"How busy are insolvency practitioners at the moment?"rnBoom-time for these guys, you might think. Surely in this recession there's loads of businesses going down, and people going bankrupt. Wrong. Insolvencies have decreased. Why? Because no-one is buying property. Remember when property prices kept going up? It was like magic. In real terms - forget the stats - the actual value of property is at a frighteningly low level. Insolvency doesn't achieve anything if no-one wants to buy the company's assets.rnI mention this because I find increasing numbers of clients coming to me with very good claims, but it is clear that the reason for non-payment is that the other side simply cannot pay. In the 'good old days', this rarely happened because people or companies were able to borrow against a property they owned. So, the result is that many good claims now are not worth the paper they are written on. And there's nothing you can do about it. Appoint a liquidator if you want; the bank will be due more than the property is worth. I have just come through an adjudication where my clients were awarded the best part of ￡200,000. The debtor has now 'stopped trading'. No-one wants to buy their landbank at the moment. There is no magic wand any more.
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