“Reorganising and refining our supermarket business left us with cash which we needed to invest wisely – good safe havens with reasonable returns. Commercial property makes sense, if you do it right. But it carries risks. We’re not property investment specialists and the last thing we wanted to do was to be sole owners of buildings which may not work for us. Property ownership for us is not a badge of achievement – it’s a prudent investment as part of a managed portfolio.

"Like any good business, what we want is to work with people who are experts at what they do. Through Helmsley’s expertise and professionalism, we saw the potential to spread our risk by taking part shares in a number of syndicated properties with strong leases and good covenants. That also gives us the scope to cash parts of our investments more easily, if we want to. More than that, in Helmsley we saw a property product which has been developed over recent years that ticks boxes and sticks to a set sensible criteria which is not tampered with when times appear more opportunist – developed by people who we could really do business with.”
Ian Proudfoot, Scarborough, North Yorkshire

“With the help of Helmsley’s property syndication, you get the access, benefits and protection of large property portfolios, while at the same time limiting your participation to that which suits you as an individual; by doing it this way you can get a spread so that all your eggs are not in the same basket. To me it’s an ideal way of participating in the commercial property market, at the size and proportion that suits the individual.”
Martin Sutcliffe, Wakefield, West Yorkshire