What you want out of a buy to let will vary from person to person. Some take the long view (almost always a good idea) and are looking for capital gains, some want a steady income in the form of rental returns and many want a little of both.
I’ve been looking at some recent statistics for the property market in Dundee just to see if there were any significant differences between the types of property and the capital return generated over the last twelve months and longer.
What I hope this article will demonstrate is two things, firstly that one should always take the longer view with property and that even when the overall, short term picture is weak there are almost always going to be types of property, locations even just streets that will out perform the market.
For the purpose of the article I’m going to look at capital gain. Lets take the overall picture for Dundee, covering all types of residential sales in the last 12 months prices went down 0.16% over 5 years prices went up 7.02% and over 10 years prices went up 32.07%.
Now like all such things there are lies, damn lies and statistics so lets dig a little deeper.
If we focus on just one of the property types, in this case semi detached, then figures for the same periods are plus 2.9%, plus 12.76% and for ten years plus 43.21%. Other property types show variations as well but it does demonstrate that by digging a little deeper when looking for a new investment you can maximise your return (and hopefully avoid the dangers) and that’s where your and possibly your agents local knowledge comes into play.
That said the story doesn’t end there if we drill a little deeper and look at post codes then if I had bought the same semi in DD2 or DD4 then the 10 year return would have shot up to about 49.4% and for 5 years to over 14%.
As I said all I’m trying to do here is demonstrate that there are still opportunities to be had but that you need to firstly do your research and secondly take a patient perspective.
If you would like to discuss this article or any other aspects of the Dundee rentals market then please just drop me a line nick.horan@belvoirlettings.com.B
