UK Property Investment Blog

Number of enquiries are up in most areas of the UK, first time buyers are coming back onto the market and buy to let investors are buying as much as they can finance permitting!

What are the main reasons?

1. The Weak Pound – this has attracted Overseas and Ex-Pat investors who not only are seeing the UK offering good value, are also see the value increasing by up to a third due to their currency strengthening against the £. We have had enquiries from Swiss, Chinese and American investors in the last week as well as many ex-pat investors.

2. High Yields – with rental yields as high as 8-10%, investors are back seeing some strong positive cashflow coming through on a monthly basis giving a good passive income, even if financing they are making strong returns on a monthly basis. Compared to the bank interest rates of under 1% this makes this more attractive than ever!

3. Strong local affordability – with prices dropping by 10-20% in many areas, prices are back to being very affordable for locals and many people, in particular first time buyers, are now seeing properties that would have beyond them a year ago now much more affordable and realistic.

We have seen the number of enquiries for UK deals increase steadily over the last few months, and are constantly trying to find enough good deals for investors!

In a bid to increase property availability and shorten the social housing list, the UK Housing Minister has called upon local councils to track down property owners who have left their properties vacant.*

*Please note this applies to primary properties, not rental properties

To date there are currently 697,055 empty properties across the UK that are just sitting there doing nothing – 293,728 of which have been abandoned for over 6 months.

In this new scheme though, councils will have the power to use EDMOs (empty dwelling management orders) that will allow them to seize, renovate and rent out these said properties for a period of 7 years.

At no time at all during this period will original owners have the power to control how their properties are used. Only once the 7 years are over, will they be able to reclaim them.

The only restriction councils will find in this system is that they must wait until the property has been left unoccupied for 6 months before they take it into possession. A time limit that should not prove to be a problem considering that there are already 293,728 properties which fit into this category.

What are they waiting for ?

Since EDMO’s introduction in 2006, this scheme has only been used 17 times and part of this reason is due to cost.

When researching, tracking and contacting leads is all added together, the cost of hiring a tracing agent to find a property owner can become costly. For this reason many councils choose to either overlook this new scheme (leaving properties barren of activity) or use simpler methods.

How do tracing agents work?

To effectively track down a previous owner, any of the following methods can be incorporated:

Accessing public databases
Contacting third parties (neighbours and relatives)
Local advertisements in newspapers
Land Registry and forensic examination of paperwork
Telephone tracing
Tracing agent

Due to the cost of using a tracing agent the Minister has declared that it should only be used as a last resort. But as their study proves, if councils were to incorporate this scheme into their plan they could easily introduce over 290,000 properties back onto the market. A scheme that would well be worth the investment.

Bank of Scotland, Northern Rock and Royal Bank of Scotland are all beginning to re-enter the buy to let market which can only be a good thing for buy to let investors!

Alongside Birmingham Midshires, who are getting offers out as quickly as ever and the Mortgage Works and C & G this will offer a very good range of lenders.

An interesting point from David Smith in the Sunday Times at the weekend, who stated that actual lending by many lenders was still quite constrained last year – with the average first time buyer earning an average of £35,600 in summer 2007 and the average salary of a mover being £45,600 compared with less than £25,000 for the population as a whole.

So the median loan-income ratio for first time buyers was less than 3.4 and for movers just over 3 which supports average prices of £180-200,000.

Clearly still people on the average salary of say £25,000 would struggle to get finance while prices were this high, and it would be irresponsible for lenders to lend at this level.

The days of 125% mortgages are clearly, quite rightly gone, but it does look as if with some tightening up across the board the lenders will be back lending confidently again. The key for them is making sure values are sensible, and most importantly the debt serviceability is realistic ie on buy to lets at least a rental coverage of 125% (we normally go for at least 150%) and for owner occupiers probably looking at no more than 3.5-4 times annual earnings.

All in all though, good news for buy to let investors with more of the big players coming back on to the market and looking to lend again!

Up sizing to a larger property is becoming increasingly harder for families in the current financial climate.

In a report released by the NAEA they found that despite smaller two bedroom properties experiencing a 1.6% increase in price to £124,727, larger properties faced an entirely different story.

During January and February 2009, 3 bedroom semi-detached houses fell in value by 4%, with 4 bedroom detached houses witnessing a similar fall from £339,072 to £316,228.

