Host celebrates cut price Punch pub sale

http://www.morningadvertiser.co.uk/news.ma/ViewArticle?R=83971

The Elephant in the Room used to be The Tie. Now people have got their heads around the fact that the tie is the reason for many pub business failures and the pubcos are coyly looking at ways of twiddling aqround the edges to try make the tie 'fairer' and get off the Competition Commission hook instead of just abolishing it, the new Elephant in the Room is VALUATIONS - of freeholds and rentals.

Pub estates are massively overvalued - everyone knows this but no one is prepared to acknowledge it because all the pubcos will be technically insolvent if they do come clean and there may be further dreadful knock on problems with property values elswhere if some RICS trained goon at some pubco somewhere were honest for once and admitted their estate is actually, really, honest and truthfully in the real world only worth 50% of book value.

So these guys (good for them and Acorn and Unity Trust Bank or whatever) have fortunately been able to get their pub at a snip. This having been a tied pub for decades no doubt they will have to spend hundreds of thousands getting it up to sctratch with contemprary building codes but whatthell? At least they will be increasing the value of THEIR property for themselves for once instead of giving a pubco the chance to rentalise their improvements at next review.