A question I am almost always asked by somebody who is just about to begin in property is ‘should I go to an auction to buy my first property?’ I guess that’s a natural question. We’ve all watched Homes Under the Hammer and it can give this idealised view of buying properties at auction and…
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A question I am sometimes asked is, ‘Is there more than one way to do buy to let?’. It all depends on how you define buy to let. If you define buy to let as buying a property and putting a tenant in then that could cover HMOs (Houses of Multiple Occupation), it could include…
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A question I am often asked is, ‘How do I build relationships with estate agents?’. Let’s start at the beginning. First of all, why would you want to build a relationship with an estate agent? The answer is that, if you follow a strategy like buy to let, probably 90-95% or more of your deals…
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A question I’m sometimes asked is what is, “gross yield and when would I use it?” In its simplest form gross yield is the return on the property. Now, often times that’s the return ignoring costs, and the most simple way of calculating gross yield is to take the annual rent and to divide that…
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Something I see debated a lot online is whether we should pay a mortgage broker and if we should, how much we should pay. I often see on Facebook groups and forums people posting saying words to the effect of, ‘can anyone recommend a good mortgage broker who doesn’t charge a fee?’. I must admit…
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Do my solicitor and mortgage broker need to be based either near me or near my properties, and the answer in both cases is no! But, let’s just think about this. Firstly, let’s deal with mortgage brokers because I think that is very easy. A mortgage broker nowadays can do most of what they need…
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How do I choose a good property management company and what do they do? First of all, let’s clarify what that means because sometimes you will hear people refer to letting agents, and you will hear people referring to managing agents, and often the two are interchangeable and they do the same thing. Most letting…
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A concern which I sometimes hear new investors express is what if the bank won’t lend me the money? Let’s just think about this because there are probably going to be two different reasons why a bank might not lend you the money. The very first is, they’re not going to lend you the money…
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A question that I am sometimes asked is ‘how much of a discount can I expect to get off a purchase price or off an asking price if I offer the agent cash?’. By the way, just to be clear, when I say offer the agent cash, I don’t mean offer the agent cash as…
DetailsA couple of years ago buy to let lenders introduced the stress test, encouraged to do so by the Bank of England and The CML. This has made the journey to securing finance and mortgages very interesting! On the face of it this is a good idea. Mortgage lending needs to be kept under control…
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