With the General Election out of the way, property values in Epsom are still 1.02% higher than they
were 3 months ago, the diversion and ambiguity of an election typically makes house sellers who
need to sell, price their property more realistically (although this only lasts a couple of months).
Looking specifically at it from an Epsom landlord’s point of view, the Epsom properties favoured by
investors are in short supply in many parts of the town because of a number of factors. One of the
factors has been that we have seen the number of first time buyers coming to buy their first home
increase over the last 12 months in Epsom. Another factor has been the fact that the banks have
been pushing ‘let to buy’ (yes ‘let to buy’ which is different to ’buy to let’) to homeowners (more of
‘let to buy’ in an up and coming article). Next, because of the banks, who are chasing low risk
landlords with high deposits with very low mortgage rates- and the low risk landlords with high
deposits tend to be attracted to the safer modern two and three bed town houses and semis in
Epsom.
As I mentioned a few weeks back, the pension rules are changing which means buy to let landlords
can use some, or all, of their pension pot to buy a property. It shouldn’t be forgotten there are tax
implications taking more than a quarter of your pension pot out (see the article from a couple of
weeks ago), so whilst many pension pots may not be able to fund a suitably big enough tax free lump
sum to buy the property outright, for most it will provide enough for the 25% deposit (required by
most BTL mortgage providers). It shouldn’t be forgotten landlords that the interest paid on the
mortgage is tax deductible against the rent, thus lowering your income tax paid.
In the last 12 months, I have noticed a particular uplift in interest from ‘50 something’ Epsom people
wanting to become landlords for the first time. In Epsom, the highest returns for the lowest
investment are at the lower end of the market e.g. the classic apartment. Unfortunately apartments,
with two bedrooms are coming to the market in smaller numbers than the larger four beds’ in top
end sectors of the Epsom property market. When looking at the actual numbers, in the later part of
the Summer of 2014 in Epsom, in one month alone 101 two bed properties were on the market in
Epsom. However, in January this year, a notoriously excellent bumper month for properties coming
on to the market, there were only 74 two bed properties on the market in Epsom to choose from.
Today, that figure stands at only 67...whilst the number of four and five beds has increased
significantly ... interesting don’t you think?
At that lower end of the property market in Epsom, (i.e. where first time buyers and landlord
investors compete with each other to buy those smaller properties), I believe throughout 2015,
there will be a slow and steady tipping of the scales between supply and demand. In fact, from what
I am seeing and hearing, early anecdotal evidence has suggested over the last few months (although
we will need to look at figures later in the Spring once we have the data from The Land Registry), we
are beginning to see a polarised Epsom property market, where we have high demand but low
supply at the bottom end of the property market, yet high supply but lower demand at the top of
the market... and that can only mean one thing ... prices will go up quicker on the smaller properties
than the larger ones in Epsom, thus narrowing the gap for people looking to move up market!
If you would like to read more or get some great advice, please keep reading the Epsom Property Blog or please email me at ian@directresidential.co.uk.
No comments
Post a Comment