Wilsons Selling Up. The Lot. All 700 Houses.

carolt

mewbie wrote: »

More zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Back to topic.

Wilsons - 180 million (claimed) to 90 million (claimed). Ouch. Maybe dodgy Russian !!!!! money will help them out. Would you invest actual cash into these properties.

What they should do is make a TV programme showing the hapless Wilsons desperate to sell and a dodgy Russian geezer forcing them into a BMV deal with them.

Karma. Mmmmm, lovely.

Fabulous idea - now that's one property programme I would bother watching.

baileysbattlebus

mewbie wrote: »

More zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Back to topic.

Wilsons - 180 million (claimed) to 90 million (claimed). Ouch. Maybe dodgy Russian !!!!! money will help them out. Would you invest actual cash into these properties.

What they should do is make a TV programme showing the hapless Wilsons desperate to sell and a dodgy Russian geezer forcing them into a BMV deal with them.

Karma. Mmmmm, lovely.

I read on the Daily Mail website this morning that they have lost £180m leaving them £70m- some one must have their figures pretty badly wrong. That means £250m for 900 or is it 700 mainly 2 bed houses?
£275k each for 900 - or £350k for 700 I don't think so - unless ofcourse they diversified into other areas.

The £70m seems much nearer the mark tbh - if they have 900 houses that's about £78k each or if they have 700 houses that's £100k each on average.

The truth is we don't know - all we can is speculate. We don't how leveraged they are, infact we nothing at all about their business.

I read they started buying in 1991 at auction and in the beginning only bought properties with protected tenancies (meant they came with ready made permanent tenants) - you could get them for absolute peanuts - infact you probably still can.

If that is how they did start - good on them - they bought property that most people then (or now) probably wouldn't have touched with a barge pole - they spotted an opportunity. What they did afterwards is something else.

Like this:

http://www.inea.co.uk/ResidentialSales/PropertyDetails/Cedar_Court_Road__-2E9187EBF.aspx

it's off this road

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-10064820.html?locationIdentifier=REGION%5E1350&minBedrooms=3&maxBedrooms=3&secondaryDisplayPropertyType=semidetachedhouses&oldSecondaryDisplayPropertyType=semidetachedhouses&pageNumber=2&backToListURL=%2Fproperty-for-sale%2Ffind.html%3FlocationIdentifier%3DREGION%255E1350%26minBedrooms%3D3%26maxBedrooms%3D3%26secondaryDisplayPropertyType%3Dsemidetachedhouses%26oldSecondaryDisplayPropertyType%3Dsemidetachedhouses%26index%3D10

the first one has 80 year old tenants who have lived there 30 years and pay a creditable £500 or so a month - and obviously can stay there for life.

nearlynew

Whatever the "value" of their business / houses, greed will continue to be their achilles heel.

Say it was all valued and put on the market at. If sold at that price (whatever that is), they pay all their debts, fees etc and would come out with £20 million profit.

But they will hold out for that price for too long and will eventually have to settle for less. And all the while (which could take years if they don't sell the whole lot in one go) their retirement is delayed.

If I was in their position and their age I would think "sod this, we've had a good screw out of this over the years. Now is the time to enjoy our retirement in luxury and for a quick sale knock off £5 million and have done with it . We willstill have £15 million"



But then again I'm not greedy. And I would have started offloading years ago.

vikingaero

I'm not one to connect the Tesco/Wilson analogy that positively.

The irony is that in Park Farm where the Wilsons have the bulk of their estates, the main supermarket is Tescos! And the next nearest supermarket is.......... Tescos Crooksfoot/Willesborough! :D:D

Graham_Devon

Their bigest problem is they basically can only count the equity as their "profit". So if the house is worth £150k, but they owe 90k, their potential gain is 60k.

Other problems they face are:
- They cannot just sell the properties while they have tennants in them.

- They need tennants in every house to cover their costs of the mortgages. If I remember correctly, the wilsons would only "fix" mortgages, and had some "good deal" with the lenders who gave them long term fixed rates, so I doubt they have benefitted from interest rates. I could be wrong, but I'm sure this was part of his plan to know how much is going out each month, and he had buying power so got long term deals.

- They can't just release every house onto the market, values in Ashford would simply plummet. Suddenly, 700 properties hit the market, all of the same type, all of the same decoration.

- They can't hold on too long before selling, otherwise they could lose pretty much all their equity and end up having to go bankrupt.

- Each property is going to take a HIPs pack....theres £700,000 straight away. Plus selling fees, say around 3k per property, theres another £2.1m. Theres £2.8 million in fee's for just selling them. I bet they have early repayment charges on many of them too.

- They can't just sell them all without employing someone to manage this sort of project. It will be a huge job keeping track of all properties.

All they can really do is hope to sell to a property company. However, a property company would want a seriously good deal to take on this type of thing.

I reckon personally they will end up selling this lot for a quid or something, bit like woolworths and how the DSG group has just sold for a quid.....if the market starts to decline again that is.

Anyone remember the landlord who recently sold a bunch of flats in London? Sold it for £1, but the buyers had to take on £700m of debt. I think it sold in the end, but that landlord did a lot of work for a quid!!!

Alternatively, they could keep it and carry on. But time is not on their side, and as he always said, this was their retirement fund and money for the family.

shakerbaby

Why are they selling? I thought people who own property were in it for the long run?

baileysbattlebus

shakerbaby wrote: »

Why are they selling? I thought people who own property were in it for the long run?

isn't 20 years the long run?

nearlynew

shakerbaby wrote: »

Why are they selling? I thought people who own property were in it for the long run?

They are getting on a bit now shakes and have been at it a while.
You have to cash out at some point.

But they have left it too late.



Like all HPI cheerleaders, they are greedy and never know when it's time to "hang up the credit cards"

nearlynew

.............. Hello Ad.

Graham_Devon

South_Of_Heaven wrote: »

Hi Guys, I'm new here, I'm bearish, a bit of a peak oiler..... blah blah, I'm sure you all know the drill by now.

Never will I understand the board owners point in all this.