A local Walsall landlord recently contacted me after he found my blog (the Walsall Property Blog) and thought to take me up on my offer of advice.  He lives in Parkhall and was thinking of purchasing a property he had seen.  As I’ve always maintained, opinion costs nothing and I am always happy to pass my opinion on any property in the open market.

After he sent me the link to the advertised property I started my research and found some interesting facts.  The property in Walsall was a 3 bed mid-terrace advertised for £129,950.  Just four weeks ago, when it was first advertised, it was priced at £134,950.  So a drop of £5,000 in a month! I smelt a potentially motivated seller. Here’s what makes it more interesting…when I dug deeper…I found the property had been on the market two years ago but for some reason, didn’t sell so was taken off market at that time!!

Anyone can set themselves up as a letting agent these days, they can offer cut-throat discounts to their fees, take out a full page ad in the local paper, but is that really good value to you as a landlord? What about when you start to think about your next Walsall investment property, wouldn’t it be great to talk things through with a Walsall specialist letting agent so that you don’t buy the wrong property in the wrong area that the market does not want?  Sounds good…?

Suppose you COULD visit an agent, and you could look at a number of options with regards to funding, and you could throw ideas around as to what you want to buy and ask for a professional opinion on your thoughts, perhaps they could even go on site visits with you to help you understand what to look for, give you advice on how a property should be presented and how to cost any remedial works.

After further communication with my landlord he asked if I would attend a viewing with him to give my thoughts on the property itself.  When we attended we met the vendor (owner) who showed us around.  I noted some important facts from an investor’s point of view. Whilst the upstairs was of a decent standard, refurbished 18 months ago, the downstairs required some updating including a new kitchen and relocation of the family bathroom.  There was good potential with this property and as we had recently let two properties nearby on Alexandra Road and Broadway West, I knew we could achieve a rent of around £550 to £575 (yields of 5.07% to 5.3%) per calendar month for this type of property.

Our Walsall landlord wanted me to take care of the negotiations so guess what…? I negotiated a great deal for him of course!! The top end of his budget was £120k but I managed to agree a price of £110k (6.0% to 6.27% yield) for our landlord.  What did I get in return you may ask…? Nothing…it’s true! There was no charge as I believe in creating value and long-term relationships. Does your letting agent go this far??

Actually I go further. Having gone through all of the above our landlord wanted me to project manage the refurbishment, source and co-ordinate the necessary tradesmen, arrange for all legal compliances to be met and even for the whole property to be cleaned before the tenant moves in.

You see, we at Ashmore Lettings don’t just take on new properties and let them out, we go back a stage or two and look to work with potential investors at the start of their journey and stay with them right through to letting & managing their new property, and that is where all of the above comes into play. The cost for all this is precisely £0, nada, zilch, nothing…but the value to you though – IMMEASURABLE – wouldn’t you say?

If YOU want to be the first to know about what would make a great Buy To Let investment that is currently available either on the open market or via our own sources (landlord to landlord sales etc),  sign up to the blog for weekly deals, call us now and get your name put on our Investor list on 01922 311016, or send us an email over to salekm@ashmorelettings.co.uk