Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS

That's great Billy. We do this at work as well and also our family volunteers on a weekly basis. We all really enjoy this and know that we are doing something for the community. However time strapped we all feel, and having two kids and both with full time jobs I know it's tough, but it can be done.

wynnvegas

Hi Tilly,

I had no idea so many things were going on. I've put my chief interest as helping 16-20 year olds training and finding employment but there seems to be a lot of committee and managerial work to be done across a range of charitable and community groups. My initial guess was that I'd spend a couple of hours a week doling out stuff to the homeless but it looks like I could do that and a lot more besides. I'm trying to keep Moyra away from the idea of fostering pets or walking prospective blind dog puppies!!

Cheers,

Billy

diadeb

Hi Billy
Yes you're right re the interest rate, I should be grateful we managed to get the deal we did. It's a lifetime tracker, so I hope there is never a reason to have to leave it (until it's paid off that is...;)), but boy did we have to jump through hoops to get it. Meetings with the bank, computer says no, etc etc; it was like going back in time 20 years to days when you had meetings with your bank manager and the internet didn't exist! I was determined though that it was the deal we wanted and so persisted to the end!

My properties are not abroad, so I have no problem with the lingo and worse case scenario, I can get there in two and half hours if I have to. I have a fab cleaner who is as important as a limb to me, so together we make a great team. You can have great holidays in the UK you know Billy - the world doesn't end at Las Vegas.

wynnvegas

Hi diadeb,

I think that we lucked out with the time period more than anything else. Our mortgage was arranged in less than an hour and the entire time between stepping foot into the squalor, arranging the 105% mortgage from scratch that night and having our offer accepted was somewhere in the region od 22 hours. It's only reading the scraps that folk have gone through and the problems that can occur in that process that we've started to understand how fortunate we were in our ignorance.

Sorry I misunderstood about the properties. I've every faith, having had a couple of chats about it with the guys involved, that it's a pretty lucrative medium-term scheme. I've got a meeting with Investor 1 on Friday to start the process rolling. I'm not particularly daunted by the task but borrowing money, however well meaning it is, and however factual that it won't actually cost us anything in real terms, will still be a bit of a wrench! We could well have our first properties early in the new year but early April is probably more likely.

Cheers,

Billy

sarahevie

I think you are in an ideal position to become landlords, the problem I find for people, and the reason we are sticking at one to now, is the mortgages *if* you don't have tenants or *if* they aren't paying - it happens!

Whereas for you, you have minimal outgoings with such a lot of 'spare' money per month that you are never going to be financially strapped paying the mortgages so why not go for it.

ETA I've looked at lower end of the market houses before I'm near Leeds where such houses can still be bought for around £40K but the tenants, areas scare me too much.

wynnvegas

Hi Sarah,

I'm not sure yet where we'll end up having houses / flats. The prices where we are are still creeping up due to the proximity to Edinburgh. The letting agent has said we should take interest only mortgages out on the BTL properties but I'm not brilliantly keen on that. I'd much rather have a smaller, more manageable portfolio where we do have the wherewithall to cover any unrented periods (or, I suppose, the flexibility to reduce the rents for any specific property to save it from being empty) than dozens of houses where we could potentially get ourselves into a wee bit of trouble if things took a dramatic turn for the worse.

I'm already thinking about the possibilities of owning whole streets (too much Monopoly back in the day methinks)!! At what percentage ownership point do you think I could lobby the council to start renaming streets after myself!?

Cheers,

Billy

sarahevie

An old school pal of mine had that happen to him, got to 10, mid range ones but had a few vacant, non payers, expensive maintenance where they had been trashed and was close to repossession. Very stressful time.

Also someone my OH works with owns a couple of whole streets in Bradford, about 10 houses on each.

There's a lot of 'large' 100+ property landlords in Leeds

wynnvegas

Afternoon All,

This may seem like a really stupid question to those much more in the know but what is the point of an interest only mortgage? I can just about see the benefit if, at the end of your term, the house doesn't need much doing to it and you can sell it for anything up to double what you paid for it and then just run away with the cash quite happily. Banking on that seems a bit mental though (particularly as selling houses isn't half as easy as it used to be as far as I can see). Surely with a repayment mortgage, which often as not isn't a massive amount more, you're as well owning the whole thing at the end and then coining it in all the harder if and when you sell the property?

I'll get to the bottom of that and about another million questions over the next week. It's Investor 1 tomorrow night, the letting agent on Wednesday and the bank on Friday of next week. Inbetween times, I've got a lecture to give on Monday, my volunteering interview to have on Thursday and quite a bit of work to do on top. No rest for the wicked!! I'm off just now to pay a wee visit to one of my guys who retired earlier this year and has recently had a triple bypass so I'm hoping he's in a much better state that when I last saw him.

Hope everyone is grand and dandy.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Hi Sarah,

That's the plan then. A whole street to myself at some point. This already has the potential to get seriously out of hand...

Cheers,

Billy

unhappy_shopper

Hi Billy,

Wishing you good luck in your BTL venture. :cool2:

Just a small word of caution: Think about your income tax position too as I know you are already in the 40% bracket.

Best Wishes.