I have met many successful property people who have followed the basic strategy of just never selling their property, reasoning what do you do with cash? Except look for another deal to put it back into.
The first step in property investment is trying to decide what you require in terms of capital growth and income. This must be decided in consideration of you tax situation and future plans. If you would like help defining these why don’t you give our office a call?
The Real Deal
Real scenarios from the street
A client came to see me who had held assets in central locations such as Pimlico and Kings cross. He had focused on the council houses and picked up 4-5 properties over a few years all with extremely high yields. This was in the 80’s when you could get stonking rental yields of 12% to 20%. At the time these properties could be picked up for around £45,000 during this period ex-council properties really did have a stigma attached to them and not many people were touching them, now the stigma has decreased but still exists. The client sold these properties many years go, they were all sold because financing was difficult hence you could not be remortgage them very easily.
The client runs an import/export business in north london, and is aged 50, he plans to retire in 10 years and wants to develop an income stream of about £30-40k by the time he retires. He again like the idea of purchasing ex-council with the intention of streams cash flow. On retirement he wishes to spend his time helping his local temple, so he has a noble intention. Sow & Reap will be sourcing properties to ensure he meets his aim. In my opinion this is a very achievable goal given that he has £250k in cash and a commercial property worth £500k fully paid for. I couldn’t help but tell him how much the flats would be worth now if he had kept them and I bet he hasn’t managed to save this much!
The Victorian House
Types and Styles of Housing
The terraced house is the most economical use of the land to build a house. These were built with great quantity during the Victorian period. The dimensions were two rooms deep and one room a corridor wide. You can see rows of these types of properties all over England, normally the front garden is non existent and they have small back yards where sometimes the toilets were located and they are packed as tight as sardines, like the ones you see on Coronation Street.
In early Victorian houses the kitchens and associated service rooms were in the basement. Later on these had disappeared with the kitchens being relocated to the rear of the houses. The size of the houses got bigger too. In the 1800’s the poorest house consisted of only one room whilst in the 1900’s the minimum would be 4 rooms.
Terraced houses, in order to look more affluent, used various techniques to give the appearance of semis. One would be to stagger the houses on a curved road, another would be to have subtle decorative differences. Another popular method was to be used in the 1840’s were bay windows. Bay windows were associated with seaside towns like Brighton. They were done to maximize the sea view. These were used in terraced houses to increase their appeal.
Suresh Vagjiani
Managing Director
Sow & Reap
Sow & Reap - Copyright 2011
