We live in very strange times. At the moment (October 2020) there is a mini property boom and average UK property prices are the highest they’ve ever been. But in my opinion the fundamentals aren’t there to support this. And when, sadly, 100,000s or even millions of people start to lose their jobs, I think…
A great question I have been asked is does the time of year make any difference to buying and selling in property? Well, you would think that it shouldn’t, but it does. Two of the best times to buy if you are an investor is around Christmas time,(this includes the run up to Christmas and…
A question I am sometimes asked is ‘what is Net Yield and how does that differ from Gross Yield?’. In an earlier post we thought about gross yield which is expressed mathematically as the rent divided by the purchase price, or the value, times 100. It provides a very basic assessment of the return (from…
A question I am sometimes asked is, “If I go to an auction to buy a property, how do I bid?” The first starting point before you do anything is to sort out your finance, to sort out your survey and to sort out the legal side. That is a given. Then when you’ve done…
This is an interesting question. Somebody has asked me ‘does no money down really exist and if it does how do I do it?’. First things first. One thing I have noticed when I have been online looking at the forums and looking at the Facebook groups is that occasionally you will see somebody saying,…
When you get interested in property investing you’ll hear a lot of talk about gross yield. Gross yield can be a great way of comparing properties because you can look at the return from one property and compare it with a return on another. But at its very basic level, gross yield doesn’t really tell…
One of the great things about being in property today is that there are so many different ways we can raise our finance. And if you find yourself in a situation where you find yourself a fantastic refurb opportunity, but you can’t get standard buy to let lending because it needs a bit too much…
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…
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…
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…