Most BTL investors see their properties as some formof pension fund, providing a healthy and reliable income in later years. The sector has certainly outperformed most Anglo-Saxon stock markets recently and has grown to become the largest single property sector in the UK at over £500bn.

The options are also increasing with the mechanisms now in place in many cases to have a BTL property included in a SIPP (Self Invested Personal Pension) although the rules here are stringent and you need to take care.

If you see property as the way for you to build a pension then check out some of the excellent investment deals around. It's possible to build quite a substantial portfolio over a few years by using borrowings already on offer as part of the package in many deals.

I seem to remember many stockmarket analysts saying that stocks and shares outperform bricks and mortar in the long term, if not the short or medium term. Given the current nosedives on the world's stock exchanges, is this still really true?

I know this story - I used to work in the City and have heard it many times. The real issue is "What is long-term?". If you plan to make money over a 3-5 year time horizon then the stock market can be far too volatile to achieve that safely.
If, on the other hand, you measure returns over 25+ years then stocks will frequently outperform property and many other asset classes.
I personally would be reluctant to put much into the world's stock markets at the moment - I know prices llok low but I'd prefer not to watch them fall even further after sticking my hard-earned cash in!

also, isn't it true that the ups and downs of stock market are harsher because of their liquidity - and that property, being illiquid, tends to boom and bust more slowly and more gently. I.e. the recent financial troubles have seen only a 10 per cent dip in UK prices over a year period.

maybe. the correlation between liquidity and volatility has no doubt been researched by someone - sadly, not me :-)

The underlying value of property (land) is bound be a lot less volatile. As Mark Twain said: buy land because they've stopped making it.

As Mark Twain said: buy land because they've stopped making it.[/quote]


Not strictly true as far as Hong kong and Dubai are concerned.

love your sense of humour, Lysos. Not sure I would classify what they are doing as really "making Land" but I get your point. Dubai is really just "relocating" land and hoping their defences for it are adequate....