New Member Announcement: Jake Barnett

Downtown International is excited to announce Jake Barnett as our newest member of our team.

He recently moved to Dubai from London, Jake is a London new homes specialist having worked with various blue chip residential developers over the last 11 years. And now will be taking in charge of our Qatar clients.

Our company is continuously growing in achieving its highest level. We need competitive people in our company. In this case, our whole team is very happy to have you. We are very proud of what we have today thus we are looking forward for best and brightest future of our company with you. Welcome aboard.

Posted by: Downtown International, Sun, Apr 12th 2020

UK Developers Prepared to Offer up to 20% Discount

With the huge drop in property transactions in recent weeks, developers are becoming more flexible particularly with completed developments which have a few units left. Downtown International has successfully negotiated large discounts for it’s clients with premium developers recently. Yes, discounts were always available but not to this extent and when one factors in the currency depreciation, investors are looking at an approximate additional saving of 20%. Furthermore, buyers could leverage their investment once the mortgage market opens up again and benefit from historic interest rate lows.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sat, Apr 4th 2020

Time for Cash Buyers of UK Property to Benefit

Halifax, the UK’s largest mortgage lender has withdrawn most of it’s loans sold through brokers including first time buyer products citing a lack of processing resources due to the number of applications for a repayment holiday. The lender has also reduced the maximum loan to value mortgages to 60% as they are only able to do desk top valuations.

Whilst banks themselves are still liquid, these actions will severely reduce liquidity for buyers for a period which could last longer than expected, placing pressure sellers. This could play into the hands of cash buyers who will find sellers highly negotiable.

In addition to being able to leverage our relationships with developers to benefit investors, Downtown International has a partnership with Oakmont Private Office who specializes in bespoke London, Monaco and Cote d’Azur property searches.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Mar 29th 2020

Weak Sterling Offers an Opportunity

Whilst the medium term forecast for the pound has been bullish for some time, we now find ourselves in an unexpected situation where the Pound has fallen almost 10% recently. The small bounce back on Friday possibly indicates it has bottomed out and has better days ahead.

This scenario coupled with the fact that developers are more negotiable than before should be attractive to investors who have been undecided until now. Furthermore, there is still time to avoid the 2% stamp duty surcharge being introduced for non-resident investors from April 2021. There are a number of developments across the UK which have ready or near ready units available we can negotiate a favorable deal on behalf of investors.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Mar 22nd 2020

Foreign Investors Have Until 1 April 2021 to Avoid Additional 2% UK Stamp Duty

The recent announcement in the UK budget speech impacting non-residents was disappointing but not surprising and perhaps there was some relief that it was not 3% as was initially intimated by Boris Johnson. The good news is that international investors still have one year to avoid the surcharge.

Although it has a fairly significant cash flow impact on transfer of properties, the cost should be taken in the context of a long-term investment over ten years plus which reduces the impact on an annual basis significantly.

Posted by: Kelvin Tayfield, Sun, Mar 15th 2020