NOW SOLD - NORTHAMPTON, 2 bed Bungalow £109.995

They come like buses - this is the second decent buy in a day. Cheap at £109,995, and refurbished throughout, the price reflects that parking is at a premium in this road. Even without parking, this will easily rent for £525PCM, to a nice tenant, and it's a nice property - a 6% yield in Duston - a great buy for all of you who only want nice roads and areas.

This is a 2 bed bungalow, freehold. It shoudn't need much money spending on it at all.
richard.baker@belvoirlettings.com for details.

NOW SOLD - 8% yield - Northampton - 2 bed house - SNAP IT UP!

This is a great buy for someone. Yes it will need a few thousand pounds of upgrading, but at £85,000 for a 2 bed freehold house on a half decent road, you can't really go wrong. This is a great one to add to the portfolio - I'd take it myself if I didn't have other irons in the fire!
It's in Hamsterly Park, NN3. It will rent for £525 on a bad day (private tenant, no housing benefit), but £550 in the current market. Yes, it will require a bit of modernising first, but please don't kick the tyres at this price! We can arrange all works. If I was a betting man, I'd say this will be gone in 48 hours, so please get in touch quickly if interested.

Buy £85k (you may get some downside on this)
Spend £5k.
Then worth £100k easily.
Rent for £525 on a bad day.

The True Cost of Eviction

If you end up with a tenant that won't leave, you'll need to evict them. If they aren't paying any rent, you'll most probably lose this whilst you're waiting for the eviction to happen. 

It would be nice if you could go in and simply kick them out. You can't though - it's not legal - the law is on the tenants side.  To get the property back you have to go through a legal process which will probably take 3-5 months assuming you get the paperwork right.
The simple way out of this problem is to take Belvoir's Rental Insurance. £140 per annum if we're managing and it pays all your lost rent and all the costs of eviction. I'm not on a sales pitch, but it's not hard to see why over 80% of our landlords take this cover.
But if you don't have this cover, what's the cost to the landlord of recovering the property? The experts in this area (and to be fair they are pretty good) are Landlord Action who specialise in helping out landlords who have got themselves in a pickle. They give good, clear advice and operate a recovery process for properties that's actually quite cost effective compared to using a solicitor. However the costs are still over £1000 per property, in addition to the 3-5 months rent that you may or may not have received. Further details on the costs can be found HERE.

RUGBY - 6.8% yield - £140k

THE PAVILIONS, RUGBY

6.8% yields in Rugby aren't usual, especially when it's a freehold property in a perfectly nice area - rents to a decent tenant etc. As such there's a good buy here for someone. 
I suspect it will need some internal refreshing, but nothing that should break the bank.
On the market at £141k, and I suspect it will sell for very close to this, if not more. Must be a repossession at that price.

richard.baker@belvoirlettings.com for further details.

NOW SOLD - EAST HUNSBURY - under £120k

This is also a good deal for someone. East Hunsbury is a popular area with landlords and tenants alike, and is generally considered to be one of the more desirable areas in Northampton to live. For that reason properties hold their value and rental yields are never as good as other areas. They represent a low risk option for investors though. 2 bed houses here sell for between £120k and £135k in the current market, mainly dependent on their internal condition. 
Here we have a 2 bed advertised at £120k. It's clearly empty, and appears to be in pretty decent (and perfectly rentable) order. It has UPVC windows which these properties didn't have from new and is a benefit. As such it's the sort of property I'd usually expect to see somewhere around the £125k mark. I suspect it will sell for pretty close to £120k, but there's a small discount there for someone, which is unusual in this area. 

It will rent safely for £550PCM, but as things stand somewhere up to £595PCM should be do-able in the current market. A yield of at least 5.5%.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-26248542.html

NOW SOLD - BUY IT TENANTED - £118k

We have a couple of deals coming up where investors can buy a property with a tenant already in situ. This is because an existing landlord is selling. We see quite a few examples at the moment of people renting their own house out because they can't achieve the sale price they want, then deciding 12 months later that they'll take an offer after all. Here's number 1!

MOORE STREET, POETS CORNER.

2 bed property, well presented, excellent order, and in one of the best areas of town for Victorian properties - Poets Corner, Kingsley.
Double Glazed, Gas Central Heated, Nice kitchen and bathroom, etc etc.
Currently tenanted (single female occupier) at £550PCM. It's a rolling contract, but we'll have no trouble re-letting at this level if and when she leaves. 
Current owner has been advised by local estate agents to advertise at £119,995 and will do this in the next few weeks. Avoiding the agency fee, he'd be happy to accept £118k for a quick sale.
The property is well maintained internally and has been looked after by the current owner.

