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The Honest Estate Agent

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About The Honest Estate Agent

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  1. HPC friendly but I have not predicted a crash. Far from it.
  2. Right Said Fred: I think the post has covered all you points about wages etc. Although what dream are they chasing? Being an EA hardly a dream! Smell: A brilliant idea, but false. I'm off soon, anything else you want to know abou the "dark side" of EA's?
  3. You are right and I thought maybe a SIPP Manager might offer us an above market value offer for the portfolio to stick in a SIPP. If they were for real then residential property portfolios already tenanted might have commanded a premium! So yes the hype might have made some over optimistic. Although when a proposal is not finalised by the Treasury you know something is a miss! Indeed how a labour government with a housing crisis could justify tax breaks on property for the rich I don’t know! I suspect HIP’s might suffer the same fate? What do you think?
  4. We are in London and cover the East End. SIPPS, in my opinion, have not really made much difference. Most BTL realised it was not a good plan for individual BTL properties: You had to sell your property to the plan incurring CGT The SIPP owned the property not you All equity and profit much remain illiquid until retirement I could go on but essentially a SIPP would have been a slip for most BTL. However the developers as usually hyped it so much you would have thought the government were giving money away! Apparently the miss selling aspect was a major reason for the schemes withdrawal, apparently. And I am sure there were BTL’s who planned to buy because they had heard of SIPPS and thought it would be great. Alas. REITS however have really buggered the commercial side I feel. I am not an expert but I hear the benefits promised have not been realised so many property companies now look 10% - 15% overvalued? However that’s in the ES so it could well be extremely alarmist!
  5. You really think our phone number is 0800 12345678! He! The website you refer to is online only, maybe you can help with the business? You see 18 months ago I decided with the market looking dodgy to try and create another form of revenue. A wise man once said to me, "Any service is always limited by time and staff, however if you can turn a service into a product then you can create a very useful additional revenue stream." So with all this super knowledge about the property market (don’t laugh) I thought why not write a book about property and sell the book? Service becomes product. If I sell a million books who cares if the market is flat! Oh dear!! Things did not work out that way. No publishers were interested at all. So I had the bright idea of making it into an ebook to sell online, hence the website. Let people read the book online, free at first then let them buy it if they like it. 2 Problems however: 1. I am the worse person to write a book because I get bored of anything in five minutes. All the section are still not complete. 2. The general public do not seem to be at all interested, ignorance is bliss! Now I am not saying the book is a bible or anything but it is certainly a step up from what Joe Public know. Anyway after much marketing etc no real pick up……any ideas…..facetious comments aside. As for it being late, well I am so sad I logged in at home. Oh fun.
  6. Hang on here! What is the problem? You assume I am a wind up merchant because I confess to being and EA and a landlord, who lives in rented accommodation. What is so ridiculous? Imagine a few years ago you had a little property portfolio and owned your own property. It gradually becomes apparent that property has peaked and may well fall. What are your options? A. Sell all property? And lose all rental income, pay capital gains tax, and pay all manner of fees? B. Sell all BTL property to pay off mortgage on primary residence, again capital gains and fees with loss of income. C. (what I did) sell primary home and suffer no capital gains tax at all! Use some funds to lessen debt on BTL to 50% across the board so any market shift is manageable. Then fix mortgage rates at 2003 rates for 5 years, at least the payments are certain. Invest surplus in markets which offer decent returns, and keep some cash in waiting. Rent a nice property for about the same as my old mortgage cost. Maybe I should have sold the lot then, but inertia nostalgia I’m not sure. However I would miss the income and I think I’m fairly well hedged against the market.
  7. Can you not be a landlord who rents himself? Maybe? When your tenants seem to be getting such a good deal why not join them? Makes sense to me. Just because you own a property or two does not mean you are convinced prices will always rise or won't fall. You can be in the shit and see it, not ignore it!
