Accountants are by their profession bound to be picky over their investments, so it must come as a relief to the owners of The Property Investment Market that they can count a qualified number cruncher as one of their early traders on the exchange.

Peter Aves, 45, is the chief financial officer of a firm of management consultants in London.

Married with a one-year-old daughter and proud owner of a home, in Whitechapel, Mr Aves admits that buying a property “as an investment has occurred to me, but I did not want to shell out several hundred thousand pounds and wanted to avoid the trouble of property management”.

After 20 years of investing, Mr Aves has a portfolio of other equity investments, worth about £100,000, but nothing in the property sectors.

Six months ago, Mr Aves bought shares in two terraced properties around Sunderland, worth a few thousand pounds, via TPIM. Yesterday, he clicked on his 500 shares in property LS184JZ1, a North East terrace, in which he owns 500 shares bought at £1 each. They are now trading at £1.07 — making a paper profit of £35.

“In absolute terms those returns are small. But that is now running on an annualised gain of 14 per cent. If I invest ten times that you can take the whole thing seriously. It seems very low risk — though I have not made a large absolute amount I have not lost any.

“It seems safe and stable. My likely next step is to invest on a larger scale.”

Commission rates on purchases range from 3 per cent to 0.5 per cent for large share purchases.

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