Yet despite these evident changes in property values, home buyers are still having to downsize their properties due to the increasing number of restrictions that are being placed on lending.

Beginning with the FSA’s proposal. Speaking earlier this week they called for the abolishment of 100% mortgages and for loans to be reduced to 3 times an individual’s salary.

With such restrictions in place, homeowners are left with no choice but to invest in smaller properties as they are unable to raise the capital they need to offer lenders a larger deposit.

FROM: Property Investment Specialists

It’s clear to us that there are a lot of investors out there assessing the UK market and deciding that now might be the time to start snapping up property and expanding their portfolios.

Martin Greinger is the Head of Portfolio Development for a popular UK property sourcing service. There is no-one better placed to tell you the type of demand there is for UK property right now.

We caught up with Martin between phone calls to ask him a few questions.

Martin, what demand are you seeing for property sourcing?

The demand is certainly growing and has been steady since the turn of the year. The media has helped by outlining the drop in prices over the last year and savvy investors realise there is an opportunity right now. Although we may not be at the bottom, we are fairly close and over the next 6 months is the time to increase your UK portfolio.

Waiting until the market is right at the bottom is risky as you could then be competing with an influx of investors and rising prices. Investing when it is a buyer’s market allows you to make aggressive offers on properties – especially distressed properties – more than compensating for any further drop in prices.

Low prices also give higher rental yields and immediately cash-flow positive investments – with capital growth to come in the longer term.

What are clients after? Are yields important or is it capital growth?

Yield is the major buzz word right now as investors realise capital growth is not possible – certainly in the short term. A strong gross yield of 7%+ is required by most resulting in a positive cash flow month on month. The combination of achieving a low price in a solid rental location – driven by our analysis and local knowledge – is paying dividends.

This is not to say we are ignoring capital growth, far from it. Our intrinsic property value research takes us to the strongest locations that will come out of the recession first; these are the areas we expect to grow the quickest. By looking at the economic factors behind each location we can predict its potential and point our investors in the right direction.

We have already done research on a number of locations and successfully sourced property there. We have realized that property is usually cheap for a reason and we would not want our investors buying into an area that is not going to recover from the recent downturn.

Are there active buyers or is it mostly “observers”?

There is a mixture of both to be honest; I will always have clients who like to watch what is happening from a distance. Those who are buying are doing so because they see an opportunity where developers and agents need to sell in order to balance the books. Where I can pull a number of investors together we can negotiate better prices by buying in bulk and cash is certainly king right now. Cash buyers can carry a lot of weight into price negotiation.

One other important aspect is finance; although the banks have tightened up I am still seeing many buy to letters obtain suitable mortgages for their investments. It is all about speaking to the right people and doing your research.

Do people know where they want to invest or are they led by our IPV research?

Again this is a mixture of both. Some investors approach me with a set brief and ask me to work to that, it is clear that many do not like to step out of their comfort zone, say 20 miles from their home. I can understand this as it makes management so much easier although it does restrict your potential.

The investors who ask for our research will have a set plan; they know how much they have to spend and want us to tell them where. Our research can be adapted to all parts of the UK and is similar to the work we did in CEE between 2004 – 2008. If someone wants us to look at the whole of England we can break it up into counties or major cities. First of all I will need to know their objectives, timescales and budget, then we can start to build a brief and discard the locations that do not fit.

If someone wants to buy in bulk we will look at locations that are not oversupplied and have a need for good rental properties; rent is important at the moment so void periods need to be avoided. It is therefore important to be conservative with our figures; overestimating rental income can make an investment look a lot better than it actually is.

So what types of opportunities are the sourcing team uncovering?

Each brief is different so we are finding a great variety in our sourcing results. Many investors prefer newer build property as it is less management intensive although apartments are not to everyone’s taste. We are coming across excellent bulk buys so it comes in useful if we have three or four investors all looking for similar location with a similar budget; this is where our negotiating can save clients a lot of money.

Because we go to the source rather than locate property from the office we can cut out the middlemen and get the best possible prices. Speaking to people face to face and looking around sites is proving our tactic right now and it is really working.

Whilst I don’t want to give actual examples, we are seeing properties at much less than half the price they were selling for 2 years ago and with great rental potential.

