Day Spa in London for sale

This is a rare opportunity to acquire an established Day Spa which boasts a sought after high street location in this exclusive London suburb. Fully equipped with an impressive client base this is an exciting opportunity for new owners to be able to build on what has already been achieved at this first class establishment. With a turnover of approximatley £95,000 this business has huge scope and potential for new owners to explore. http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/High-Class-Day-Spa--London-ref-2567

August Market Report

If people ask me how is the market I would call it “brittle”, it’s growing steadily and there are significantly more deals being done by us than 12 months ago but all that being said you get the feeling that one hard knock could send things back to where they were. Probably like you, I pore over the papers looking for encouraging signs of economic recovery, but the problem is that you read all these contradictory reports. My pet theory is that there are so many hedge funds out there betting on falls in the market who are putting out bad news as a way to fuel the unease and cause the market to fall, that the whole thing becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.


I certainly hope that George Osborne has got it right and isn’t going to take all the air out of the balloon with his Budget cuts in October!

The banks are behaving a bit better although the people on their credit committees are still in charge and are being very careful with the deals they approve. I heard a story the other day that one member of a bank’s credit committee had told a business broker that he didn’t trust his commercial managers to lend sensibly, which was a pretty startling revelation.

The latest news is that house prices have now been falling for three months in a row and there are going to be significant further falls in the housing market. Frankly I don’t see that. Have you heard of dramatically cut house prices in your area and people snapping up bargains? No, nor have I. What I have seen is over-priced houses being sold at what were always the right prices for those properties in the first place. In other words what we are seeing is the housing market performing sensibly with houses being sold for what they are worth. Interest rates are at an all time low and many highly geared owners in negative equity have been able to hold onto their houses so long as they are still employed. In fact house owners with a small mortgage and a steady income are in pretty good shape right now with their mortgage interest payments accounting for only a small percentage of their household income. Property prices are now back at the same levels they were in 2007 which means that they have already fallen some 20-30% in real terms. But, by the same token, I don't see property prices rising either and that's because banks will stay cautious with their lending and property in the UK is expensive and still unaffordable to first time buyers. In the current market houses are and will take longer to shift because buyers cannot borrow as much as they had initially hoped, so if you have a vendor who won’t lower his price and a purchaser who cannot raise his offer, you have a property that will stick on the market. The only way to break that deadlock is for vendors to accept that they are unlikely to get the price they want.

This is also true in the business sales market although there are one or two crucial differences: (1) house buyers can wait until they get what they want while business buyers need to buy because the longer they wait the more they eat into their capital/savings which reduces their buying power; and (2) business buyers are less emotional than house buyers, fundamentally they are buying an income stream so if they can’t buy one business at the right price, they will move onto the next one.

We continue to hear stories of vendors being told by agents that their properties are worth absurd prices. Frankly I am always amazed that these vendors can be taken in by such nonsense when surely every bone in their bodies must be screaming that it must be too good to be true. Business buyers are sensible people and they very seldom over-pay; there are too many checks and balances in place nowadays for that to happen, from their accountants and bank managers giving them advice through to their having looked at 5-10 other similar businesses before they see yours; and then there is the bank valuation - almost every business purchase is subject to one.

Traditionally July and August are quiet months when many buyers are away, however we noticed that activity over the last two months went in waves with periods of pandemonium followed by days of calm. I think this was a reflection of people spreading their holidays across the two months, rather than taking them in one block.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of the sale of your business with us then please do not hesitate to contact us on 0800 707 6370.
http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/

We have recently started advertising your business on a new sales website www.businesssalesdirect.co.uk as well as freehold properties on a rotational basis on www.egpropertylink.com.


Many of you will have just completed your latest financial year. Can you please send us your most recent accounts as soon as possible or, if they are still with your accountants, your management accounts, VAT returns or at the very least advise us of how the last year’s trading has gone and when you can expect to have accounts available.

