Buying council flat above commercial properties to live in

yungturl

mark_cycling00 said:

I once lived above an Indian restaurant. There's a big difference between the smell of food and what comes out of an extraction unit at the rear.
Burnt ingredients and burning oil a lot of the time.

Bags of food waste out the back stinking during summer.

Dry cleaners are banned from urban areas in some European countries...

I'd be asking why landlords haven't snapped it up at that price. It would be a 15% yield whereas typically yields in London are about 5% last time I looked.

Re. the landlord point - one of our fears is that it is selling for a bit more than its worth due to the cash buyer competitiveness at this price range... but we figure that will generally be the case if we want a cheap flat in SW4 Clapham haha

Given that we're very keen to have a 3 bed in this location, want to keep our debt leverage relatively low (in case any income issues in future), don't have the issues of needing a mortgage and don't care about the commercial stuff below... I think we're in a goldilocks zone of getting what we want but discounted for downsides we don't care about anyway

Just want to make sure we're not paying over the odds re. the re-sale point (otherwise we might try negotiate down a little)

If rates fall we might always re-mortgage (having bought in cash) and buy something else to live in, then let out this flat at the c8% yield mark

mark_cycling00

I don't want to talk you out of it. You've obviously checked it out well and thought things through.

Years ago I wanted to buy a 2-bed apartment at postman's park EC2 for £230,000. Everyone talked me out of it and I bailed. Now it would be worth £900,000 and the area got much livelier too.

Calculated risk can be good. Just don't ignore things or make too many assumptions.

Good luck!