Latest in Lettings Issue 1.
BUY TO LET
BUY TO LET is still very much alive. Investors, many from overseas are still buying in the fashionable areas of London, in Cambridge and Oxford. Their interest is not in the rate of return but in owning an investment in the UK, seen as a safe haven, and in long term capital growth.
Careful UK landlords are trading their investments, selling properties that have grown in value and are close to the top of a local market. The money is going straight back into residential, small houses instead of flats. Longer term families with children need a house and a garden, not 2 bedrooms both with ensuite and a balcony!
Veteran landlords are watching the auction rooms for repossessions, sell offs by social landlords, and properties from deceased estates. Anything that some hard work, redecoration with modern kitchen and bathroom will make presentable - ideal for letting and almost always with a built in capital gain from Day One.
How active are you in researching this market?
NO STAMP DUTY
from 1st October 2007 zero carbon homes will be exempt from stamp duty land tax if the HMRC can get the regulations together in time.
SECONDARY COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES
SECONDARY COMMERCIAL PROPERTIES are no longer flavour of the month. A combination of small business failures, strong resistance to rent increases and the new Rating (Empty Properties) Bill - likely to receive Royal Assent in the next few weeks - are all serious disincentives. Where conversion to residential is possible commercial landlords, large and small are seeking planning consent.