Portfolio Executive

Trip to Silicon Valley: Part one

2008-12-19T01:17:00.002Z

We recently took a trip Silicon Valley in an attempt to secure investment for Portfolio Executive. Here’s what happened. We first got in touch with the investors a few months back by sending them details of our business. They liked it and they invited us to meet them in California. We flew out on the Monday before our Friday meeting to allow us time to meet with various

First tools come online for selected users

2008-10-07T20:53:00.000+01:00

After weeks of additional coding, we're finally there: our first tools are ready to be given a glimpse of daylight, but only to a selected handful of users. Portfolio Executive will ultimately offer a full suite of tools tailored to the needs of buy-to-let property investors and managers. We believe in innovation at every step, and so the first tools in our range have challenged conventional

From banking to business

2008-09-24T20:47:00.000+01:00

I've just started blogging for LSE. At the moment it's only available to current students, but there should be an external version in the pipeline. My first post: -- Moving from the big world of investment banking to the small world of startups is not what it seems. The challenges in banking are huge and varied, but there’s something about the industry that just doesn’t seem real. Startup

Residential property derivatives

2008-09-19T23:53:00.000+01:00

Derivatives allow investors to make financial gain from particular assets without actually owning said assets. They've been around for years, but recently they've made the cross over from more advanced commercial property structures into the realm of residential property deals being closed by Joe Bloggs buy-to-let investor. Well, not quite, but it's certainly getting there. I'll be doing some

The economics of the property boom-bust cycle

2008-09-14T15:37:00.002+01:00

Economic situations vary and there will always be factors unique to a given boom-bust cycle. There are however a range of broad principles that can often be observed over the course of the property cycle. The assumption is made that the economy starts from a stable equilibrium with limited infrastructure, which will of course not be true of all cycles. The boom-bust cycle can be split into five

Knowing where in the property cycle to invest

2008-08-31T22:27:00.000+01:00

Investment returns in the buy-to-let sector come from two sources: capital appreciation and rental yield. Understanding the dynamics of these two factors enables professional BTL investors to assess the optimal time to invest. Capital appreciation Property prices are cyclical. For ease of representation, we can model the property cycle over a 12 hour period. At 12 prices first start to rise and

BTL Basics: The inverse relationship between property prices and rental yields

2008-08-30T20:17:00.001+01:00

Property prices and rental yields are inversely related. This means that when property prices go up, rental yields fall. When property prices go down, rental yields rise. Note that rental yield is distinct from rental income. Rental incomes are pretty static compared to property prices. They do not rise and fall cyclically. The trend with rental income is a slow, steady rise over time,

Tenancy doc tool expanded - almost ready to be pushed into private beta

2008-08-21T19:06:00.005+01:00

Our tenancy document tool, currently in private beta for our pre-registered users, will be shortly upgraded to have some more usable functionality. Previously the tool demonstrated simply the core functionality of being able to generate a tenancy document in under a minute, using our streamlined forms. Mike has just finished demoing the new enhancements to me. They're pretty impressive and

New holding page design

2008-08-14T15:41:00.002+01:00

Away with the hold and in with the new... something a little more Web 2.0 while we're still hiding behind our hold page...