Bad Time to Buy Property as an Investment? By Lawrenson of LettingFocus

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A weird thing happened last year.
An old pal of mine from Merseyside bought a house right next door to the place where we used to live on the Wirral when I was just a small kid. This next door house was identical to our one.
He paid about half a million for it. My father paid £30,000 for ours back in 1971.
Not a bad increase in price over time I guess.

Don’t Compare Oranges with Bananas
But when comparing property prices over time don’t forget that properties need to be maintained which costs money.
And, of course, the quality of what’s in today’s properties is so much better than what one would have put up with in the 1970s.
Bleeding obvious I know - but often forgotten by many commentators.
So when comparing property prices today with what they were some years ago and saying “Gosh, how much things have gone up” we must always remember that we are not exactly comparing like with like because maintaining and improving property costs real money.

Inflationary Hedge
But all the same, those kind of figures really does show how property is a great inflationary hedge.
Money left in the stock market over the period 1971 - 2009 would have done pretty well too.
An investor friend of mine - Rochdale Andy - noted that he rather fancied gold at the moment but then added “Unfortunately I can’t leverage up to 70% buying gold.”
And nor can you borrow money to buy shares either.
Just go to your bank and see if they will loan you money to buy shares without any asset to back it and see how far you get.
And I imagine that, even if it were possible to borrow money to buy gold or shares, it would not normally be tax deductible either in the same way as investing in let property is .
And neither would gold produce a rental income.
These factors, for me mean that the right type of let property will beat shares most of the time.

Is It a Good Time to Buy Now?
It’s better to buy now than it was in 2007 right? House prices are down so it has to be better to buy now. Isn’t it?
Well, I bought 2 places in 2007 and where I have invested prices are down between 5 and 10% on 2 years ago.
Should I not have waited? Should I not have seen what Sir Fred and the other banking eejats were up to and held on through the credit crunch to buy now.
I disagree. At least not for one who needed mortgage financing to complete the purchase.
Why?
Well, back then I could get an 85% loan to value at a buy to let mortgage rate of just .69% above base rate FOR LIFE for a mortgage fee of about £500.
Now, the best loan to value is a measly 75%, the best buy to let mortgage rates are a whopping 4.5% above base for just 3 years followed by 2% above base for the rest of time.
And the fee is a whopping 2.5%, )which would have been £2,500 on that particular property.)
I’ve done the maths and because of the effect of the cost of money, it still looks like 2007 was a better time to buy. That said, I think 2009 will also prove good in the long run too partly because I think inflation will come roaring back within 2-3 years.
But I will look in more detail at why I think today is a good time to buy to let in a forthcoming blog.
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ABOUT LETTINGFOCUS.COM and DAVID LAWRENSON
We are LettingFocus.com - the property experts.
I’m, David Lawrenson, the author of “Successful Property Letting” which for the last 3 years has been the UK’s top selling property book.
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The credit crunch means it is time to make offers in the UK property market says Lawrenson of Letting Focus

Ah, the credit crunch continues to spook the market!
The number of house buyers on estate agents’ books dropped from an average of 276 registered per agent in January to 243 in February 2008, the lowest recorded since the survey started. And the difference between asking and sales price has risen again this month – to 4.5%.
Today, if you want to buy a property either for yourself or to let out and you have not got a decent deposit to put down or you have a bad credit record things will be looking a bit bleak for you.
In fact, things have become quite a bit tighter for everyone.
Just 2 weeks ago Lloyds TSB, their C&G subsidiary and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) reduced their maximum loan to value back down to 90%.
And Alliance & Leicester and the Britannia have pulled their 95% loan to value mortgages. These moves follow hard on the heels of the Halifax who have just raised their interest rates again.
Lenders are “pulling” mortgage offers suddenly and without warning proving how hard it is for them to get funds.
So, it seems the days of cheap money have disappeared for a while and we can see the back of six times income multiples at least for a year or two.
Does it matter –well, yes.
The problem is made worse because about 150,000 people in 2007 borrowed over 90% of their property’s value. So, this clampdown on loan to value really does have the potential to reduce demand for houses and could hit prices harder than we have seen so far.
Naturally, the best deals in the standard residential market are available to those borrowers who have to borrow the least. Nationwide has said its best mortgage rates would now only be available for borrowers who put in at least 25% of a property’s value!
So far, we have only seen a gentle tailing off in house prices. The Nationwide said that February marked the fourth month in a row of house price falls with annual growth down to just under 3% annually.
Mortgage approvals are also low - at 75,000 for January - which is the second lowest figure for 12 years.
Also, a lot of people - most estimates put it at 1.2 million - are coming off fixed and discounted deals taken out two to three years ago and are facing big increases in their mortgage rates this year.
Sounds bad?
Well, yes it does, but so far, whilst repossessions are going up, they are still only at about one third of their 1991 peak and less than they were at any time in the 1990s.
But it is possible that things will get worse and property values could fall more sharply. We will see!
It has also got tougher for buy to let borrowers. Moneyfacts.co.uk recently calculated that UK landlords need to find about £5,500 more of their own money to buy the average buy to let property than they would have had to one year ago.

BUY TO LET LOANS
Also, buy to let borrowers will now have to find at least 15% of the property value -the days of 10% have long since gone.
Woolwich, never the most gung ho of lenders, has just cut the amount it will lend landlords to 75% LTV.
Most other lenders are also now demanding 125% or 130% rental over interest and many brokers I spoke to think that this will soon be the norm (again)
A survey by Savills said that about a quarter of landlords would be unable to make further purchases because of this tightening in credit criteria.
But despite all this, recent Council of Mortgage lenders showed buy to let lending continuing to grow fast, no doubt chasing the increasing rental returns caused by so many would be homebuyers becoming tenants.
And what do I think?
Well, I viewed some properties during the Easter weekend and have put in one offer.
So, I’m not scared.
I figure that whatever happens over the next few months, we will still have a shortage of the right kind of housing.
The fact is that we simply don’t know what further bad credit crunch news awaits us.
And we may not know fort a long time yet.
So, sod it, I’m jumping back in and making offers.
If you need more advice on investment property or buy to let investments in general please ask me.
I’m David Lawrenson from property investment mentors http://www.lettingfocus.com/
I’m the author of the buy to let book “Successful Property Letting - How to Make Money in Buy to Let” the UK’s top selling property title.
Buy the new edition here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Successful-Property-Letting-Right-Plus/dp/0716030195/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203933977&sr=1-1
It is fully up to date with all the recent changes to tenancy deposit schemes, HMOs, licensing, capital gains taxes and it has new sections on buying below market value. I’m an expert on the UK property market and a well known property investment blogger and I contribute to newspapers and a host of property websites, write a property investment blog, a number of columns in the press and run a landlords advice service.
I also work as a consultant helping banks, building societies, housing associations and web portals with their buy to let and property products and services.You can read more of my property investment blog and details of my networking, advice, buy to let networking programme at my website http://www.lettingfocus.com/My next London property investors networking meeting is coming soon. Click here for details: Property Investment Advice
What’s unique about lettingfocus.com is that we offer independent property mentoring because unlike most people in the buy to let and property “advice” business we are not linked to a property company, developer, agent or bridging loan financier and do not receive commissions from any of these sources.If a property investment is lousy – We’ll tell you straight and we will tell you all about buy to let and property investment - the good and the bad and we won’t make silly promises that you’ll become a millionaire overnight.Copyright: David Lawrenson 2008. This blog is updated once a week. Permission must be sought before using the material in the blog.