Rob76

I don't think Meacher's going to be rushing to penalise multiple ownership unless he's done something drastic in the last 6 years: http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardianpolitics...,425372,00.html David Hencke and Rob Evans Saturday January 20, 2001 The Guardian Michael Meacher, the environment minister, has built up a property portfolio of at least nine and up to 12 homes with his second wife, Lucianne, worth a minimum of £2m, a joint investigation by the Guardian and the Mark Thomas Product TV programme reveals today. The leftwing minister, who nearly 20 years ago condemned posh homes as "status symbols" and part of the Thatcherite divide, has built up most of the portfolio in the 1990s, with his latest purchases coming after taking up his government post.

Hi Guys, I posted this over in the MSE forum in response to the speculation that Manchester was going to be in the top 10 hotspots for the country on the K&P ramping programme and thought you might find it interesting. I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on the city centre as every time I go back there another 5000 flats seem to have sprung out of the ground. In my opinion there has been massive overdevelopment of the city centre flat market and combined an endless stream of people who thought it would be a licence to print money, the yields have nosedived. 35 The Ropeworks (M15 4QJ) is a pretty normal development, split between owner occupiers and BTL so it’s good to show the numbers: Rental Yeild: Flat B48 is up for rent at £825pcm (rightmove), was bought in Dec 2003 for £200,000 (nethouseprices). Income is £9900pa - £800 service charge - £120 ground rent giving a yield of 4.5% assuming no voids, repairs, management charges, etc. If it was bought with cash then that is an appalling return, if bought with a mortgage then it will be losing money every month. But the Capital Appreciation means that loss every month is not too much to worry about, after all BTLs are in it for the long term… Afraid not. As you can see from the data from the last four resales, oversupply has hit prices pretty hard as well. Flat B67 £235,000 20-Jan-2006 £295,000 24-Dec-2003 Flat B13 £135,500 11-Jan-2006 £117,500 06-Dec-2002 Flat B72 £215,000 30-Sep-2005 £319,000 24-Dec-2003 Flat B66 £192,500 26-Aug-2005 £234,000 23-Dec-2002 It will be interesting to see where this goes, I guess there is a nasty decision to take. Do you keep on making a loss every month or do you call it a day and capitalise a loss that will run into the tens of thousands? Time will tell… Flat B72 is has an almost unbelieveable drop of £104,000 in a fraction over 2 years, the data is straight from nethouseprices though and the other sales in the development seem to validate it. Have any of you got any pet developments you are tracking and if so what sort of trends are you seeing?