Pretty much every single interested party asks for the latest accounts once they have received the sales details and any delay in providing this information can mean that we will lose their interest in your business.

We have recently upgraded our website including the free Business Advice section which we hope you will find useful. Various professionals will begin “blogging” in that Section in the next few days on such topics as Employment Law, Business Sales legal issues, VAT and Tax, and Websites and E-Commerce. If you have specific questions to ask on those topics then please feel free to email any of the bloggers. I suspect that the E-Commerce and Employment Law topics will be of particular interest to many of you.

Even though your business is for sale my strong advice is that you should continue to run your business as if it weren’t, which means continuing to upgrade your website, improve your premises and grow your business. If you don’t then the worry is that your business will start to stagnate or at worse deteriorate which will have a negative impact on your sale price. Purchasers are particularly fearful of “catching a falling knife” and any downturn in trade or profit can kill a sale.

I am still of the view that the business sales market will keep improving. We are seeing continued strong buyer interest and high levels of enquiry. I think any redundancies in the Civil Service can only be good news for us all as it will tip more buyers into the market. However prices are still very keen and buyers will definitely not pay a premium.

If you would like to discuss any aspect of your business, its asking price or its marketing then please call us on 0800 707 6370.
http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/

March Update

So at last the election has been called for May 6th and I suspect that the financial markets will begin to accelerate in anticipation of the new government making concrete announcements on exactly what they intend to do to reduce the deficit once they are elected. And really, I think that is all the certainty we need in order to get on with our lives and continue rebuilding our businesses after the last two years of doom and gloom, much of which has been penned by the political parties to suit their own ends.
Last month we achieved our highest priced business sale for over two years and we are continuing to see improvements in sales values and buyer confidence. Rather surprisingly we are also seeing the appearance of some very confident vendors who have decided that prices are going to rise in the near term and are knocking back offers we have procured at their asking prices. To be perfectly honest I do not see any significant asset price increase happening any time soon. Buyers will continue to be wary and will be very cautious about being sold a lemon and over-paying. (If you were buying a business, how would you be feeling at the moment?).
We are just finalising some updates to our website in order to keep it looking fresh. We are also about to start running a Business Advice Centre through the website where you will be able to see answers to questions from our experts on everything from employment issues through to the cost and benefit of a search engine optimisation programme. I hope that you will find these Q&A’s useful to you in the running of your business. You will also be able to email our experts direct if you want further answers to particular questions. If you have any comments on the Business Advice Section then I would be delighted to hear from you.
You may wonder where we advertise your business for sale and so here is a list of the main advertising sites where we advertise (some sites are sector or size specific, so you may not appear on those):
http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/ http://www.businessesforsale.com/ http://www.daltonsbusiness.com/ http://www.bizsale.co.uk/ http://www.rightmove.co.uk/ http://www.rightbiz.co.uk/ http://www.startinbusiness.co.uk/ http://www.businesssalereport.co.uk/ http://www.businesstobuy.co.uk/ http://www.hotelstobuy.co.uk/ http://www.businessalesdirect.co.uk/ http://www.bedandbreakfasts.co.uk/ http://www.businesswings.co.uk/ http://www.fish4.co.uk/ http://www.ft.com/ http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/ http://www.reed.co.uk/ http://www.bizval.com/ http://www.startups.co.uk/ http://www.mybusiness.co.uk/ http://www.swbusinesstobuy.co.uk/
According to the organisations that run these different websites, your business is being exposed to a total audience of around 3million people.
If you are getting close to a sale of your business do please remember that you will need to ensure that your EPC is available for the purchaser together with any environmental reports that you may need to produce. These will hold up a speedy sale if you don’t have them. Please contact us if you would like to order an EPC at a competitive price.
http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/

First Post

Welcome to Amberglobe's Blog.

This is our first post but I'm sure there will be many more. Keeping watching this space.
http://www.amberglobe.co.uk/