Action must be taken on house prices in London

chucknorris

Bantex wrote: »

There was very little BTL competing with buyers though. I seem to remember that going back 20 or so years, it was cheaper to rent an equivalent house than to buy it.

I bought my first 2 investment properties 23 years ago and it was at a time when some owners were going as far as posting the keys back through their mortgage lenders letterboxes and walking away from the property.

Bantex_2

chucknorris wrote: »

I bought my first 2 investment properties 23 years ago and it was at a time when some owners were going as far as posting the keys back through their mortgage lenders letterboxes and walking away from the property.

I was not having a dig.

Do find it a little sad that many do not see houses as a home any more though, just a way to make money, quite often at the expense of others.

I belive that the vast majority of renters would rather have the security of buying, but in many cases are now being outbid/priced out by absent investor landlords.

I know a few streets that used to be nice but are now tatty BTL ghettos.

purch

Bought my first few at an auction in March 1992.

And it was real BTL, no leverage required.

Certainly for the prices these properties were being marketed at in 1990/91 the return would have been miserly and I'd have been better off leaving the money in the Bank, but for the prices I got them at auction and the £500 pm rent achieved almost immediately it was the best income/return available at that time.

purch

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Yes, because there wasn't a rental market until 1998.

That's funny.

I was renting out property in 1992, and I am quite sure it was possible to rent a property before then.

purch

Bantex wrote: »

I do find it a little depressing that many now consider houses to be an investment rather than a home.

Property has been considered an Investment for hundreds of years.

How do you think the Duke of Westminster got to be so rich ?

HAMISH_MCTAVISH

Jason74 wrote: »

As many people on these boards (from all sides of the debate) have pointed out, London property is a scarce resource, and one that needs to be used for maximum social benefit

Well I would argue London property is a scarce resource, that needs to be used for maximum economic benefit.

It will not always be the case that social benefits and economic benefits align.

But in this instance they may well do so.

chucknorris

Bantex wrote: »

I was not having a dig.

Do find it a little sad that many do not see houses as a home any more though, just a way to make money, quite often at the expense of others.

I belive that the vast majority of renters would rather have the security of buying, but in many cases are now being outbid/priced out by absent investor landlords.

I know a few streets that used to be nice but are now tatty BTL ghettos.

I'm not saying or thinking that you are having a dig, but all the same I want to respond.


Without exception every property that I have bought has been improved substantially, I have spent about 14 years living in some of the various investment properties that I own. I'm not hiding behind 'providing a service', I invested because I thought that they would be a good investment, but I do believe that I do provide a good service, my tenants rent slightly below the market (not because I am charitable, but because getting the right tenant is important to me, and I want more choice), they don't pay agency fees as I/we manage our own properties and they tend to stay for a number of years. I have one tenant that has been with me now for almost 10 years (I can't actually remember when he first moved in).

MFW_ASAP

Bantex wrote: »

There was very little BTL competing with buyers though. I seem to remember that going back 20 or so years, it was cheaper to rent an equivalent house than to buy it.

But that's not what you said. You were talking about people seeing houses as investments, which has clearly always been the case and not something new.

MFW_ASAP

purch wrote: »

That's funny.

I was renting out property in 1992, and I am quite sure it was possible to rent a property before then.

Same here, but I must have dreamed it because it seems people only started seeing property as an investment recently.

Or perhaps people have a rosy/blinkered view of the past? or indeed hold the view that if they personally didn't know it was going on, it never happened?

Graham_Devon

MFW_ASAP wrote: »

Same here, but I must have dreamed it because it seems people only started seeing property as an investment recently.

Or perhaps people have a rosy/blinkered view of the past? or indeed hold the view that if they personally didn't know it was going on, it never happened?

Context dear boy, context.

BTL lending itself has only been around for about 15 years (CML). Before that, you bought the house via other means.

This means that since around 1997/8 BTL has expanded rapidly.

So yes, while BTL was around, it wasn't around in anything like the fashion it is today, and that's where the context comes in.

It's pretty clear that the poster in question was talking about BTL in recent years. The years where it's been supported by buy to let investment financial products.

https://www.cml.org.uk/cml/publications/newsandviews/141/545