Make a Profit from Death

There now appears to be an opportunity to make a profit out of death that does not involve murdering your business partner.

The cost of being buried has skyrocketed throughout the country over the last few decades, and it can cost up to £5000 to be buried in parts of the capital. A burial plot bought for £30 twenty years ago could now be worth over £600 – an increase of 1,900 percent – and investors are seeing an opportunity to make some money out of a hole in the ground.

Schemes have been set up to take advantage of the unusual opportunity, with one, cemeteryinvest.com, estimating that it can make its investors 87 percent in three years by buying plots in a new cemetery it is building, and an investment trust, Gresham House, expecting returns that are ‘better than commercial property’ and in ‘double digits’ from its investment in Kemnal Manor Cemetery, Bromley – which opens in June.

So, there’s money in dying.

Well, not according to Dr Julie Rugg of the Cemetery Research Group at the University of York, who finds it ‘very amusing’ that people think they can make money out of cemeteries, and says that councils would love to hand them over to the private sector, but there are no takers because ‘they don’t make money’.

However, the shares of the UK’s only stock market-listed funeral business, Dignity, are rated as ‘buy’ by some analysts. Investec also says, ‘we remain of the view that the rating fails to accurately capture either the quality of Dignity’s earnings or its ability to deliver a sustainable high teen returns’.

Whether or not you will make a profit on your investment is not clear, but – as depressing as it is – it seems like a good idea to arrange a burial plot for yourself now before prices rise to unaffordable levels and your funeral involves being buried in the back garden next to the family dog.