Thursday 10 October 2024
How much does a bedroom cost in Chichester?
Monday 30 September 2024
BUY-TO-LET DEAL OF THE WEEK: 2 bed house in Chichester, £300,000, 5.0% yield
Summary2 bed house in ChichesterListed for sale on 08/08/24 @ £315,000Now = £300,000Rent = £1,250pcmYield = 5.0%Last sold for £250,000 in February 2020 (+20% in 4 years)
Thursday 26 September 2024
Buy-to-let: home or away
Opinions are divided over whether you should invest in buy-to-let locally or venture further afield in an attempt to achieve better returns.
Monday 16 September 2024
BUY-TO-LET DEAL OF THE WEEK: 3 bed house in Chichester, £395,000, 4.9% yield
3 bed house in ChichesterListed for sale on 01/05/24 @ £500,000Now = £395,000Rent = £1,600pcmYield = 4.9%
Thursday 12 September 2024
Is September the best month to sell your property?
By looking at a monthly breakdown of property sales in the UK for 2022 & 2023, we can determine whether this is in fact true and which months are actually busiest for estate agents.
Here’s the month-by-month property sales in the UK for 2022 & 2023:
Bear in mind though that these figures (from Land Registry) are when a property sale is completed, rather than when it is first agreed between buyer and seller. With the legal process normally taking several months, we can conclude that the highest number of sales are actually agreed around May / June.
Having looked at the figures across a number of years, I can confirm that the above pattern is typical of how the market flows throughout the year. Things start off slow and build momentum as the year progresses, peaking in late Summer, before tailing off again into the darker, colder months.
In fact, the number of sales roughly follows the amount of daylight we have, albeit lagging this by a couple of months i.e. there are more viewings and sales agreed when there are more daylight hours, with a couple of months for the paperwork to go through before the transaction completes and shows up as a ‘sale’ on the Land Registry. The only outlier to this is March, which can be explained as a result of more people suddenly looking for a fresh start in January.
As a side note, the totals above show there were 726,940 sales in the whole of 2023, which was a massive 39% lower than in 2022, when 1,008,616 properties were sold in the UK. Worryingly, things have slowed down even further at the start of 2024, with there being 24% fewer sales registered in the first third of the year compared to the same period twelve months prior.
Looking back at the chart though, the volume of sales is actually quite steady throughout the year, rather than having wild ups and downs like some people think. What this ultimately means is that there is not really a ‘best’ time to sell; the best time is surely when it fits your circumstances. So, you should be content to know that, if correctly priced, your property will sell regardless of when it is listed throughout the year.
Monday 2 September 2024
BUY-TO-LET DEAL OF THE WEEK: 3 bed house in Fishbourne, £285,000, 5.5% yield
Summary3 bed house in FishbourneListed for sale on 19/08/24 @ £285,000Rent = £1,300pcmYield = 5.5%Last sold for £199,950 in 2013 (+43% in 11 years)
Thursday 29 August 2024
Is a ground floor flat a good buy?
Which floor a flat is on is an important factor when deciding what to buy (or rent). Some are ardent in their opinion that an upper-floor flat is the only way to go, whilst others can see plenty of benefits in keeping your feet on the ground. Typically, top floor flats have achieved a premium price over their ground floor counterparts, but is this justified?
Many will say it is and that flats on the ground floor represent both a privacy and security risk. In theory that is true; people walking past will be able to see into a ground floor flat rather than one higher up. And it’s easier to hop through an open window or break the glass of one on the ground floor than if you’d need a ladder to do so. But the same could be said for any house that isn’t built on stilts, so that logic doesn’t really cut the mustard in my opinion.
Certainly the view can be better in a flat on a higher floor and they tend to be brighter too. Plus, heat rises, so they are often easier and cheaper to heat in the Winter. I think there’s still something of a ‘status’ about being higher up in the sky though (think top floor penthouses), which largely clouds people’s opinions on the matter. Having said that, there’s definitely something to be said for only having neighbours below you, compared to ground floor flats, which in a poorly insulated building can mean hearing ‘footsteps on the ceiling’.
Ground floor flats though make perfect sense for those wishing to avoid the stairs. Whilst many immediately think of the elderly in this regard, the benefit is also there for young families with pushchairs and people with mobility issues. They’re also easier to evacuate for the safety conscious and you won’t have to worry about leaking roofs (although they’re the first ones to feel the impact of rising damp or drainage problems).
But the real bonus of having a ground floor flat is that many come with their own private garden or direct access to communal grounds. Apart from the obvious benefit this provides, which came to the fore as we were stuck at home during the pandemic, it can also make ground floor flats suitable for pet owners compared to their more penned-in upper-floor flat counterparts (although you’ll need to check the head lease to ensure pets are allowed at all).
I have long argued that houses are more popular than flats with both owner-occupiers and tenants. This is because they come with their own entrance, private outdoor space and, normally, better parking. But I’ve visited many ground floor flats that also come with these benefits and it’s not surprising that demand for these are holding up noticeably better at the moment compared to flats without these bonuses.
So for me, a ground floor flat that provides access onto its own outdoor space could be a winner; particularly with an aging population that values their own private space. This is a good way of getting many of the benefits associated with a house, but with a lower price tag.