Peter Bill, Editor of the Estates Gazette as well as 7 others experts in UK Commercial Property investing have teamed up to talk about how to successfully invest in UK Commercial Property.

Fiona Goldman recently interviewed Peter Bill, editor of the Estates Gazette.

Asking Peter Bill what his thoughts are on the future of the UK Commercial Property Market gives any prospective commercial property investor a real insight into where the UK market is heading in the next few years.

Fiona asked Peter "Would you say Great Britain is still a buoyant market to invest in with regards to property"

Peter replied "Yes I think it is, as we speak I think its been buoyant now for 8 or 9 years.

Is it slowing down? This we keep saying it?s going to but every year it keeps going up. If you can imagine a very tall glass filled with water on one side of the table and a very short glass filled with water on the other side of the table. The small glass for the amount of property that there is in the world and tall glass for the amount of money chasing it. At the moment there is probably 10x as more water or money as there is to property to buy. So there?s a massive over supply of money to property at the moment so that?s what has been driving it and will continue to drive it, its completely globalised now."

This is great news for any prospective commercial property investor be they novice, intermediate or advanced investors in residential or commerical property investing in the UK.

To emphasise the benefits of investing in the UK Commercial property market right now, Stuart Law, founder of Assetz Finance, mentions his experiences in UK commercial property investing and why he thinks now is the time to invest in the market. Stuart say "Commercial property could also be new built student halls which are carved up into individual student apartments. That?s a particularly low hassle and a longterm investment and that?s generally high income as well. With commercial property, there really is two ways you can go in. You can go into commercial property by sector, so retail, shops, etc, offices or industrial. But another way of looking at is, whether or not the property is tenanted or untenanted, its very important to understand that with commercial investment its not been done before, but when you buy a property with a tenant in place, you?re paying a premium for the lease. The lease is the promise to pay, each year, four quarterly payments of rent. If you buy a building with out that promise and without that tenant in place, then you are just buying bricks and mortar. And when you buy bricks and mortar with a lease, you pay more."

Issues such as taxation are important to consider when investing in uk commercial property. Amir Saddiq founder of the Property Tax Portal says "Say somebody purchased a property for ?50,000 five years ago and its now worth ?150,000 which is quite feasible, they may well have to report property values and they maybe liable to pay tax of upto 40% on the ?100,000 profit. They have only got 25% left of equity on the property but they could have tax liablilitys as high as ?40,000. So there the kind of areas that Daniel Feingold iin particular would start to get involved as he could help restructure people?s assets and give them the development advice they require"

Daniel Fiengold head of a leading independent tax consultancy in the UK, called Strategy Tax Planning said "Correctly structured, tax is only 22% in the UK. If you borrow to acquire a property you can offset the interest so it starts to slide down from 22% so a lot of people are effectively paying something like 10 or 11% tax on their rental income which is obviously a very attractive rate, a very low rate and in addition paying no capital gains tax. It provides a very, very exciting investment opportunity for them but its all about getting the right structure from the start. If someone comes to me saying I?ve bought a property then alarm bells normally ring but if someone comes to me saying I'm looking, I'm considering, I'm about to, then its normally the point at which I can give the right advice and get them in a position to minimise their UK tax liabilities.

Copyright 2006 Invest UK Publishing