The fund will buy hotels operating as going concerns from their existing owners, banks and administrators. It will then re-brand the hotels and let them to Travelodge on leases of 35 years at rents reflecting initial yields of 7%.
Indian globe-trotters may buy half of London by 2017. According to theestimates of Jones Lang LaSalle Meghraj (JLLM), a global real estatecompany, Indians could spend as much as Rs 128,000 crore (15 billionpounds) on residential property in the UK, especially in London in thenext decade.
Gurmeet Singh Gujral, a property dealer
from India, has arrived in the UK to look at houses in the £1-2.5
million bracket in London, Manchester and Birmingham, pick them up at
bargain prices while the British housing market is depressed, convert
them into flats and sell them mostly to Indians at a discount.
He plans to make the apartments attractive to Indians by including features as a Puja room and somewhere to store outside shoes near the
entrance extras that British developers have so far not thought of
incorporating into their designs.
UK developers are heading to India in search of wealthy new customers
for their luxury flats. Nick Candy, one half of the design and development firm Candy &
Candy, is in Mumbai to drum up interest for his own super-luxury
project, One Hyde Park. The central London project is offering
apartments - to the right kind of customer - for an average of £20m.
