Demand for hotels for sale in the UK has been stimulated by an influx of newcomers to the hospitality industry, with particular interest focused on the cheaper end of the market.

If you’re one of the many keen for a change of career, contemplating early retirement or worried about redundancy, there are annual profits of around £20,000 to be made from the average five-bedroom guesthouse, going up to £130,000 for a 20-bedroom hotel including a bar/restaurant.

Allow half of that to cover the costs of running the establishment, bearing in mind that business rates and compliance with fire regulations will apply if you acquire anything bigger than four letting bedrooms.

Brokers say anyone with equity of at least £100,000 in their home is in a healthy position to buy a small hotel – chances are you’ll need to take out a mortgage, but the lowest interest rates for fifty years mean any reasonable operator should be able to take home a decent profit.

Things to bear in mind when sizing up hotels for sale:

Why is a given outlet on the market and how long has the current owner been there? How much has been spent on improvements?

What kind of custom does it attract? Are there any other new hotels in the pipeline in the area?

What is and isn’t included in the hotel sale? Take a detailed look at the contract and accounts.

And finally, don’t underestimate the benefits to be gained from getting a hotel’s previous owners on side – their help and goodwill often prove invaluable to buyers.

For more resources on buying a hotel please visit our pages which list leisure businesses and hotels for sale and more advice on buying a hotel.

If you have a successful and profitable magazine title to sell, and a genuine reason for selling it, you are likely to have very few problems doing so. Buyers want to see forecastable future cash flows and authentic reasons for selling. In these circumstances, you can achieve a high price for your publication.

Of course in this day and age the internet is a vital channel for your magazine readers. Even if you have not yet fulfilled your plans for an online version of your title, a detailed plan on how you will create this will usually encourage buyers to be interested.

Timing is vital when selling a magazine title. Proving you can make money from the title is crucial as investors are no longer keen to risk precious cash on a risky forecast alone. Make sure you can show potential buyers that there is money to be made from their purchase.

Understanding your buyers can help you to establish the best way to market your title – talk to industry buyers about synergies and speak to financial buyers about profits – basic really!

Having the best possible advisors on board to help you with the sale will really help you to achieve the best price when selling a magazine title. They will be able to give you an objective view of your business, they will know who the likely buyers are, and will be able to spend time on marketing your magazine for sale. This will allow you to concentrate on running the business instead of getting wrapped up in emotive negotiations. Also don’t forget to get good tax advice not least because selling business assets (i.e. a title) is treated differently from selling business shares. For more information on these issues you can subscribe to the report.

For help on determining the value of a magazine title then please fill out the no obligation business valuation form.

Alistair Darling today issued a major concession to the forthcoming capital gains tax changes due to come into effect on 6th April.

A new 10% Entrepreneur’s Relief is to introduced (similar to the old Retirement Relief), for business owners selling up and making gains of less than a million pounds. Under the CGT plans announced at the end of last year, the existing taper relief would have been replaced with an across-the-board flat 18%, meaning an effective 80% hike in tax rates for vendors. This will now be lowered to 10% for business sale gains of under one million pounds.

Small business owners should welcome these changes, as it certainly goes some way to reclaim the ‘entrepreneur spirit’ many outraged business pressure groups have said the government had damaged with the new proposals.

Nobody I have spoken to about this has yet manged to locate the fine print on the government website, so watch out for the devil in the details!