  8. Charlie: Yes 100% absolutely, so many BTL have 4 or 5 FTB mortgages. And many many buyers have self cert mortgages signed off by dodgy accountants. Some Mortgage Brokers print pay slips, have dodgy accountants, and even have friendly people in the HR department of large firms. However that has always happened even in the 80’s. I remember colleagues at work back then just signing off their own salaries when the recession hit the mort took 50% - 70% of their salaries. They just battened down the hatches and bought food from LIDLE, nice. TTRTR: I am NOT having a pop. I think you have it very sorted with good properties. If you are cash flow positive by 20% of income and have 25% equity you’ll be fine. To my way of thinking the best thing about your properties is the demand, they are cheap, in good locations, and are what people want. Guess what I am a landlord too! You don’t think being an EA I just love making other people rich. I have applied the same formula BUT allow 20% capital losses into my figures. Just because I am a landlord does not mean I can not accept losses at some stage. Furthermore it is not my only investment so hell does not freeze over if things go pear shaped. Finally I have not bought anything for a good 2 years. Prices are so high yields are impossible. And I can not afford to generate economies of scale by buying whole buildings etc. For as far as individual units go BTL for me makes no sense. I am thinking of dumping the lot though, I thought a SIPP pension plan might buy at a premium but alas!!!!!! I am concerned that massive oversupply restrictive legislation might make private landlords a thing of the past.
  9. ?...! HA I like it! However I’ll leave that to the other EA’s in the area. Surfing the web is far cheaper and less fattening. VP I agree with you about the Law and contracts. ARLA helps. And of course the Office of Fair Trading is having fun with unfair terms. The new Tenancy Deposit Scheme will be in effect from 2006 which will help with deposits. It comes back to my earlier point: even basic tenancy law is beyond the legal comprehension of a vast swathe of the general public. If you are a small EA and can’t pay the wages required for someone intelligent………….. pay peanuts get monkeys! Ultimately a Managing Agent should have totally qualified staff to deal with all the nuances of the Law. However in reality is seldom exists. Regarding references, credit ratings are important. If the Halifax would not lend you the money to buy a house why should I let you rent mine, in effect you are paying my mortgage! Landlords view VP no doubts you are honest but so many tenants are not, simply using friends to give personal, work, and landlord references. Charlie Audi T T No, because they do not uderstand what either of those thinigs are! Do not labour under the gross misapprehension that EA’s think about issues like this in general. They are sales people commissioned to sell, sell, sell. To sell you must believe so they rhetorically recite prices always go up, in the end. Also Charlie being an EA is worrying from the other side too. Some of the general public are just convinced that property is the best investment in the world. No matter what you tell them! Buyers turn up having borrowed 50k from dad to buy, and Dad is pushing them to buy because “property always goes up”! I feel this is the biggest spanner in the works for a house price crash. Until Joe Public stops believing that property is a safe bet they will keep buying it, facts or no facts.
  10. It's the 20th December, how many people do you think are busily looking for property right now?
  11. OH MY GOD! The famous TTRTR I have read about you and I have got to say your strategy seems pretty good, as you say period properties in good location at affordable prices. Can’t go too far wrong. Tescos are successful: they provide good products, that people want to buy, at good prices for the majority it’s fair play all round. So why to new BTL provide rubbish products, which people do not want, at crazy prices and expect to be successful? Why do you want to know who I am and where my business operates?
  12. None! All on line these days. We stopped paper advertising about 12 months ago. We spend £1000 pcm online OUCH!
  13. Charlie the Tramp: About 20% Usually new BTL puts his property on with the Agent who sold it them, then after a month or so they instruct others, then after another month or so 10 or 12 agents have the same property (the owner will only supply one set of keys to share) so war breaks out between agents so no one bothers with the property. Onyme I see, well vendors don’t always look at it like this they just want to be told that their property is worth loads! Hence certain agents (the mini brigade) over value to gain the instruction. Sales fees will erode as agents chase fewer properties on the market, but maybe if prices do drop vendor will be prepared to pay more if an EA does find a buyer? A good job well done? However the onset of the private sale websites could have an interesting effect. Still in its infancy but this could severely erode the usefulness of EA’s. It has always been possible to sell your own house by putting ads in local and even national papers, however these private sites offer fairly good market exposure on line, far more cost effective than one off ads in papers. The Oldie: maybe you’re right. Aside some interesting data on BTL There are currently 1933 (One THOUSAND NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY THREE) 2 bed flats to let advertised on findaproperty in E14 Docklands. Where many many new BTL buy. Now lets compare that with NW1 Camden, Primrose Hill, Regents Park etc. A nice central areas where young renter would actually quite like to live. There are only 109 3 bed flats advertised. Does this tell you anything about the ridiculous ignorance of supply and demand demonstrated by some BTL's?
  14. Do you think Viki even knows what a vested interest is? Furthermore it was clearly a wind up! Come on.
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