October 2024
A not so Spooky month!
October didn’t really bring the enjoyment or excitement that we were hoping for! Its been a very tricky few months since our last project completion. Lots of unsuccessful auctions and offers that are being declined at the very last minute! However, as the saying goes, if it was easy then everyone would be doing it!
Property investment certainly has its ups and downs and seemingly we are in a bit of a down period at this moment in time.
We have had some extremely close auction results, some being within £1,000 - £7,000. These are a bit bitter sweet, as it means our numbers are right and on par with the successful bidder, however we are so close to getting some of these.
On the other hand, there have been auctions where our offer prices has been exceeded by nearly £30,000 - £40,000. It really seems like it can be so varied just depending on what type of people are interested in the projects.
After the most helpful SDLT changes brought in this month we are noticing that it is much harder to compete with people purchasing personally. We don’t have an issue with the change due to the intended outcome being that first time buyers should be more successful, however we would be lying if we said it hasn’t impacted on the offering ability on traditional purchases.
Any example of how the SDLT changes impact us are as follow :
Purchase price £215,000
SDLT before the budget - £6,450
SDLT after the budget - £10,750
Quite the increase in tax for us.
Speaking with other property investors this is something that isn’t overly pressing, it just means that SDLT rebates on properties that are uninhabitable or fall into rebate categories are going to be of great importance. We expect that company purchases will be lower now due to this change, meaning ultimately the vendors may receive lower offers.
New Power Team
This month has seen us open up new lines of communication with a couple new companies. We have decided to change solicitor moving forward. This is because of some bad communication issues with our existing ones, and ultimately we need to have full confidence in them as they are a crucial part of our power team.
We will actually be setting up with 3 different solicitors in the coming months. 2 for bridging and mortgage related purchases, and 1 for cash purchases. Having someone who specialises in cash purchases will make our life that much easier for when these purchases come around.
A good broker can be worth their weight in gold, and we really weren’t all that confident with the previous broker we had relationships with. They moved abroad and the face to face interaction just wasn’t available, and the methods they prefered to use just didn’t sit right with us.
Changing to a local broker who we can just pop in and speak with is going to really allow us to leverage the company moving forward, with full confidence that Pete from My Mortgage Planner is going to get us the best product for the deal every time. Sometimes bridging and lending can get confusing, so it helps when we can physically sit down with someone and go through the numbers.
Hopefully with a lot of the changes and systems we are putting in place, the upcoming deals should be super smooth and allow us to continue to build a pipeline of deals moving forward!
Bring on the cold season and hopefully no leaks! (fingers crossed)