You find me in a
reflective mood today as I want to talk about the future of investing in
property in Burley. The truth is that we have got complacent, with many people
having mistaken the ever rising Burley (and in fact the whole of the UK)
property market since the 1960’s as the eternal gift that kept giving as
property prices constantly rose and doubled every five to seven years.
The days of making money from property
as easy
as falling off a log, like taking candy
from a baby are sadly over
Whilst George Osborne has
decided now is the time to milk the ‘Golden Cow’ of UK’s private landlords,
with changes in taxation for buy to let property, many pundits are predicting
the end of buy to let as we know it. However, it is still possible to make a
reasonable, profitable and safe return on property with these changes. You see,
I have always seen investing in the Burley buy to let market (as I would anywhere in the UK), as I might see mother nature,
creating some truly wonderful stunning warm weather but at the same time, she
will bite, creating catastrophic situations such as snowstorms and
hurricanes. You need to study the
market, take advice and opinions from many people and then decide what the
proverbial property weather will be … remember, tenants will always want a roof
over their head and I don’t see the Government building the millions of houses
required to house them.
Nobody knows the future,
and yes people can predict but I wouldn’t be afraid of this change... because
as a famous French proverb says, (I told you I was a reflective mood today), ‘the
more things change, the more they stay the same’. I mean, no one could have predicted how the
property market has changed in Burley over the last couple of decades? Looking
specifically at the Leeds West Parliamentary Constituency, twenty years ago,
19,618 households (meaning 52.86% of property) was owned and only 1,853
households were privately rented (meaning 4.99% of property was rented out by
private landlords). Roll the clocks on twenty years and the change has been
seismic …. Now only 21,185 of properties in the Constituency are home-owners (a
drop to only 51.48% being owner occupied) and the jump in private renting has
been out of this world, as 7,223 properties are now privately rented proportionally
17.55%). (NB Neighbouring Constituencies show similar changes as well)
Who would have predicted in 1995 the
private rental sector in
Burley would have grown by 251.7% in the
proceeding 20 years?
Also, if you had asked
someone in 1995 to predict what would happen to property values over the
proceeding 20 years (ie between 1995 and 2015), they might have
predicted similar growth to the growth experienced over the previous 20 years (ie
between 1975 and 1995), which was a very impressive 351.55%. Yes, property
values in Burley have increased over the last 20 years (between 1995 and 2015),
but by a more modest 133.99% (and most of that can be attributed to house price
growth between 2000 and 2006.)
The property market is
constantly changing and buy to let for too long has been heavily dependent
solely on house price growth, where yield has been almost forgotten. I see the changes in tax and landlord and
tenant law in a different perspective to the doom-mongers and see it as
bringing many opportunities. You might need to change your buy to let
benchmarks, your approach to financing or even consider places other than
Burley in which to invest your money, but this will shine a light on investing
in properties with healthier yields and create more realistic long term buy to
let opportunities, instead of short term growth bets and wagers.