Even
with the General Election on
the horizon, property values in Huddersfield are still 1.66% 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 a Huddersfield landlord’s point of view, the Huddersfield
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 seen the number of
first time buyers coming to buy their first home increase over the last 12
months in Huddersfield. Another factor has been the fact that the
banks have been pushing ‘let to buy’ (yes ‘let to buy’ 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 Huddersfield.
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 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’ Huddersfield people wanting to become landlords for the first time.
In Huddersfield, the highest returns for the lowest investment are at the lower
end of the market eg the classic Victorian terraced house . Unfortunately Victorian
terraced houses , with two bedrooms are coming to the market in smaller numbers
than the larger four bed’s in top end sectors of the Huddersfield property
market. When looking at the actual numbers, in the later part of the Summer of
2014 in Huddersfield, in one month alone 255 two bed properties were on the
market in Huddersfield. However, in January this year, a notoriously excellent
bumper month for properties coming on to the market, there were only 198 two
bed properties on the market in Huddersfield to choose from. Today, that figure
stands at only 214 ..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 Huddersfield, (ie
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 Huddersfield
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 market ..
and that can only mean one thing ... prices will go up quicker on the smaller
properties than the larger ones in Huddersfield, thus narrowing the gap for
people looking to move up market!
No comments:
Post a Comment