Surveys conducted by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors in 2011 confirm that the sector overall is still finding the going tough.

Although London is faring significantly better than the rest of the country, house prices nationally continue to fall, and activity is depressed and flat. Supply constraints and strong tenant demand are pushing residential rents higher as would-be buyers struggle to gain a foothold in the housing market and rent instead. London's commercial market also shows a more positive picture than that in the rest of the UK. The office sector outperforms the industrial and retail sectors in both occupier and investment markets, although yields decline as investors seek opportunities to maintain the capital value of their assets.

The signs of a national improvement in construction activity again mask big regional differences, with private housing and private commercial in the South East offsetting the continued decline elsewhere. Public sector works continue to decline.

Current issues

We help a wide variety of people and businesses involved with many aspects of the industry. These include valuers, consultants, planners, architects, surveyors, financiers, finance brokers, builders, self-builders, developers, residential and commercial owner-occupiers, investors, agents consultants, and even demolition contractors.

Our input brings together our technical expertise covering a range of areas, and experience built up over many years. We are often asked to help with special projects such as tax planning (including SDLT and VAT), and in the current climate debt and business restructuring, as well as the routine compliance.

Tax planning for those in the sector covers a huge variety of topics and examples include the principal private residence exemption, trading vs. investment, the availability of entrepreneurs' relief, partnerships and succession, inheritance tax, SDLT mitigation, capital gains for groups of companies and capital allowances.

In the current climate it's especially important that compliance work is up to date and cost effective. HMRC are introducing ever more automatic penalties for those who are unaware of the rules or late in meeting them. Compliance areas include management accounts, statutory accounts, audit, PAYE, national insurance, the subcontractors scheme and VAT.

Our expertise and experience

We find that property issues affect almost all our clients, not just those within the industry. The owners of a manufacturing business may own the factory premises and need help structuring the purchase or sale. A senior city executive of may be a self builder for VAT purposes in relation to their new holiday home on the coast. For this reason, we don't have an team specialising in just dealing with the industry. Instead we have developed expertise which is available to all our clients, often co-ordinated by our clients normal Shipleys contact.

Our people contribute regularly to property industry magazines, including Modus (the magazine for members of the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors), and The Estate Agent, magazine of the National Federation of Property Professionals, as well as property related issues for the local press.

Through our membership of AGN international, a worldwide association of separate and independent accounting and consulting firms, our clients can gain access to local rules and practices across the globe.