,” he says.”It’s very difficult for investors to discover if the developer has the contacts in particular communities to attract custom,” Mr Plumb says.Also, public authorities are still the major players in the provision of cemeteries. Recently, a new cemetery has been built near Edinburgh for the Scottish capital. Investors in a site could find that suddenly there is a surplus rather than a shortage of plots.The low-interest rate environment is pushing people to look for better ways of making money from their savings. While high net worth individuals have always been keen to diversify (and sometimes take more risk), recent restrictions on buy-to-let are pushing more people towards less obvious asset-backed investments including car parks, golf courses, crematoria and caravan parks.Hugo Llewelyn, the managing director of Newcore Capital Management, has set up a business investing in alternative assets on behalf of institutions. But he would not go near cemeteries.”We identified in 2011 that there was a whole set of assets that weren’t being targeted by the mainstream, but were just as core to society. We classify them as social infrastructure, storage and accommodation,” he says,Under the storage category, you could find energy storage, but also prisons and cemeteries. “People make a lot of money out of death – from things like cemetery land, coffins, funeral parlours – because not many people want to do it,” Mr Llewelyn says.While he considers selling off plots of cemetery land a “valid play”, it is not something that he wants to do and Newcore prefers to concentrate on children’s nurseries, car parking, waste and energy, as well as student housing, which has really become a mainstream asset.In the universe of alternative assets, there are some horror stories out there, Mr Llewelyn says. You hear of a promoter who may have secured a car park and sold off the rights to spaces, to individual investors. However, the asset cannot then be put back together. The promoter takes a big profit and the investors discover that they have no way of sacking the operational manager should he or she prove problematic.Some student housing developers sell off individual rooms but then have no strategy for maintaining the building as it obsolesces. The original investor can find it very difficult to sell a depreciating asset on.Tim Morris, the chief executive of the Institute of Crematorium and Cemetery Management, acknowledges that there is a critical shortage of cemetery space in London but he also doubts that burial plots are as brilliant an investment as they appear to be – because of an upcoming change to legislation.”Cemeteries in their present form are not sustainable but there is great pressure to change the laws so that graves can be reused after a 75 year period,” Mr Morris says.In London, it has been possible to do this, with appropriate permissions, since 2007. Recent changes to the law in Scotland mean that reuse will also become an option there.Where Scotland leads, it could be only a matter of time before England and Wales follow. Suddenly, burying your savings in cemetery land looks like it may be a dead end.business@thenational.aeFollow The National’s Business section on Twitter
\n
\nSource : thenational.ae
\nRead more…Final resting place draws UK investors<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

LONDON \/\/ Not only is the British capital struggling to house its living population, it...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-property-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p75ss1-3RQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":34578,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/londons-top-boroughs-see-prices-plummet-most-in-five-years\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":0},"title":"London's top boroughs see prices plummet most in five years","date":"November 16, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Land values in central London's best districts fell 10.3 per cent in the year through September, the biggest fall in at least five years, as higher taxes and the Brexit vote cause luxury home prices to fall.Banks are less willing to lend for site acquisitions and construction, fuelling the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":304,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/mapped-the-london-boroughs-you-can-no-longer-afford\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":1},"title":"Mapped: the London boroughs you can no longer afford","date":"December 16, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Rising house prices in the capital are making it increasingly difficult for buyers on a budget to purchase their first home, so which areas are still affordable?\r \r Source : telegraph.co.uk\r Read more...Mapped: the London boroughs you can no longer afford","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":105073,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/is-harlow-being-used-to-socially-cleanse-london\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":2},"title":"Is Harlow being used to \u2018socially cleanse\u2019 London?","date":"March 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Politicians councils in the capital are dumping vulnerable people in small and unsuitable flatsReports of children who are frightened to go home and can\u2019t sleep at night because they are \u201cpetrified\u201d; concerns about the potential for grooming of vulnerable adults and youngsters; suspected drug dealing; alcohol-fuelled bad behaviour; incidents\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":27325,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/london-house-prices-rise-more-than-a-solicitor-earns-in-a-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":3},"title":"London house prices rise more than a solicitor earns in a year","date":"November 27, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\r In some boroughs house prices went up by more than the prime minister was paid in the year 2013-14The recent boom in house prices means that in two thirds of London boroughs properties effectively \u201cearned\u201d more than the average nurse\u2019s salary in the 2013-14 financial year, according to figures\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":123126,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/property-prices-fall-in-upmarket-london-boroughs\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":4},"title":"Property prices fall in upmarket London boroughs","date":"November 9, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Westminister and Kensington and Chelsea among those hit by pandemic-driven \u2018race for space\u2019\r \r Source : ft.com\r Read more...Property prices fall in upmarket London boroughs","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":111323,"url":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/property-news\/key-london-boroughs-buck-trend-of-slower-house-sales\/","url_meta":{"origin":14870,"position":5},"title":"Key London boroughs buck trend of slower house sales","date":"October 4, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\r Newbuilds bolster figures in Islington and Tower Hamlets\r \r Source : ft.com\r Read more...Key London boroughs buck trend of slower house sales","rel":"","context":"In "Property News"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14870"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14870"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14870\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.siamlandbank.com\/propertynews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}