Hello all - a different take this month on a subject that I welcome, and rub shoulders with on a weekly basis. Property portfolios and legacy planning.

Let’s not mince words here. I’ve built a portfolio on the back of keen purchasing at the forefront, and that’s enabled me to continue to scale. With that in mind, on reflection I can think of many dozens of times where I’ve bought a property, property business, or limited company where the vendor basically didn’t have an exit plan. They’d never considered one, and when they got to the end of the asset’s useful life (to them) - let’s say a big refurb was needed - or they wanted the cash out even though the timing/presentation/tenancy situation was not optimal - or life had happened to them and they needed to liquidate assets - then I, in a roundabout way quite often (i.e. via an auction, for example), was there to have a fighting chance of making a profit based on that lack of clarity or exit planning.

Then I also consider the words I hear week in, week out, again and again. “I don’t trust stocks and shares”. “I don’t know what to do with the money”. “What can get me the sorts of returns I’ve been used to that isn’t property?”. “What do I do - my kids are not interested in taking over my self-managed portfolio of HMOs?” (of course not, they’ve seen the 11pm emergency callouts over the milk shelf argument, or equivalent).

None of this is conducive to wealth preservation. It might well have been conducive to wealth building, and income production as well - but not for wealth preservation. Where’s the continuity? Where does the tax sit? What about future tax changes? What about inheritance tax? How about pensions and incorporation? That’s being covered elsewhere in this month’s edition, but I will inevitably touch upon answers to those questions as well.