Last week a landlord from Aylesbury came into our office. He had a couple of hours to waste, waiting for his wife doing something in Dunstable, so to keep out of mischief he went for a walk and ended up walking through our door. He wanted to know how Dunstable’s property market was doing, as most of his properties were in Aylesbury. He didn’t want to invest his money in Dunstable .. it wasn’t a good investment he told us.
So, just for interest, we looked at Aylesbury’s property market and found out that on average a 2 bed apartment would cost around £145,000 and rent for around £695 per month, a decent yield of 5.75%. I also looked at how the values of properties had gone up over the last year in Aylesbury, and noted they had risen by 3.97%. He said he knew that and that’s why he bought in Aylesbury.
Next I showed him that you could buy a similar apartment in Dunstable for around £115,000 and it would rent for a conservative £595 per month ..a fairly impressive yield of over 6% .. and here’s the best bit. Property values have risen by 8% in the last year in Dunstable. In fact, Dunstable’s property market has consistently done better over the last couple of years than that of Aylesbury and in the last 6 months alone figures show that property prices in Dunstable have risen by nearly 5% but in Aylesbury they have risen by less than 3%.
To look at the wider picture we then compared the average sold house price over the last 3 years in Aylesbury and it was £258,000 and the average asking rent was £990pcm giving an average rental yield of 4.6%. Comparing this to Dunstable over the last 3 years where the average sold house price was £205,000 and the average asking rent was £989pcm ( yes the same average rental value !) giving an average rental yield of 5.79% and I know he was convinced. I think our friend might be buying his next property here, in Dunstable and not in Aylesbury.
If you want to be part of our town’s property market and want to know what (or not to buy), feel free to come and talk to us and we can give you some straight talking advice on investing in buy to let