Rental Yield 5.5%

Why buy with a tenant in situ?

• Appeals to investors who value certainty! If there's a good tenant in there already, there's no question mark over what rent will be achieved and whether a suitable tenant can be found.
• You pick up rental income from the day you complete on the property - no void period whilst a tenant is found, referenced, and moved in. 
• The property comes with all relevant safety certificates. No nasty surprises or a gas man telling you the boiler won't pass it's test.
• No new tenancy agreement is needed - Belvoir tenancy agreements are set up to move from one landlord to the other if required, which minimises paperwork. 

CONTACT richard.baker@belvoirlettings.com if you're interested in this property

Landlords : Don't forget your property is a BUSINESS

I'd say probably half new landlords at the moment are 'accidental' - they haven't bought a property to let, but have ended up with a property that needs letting out. Usually because this is because they can't sell it, but sometimes it's a property they have inherited, or maybe they are going abroad for a couple of years. This can affect the way they think about their property - whereas an investor looks at his property as a business and makes decisions with a 'business' hat on, 'accidental' landlords can struggle to get their head round what's actually going on. Twelve months on, it's not unusual for them to get themselves into trouble, have decided that letting is not for them, or have fallen out with their agent and tenant! Here's how to avoid that happening to you.

Emotionally detach yourself.
If you love the house you're letting like your own home, don't let it! Sell it, or if it's that great, live in it yourself. The reason for this you're going to be offended by any tenant who has the audacity to move in. They'll do something differently to you do - hang a picture, park the car, fail to weed the flowerbeds, wear their shoes in the house - and because you love the place, this will really irritate you! Renting a property that you're not in love with makes it far easier to look at things objectively.

Budget for maintenance.
Even though the property will be tenanted, things will still go wrong with it. The electric shower may break, the boiler may leak, the upvc window handles may come loose, etc. Many landlords are astonished when this proves to be the case as they haven't budgeted for anything going wrong. Clearly this is short sighted - at some point the landlord will want to sell that property for decent money, and if he's allowed it to get into a state of disrepair, that isn't going to help his cause.

Don't make every decision based on cost. 
The classic one here is which lettings agent to use! Given that the investment property is likely to be one of the biggest financial commitments you make in your life, why would you put it in the hands of someone who trades on being 'cheap'. However this also extends to whether you should have an inventory and whether you should insure the rent. Whereas successful landlords realise the value of 'doing things properly', an accidental landlord often tries to cut cost at every opportunity. I'm a lettings agent and I still have rent & legal insurance on every one of my own investment properties, which should be an indication that it's worth the premium. 

Should you really self manage?
I could probably service my car if I put my mind to it. I'd get away with it for a while, but sooner or later I'd get caught out and a sizeable repair bill would follow. It's the same with playing at property management - type 'landlords forum' into google and you'll find umpteen advice sites for landlords which are littered with questions from people who've got into trouble managing their own property. Most of the issues cover simple things - how to end the tenancy, how to deal with non payment of rent, how to deal with a demanding tenant, etc - but if you don't know the answers, the only real outcome is expensive legal bills. I've taken 4 properties on in 2013 where the landlord had been managing previously, and basically wanted someone to sort out the mess they'd created.

Understand that every business has customers that don't pay.
Again, whilst statistically your chances of a fundamentally rogue tenant are low, if you let any property out for a period of years, you're going to have hiccups at some point. This is a business, and sometimes tenants (customers) will cause problems - it's occupational hazard. Accidental landlords sometimes forget this and react with horror when everything doesn't go according to plan. Professional landlords realise that the 2 biggest risks of letting a property (tenant doesn't pay, and tenant damages property) are both insurable. As such the income stream is secured.

Focus on what really matters.
Landlords who have bought to let tend to be results focussed. They look at the big picture - keep the property condition up, keep the property tenanted, keep the income coming in. They worry less about the detail - for instance how the property is described on the agent's website. They don't tell the agent how do its job, but they do expect answers if the results aren't delivered - which is perfectly fair. On the other hand, I do have accidental landlords who lecture my staff in the n'th detail on how to let and manage properties, which invariably only serves to make things more complicated. If you don't have faith in your  agent to look after the property, you've chosen the wrong agent(!) And if you desire an agent who simply says yes to every question you raise, you're storing up problems for the future.