Baron and Cabot, a UK-based Property Company, is helping Africans to acquire property in the U.K with low-interest rates. South Africa’s, Kenya’s, Nigeria’s and Ghana’s middle class and business people have turned to the U.K to buy houses for renting out, mostly due to the high inflation in the countries, which has made acquiring Real Estate property very expensive and mortgage rates very high.

As of 2022, rising inflation has become a shared trend in Africa. Global supply disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are some of the major factors responsible for inflation. Prices are set to rise even further, as Russia and Ukraine are major wheat suppliers to many African countries. Benin, for example, imports all its wheat from Russia, while imports to Somalia originated almost solely from Russia and Ukraine.

According to the IMF, Sudan has the highest inflation rate in Africa as of 2022. The rate reached roughly 245% owing to a long-running economic crisis and political instability. Zimbabwe ranked second on the list of African countries with the highest inflation, averaging 90%. The latest figures from the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency show that the country’s annual inflation rate reached 191% in June from 132% in May, a 30.7% month-on-month increase. Statista, a German company specialising in consumer data, rates Ethiopia, Angola and Sierra Leon as the third, fourth and fifth most inflated countries in Africa, respectively. Ghana, Nigeria, South Sudan, Zambia and São Tomé and Príncipe are also on the top ten list.

House prices in South Africa have been growing every month. House price growth averaged 2.5% (before adjusting for inflation) in 2020, then rose by 4.2% in 2021. The latest inflation numbers show the biggest increase in five years. Much of this is due to rising fuel prices, and food inflation as a result of supply line disruption. These factors put pressure on the middle class, and can be expected to slow property growth.

In instances of rising inflation, rents rise along with the prices of goods and raw materials, with typical lease clauses allowing for rent to be marked up to the market to protect the investor in terms of net income. This happens in cities such as Accra, where property owners increase their rental prices annually by at least 10% to 15% to beat inflation. The rising cost of building materials in Kenya has pushed construction costs by an average of Sh3,000 per square meter, forcing constructors to hold ongoing projects. In Nigeria, most of the developers have jacked up their house prices by 40 to 50 percent.

“We have a mini bungalow selling for N6.5 million which was initially N4.5 million. While the price went up because of the building materials cost,” Adekunle Monehin, the managing Director of Tobykemsworth Investment Limited said in April 2022.

Egypt has seen been the most affected with the prices of building materials increased by up to 92% in March, according to a report issued by the Central Administration of Building Materials of the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities.

A great opportunity presented by the UK is that Africans can legally buy a property or have banks offer favourable mortgage terms for investment. This investment platform gives Africans a chance to invest in property with ease and without limitations. Thus, while seeking to invest in property, Baron & Cabot stands out to be the paramount property investment organization that an investor can trust throughout the investment process.

“Baron & Cabot is undoubtedly the fastest growing UK property investment company in the world,” remarks Mark Pearson, founder of Baron & Cabot. “We aim to help Africans with the ability to provide mortgages and buying of property through thorough research for the safety of their investment in the UK. As the demand for property investment rises within African investors, our main goal is to make sure the process of property investment always remains transparent and simple.”

Among the markets that Baron and Cabot has in Africa, Nigeria is the most lucrative. Baron and Cabot gets a very low mortgage rate for Nigerians in England. The rates range between 4.5% and 4%. It can be a 25-year mortgage, and it is changed every two and five years to get a lower mortgage rate. You don’t have to use cash to buy out the mortgage to change it, you move from one to another. Ghanaian investors are also exploring alternative investments. Pearson says that on average, they record transactions of up to 5 million pounds in West Africa monthly, with the bulk coming from Nigeria and a fair share from Ghana.

Investing in property in the UK is greatly considered to be one of the lowest risk investments in the world, with consistent long-term returns factored in by continuous growth within the country. Baron & Cabot has built a market-leading research strategy for the investor to simply choose what would be suitable for them. The investor is also granted a step-by-step guide on sourcing the right property to purchase in the UK. This gives the investor the power and confidence to ask the right questions for profitable property investment.