Uown

Overall I like the look of the set-up, with the backing of an established in-house property & letting business. No problem with market value valuations either (as opposed to 'below market value' purchases - as long as the valuations are realistic.

Hi uown

Like the site and your open and honest answers on this forum. With that in mind, and before I invest, I've a few queries which I'd appreciate if you could address:

1) HMO Licences - at the time of the respective surveyors reports, one property didn't have a licence ('not required'?), one had a licence expiring in January and one towards the end of this month. Can you confirm the new licences have been obtained or in the case of the June expiry, applied for/granted?

2) There doesn't appear to be a set term for holding the properties? How is it determined if or when to sell the properties in the future? Democratic vote by shareholders?

3) The properties appear to be only very slowly filling. As they are currently owned by a strategic partner, do you still require them to be fully funded and if so, is there a cut off date for this to happen and for money to be returned to investors?

Thanks in advance...

er... not having a good day here. The system will not let me accept the T & C's for investing in a property. When I try to tick the box, it just keeps flashing up the T & C page again.

Should I take this as a sign.....?

Edit) ah, I see now that the 'Accept' banner, which appears at the bottom of the T & C page and needs to be ticked, does not automatically appear on the laptop I am using (and it is a 17" !), but a bit of jiggling about with this and that gets it to appear.

If you check the land registry landregistry.data.gov.uk/app/ppd/search it appears they are still in the hands of the original owners (e.g. Number 57 appears to have last sold in 1999, even though I've already received dividends from it). My guess is the properties currently are owned by the parents firm, an independent valuation is carried out and then the property is crowdfunded from this on Uown.

I think liquidity is a factor that might presently inhibit new investors at uown

As already mentioned, clarification of what will happen if the properties fail to complete funding might help. If (for example after 1 year) from launch this has not happened, will the SPV'S be closed down and investor money returned? Obviously you do not want to consider this a possibility, but if you clarify this, it will surely help the flow of further investment.

Other possibilities that might help are:

-Offering a buyback guarantee - it is all very well saying you hope to process a sell order within 1 month, but even once a secondary market is established, liquidity remains wholly unknown at this time. Having no fixed term on these investments also means more uncertainty re liquidity.
-guaranteeing a minimum of rental yield (perhaps a bit less than the full projected amount)
-once a secondary market is established, making it free of your fees for buyers - but allowing sellers to add a small premium (or discount) +/- 2%. This would mean that investors could sell & diversify, and would create a good marketplace. It would also help to increase investment in the primary market - but with a Uown 2% fee on the primary market, it is not financially viable to sell on later & buy into a new investment, unless the fees can be at least partially recouped. But with fees only charged on primary investments, you might have a good model that puts you way ahead of PM.
-increasing personal information. The 'dumbed down' approach might appeal to some (not to me), but there will always be those who want to know more about who you are on the website. Actually I think you have a good story to tell and what looks like a solid business foundation behind you, and these should be selling points. I was wondering how many are in your team at present etc but there is zero information. A business phone number should also be supplied, as it is important to be openly contactable.

It is with risk that new investors invest, and at the moment there are a lot of uncertainties, though of course we all hope for success. Anyway, these are just some opinions from an opinionated investor. Feel free to ignore! Please do note that the 'dumbed down' approach will put some people off p2pindependentforum.com/post/169312

 

When will the extra 100 shares be credited? 

Thanks

Hi Guys, 

Firstly for those of you that invested whilst we have had the offer on, thanks we are looking forward to working together with you in the future.

Just to answer some of the questions that have come up. 



1)  For ** s******e s****t the HMO licesnse was up for renewal in January just gone, we renewed it, I'll see if I can attach a picture at some point, the other property Beechwood mount is due for renewal at the end of this month, we are aware and are processing the renewal. 

2) There is a secondary market, so you can sell whenever you like when the property is fully funded. 

3) We are only just starting off so initially we just didn't have the user base to make notable headway, but now our sales have really picked up steam, we are breaking our own internal records every month and the word does seem to be getting out there. We don't really have a cut off point from the property owners for funding. If for whatever reason  we couldn't fund the properties all investors would get their money back.



Glad that cleared up, its worth noting that payments for Bank wires get processed at two times during the day 11am and 4pm (Not too sure if thats GMT or GMT+1) so there can be a delay if you pay any time between those times. 


All good points, will look into them as things develops. 


Can one of the admins help me change it? I only just noticed it now, but now I can't unsee it. It was done for me by someone else when I signed up on here.