What insights can you give our clients about UK investment property?

Don’t tie yourself down to one location; with the UK in the state it is and with so many businesses and industries under threat it would be dangerous to rely on one city. If you are based in Bristol, explore Cardiff and Swansea, likewise if you are in Manchester, ask your self what is happening in Bolton and Liverpool.

Also, there are a lot of great property buys out there, it is just a case of searching them out. When we are on the road we use tried and tested techniques to find out what is available, how low an offer is likely to be accepted and rental figures to back up the investment.

What insights can you give our clients about UK investment property?

Finally, and probably most importantly, do our key clients believe now is the time to buy and why?

Yes and no. We have been instructed by a number of our high net worth clients to source property for them. This is a good sign for the smaller investor because they can jump on the back of some of their deals, thus forcing the price even lower.

Some clients are playing the waiting game and will buy during and after the Summer. Mortgages have some part to play in this and reports that prices are still falling.

We know from talking to many others in the industry that there is a lack of good quality stock and this is an area we honestly believe we can help with. The deals that have gone through this year have been examples of that and provided our investors with excellent cash flow positive properties.

Thanks, Martin.

Three pieces of fairly positive property news this week.

Tony Pidgley, the Chief Executive at Berkeley Group, who also called the 1990′s housing market correctly, says we’ve reached the bottom of the market. “We all accept that, give or take 5 per cent, the market is somewhere along the bottom (of its economic cycle).”

Tony was interviewed in The Independent, and stated there will be between 35,000 and 50,000 construction starts on new homes in 2009. And you will recall that the government wants 240,000 new homes built each year just to keep pace with the demand for new households. So based on supply and demand prices will rise.

Also over the last couple of days, the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) said the average selling price of a two-bedroom flat increased by 1.6% during the month to £124,727, while the sale price for a three-bedroom terrace increased by 0.6%.

Top end, executive properties enjoyed the biggest lift, with the price for which they change hands soaring by 11.1% during February to average £591,111.

But three-bedroom semi-detached properties and four-bedroom detached homes fared less well, seeing their prices drop by 3.8% and 4.2% respectively.

Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the NAEA, said: “Smaller houses actually saw their value increase – this suggests that people who are buying are picking up smaller houses than they may have done previously, possibly because they can only get smaller mortgages. It may also reflect a trend of downsizing.

The price of small properties and executive homes rose during February but the value of other houses continued to fall, research has showed.

“The very top end of the market has also performed well, demonstrating not only that the very rich can still afford a high end property, but that with plummeting interest rates are now perhaps more tempted to put their money into bricks and mortar.”

The figures come after property website Rightmove said house prices rose for the second month in a row during March.

What does this tell us?

Well as we have felt for the last few months the huge bargains at the lower end of the market may only be with us for the next 3-6 months, as once financing improves more and more people will be looking to buy and snap up the bargains and properties at high yields.

We are busier than ever with new and existing investors – this morning I took a call at 8.30am from someone with over 5000 UK properties, looking to buy another 1000 over the next 6 months!!

It also shows that the larger family properties will continue to slow down, in my opinion, for the next 12-18 months as many professional families will have had a scare and be careful about taking on increased levels of debt on their family properties.

I firmly believe the market will continue to move in different camps ie the lower end of the market, the investment end where first time buyers and investors compete for properties, will be more and more competitive, while the £200,000-500,000 end of the market will continue to slow for the next 18 months.

From the stats above this is looking the way it is going, and I see no reason why this will differ. So buy as many investment properties as can just now, and hold off moving home for a while is my opinion!

In a survey conducted by Paragon Mortgages nearly 33% of landlords never run a background check on their tenants – a check that could prove to be the pivotal difference between finding a quality tenant and a bad one.

Traditionally a landlord would be expected to perform a series of credit/ background checks to ensure that their tenants can afford their rental property. For example the following precautions:

Identity verification
Employment status
Credit/financial history
References

Yet as this report by Paragon proves a startling number of investors choose to not perform this search.

Continuing in their survey Paragon found of the 1,000 investors questioned that nearly 14% of them – at some point in their career – had been forced to evict a tenant due to them falling into arrears.

This figure is further confirmed by the National Landlords Association. In their annual company review they reported that 75% of their calls were from property investors asking for advice on rental arrears.

