Ground Rents Income Fund (GRIO) is a closed-end real estate investment trust (Reit) that does what it says on the tin, generating rental income from a portfolio of residential properties. And in the six months to March 2017, this grew to £2.18m, up a shade from £2.05m a year earlier. Pre-tax profits were significantly higher, but that's after including a valuation uplift of £6.3m on the £143m portfolio.
However, 18 per cent of the portfolio's capital value is made up of 'doubling' ground rent agreements (whereby the ground rent on a property doubles every set number of years), and given the level of criticism that these have attracted, the company now believes this could trim up to £6m off the portfolio valuation, which would leave net asset value unchanged from a year earlier. These are only estimates, and the next valuation date is 30 September 2017.