Littlebrook Avenue, Slough, Berkshire - 1 Bed Terrace - Will gain some interest!

Good Morning, today we are heading to SL2 and this great one bedder on Littlebrook Avenue. For £250K you get a fantastic one bedder that would pull in about £1,000 PCM in rent.... that a pretty healthy return for the area! From the pics it looks really nicely down out so no DIY required just get straight back in the rental ads.

Give the guys and girls at Romans a call and click on the link below for more details.....

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-58055156.html

Maidenhead Landlords count the cost of a Tory Election win

Can you remember 10.05pm on Thursday, 7th May 2015 ... with the shock news that BBC Exit Polls suggested the Conservatives would be returned with majority? The middle classes in Burchetts Green and Woodlands Park exhaled a huge sigh of relief, and Maidenhead landlords, faced with rent controls from Red Ed and the Labour Party, now had something to cheer about as the Tory’s were always considered to be a political party that accepted the importance of the rental market, supported its development while properly targeting the lawbreaker landlords renting out below standard rental accommodation.

Since May though, George Osborne has announced future rises in stamp duty for buy to let landlords and a change in the interest relief on buy to let mortgages, and some people have started to question that loyalty. However, things could have been a lot worse for Maidenhead landlords as the idea of making landlord’s pay more tax by increasing Capital Gains Tax rates to the landlord’s own income tax levels was seriously considered. If Landlords had to pay capital gains tax of 40% to 45% on any uplift in value, I can tell you here and now, that would have made investing in property a non starter for almost everyone.

However, I will admit the loss of mortgage higher rate tax relief will make a number of properties not stack up financially. The new rules are likely to slow demand in the Maidenhead housing market, which is in fact good news for the other landlords, as there is less competition from 'amateur' landlords offering too much.

Just a thought, but making Maidenhead landlords think twice and

run their numbers more cautiously is not such a bad thing.

So looking at the numbers, the December figures have just been released and they show a 0% change in property values in Maidenhead over the month of December. That figure doesn’t surprise me due to the time of year. It’s quite dangerous to look at one month in isolation, so looking at a more medium term view, over the last 12 months, property values in Maidenhead have risen by 10.3%, not bad when you consider inflation is running at -0.1%.

However, regular readers of the Maidenhead Property Blog know my passion for looking deeper into the stats. The really interesting information is the value growth, but what types of property are actually selling in Maidenhead?  Looking at all the properties sold, as recorded by the Land Registry, within 3 miles of the centre of Maidenhead in September 2015 (this data always runs a couple of months behind the house price data) compared to September 2007 (a couple of months before the credit crunch started to bite and the subsequent property crash).

	Sept 2007	Sept 2015	Difference
Detached in Maidenhead	49	44	-10%
Semis in Maidenhead	51	31	-39%
Terraced Houses in Maidenhead	27	31	+15%
Apartments / Flats in Maidenhead	56	30	-46%

Now I have mentioned in previous articles that the numbers of properties selling in the town has certainly dropped post 2008, but what amazed me were the drop in the number of semis and apartments selling in Maidenhead compared to the sales of terraced properties, which rose slightly.

Less properties are selling now than in the last decade in Maidenhead

and the types of properties selling have changed ...

interesting times ahead for the Maidenhead Property market!

Therefore, all I can say to the landlords of Maidenhead is do your homework, make sure the numbers do stack up, take advice and opinion from professionals and above all, for those of you planning to add to your portfolio, buy the right property at the right price. 

One place for such advice and opinion on the Maidenhead Property market is the Maidenhead Property Blog

Norfolk Road, Maidenhead SL6 - 5 Bed Detached - Huge Potential!

Good Morning! Just seen this place on Zoopla. For all those investors with a bit more to spend I think this place offers a variety of options in terms of maximising your returns. This house offers significant potential to split into individual flats which could offer you a monthly rental income of over £4,000 PCM.... Let me explain, I reckon you could convert this into one larger studio flat (c. £750 PCM return), three 1 bed flats (c. £900 PCM each) and one smaller studio flat (c. £700 PCM).... worth thinking about???

