My unexpected tale of selling my BTL

[Claymore]

I had wanted to sell a property as tenant was leaving to buy her own home and because I'm not enjoying being a landlord anymore, so many needy tenants! Popped the property on the market and interest was great but tenant started playing games and Covid kicked in.

As property was empty and no-one was viewing, I felt I had better re-let - I couldn't see anything selling for a long time. How wrong was I? Mini boom going on in the area at the moment. However, I can't take advantage because my new tenants are a young married couple and they want to make the property their home long-term. They are proving excellent tenants, have erected a new fence (neighbours side) at their own expense to keep their dog safe. Repaired leak to the garage roof as the husband is turning the garage into his little den. They've built an outdoor bar in a discrete area of the garden. They asked me if I wanted to keep the greenhouse, which I didn't want the aggro of maintaining. So that's gone now - I just paid to have the concrete taken away. The property had only been redecorated 18 months previously but the exiting tenant had really made a mess of the walls, so I was getting it all repainted etc. The new tenants 'asked' me not to do this and could they decorate themselves using their own colour scheme - all very tasteful too.

I feel so lucky :-)

[BTL investor]

It took until 2018 for house prices to, broadly, recover to their 2008 level.

Exactly! A 10 year bull market is one way of describing it, a more accurate way to describe it is to say that even after government intervention it took 10 years to recover to pre crash prices.
The government are already pumping money in to the economy now in form of the furlough scheme and that’s why we haven’t seen a crash yet, once that ends and unemployment hits combined with all the furlough money needing to be paid back there has to be some sort of reduction in prices as there will be less people in a position to buy houses because there will be less people able to get mortgages and that includes foreign buyers as they all have some sort of furlough schemes in place as well. The people that do have large amounts of money and steady incomes will have less people to bid against.
If the government pump money in and we get another bull market it won’t be a bull market from todays prices it will be a bull market from any crash that occurs after the furlough scheme ends and some “experts” are predicting prices won’t bottom out until mid 2022.

[JK0]

Ha, I wonder if giving all the Hong Kong residents rights to live here was a deliberate ploy to stoke up the housing market?

[jpucng62]

It took until 2018 for house prices to, broadly, recover to their 2008 level.

I don't think that is true in the areas where I have properties - values recovered quite quickly and then moved on strongly.

[jpkeates]

I don't think that is true in the areas where I have properties - values recovered quite quickly and then moved on strongly.

I was a couple of years out.

Figures from the ONS

[boletus]

I was a couple of years out.

A slight understatement?

[buzzard1994]

The government "strategy", if it can be called that, is indeed to import millionaires but after the incompetence they have shown in the last few months will they want to come here. There will be other pandemics, there will be climate change - New Zealand is looking pretty good right now..

[jpkeates]

A slight understatement?

There were a load of newspaper articles in 2018 which announced that prices had returned to pre-crash levels.

[boletus]

There were a load of newspaper articles in 2018 which announced that prices had returned to pre-crash levels.

I'm sure there were, a small minority of areas still haven't recovered.
But on average, it was 2014.