6% Yield close to Town Centre

If I had a pound for every time a prospective tenant says they want to live “close to the tenant centre” I could be a millionaire.  I have seen this flat come on to the market that is not only close to town centre but also walking distance to the Manor Royal Industrial Estate.  The property is being marketed by Northwood, you can see the details by clicking here

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-48933761.html

It is not the biggest 2 bedroom flat on the market but it has the big advantage of a garage and is in a very desirable location.  We would advertise at £900 per calendar month therefore a yield of over 6% is almost certain on this property.  If the tenants don’t have a car & rely on public transport they are well served by the FastWay buses that run almost 24 hours a day from the stops on the road outside the development. 

Increase yield by spending more..?

With house prices seeming to increase on a daily basis I am always interested when agents reduce the marketing price.  Astons have been marketing this property in Chiltern Close, West Green for months and have dropped the price on two occasions to its current level of £225,000.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-30039987.html

It has been a rental property for many years and has suffered from a lack of investment but even so, if purchased and rented in its current condition with no improvement works it would achieve £975 per month – a yield of 5.2%.

West Green is a highly sought after area close to the Town Centre and based on the similar properties I have let in the surrounding streets it would only take a new kitchen & a new bathroom and maybe a couple of new carpets upstairs to increase that rental price nearer to £1100 per month. 

I would budget a £6000 spend on new rooms to bring the property to a top rental standard.  What would interest the investor is that the total spend on the property is still much less than the £240,000 it was originally marketed for but the yield would increase to 5.7%

St Peters Church, West Green

1 Bedroom House with ready made tenants

After spotting the maisonette in Cottesmore Green on Friday that was for sale with another agents, we have just listed this little 1 bedroom house in the same area of Crawley. 

http://www.martinco.com/for-sale/property/182223

It has been tenanted with us for many years and has the benefit of being a proper house with an upstairs and downstairs.  Admittedly there isn’t a great deal of house but it is more than adequate for a single person or a couple and the current tenants are very happy living there.  One of the many advantages is not just its proximity to Buchan Country Park but this house comes with its own private garden.  To achieve its maximum values the house will require modernisation but for landlords looking for an easy investment this house will come with great tenants paying rent from the day of completion.

If you are interested in this property or any others listed on my company website please call my office on 01293 735000  

Cottesmore Green Investment 5.8% yield

I saw this little property come on the market with Astons, these are not the biggest 1 bedroom maisonettes you’ll find in Crawley but they are really popular as rental properties.  Located in Cottesmore Green they have easy access to FastWay for Gatwick Airport & great links to the M23 motorway.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-46023268.html

Cottesmore Green is on the western edge of Crawley and makes an easy commute for tenants that work in Horsham as well as Gatwick.  Being further out they need to be priced under the rates achieved in the town centre and I would suggest a rental valuation of £675 per month would get the phones ringing off the hook, especially as 1 bedroom flats in the centre of Crawley are now advertised at £800 per month.  At £675 it would realise a yield of 5.8% on the current marketing price and would have tenants queuing, giving the landlord the luxury of moving someone straight in with no void period.  

The verdant Buchan Country Park & lake is just across the road for tenants that like woodland walks.  I don’t know if the lakes & trees would be a big enough selling point but if we found a tenant that would pay a higher rent of £695 a month & the purchase price was haggled down to £137,500 we could increase the yield to over 6%.

Do the terraced houses on Ifield Drive in Crawley make good investments?

I was talking to a client who lives in a terraced house on Ifield Drive in Crawley and she asked if the properties made good investments.  Her house is close to Ifield railway station and she suspected there was a market for rental property fuelled by the commuters using the station.

I have always found a stronger demand for the property from families because of the local secondary school but to investigate the area further I checked the data listed with the online portals.  The listings show that 44 of the 3 bedroom terraced houses in Ifield Drive have been sold since the year 2000. 

Figures from the Halifax show that average property values in the South East have risen by 101.9% since the year 2000 but the terraced houses on Ifield Drive have beaten that rise.  The average sold price of 3 bedroom terraced house in 2000 was £98,830 but the land registry is showing a 3 bedroom house has sold this year for £225,000, that’s a rise of 127.6%.  There has only been one reported sale so far this year but if the others mirror that price the homeowners in the street are doing very well.

With outstanding capital growth it certainly makes the area good for families wishing to trade up to a bigger property but landlords would expect the yields to be comparatively lower.  A good quality 3 bedroom house with parking will now rent at £1100 per month or even more, that’s a yield of 5.8% based on the price of the property that has sold this year already. 

The client was pleased that the properties on Ifield Drive are good news for both owner occupiers and investors.  If you are considering a sale, a purchase, the family home or an investment you are welcome to contact me for any advice or insight into the Crawley property market.

Great Little Investment in Ifield West

It is always worth splashing out a little bit more for a property that has its own private garden and I saw this little 1 bedroom maisonette being marketed with Astons.

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-30852609.html

These maisonettes in the leafy suburb of Ifield West have a great shape to the living space that allows for distinct areas for lounge & dining – which is unusual in the smaller properties.  They also have enclosed kitchens rather than the current craze of having cookers and washing machines open plan to the main living area.  With its own private garden I can rent this at £725 per month or maybe even more in todays property starved rental market.  Ifield West is not best served by public transport but car owners would enjoy the allocated parking space. 

If purchased at the marketing price of £154,950 the yield would be a respectable 5.6% but I’d be tempted to put in a cheeky offer based on the highest price achieved for one of these in the 2007 boom time.  If accepted at £140,000 the yield would be over 6% & make the property much more attractive to the investor.

Prices Boom, Bust and Boom again but Yields remain constant in Seaford Road, Crawley

A few weeks ago I featured a 3 bedroom house in Seaford Road, Crawley that I thought would make a good investment.  Interestingly I have just let one of these houses for a landlord who owns a number of properties all in the same road and I checked back through the records to discuss the rise and fall of property prices on the street and how this has affected the yield over the years.

In 2001, when he purchased his first property on Seaford Road, the average sold price of the 3 bedroom terraced houses on the street was £105,000. This rose sharply to £144,500 in 2004 and continued to rise to £150,750 by 2006.

At the end of 2007, in the height of the property boom, the same terraced house on Seaford Road had an average value of £177,000. But along came the crash and sold prices fell back by over £20,000, land registry data shows the average sold price in 2011 was just £154,000.

The land registry sold house price data for 2014 will verify every media report about a housing market recovery (or boom depending on which media you read).  There have only been 2 sales recorded this year but the average sold price has rocketed to £185,000, surpassing the previous property highs of the 2007 boom and do not look like slowing at any time soon.

We trawled through the dusty Martin & Co archives to look at the average rents achieved on the street and they have done nothing but rise.  In 2002 the average rent was £750 per month and is now £975 per month.  Despite the obvious fluctuations in price the yield has barely changed in the last ten years, it was 6.6% in 2004 and in 2014 the yield is now 6.3%.

For any landlord who has kept hold of their property in Seaford Road it has been a solid investment.  Prices have gone up, come down, gone up again but with 10 years of consistently achieving a yield of over 6% it is still a road to consider investing in.