What can investors do to prevent this?

In light of the current financial climate, the surest way to secure your rental property and your monthly cashflow is to make your tenant fill out a Tenant Application Form.

By utilising this simple form you can acquire the following details about your tenant: their property details; employment status; previous/current landlords references and their bank details.

Withdrawing equity from your property may be easier than you think according to equity specialist advisors Key Retirement Solutions.

Speaking on the dilemma many homeowners are facing of wanting to release equity from their properties but being too nervous to do so, KRS proved that this is still possible.

That no matter how much your property has fallen in price, there are still opportunities for acquiring equity from your property.

The first point they divulged on this subject was the fact that only 15% of their clients ever choose to release the full amount of equity accumulated in their property.

The vast majority choose to only release a small fragment of this figure, meaning that no matter how much a property is worth now compared to its original investment, homeowners can still unlock the capital they need to support their finances.

Why current property prices will make no difference to the equity you release

In light of the property markets’ repetitive nature to fluctuate following periods of recession, they strongly believe that the equity you take out today will be safely restored into your property long before you consider doing anything else with it. Namely selling it.

Their theory has already been justified.

Over the last 2 months we have witnessed property price increases of 3%, with Rightmove reporting a 17% rise in the number of enqueries they received on their website, when compared to this time last year.

On their own client base, KRS found that their average equity releases reached only £54,000 – a third of the value Halifax have predicted to be the UK’s average property price (£163,996).

So whilst property prices may have fallen by 10-15% in the last 12 months, KRS’s statement proves that there is still potential for substantial equity releases from your property. More so if you invested more than 10 years ago.

So what does this information spell for investors? The incentive to resist the temptation to sell and to instead use their properties for more lucrative means i.e. extending their current property portfolio further.

Signs that the property market is on the verge of a revival are growing more prominent in the media.

Following a survey by the Bank of Ireland, they found that two in five first time buyers were planning on investing in the property market during the next 18 months. A time frame that correlates will all the other recent action that has been taking place on the property market.

During January and February 2009 alone Rightmove reported an upsurge of interest from 1st time buyers, with a further 36% finalising on sales during this same period.

The impact of this sudden revival in the market is already having a positive effect upon property prices. For 2 consecutive months in a row, property prices have increased by 3% in value.

Combined, all these figures point towards the same conclusion: the property market is changing and is changing for the better.

Continuing in their survey, the Bank of Ireland discovered that due to the current nature of the property market:

70% of buyers surveyed wanted to buy as soon as possible due to low property prices
10% want to invested soon due to low mortgage rates
80% of 1st time buyers believed the market is more affordable
40% believed there is good value in investing in the property market
35% believed there are good rates available

Plus 81% of the people interviewed ranked acquiring a property as one of their top three goals to achieve in the next 18 months: career and further education being the other two.

Put into context, these statistics leave you with 2 promising outcomes: a tenancy group in need of rental accommodation over the coming 18 months, or the perfect opportunity to expand your current property portfolio while prices are still low.

One of the key elements to attaining a successful property portfolio is ensuring that you offer your rental properties only the best in quality tenants.

Yet in a recent survey by LPS, of the 10,000 investors they surveyed, LPS discovered that 42% of them had received fake references from tenants aged 29 and below.

With at least another 50% having received a fake reference at least once during their career.

Yet this statistic is only a sample of the numerous deceptions investors have encountered from their potential tenants.

Continuing in their report, LPS noted that investors had also experienced similar instances from other age groups; some of which you may find surprising:

Aged 50 and above: 43% offered fake references
Aged 60 and above; 21% offered fake references

Without proper measures in place, the above figures could prove to have a detrimental affect upon the size of your passive income, by removing a vital part of any property investment strategy: a paying tenant.

So what do you do?

The only sure way to guarantee that your tenants are sending real credible references is to request these references yourself. Plus during this time it is essential that you have access to resources that will enable you to check out the validity of your tenant.

The key areas you will need to establish are:

1. Their credit history
2. Current/previous employment
3. Current/previous landlord references
4. P roof of income.

And in terms of external character references, LPS have proven that given the opportunity tenants will opt to send fake references in order to acquire a tenancy agreement.
So, are you building your property portofolio?