Walsall Letting Agents

Walsall Property Market or The London Stock Exchange? Where shall I put my savings…??

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , , , , ,

House Cash

It is almost 7 years since Mervyn King, the then Bank of England Governor, slashed UK interest rates to the unparalleled figure of 0.5% – 5th March 2009 to be precise!  In just under five months, starting on 8th October 2008, the rate had come down from 4.5% to that low figure, all in an attempt to ensure the British economy survived the worldwide credit crunch and there it has stayed since.

In the Summer of 2015, people were predicting a rise in the New Year, yet now, some forecast it may stay at this level for years yet to come with the issues in China.  Now, I am not some City Whiz kid with a hotline to Mr Carney at Threadneedle Street, but merely a humble letting agent from Walsall, so I cannot profess to know what will happen to interest rates.  However, what I do know, speaking to my Walsall friends and Walsall landlords is that these low interest rates have hit savers really hard.

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Do Walsall Landlords ‘Regret’ voting for a Tory government…?!

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , , , , , ,

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Do you still remember that inevitable night of Thursday, 7th May 2015 at 10.05pm….??  With the shocking news that the BBC Exit Polls suggested the Conservatives would be returning into government with a majority.  Well let’s face it…it wasn’t that shocking as a two-horsed race can only be won by one.  The middle classes in Parkhall and Aldridge exhaled a huge sigh of relief, as Walsall landlords, faced with rent controls from Red Ed Milliband and the Labour Party, now had something to cheer about as the Tories were always considered to be a political party that accepted the importance of the rental market, supported its development whist properly targeting the lawbreaker/ slum landlords renting out sub standard rental accommodation.

Since May though, George Osborne announced future rises in stamp duty for buy to let landlords and a change in the interest relief on buy to let mortgages,some people have started to question that loyalty.

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The ‘Liquorice Allsorts’ – Walsall Property Market!

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , , , , ,

ALLSORTS

I had an interesting meeting with one of my local Walsall landlords this weekend.  He wanted some advice around his current existing portfolio which he was looking to expand in a new direction by adding properties that would give him a higher rental yield today.  I’ve always advocated having a portfolio of a mixed bag of properties.  Looking at his current portfolio I noticed that they consisted of properties with generally a low or average yields so as usual this made me think about the Walsall Property Market.  In general a mixed bag of ‘liquorice allsorts’ (in property terms) can ease current cash flow and build you a nice nest egg for the future.

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Properties in the Highgate catchment area outperform Walsall by 27.06%!!

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , , , , ,

27.06% Up

I was having a chat with a footie-loving property investor friend the other day.  After we spent a very small amount of time discussing England’s chances of winning in the forthcoming Euro Championships (!), we got chatting about property.

He has a couple of young children and asked if schools, especially primary schools, affected the local property market in terms of demand from buyers and tenants to a property.  Anecdotally, I have always known this to be true, a good school creates good demand and good demand does affect house prices.  So, I asked my colleagues on the front line, who take the phone calls from people putting themselves on our mailing list and they confirmed that most people cite location as their number one factor.

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The Time Bomb of The Walsall Property Market

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , ,

I had an interesting telephone conversation with a local property developer and landlord.  Amongst other matters we began to talk about the future of the Walsall property market.  He wanted to know my thoughts on the future of the Private Rental Sector (PRS) nationally and especially locally.  As usual I had an opinion and it sounded like he wanted to hear it.  Below are my thoughts on how I think the next 10 years will play out and why I think the PRS is set to grow even further in Walsall.

TIME

Thatcher’s government introduced the right to buy of council homes but that’s not where the British obsession for owning your own home began.  Prior to WW2 the aspiration of the people wasn’t to buy but to rent.  Looking at the country as a whole, in 1951, 30% of residential properties were owner occupied, then every ten years that rose incrementally to 39% by 1961, 51% by 1971, 58% by 1981, 68% by 2001 but after that, it dropped to 63.4% by 2011 and continues to drop today.

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Just who are the renters in Walsall?

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , ,

I recently went to a property auction and bumped into one of my landlords!  We got talking about the state of the Walsall property market and whether we, as a country, are turning more and more to the European style of property ownership, where it is the norm to rent as opposed to automatically buying once you have a good job etc.  So I got to work when I returned to my desk….

Review

Even though a recent report by the Halifax stated home-ownership remains a goal for 85% of twenty to forty five year-olds, there is information emerging that attitudes in the UK towards renting your own home as opposed to owning it have softened, showing more and more, that renting is being seen as a life style choice.  In fact it is recognised in learned circles that the cycle of renting is also repeated by the fact that people who grow up primarily in rented accommodation are themselves more likely to rent than buy.

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Why it makes sense to invest in property in Walsall…..

Head of Juicing @Ashmore Lettings & Sales Ltd Walsall Property Market , , ,

So I had an interesting conversation with a landlord recently from the south who was looking to invest in Birmingham.  Even though he has a property we manage for him in Shenstone he still calls it Birmingham so when I informed him about some mouth watering deals you could have in Walsall, he asked me where that was!   Anyway, we started to talk about the local property market in Walsall and I shared with him my thoughts and why, to me at least, it makes sense.

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The Land Registry have just released their latest set of figures for the Walsall Property Market, and it makes interesting reading – as average property values in Walsall rose by 0.2% in May.

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