Sanders Maltings

to be honest, I think they're doing this anyway. They're keen to divert attention away from the 5-year sales, partly because they have gone so badly recently.

See this new page for what I mean: 

www.propertypartner.co/s#/selling-record 

This one currently demonstrating the stupidity of PP. Setting it up so that a minority can undermine the interests of a majority is a ludicrous position.

PP desperately trying to persuade investors to buy out the small minority you want to sellout at 5 years as otherwise will have to sell the building as a block rather than maximise the return by individual sales.

Long time lurker (no affiliation with PP but have money invested there) but wanted to reply here as I think you guys are misrepresenting what's going on a little bit. Firstly about 15% of shares were voted to be sold (I voted to hold). Of the other 85% you'd have to imagine a chunk are just indifferent/didn't bother reading the PP emails etc. I'm not sure what a reasonable active participation would be in a vote like this but I doubt it's above 70-80%? So it's probably more like 15% want to sell, 20-30% fairly indifferent, 55-65% want to hold at best, rather than a "90%+ investor preference". If it's a decent idea to hold and most shareholders want to hold, you'd have to assume that the 15% of shares will get bought (which they basically all have now with 8 days to spare). This is an example of the results of the system working quite well. Most people wanted to hold, they get to hold. Those who want to sell get to sell. If PP changed the system so that the majority could vote to hold, keeping the minority involved unless they want to sell for a big discount on the secondary market, then having no guaranteed decent exit opportunities in the future is going to thoroughly discourage people from getting involved in the first place. While it would obviously be a bad scenario for 85% of people to really want to hold but the property gets sold anyway, it's very unlikely to happen. If the proposition is attractive enough that 85% of people are truly very keen to hold then even the vaguest resemblance of market efficiency will dictate that there will be enough takers for the other 15% of shares. 

What I do agree with is that it would be stupid to sell the block at such a huge discount to vacant possession value. Clearly if the block were to be sold then it should be sold over time with individual unit sales and very few investors would disagree with that. PP have given the two options as they have in order to make selling seem very clearly worse than holding in order to keep the property on the platform for longer. Their strategy has worked but luckily it is a reasonable outcome for investors as well in this case. Note that in the St Catherine's Mews property which would be similar except for the fact that they have offered to sell units individually with vacant possession if people voted to sell, a far higher percentage voted to sell and it looks extremely unlikely that they're going to be able to keep the property on the platform. 

I will say as well, on the topic of what percentage of people are actively voting to hold in these votes, take a look at the 7 flats in Thornwood property. Only 49% of shares actively voted to sell, despite the fact that they had the opportunity to vote to sell at an extremely attractive vacant possession value for the block listing on a block that is performing poorly and paying no dividends. Either 51% of shareholders in the property aren't bothering to look at the situation, or they all just really hate money. Even if you desperately want to keep your money on the platform, the clear rational choice would be to try to sell this property at full vacant possession value and then re-invest the money at a discount even to investment value in one of the better performing blocks on the platform that is trading well below fair value on the secondary market.

Perfectly reasonable to vote to sell Sanders Maltings, either because you just want to exit the platform, or because you are sceptical you'll see your money back for some time with 40 units to sell and who knows what will happen with the market in that time etc. Just fyi, I believe that up to now the properties where the block listings have filled up have been the ones where the values have taken a huge hit because of COVID. People believe it would be a bad time to sell, and are hoping for a rebound in values as things get back to normal, hopefully giving them a decent capital gain if they buy in the block listing at these depressed prices.

Ah, I believe that PP refer to all the listings as "block listings", meaning a block of shares from all the shareholders who wish to sell, rather than a block of units. So I was just trying to provide some insight regarding your question as to why the 2 properties that remained on the platform managed to sell so many shares in the listing. I believe they were revalued at a much lower value at the start of the 5 year exit process. So although the shares were trading below the "fair value" listed on the platform before the 5 year exit mechanic started, the listing was then done at the new valuation that was even lower than the shares had been trading. Therefore some people were willing to buy in the listing, even though they hadn't been buying on the secondary market before the process started.