Gamble of the week: a property contractor for the brave

Although the property sector is looking decidedly shaky, this contractor's civil engineering arm is making it a particularly attractive investment right now, says Paul Hill.

Is Mervyn King about to ride to the rescue of British house-builders? Last week the Centre for Economics and Business Research predicted that property prices would rise in nominal terms by 2.2% in 2011 and then by 5% a year thereafter. That's thanks to the Bank of England's incredibly accommodative stance on interest rates and quantitative easing (QE).

This contrarian view was also reciprocated by the Council of Mortgage Lenders last Friday, when it said that buy-to-let lending had increased 12% in the third quarter of 2010. Meanwhile, there is even a chance that in diversifying away from the greenback, some dollar-loaded sovereign wealth funds may begin snapping up physical assets, such as British property.

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Paul gained a degree in electrical engineering and went on to qualify as a chartered management accountant. He has extensive corporate finance and investment experience and is a member of the Securities Institute.

Over the past 16 years Paul has held top-level financial management and M&A roles for blue-chip companies such as O2, GKN and Unilever. He is now director of his own capital investment and consultancy firm, PMH Capital Limited.

Paul is an expert at analysing companies in new, fast-growing markets, and is an extremely shrewd stock-picker.