The Best And Worst Properties To Own

as someone who has followed property inadvertantly for a long while (and has practiced as an estate agent for a couple of years) the post code is definately the most important thing. in the same period of time a house in dagenham rose 2 times in value, whilst a house in chadwell heath rose three times. make of that what you will but there will always be snobbery regarding certain areas and i believe as such that they will never rise as much as the most sort after areas. however that's not to say you can't make money from a poor area that people are forced into on mass. due to demand i saw flats in south ockendon rise 2 and 1/2 times in value in the space of nine months. however at this time there was a mass exodus from the east end of london and a lot of investers looking for cheap property. consequently properties were selling so quick and prices rose ridicularly fast. unrealistically fast but that's the property game. getting your buying and selling times right is the art.

I'd have thought the worst buys must include sea side and low lying, or storm ridden properties. I gather our island holiday home could be washed away by the next storm surge. Accordingly an ark must be the best home buy.

I moved to South East in 70s I bought my first House with a big Mortgage. My Friends who stayed in the Cotswolds and bought up old Cottages no body wanted back then had a small Mortgage and have done much better overall . I believe some expensive areas give poor return value.

I purchased a house in Anfield, Liverpool in 2002. It was in the worst area imaginable. I paid £13,000 for this 4 bedroom 2 reception house. Everyone thought I was mad and I thought I was mad as well. Anfeild is now classified as a regeneration area, and I recently accepted an offer of £65,000 on it, which I did not think I could have got in a million years. I have seen a dramatic improvement in the area over the past one year.

It seems that when it comes to property value, most people seem to forget that builders are in it to make as much money as possible. It should not be a suprise then that the new properties entering the market particularly over the last 5 years are built using the cheapest methods and materials, production line techniques, using sub-standard workmanship and haphazard planning, room sizes are shrinking progressively while the price of the overall property is rising. I would suggest that this is a major factor in the rise in the cost of properties, more than anything else. New houses are smaller than existing properties, have less land per plot, but are being sold at prices which push at the price ceiling. Then when someone looks at their house with a view to selling and comparing it to the market - is it any suprise that they would want a price, proportional to the size of these new properties. It is unfortunate that the build quality of new properties is frankly so poor, all it would take is one burst or leaking pipe to cause considerable damage to the plaster boards that line the walls as well as the ceilings and whole rooms have to be redone at considerable cost, or the roof that simply won't stay put, with individual tiles and large chunks of roof that blow off without much trouble. These days I would say that if you have money to spare you would probably be better investing in a self build project or an existing sturdy building. The former would allow you to develop and build a property to your own specifications and standards for a fraction of the cost of a new property by starting a company to manage the project and employing salaried staff rather than contractors to reduce the costs. I would like to see advise on how to approach such a project. I personally would like to see legislation changed when it comes to the sale of properties, new or old which requires the land and property to be described in detail including volumes in much the way that business premises are sold. Describing each rooms shape, fixed assets and measurements in metric and imperial. It would also be useful for houses to have a maintenance books, much like cars do which requires the owner to record any significant work done to the house. An owner who doesn't maintain a property should not expect to get a good price. This would allow anyone buying a property to get a better idea of the value of such a property, and be able to readily compare properties. I think it would become more obvious then who is being greedy and asking unreasonable prices.

So, the Nationwide and Halifax reports are not as gloomy as Cliff would like to be reporting this month, so a change of tack with the conclusion that FTB's of new builds should be 'exceptionally worried'. Actually the Halifax reports that prices are exactly flat in January. No increase but also no reduction and an annual increase of 4.5%. Meanwhile over at the Nationwide they show a reduction of 0.1% in January and an annual increase of 4.2% One day Cliff will have something positive to say about property as an investment.. Probably not until prices crash and he's able to buy back the home he sold some years ago for the same relatively low price that he achieved. It was in 2004 that he first predicted a crash and started anally analyzing the numbers to support a decision that has (so far) only made his landlord rich. The buyer of his property is probably also very happy with the almost 35% increase in their investment. Property as an investment is not for everyone but advising people not to buy the home that they will live in and to pay rent over a lengthy period is (in my opinion) foolish in the extreme. Even if there is a property dip, in 25 years' time a FTB will be a mortgage free owner of a substantial asset. A renter will continue to rent for life. Of course you could gamble with your family's biggest asset and try to sell at the top and buy at the bottom but as Cliff has illustrated this is not easy to do and can be a very expensive mistake.. Trying to persuade others to avoid property won't put that right unless enough people buy into the gloom and a 40% price crash is the result. I guess at least one family must have their fingers crossed that we all become bears.

The 'experts' never consider top of the range property. In 1982 I purchased a large (5000 sq.ft.)country house with land for £100,000 cash. It was recently valued by 3 agents at an average of £1.3Million. Readers may be interested to know if large houses mean bigger long term growth. Of course a cash purchase means no mortgage to pay - but how much would £100K over the last 26 years have produced? £1.2 Million - I doubt it!