I have also included below a mock up of what this revised floor plan could look like. 

Its on with Roger Platt for £750K.... take a look at the link below for some more details...

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/39566987

Maidenhead Landlords could be fined £666,000 per year

“Who would want to move to Maidenhead in weather like this?”, was what one landlord said to me as we shook hands outside his property the other day. It was windy, cold, it had been raining most of the day and it was the last appointment of the day at 4.45pm. I will admit, as I had been out of the office all day, I was looking forward to getting home, putting the fire on, and watching telly with a big mug of tea.

It turned out he had been self-managing the property himself over the last few years, but was worried with all the new legislation that had been introduced recently. He was particularly concerned about the up and coming ‘Right to Rent’ legislation, so he called us for our opinion on a new tenancy after his current tenant had handed in their notice recently.

For those Maidenhead landlords that don’t know, landlords will need to check the immigration status  (i.e. the right to reside in the UK) of any new tenants moving into properties from February 2016 or face a £3,000 fine. It is called the 'Right to Rent' rules. Landlords should also be aware that as well as traditional tenants, this also applies to tenants who sub-let rooms and homeowners who take in lodgers.

Our landlord from Cookham wanted to know how much of a real issue was ‘Right to Rent’ in Maidenhead. I was able to tell him that the last available figures (from a couple of years ago) show that 222 people (whom were registered as Non-UK Born Short-term Residents) moved into private rented accommodation in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council area in one year alone. Assuming none of those 222 people had the right to live in the UK, this would equate to a fine of a whopping £666,000 to the landlords of the town.

It doesn’t sound a lot when you think there are 63,580 residents in Maidenhead, and of those, 51,808 people (or 81.48%) were born in the UK. But Maidenhead is a cosmopolitan town as the country of birth of the residents in Maidenhead can be split down as follows:

UK                                                     81.48%

Ireland                                               1.08%

Europe                                               5.75%

Africa                                                 2.79%

Middle East and Asia                           6.95%

Americas and Caribbean                     1.32%

Australia and Pacific region                 0.58% 

However, it must also be recognised that landlords, by checking up on tenants, could potentially be accused of discrimination under the Equality Act. This is a real minefield for landlords, especially when you consider that not all of the 3,655 Europeans in the area necessarily have the right to live in the UK either.

In a nutshell, Maidenhead landlords will need to check and retain copies of certain documents that show a potential tenant has the right to live in the UK. These include ....

UK Passport

EEA Passport/Identity card

Travel document or Permanent Residence Card showing indefinite leave to remain

Paperwork from Home Office stating their Immigration status

Certificate of registration or naturalisation as a British citizen.

I hope the new law will target dishonest landlords who repeatedly fail to carry out Right to Rent checks by making it a criminal offence. This means they could face imprisonment for failing to check on their tenants. That is why more and more landlords are asking agents to manage their properties, so they can stay the right side of the law.

So what did our landlord do?

Well after our chat, he asked us to find a tenant and manage the property for him - he had been reading the Maidenhead Property Blog for a while and because of the knowledge we impart to the landlords of Maidenhead, we obviously know what we are talking about.  Even better news for him, even though this would cost him agency fees, I was able to get him an additional £85 per month for his property when we found him a tenant one week later. Now, together with the peace of mind that we will keep him the right side of the law and putting a stop to midnight phone calls complaining about dripping taps, it was a win-win situation for everyone.

Palmers Close, Maidenhead - 3 bed end of terrace - Great Returns!

Good morning! This place has just come on the market with Robinsons for £365K, not much to go on the way of pics just yet I'm afraid! However, if this place is good to go this should get you about £1,300 a month in rental income which is a yield of over 4%. Thats not too shabby at all and above average. It's in a great location as well so the tenants will flock in!

