Bexley Borough Property News

Investing in Bexley buy to let property differs from investing in the stock market or depositing your hard-earned cash in the Building Society. Many consider investing in the Building Society the safe option, but the returns you can achieve are awfully low (the best 2-year bond rate from Nationwide is a whopping 0.75% a year!). The Stock Market can give good returns, but most invest in stock market funds rather than spending every day on the phone to the stockbroker, making the investment quite hands off; one always has the feeling of not being in control. With buy to let, things can be more hands on. Many landlords like the tactile nature of property - you can touch the bricks and mortar. Bexley’s landlords are making their own decisions rather than entrusting them to whizz kids in Canary Wharf playing roulette with their savings. Investing in property is a long-term game. You can earn from your investment in two ways. When a property increases in value over time, this ...

The Bexley housing market has undergone a sea change in recent decades, with the Buy-to-Let (BTL) sector evolving as a key trend, for both tenants and landlords. A few weeks ago, the Government released a White Paper on housing, which I found very interesting. Notably, the private rental sector played a major part in plans for future housing, which is especially important for our growing Bexley population. In 1981, the population of Bexley stood at 217,400 and today it stands at 242,100. Currently, the private rented (BTL) sector accounts for 11.7% of households in the town. The Government wants to assist people living in these houses and help the economy by encouraging the provision of quality homes in a housing sector that has grown because of global economic forces that have pushed home ownership beyond the reach of more and more people. Things were very different with respect to home ownership in 1981: 72.95% of Bexley people owned their own home 20.8%...

Easy problems should have easy solutions. Right?   For problems like Bexley Borough’s housing crisis , where we have a rudimentary numerical problem of too few homes for too many people , the answer is clearly to build more property. Unfortunately for those desperately seeking to purchase or let a property, that takes a lot of time and huge amounts of money. So what other solutions are there? The most recent set of figures from 2015 states that there are 1,180 empty homes in the Bexley Borough area. Why not put them back into the system and help ease the Bexley Borough housing crisis? 4,612 Bexley households (not people – households) are on the waiting list for council houses . Surely, we can all agree that it is immoral for property to be left empty for years and years with the burgeoning council house waiting list, not to mention the issue of homelessness. A different story emerges, however, when you look deeper into the numbers. Of the 1,180 homes lying empty, only 3...

There’s a whole legion of wannabe first-time buyers keen to get on the property ladder – and now they have a 3% price advantage over the army of landlords with cash at the ready who used to be quicker to respond. Since the start of April, buy to let landlords have had to pay an additional 3% in stamp duty. This means that, whilst demand from some Bexley Borough buy to let landlords has declined, it offers first time buyers (FTBs) a chance to fill the vacuum with less competition from cash rich landlords ( over two thirds of BTL properties were purchased without a mortgage in the last 7 years ) who can bid more and complete more quickly. The average value of a terraced house in Bexley Borough currently stands at £291,500, so if a FTB went up against a landlord, the landlord would have to pay an additional £8,745 in stamp duty. Early anecdotal evidence from fellow property professionals suggests landlords are reducing their offers slightly to reflect the extra stamp duty.  ...

April Fools’ Day 2016 was no joke for some landlords, as they rushed to make buy to let property purchases throughout late March to beat the extra 3% stamp duty George Osborne imposed on such properties after the 31 st . All the property professionals in the borough have noticed that the demand to buy from these landlords has eased since April and May. The Brexit issue is also having a tempering effect. You may recall that I wrote about this a few weeks ago, stating that Brexit won’t prompt the end of the world scenario some suggest. In another article, I spoke of the growth rate of Bexley Borough property values and how, whilst the rate of growth is slowing, Bexley Borough property values are still 13.3% higher year on year, although the month on month growth rate has started to moderate compared with the heady days of 2014 and 2015.  Intriguingly, a recent members’ survey of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors states that only 17% believed property values would ...