Re: financing an easy life in the sun?

Up North you could get 350/month on a 15k house (80/month mortgage?) which is a better deal. You'll lose 15% per month by using a letting agent. If it can be avoided I would advise against letting if you intend being out of the country for a long period. You will be robbed unless you can find an angelic agent.

Last time I pointed out how cheap houses are up north, I got shot down by southerners who didn't believe me, so here's a house with a tenant paying

I mean 325/month. Sorry.

In article , DP writes

Someone bought a property which he was not allowed to view or have inspected? They certainly are very "different" up north.

Tony

Having looked at the auction page, everything about it says dont touch it with a bargepole - and you know it!!

In article , DP writes

That's seems a very high return. What would the average yield be on a residential property?

So where do you find one of those?

"Ronald Raygun" wrote

Well here are three possibilities:

Mean - 49.5k Median - 35k Mode - 35k

Mean - the "traditional" average - meaning that if everyone threw their full salary into a big pot in the middle of the room, and then this was shared out equally amongst all of them, - well, everyone would receive the "mean".

Median - Isn't it fun lining-up everyone from lowest paid up to highest paid? Ah, then the person(s) in the middle - they must be pretty average, right?

Mode - Well the most people on a particular salary must be pretty "average" again, yes?

:-)

The mean is the average, the mode is an average and so is the median. No single figure can tell the whole story, although quartiles may be useful (that's not quite what I've done here).

In a northern city (Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bradford, Hull, etc) a small house costs between 10k and 40k and can be rented for between 300 and 350 per month. Of course some of the 10k houses would be difficult to find decent tenants for. A return of 25% is achievable for rental income with careful property choice.

Around London a small house costs between 150k and 200k and can be rented for 650 to 800 per month. Again, it would be hard to find good tenants at the lower end. A return of over 5% is achievable with careful property choice.

Historically capital gains have been better around London.

If you are based in London, it would not be sensible to invest in a Newcastle property, and vice versa.

In the land of the dodo.

Some people count the North/South divide as something close to different planets. Anyway, for what it's worth, here's another property offering a similar return. The house prices and rent quoted are in line with local markets. I do not know why this particular house is being sold, but I do know that it is not a special case.

I did not buy it myself because I know there will be a property just like this one next month.

The problem at that end of the market is that the sums turn out very differently indeed if it turns out to have galloping wood rot, subsidence, a bad roof etc needing £8k - £10k worth of work.

This agent seems to make it a policy issue to dis-allow internal inspections or to communicate with the existing tenants, (Notice any damp , get any musty smells etc?). I wonder if he permits surveyors to do reports?

DG

In article , Chris Blunt writes

In message , derek writes

Its an auction. He makes the terms quite clear. Thats why they sell cheaply.

More stats. here -

I believe the University of York do a survey

Hmm, their lowest assumed house price increase rate is 6%, which seems a bit unlikely when incomes are only rising at 4-5% ... and since they give a total return of about 9% in that case, the effective net rental yield seems to be about 3% (and they say explicitly that rents are assumed to increase only 2% a year, hard to square with price increases of 6-10%!)