All our property management software prices have today been changed to reflect the new rate of VAT for standard rated products.
 
What this means is that VAT is now only charged at 15% rather than the 17.5%. This means you get a saving of 2.5%.
 
Therefore any new customers will now only pay VAT at 15% and this is due to stay effective for 13 months. (more…)

The biggest reason for investing in property is to make good gains when we sell.  I doubt that anyone who buys property does so just for the sake of owning it.

Our agenda is to make big capital gains!

We know that if you buy a property, live in it as your main residence and then sell, no capital gains tax is due.

What people have started to do over the past few years is, rather than buying a property and renting it out, they buy a property, move into it themselves and let out their existing residence.  (more…)

OK, the news that seems to be hitting the property and landlord magazines is that in some places rents have stalled but in many places they are now on their way down. It gets even gloomier with forecasts that rents could drop next year with the ever increasing number of properties that can’t be sold coming on to the market.

So given that cashflow is still landlords number one issue, (and will be for a good while yet) what else can we do to help improve it?

Well, one thing for sure it to start scrutinising all your property related costs and really ask yourself the question ‘Do I really need to be incurring this cost for my property business’? (more…)

It always surprises me how people think that if their cashflow is not stacking up then the first thing they need to do is to look to increase rents. Normally when this approach is blindly taken it leads to more harm being done as the property then takes even longer to let.

You cannot just increase the rent if your property cash flow doesn’t stack up. You need to look closely at what YOUR property market is doing. By this I mean you need to assess properly how the property you are letting is bearing up in the current market in your area. For example, if you are letting out an apartment and the market is saturated in your local area then you would be crazy to increase the rents for this property.
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It still amazes me when I find that landlords are not prepared to drop the rent on a property in order to try and let it quickly. Sometimes we are just too concerned in making sure that the ‘numbers stack up’ that we fail to see how much we could lose in the short-term and that we could be playing ‘catch-up’ for a while.
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A business owner knows that as the world changes around them, they need to adapt. All too often, good, solid businesses are forced to shut operations because they were unable to adapt to changing business situations. The current economic crisis has bought with it a whole host of new dimensions to the world of property investment.  

For a landlord, these changes can be viewed as problems. On the other hand, they can also be viewed as opportunities…

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One of the questions I used to dread answering when purchasing a new property or re-financing an existing one was “what other mortgage and loans do you have?” This is such a time consuming question as it normally involves having to sift through lots of mortgage related paperwork for each property to give them the details that they need.
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With the credit crunch in full swing, more and more landlords are falling into negative cash flow. This occurs when their rental income can no longer cover their ongoing property-related expenditures.

For example, if your rental income is £500 and your property expenses are £600, then you are making £100 negative cash flow on your property business. This means that you have to subsidise you property through other means.

The biggest expenditure landlords have is the cost of finance on the property (i.e. their buy-to-let mortgage) and the single biggest factor that is turning positive cash flow properties in to negative cash flow is the increase in interest rates!

How do I avoid falling into this trap?

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