Alternative investments to property

[Jon Hammersley]

Hello I am curious to know what other areas or interests other investors have. I currently invest in residential property myself, although I want to continue and expand my portfolio I am considering other areas of investment and would like to see what other areas or interests similar investors have.

[Silvio Orlando]

Seems property folk can't think of anything to diverse into, I'm a guilty as the rest!...

 

Stocks and shares ISA?  You'd have to leave it for years though to see a return.  In the medium to long term the stock market always goes up, I believe even during the crunch, any 5 year period made money.

[Jason McClean]

I find the fantastic interest rates quoted by stocks and shares ISAs are all swallowed up by the management costs. What a waste of space, for years the ISA stays around wha I put in it despite 10% growth stated. If they state a loss though, it reduces.

 

I tried spread betting/trading as well. Easy to lose money there, you need to be in the know I think.

 

Solar panels...I invested in a £12k, 3.8kw system four years ago. So far it has returned around £5000 tax free and still has at least a 20-year life-span left. Now that makes sense...be wary though, the latest feed in tariff is a lot less than the near 50p I get per KW from being an early adopter, so you need to be spending a lot less on the panels now.

[Andy Harrison]

Crowd funding seems to be a growing way of investing smaller amounts of cash and spreading your risk. I'm still saving to get my first property investment so I haven't dabbled but I've got my eye on it for the future. At the moment, it seems you can invest in business or even property by paying in a nominal sum (usually a minimum applies) and owning a share of the business or property. If the business does well or the property increases in value, your initial investment is safe and growing, if a property is rented you get a proportional share of the rental income. Of course, the people putting it all together take a fee and as a proportional 'shareholder' you don't have the flexibility of cashing in whenever but on the plus side, there are 'Angel investors' who invest large amounts regularly and if you research them and their specialisms and successes, they can be a good indicator to the likelyhood of a successful investment. Of course, I'm in no position to make a recommendation to anyone on any investments. In my view, it seems like an interesting way of placing smaller sums of cash across a number of interests with the potential for large scale growth (but also losses too). It seems easier to understand the factors that might affect the success of your investment than traditional shares trading and of course property is an option for anyone who wants to get into it with smaller amounts of cash too.

[DrKidd]

Crowdfunding seems risky to me. Do I understand right that you only see a return if the company goes public or is acquired? 

 

I have traded stocks and shares before using a platform that charges a flat fee of 6.95 per trade. No advice given. 
I made some money and lost some money. In the end I pulled everything back out to put into property!

 

I am looking to reinvest into funds to diversify my investments

[Scott Elliott]

For traditional crowdfunding of start up companies you are correct.. they are very illiquid and dont do much in the way of returns until the company either lists or is sold to a big player, until then you are pretty stuck with your cash in..these are sites like seedrs for example

I have also been exploring some of the property crowdfunding sites I.e. house crowd / crowd lords etc etc they seem to pay you the agreed interest in quarterly instalments and then the capital at the end of the agreed term. .. you also have a charge over the property (for some security)

Not invested in either yet but am looking at the property ones with some interest

Hope that helps

[Alexander Teckkam]

Stocks and shares ISA's or SIPPS are a good investment if you have time to research or invest passively in index trackers with very low annual management charges. Currently my share portfolio has an annual management charge of 0.4% and no initial charge or share dealing charges with dividends amounting to around 2%.

 

This is much cheaper than property think about the annual management charges for a rental property with letting agents fees being around 10% + VAT and that is not even including the maintenance of the property, gas safety certificate etc etc etc. 

 

Also Shares are more liquid however the biggest downside in regards to shares is not being able to leverage and that is a biggie. 

[chrisaaaaa]

I go for a spread, a bit of property, some cash ISAs, bonds and shares in a SIPP.

 

I pay an IFA to deal with the SIPP, I am flippin' hopless, with shares, I managed to double my money in oil futures, then I started thinking, I got out of oil and bought uranium. Then there was a big earthquake in Japan, uranium crashed and the Arab spring pushed the price of oil up.

 

Recently I thought I would get back into oil since I seemed to know what I was doing, double doh...

 

Property is certainly a good investment, but I find it very risky, bad tenants, bad legislation, bad freeholders, fines for paperwork slip ups and so on.

 

Pensions are good to, so long as you are in the high tax rate, what you put in goes up 40% (more with salary sacrifice), the pension companies steal a good portion of it, but with so much tax relief, it must be a winner. I expect this [pension tax relief] will reduce in March.

 

Once property and pensions are mucked up, good question, what is left?

 

Maybe peer to peer lending, but I feel uneasy about this, flourishing now in quite benign conditions, but will they be decimated when rates climb?

[BillMurrey]

Money, stocks, bonds and precious metals have higher liquidity than real estate. Also some people prefer to invest in works of art but I really doubt of their profitability

[Rob D]

My idea of diversification is...investing in property in a different way!

 

For the last couple of years I've been writing bridging loans – so still property, but different type of investment (debt rather than equity) and time horizon (6-12 months rather than years). The returns dwarf anything I could get elsewhere.

 

I've got various trackers in ISA wrappers that I've held for years, but I'm not convinced by the global growth story so I can't bring myself to put much more in. I've had success with stock-picking in the past, but it involves a massive amount of research and I don't have the time.

 

Basically, I've really got to hope I see the next crash coming

[ChrisPBacon]

I'm currently using these P2P platforms. All but Zopa are new to me over last few months so there's only a small amount in each as I learn the ropes & risks:

• Rebuilding Society
• Saving Stream
• FundingSecure 
• Assetz
• ABLRate
• JustUs.co (waiting for re-launch)
• Bridgecrowd
• Zopa

(Researched via p2pindependentforum.com)

 

I plan to spread across platforms, then within each platform spread the funds between loans.

 

I let you know how that works out!

 

 

For the last couple of years I've been writing bridging loans – so still property, but different type of investment (debt rather than equity) and time horizon (6-12 months rather than years). The returns dwarf anything I could get elsewhere.

 

 

How did you find those investments Rob? Just private JV's? (I did stumble across Lendswift on my travels)

[Jeff Nevil]

Internet security is huge, several years back I invested in a Cyber security internet company, it was a big leap but one I certainly do not regret. Now with more time on my hands me and my wife are becoming more and more interested in property.