Get Rich Quick - Property Investment

Interesting stuff. My house has been on the market for 2 months Krizon, with only one offer which was laughable. The house needs updating, but I reckon with £10-£15k invested on it, I can achieve a much better price. I now have the winter months beckoning so I am thinking of taking the house off of the market and perhaps "updating" after Christmas with a view to remarket in the spring. I am so tempted to phone one of those TV programmes and ask if they would like to come and help me! :) The updating is quote cosmetic, painting, new carpets a new kitchen perhaps but plenty of scope for building a large conservatory etc.

Any builder/decorators amongst you who fancy earning a few hundred quid? :D
 
Originally posted by krizon@Nov 3 2005, 02:01 AM
It's not so much 'buy cheap, sell expensive' as 'sell quickly at a profit'. If you have £100,000 in your back pocket now (this is just to make the figures easy, so I can understand myself), then buy for £80,000, spend a TOTAL of £10,000 on it, therefore £90,000 outlaid; market for £120,000 and get a sign-up within 2 weeks of showing.

You want to GET RID of your properties, with fast and effective turnarounds.
Click to expand...

...and get hit with Capital Gains Tax?

They seemed very serious about holding on to the properties, remortgaging constantly, freeing up equity with which to invest further, etc., but the main presenter kept saying, "buy cheap, sell expensive but better still don't sell at all."

Like I said, you'd really need to sell at some point, and that's where confusion/scepticism etc set in.
 
Hmmm... I'm not sure I understand what the end purpose of buying the properties is, then, Dessie, do you? To constantly build a portfolio is fine and dandy, but - as per a young guy down here now on something like his 90th concurrently-owned flat! - you need to be doing something WITH them. He buys fairly tatty but not totally-wrecked places, updates and freshens them cheaply (no, you do NOT need the best emulsion!), with a very fast turnaround, then rents them out on the standard shorthold tenancy contracts. He does his own rent collecting, so it's a full-time business for himself. I'd be concerned WHY you'd want to build and build a portfolio and NOT sell? Or were they advocating you rent them?

If you are buying through remortgaging, you're securing the loans against the property, which means that the lender can seize it if you default. How did they suggest you pay the mortgages on, say, six houses or flats if you weren't renting them out to pay back the repayments on the loans, cover maintenance costs, etc., and make some money for yourself, and weren't selling any off?
 
Kathy - don't be too disheartened at this time of year. In the run-up to Christmas, people are always backing off getting into the legal tangle of buying a house, as any agent will tell you. No-one, unless truly desperate, wants to pack and move in the dark and the cold! I wouldn't be too concerned, or reduce the price, just yet. It's surprising how from February, once the onset of winter, Christmas, family visits, winter holidays, and the New Year are all behind, people start to bend their minds to lining up their move in the Spring.

It's an ideal time, though, for you to check for any potential problems with the roof tiles, exterior cracks, signs of damp or mildew, and have those fixed. Make sure leaves are cleared from gutters, drains, pathways, and that all garden debris is raked up and taken away. Keeping it from looking forlorn is important. Any overgrown shrubs are best reduced in late January/February, so that you get a good spurt of healthy Spring growth, and they don't get straggly-looking.

Inside, keep the central heating on Low when cold snaps start. If you don't want to do that, then keep all doors open for air circulation, and a low energy oil heater going in a central room.

If anything is REALLY dated, like faded or slightly detaching wallpaper, it'd be a good idea to paint over the former with a cheap emulsion, or rip it off it's coming really loose and can't be glued back and painted over. If the carpets are old-fashioned but serviceable, Chem-Dry do a lovely cleaning job - they just did Mum's small flat for £150, and the 20 year-old carpet's come up like new! And it smells great, too. Much cheaper than putting down something that someone might want to rip up for a laminate floor, anyway.
 
It gets to smell more haddock-like the more I look at it, Brian. I sent for the details of another 'make a million' property scheme some years ago, when house prices in the NE (of England, not London!) had hit rock-bottom, following massive repos after the miners lost their jobs. This isn't exactly the same as the set-up Dessie describes, but the basics were still, bulk buy, buy cheap, hold on, sell for a pot of gold later.

I got an estate agent I had dealt with a few times to check out the company's background, and they'd reinvented themselves about three times up 'til then. I declined this whizzo opportunity to become the Ms Rachman of t'north, and saw another ad a few years later, placed under yet another name, but with the exact spiel.

The deal, if I recall it correctly, was that you paid this shyster 15% of the purchase price, his company 'and selected associates' put up the rest, and you bought a minimum of three properties 'together'. When I phoned to see if there really was anyone on the end of the line, the respondee didn't give the name of the company promoting the once-in-a-lifetime offer, but said Mr. X would call me back later. I then told Mr. X there was no way I was putting up the money for at least three properties, and he then began a lengthy, wheedling bit of horse-trading about 'maybe we could bend our rules a bit and make it two, then'.

And maybe we'll just swerve the whole exercise, too. Very dodgy stuff out there, and a bargepole ain't long enough for some of them. Variations on the long firm, I'd imagine.
 
Kathy, if I wasn't dotting up and down to the horsepital to see the Plastered One, I'd be happy to project manage. I've been settled for a little while now, and no matter how many times I think 'thank God, now to nest for a bit', I do miss the challenge of re-shaping properties.

Just keep in mind, if I'm not teaching Granny to suck eggs, that you're selling this house, not keeping it, and you don't need to do more than present it like a horse you'd have for sale: sound, and clean.

Don't invest any money in it that isn't absolutely necessary, such as replacing anything in a dangerous condition (because the Surveyor for the buyer will reject it), or showing signs of damp, water ingress, sagging roof, missing tiles, drain pipes that have come loose from the walls or don't match up with the gutters, etc. If it's got a bright turquoise bathroom suite (and which of us hasn't found one of those on our house-buying sorties?), just leave it. There are some people who do actually love them, and putting in a Phillippe Starck version may look more out of place than the original one. So, don't personalize the place - leave that up to the buyer. I thought of one small thing - if it's closed up for most of the time, hang a few nice floral air fresheners discreetly in the bathroom, any built-in closets, the airing cupboard, etc., just to prevent any possible mustiness. :)
 
The fact she doesn't include a photo of herself with the house is ominous... She should have thrown in a supply of brown paper bags as well.
 
In that case she must be an unpleasant person <_<

There's usually something seriously wrong with anyone who has to go to those kind of lengths to meet the 'right' guy. (It usually means he has to accept she's always right.)
 
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