Take a look at the link below for more details....

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-57880550.html

Bell Street, Maidenhead - 2 Bed Terrace - Great Location!

Good evening everyone! Anything that comes up on Bell Street I think is worth bringing to your attention, the location alone will get a fair amount of interest from all those investors. This one may need some improvements here and there.....especially if bright blue and red carpets are not your thing. 

Its on the market with Roger Platt for £400K..... there maybe some haggling to do here but its certainly worth the cost of a call to get some more details.

http://www.zoopla.co.uk/for-sale/details/39486976

Will the young people of Maidenhead ever own their own home?

I had the most interesting chat with a mature couple (in their early/mid 50’s) from Woodlands Park the other day, whilst viewing one of our rental properties. The property wasn’t for them, but their son, who wanted a second viewing with his parents to get the parental blessing. Now I know that isn’t the norm, but in this case the parents were going to act as guarantor. We got chatting about the Maidenhead property market and how they had bought their first property in the town just after they got married in the late 1980’s when they were in their early/mid 20’s. Anyway, we got chatting about how the youngsters of the UK seem to rent more than buy nowadays and from that the conversation covered a number of similar topics. I want to share the highlights of that conversation with you today.

Their son, like many 20 to 30 year olds in Maidenhead, desperately wants to own his own property and the parents said he had read in the Telegraph recently, when you compare house prices to earnings, the current 20 to 30 something’s generation have to spend more of their salary in mortgage payments than any previous generation. The demand for private rental sector accommodation in Maidenhead is huge. There are in fact 3,652 private rental properties in Maidenhead at the last count, impressive when you consider there are only 242 council houses in the town. However, let us not forget 17,758 properties are owner occupied (9,452 with a mortgage).

Let us all be honest, private renting doesn’t have the stigma it had a few decades ago and it might surprise people that even though us Brit’s class ourselves as a nation of homeowners, roll the clock back 100 years and over 75% of people rented their own home (and it was all from private landlords as council housing only started to come in with the ‘homes for hero’s’ after the first World War). It might also surprise you to learn that at the time of the 1971 census, still more people rented than owned their own home.

Looking at the affordability issue, I have proved time and time again, it is in fact cheaper to buy a property than rent, when one looks at starter homes for first time buyers. 95% mortgages have been available to first time buyers for over four years and whilst you could certainly find better properties in better condition in better areas, a two bed maisonette apartments can be bought for as little as the early £150,000’s in the Cookham Road / Moor Lane area of Maidenhead (meaning a modest deposit of £7,500 would be required).

When it came to affordability, I was able to tell them that when they bought their first house in Maidenhead in 1988, the ratio of house prices to salary was 7.54 to 1 in Maidenhead ... and here was the surprise for both of us, today’s ratio is only 6.53 to 1!

I said I believed there had been a cultural attitude change towards renting property in Britain and that this quiet revolution was likely to be permanent. In the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, saving for the deposit was everything and buying a house was everything. Youngsters today have far much more disposal income today than people had in the Callaghan and Thatcher years, but choose to spend it upgrading their mobile phones every 12 months, the newest tablet or PC, a newest 50” plasma LCD TV and two sun drenched holidays a year, than go without and save for a deposit.

Yes, there are horror stories of tenants living in rat infested properties with landlords who charge massive rents and don’t repair their properties. But that is very much the exception as most tenants rent homes of a quality and size they couldn’t afford to buy. Twenty years ago, if you said you rented a property, you were considered the lowest of the low ... but now it’s the norm.

So it does appear that the UK housing market is slowly but surely turning into a more European model, where people rent for long periods of their life, then eventually inherit their parents’ properties and subsequently become homeowners themselves, albeit later in life.

Hence, I cannot see the demand for decent, high quality rental properties ever dropping in the next 10 to 20 years, but only ever increasing as the population begins to soar. Just make sure you buy the right property, at the right price, in the right location.