Bexley Borough Property News

The mind-set and tactics you employ to buy your first Bexley Borough buy to let property needs to be different to the tactics and methodology of buying a home for yourself to live in. The main difference is when purchasing your own property, you may well pay a little more to get the home you (and your family) want, and are less likely to compromise. When buying for your own use, it is only human nature you will want the best, so that quite often it is at the top end of your budget (because as my parents always used to tell me – you get what you pay for in this world!). Yet with a buy to let property, if your goal is a higher rental return – a higher price doesn’t always equate to higher monthly returns – in fact quite the opposite. Inexpensive Bexley Borough properties can bring in bigger monthly returns. Most landlords use the phrase ‘yield’ instead of monthly return. To calculate the yield on a buy to let property one basically takes the monthly rent, multiplies it by ...

I was having a lazy Saturday morning, reading through the newspapers at my favourite coffee shop in Bexley.  I find the most interesting bits are their commentaries on the British Housing Market.  Some talk about property prices, whilst others discuss the younger generation grappling to get a foot-hold on the property ladder with difficulties of saving up for the deposit.  Others feature articles about the severe lack of new homes being built (which is especially true in Bexley!).  A group of people that don’t often get any column inches however are those existing homeowners who can’t move! Back in the early 2000’s, between 1m and 1.3m people moved each year in England and Wales, peaking at 1,349,306 home-moves (i.e. house sales) in 2002.  However, the ‘credit crunch’ hit in 2008 and the number of house sales fell to 624,994 in 2009.  Since then this has steadily recovered, albeit to a more ‘respectable’ 899,708 properties by 2016.  This means the...

Joseph Wilson, 35-year-old father of two from Bexley, was out house hunting. It was a pleasant August Saturday afternoon, and our man cycles along on his bike. He cycles up a street of suburban semis, where he spots a few retired mature neighbours, chatting to each other over the garden fence. He leans his bicycle against a lamppost and launches softly into his property search. “ Anyone on the road contemplating moving? ” Joseph asks, “ I am not a landlord or developer, I’m just a Bexley bloke trying to get out of renting, buy a house, do it up and live in it with my wife and two children ” “ The only way I will leave here is in a box ”, answers an 80-something lady, wearing her fading Paisley patterned housecoat from the 1970’s. “ I‘ve lived here since before you were born, its lovely up here .. we aren’t moving, are we Doris? ” (as her neighbour sagely shook his head at his wife). Joseph, like many Bexley people born in the late 1970’s to the early 1990’s, is kee...

The most recent set of data from the Land Registry has stated that property values in Bexley Borough were 8.97% higher than 12 months ago and 30.9% higher than January 2015. Despite the uncertainty over Brexit as Bexley (and most of the UK’s) property values continue their medium and long-term upward trajectory. As economics is about supply and demand, the story behind the Bexley property market can also be seen from those two sides of the story. Looking at the supply issues of the Bexley Borough property market, putting aside the short-term dearth of property on the market, one of the main reasons of this sustained house price growth has been down to of the lack of building new homes. The draconian planning laws, that over the last 70 years (starting with The   Town and Country Planning Act 1947 ) has meant the amount of land built on in the UK today, only stands at 1.8% (no, that’s not a typo – its one point eight percent) and that is made up of 1.1% with residenti...