Saturday, Oct 10, 2009
Selling up £180m buy to let empire
Daily Mail: Meet the Wilsons, richer than the Beckhams
Judith and Fergus Wilson are proud owners of a £180million property empire.
The couple own between 700 and 900 houses - Fergus hasn’t counted recently. They bought their first property in 1975, and kept on buying, all the while on interest-only mortgages. They finally stopped buying in May, after bagging one final bargain.
Now they are planning to sell up. If they sell their portfolio for the £180million asking price, after paying off their meagre borrowing debt (£45million) and taxes, they will retire with a cosy nest-egg of around £100million.
Posted by little professor @ 03:33 AM (1815 views) Add Comment
17 Comments
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1. honest valuer said...
Usual Robert Maxwell type bullsh*t.
Facts: They are 85% geared on 2007 prices (even on their own home)
Their tax bill will be very large as they have MEWed these properties as they have risen in value
They have missed the boat on selling the portfolio by two years
2. krustyatemyhamster said...
"Besides, he has seen all walks of life pass through his rental houses: ‘six murders, battered wives, sometimes battered husbands.' "
Crikey, it's worse then St Mary Mead. I'm not moving there!
He really knows how to sell a place.
3. crunchy said...
Meet the Wilsons that have hijacked your home and because of that provide such a less than great service for your housing needs.
Crash and burn I say!
4. will said...
Did they ever think of letting other people buy a home? Selfish, greedy b***tds. Stupid bankers - for lending.
5. jack c said...
I have lost count of the number of articles in the press recently featuring the Wilson's desire to sell up (not to mention the numerous radio interviews) - if property is such a good bet and there is a shortage of supply (as we are repeatedly informed) then why isnt the telephone ringing off the hook and a big queue forming at his front door. In addition surely the weak pound makes this a potentially attractive proposition to a foreign buyer (money laundering scam rolled in for free)
How about one last throw of the advertising dice Fergus? - "Coronation Street is sponsored by the Wilson who have a lovely property portfolio to sell at a knock down £180 million"
6. fallingbuzzard said...
Slight misreporting. I heard different. They are selling down their portfolio bit by bit in auctions at the moment to try and meet mortgage payments since they are being squeezed by the lending banks. Its a problem because they are struggling with a combination of low occupancy and high leverage and not benefiting from low interest rates plus they have quite a bit of land in the portfolio which has no income. I think thats what they did with the equity they released - invested it in non-yielding land with future building potential.
Their problem is that they want to sell the portfolio as a whole rather than piecemeal which could take them years to wind down and the buyers are asking for 30% off what they wanted overall (ie fair market value) and some quite complicated structuring of the sale. All in all, its going to leave them with quite complicated tax matters and potentially nothing if the buyers walk away. It just goes to show that buy-to-let is for the long term!
7. krustyatemyhamster said...
I'm still worried about the murders:
National murder incidence ~800 per annum or so,
800 divided by 24.7million households = 0.000032 murders per household each year.
If we guess that the Wilsons have owned an average of 200 houses over the last 34 years (given they started with one and the number grew mostly in the last decade - this number's probably a bit on the high side) then we would expect 0.000032x200x34=0.22 murders in the Wilson properties since 1975.
So you're 27 times (6/0.22) more likely to be murdered if you live in a Wilson house. Has someone investigated this?
8. jack c said...
@ krustyatemyhamster - "So you're 27 times (6/0.22) more likely to be murdered if you live in a Wilson house. Has someone investigated this?"
Ring the Mail and all of the other national's - I'm sure one of them will run with this story - if this get's out the Wilson's will never get their asking price !
9. cat and canary said...
they might be richer than the Beckhams, but they definately don´t dress like them!!
(sorry off topic)
10. crunchy said...
7. krustyatemyhamster
Don't fall behind with the rent I say! How many bodies will be found in the gardens of these investment boxes when they are auctioned off.
The Great BTL Wilson Murders. We just had to keep buying. We kept running out of space for all the bodies. lol
11. str 2007 said...
There's repeated reference to £45million debt behind the £180million valuation. This can't be right surely. Seen several articles referring to 85% LTV's.
12. paul said...
There will be a headline in a years time that the Wilsons have filed for bankruptcy because of the evil banks bearing down on them and 'complicated' tax matters.
13. icarus said...
str 2007 - presumably the V in LTV refers to valuation at the time of purchase.
The journalist talks of buying in '86 and then riding the boom until 2003. Says nothing about 1989 - '95.
14. icarus said...
....although if honest valuer @1 is correct that would make them worth....not a lot.
15. doom&gloom said...
Another rubbish article about those horrible greedy Wilsons. They've been doing the rounds lately - a recent article said a Russian fund was going to buy the whole lot; no mention of that here though. Suspect that hope is why they're garnering the publicity.
Really a very poor article: "...proud owners of a £180million property empire. In fact, their fortune probably peaked at a staggering £250 million - although that doesn’t stop property experts labelling them Britain’s first buy-to-let billionaires." Which 'experts' are those - experts who skipped maths at school?
"...the couple, who own between 700 and 900 houses - Fergus hasn’t counted recently" WHAT? They call themselves investors, and don't know whether they own 700 or 900 properties? Nonsense.
16. fallingbuzzard said...
I believe that the Russian buyer pulled out. They bought most of their properties post 2003 and then when values went up bought land and additional property with the equity release. So they're in the proverbial stinking stuff.
17. mander said...
You can easily argue that in any other industry buying stuff up in order to manipulate the market or the price in the market it would be a case for the Office of Fair Trading. By arguing that they are not selling to the public because it would influence the Maidstone housing market I think it prooves that they knew when buying so many properties up in the first instance, this would influence the local housing market by creating a shortage and afecting the competition in the market.