Tuesday, Oct 21, 2008
The unravelling of the great buy-to-let scam
Spectator: The unravelling of the great buy-to-let scam
Good summary, though little new information. Interesting comments...!
I have developed a rather ghoulish pastime. It involves thumbing through auction results for repossessed apartments in city centres, then checking what those same properties sold for when new, a year or two ago. My record so far is a two-bedroom flat in a development called Beauchamp Place, Coventry, which was auctioned in September for £85,000 — less than 40 per cent of the £214,000 for which it was sold new in June 2006.
Posted by james @ 05:13 PM (683 views) Add Comment
6 Comments
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1. alan said...
"speculators and fraudsters" are blamed, but what of the building societies lending 125% mortgages and the so-called regulators?
2. handle_it said...
What a lovely little hobby you've found for your self ! :o)
3. last_days_of_disco said...
"The future for many of these flats, I suspect, will be as social housing. In June the government made £200 million available for housing associations and councils to buy empty new homes, and you can bet there will be more as local authorities work out that buying flats at distressed prices is a cheap way to house social tenants. We’ll be back where we started: with inner cities full of council tenants. But at least they’ll have a better class of kitchen."
Very well put, I thought.
4. brian t said...
The printer-friendly version of this is on one page, easier to read: http://www.spectator.co.uk/print/the-magazine/business/2299751/the-unravelling-of-the-great-buytolet-scam.thtml
5. crash bandicoot said...
Funny comments from the "in it for the long-term" BTL investor. "My 20-40 year old flats have only gone down by 10%" Whoop de doo you've only lost 10%, how about sharing some more investment tips. It's a good job that Britain is only a small island or you might have lost some more!
6. drewster said...
Wasn't there a presenter on Radio 5 who had bought himself a couple of £200k flats in "up-and-coming" Coventry? I seem to recall hearing a link to the interview on this blog a couple of years ago.