Daily Archives: November 18, 2016

DIARY OF A PROPERTY INVESTOR – DAY 11

We arrive in Sunderland and park near to the flats which are above a parade of shops. Look back to Days 4 and 5 for full details of these properties. We would be buying the entire first floor. The properties are arranged in 4 individual blocks with their own separate entrances. That is a bonus.

Near to one entrance a person is sprawled out on the road with a police and ambulance next to him. Looking on are a group of his “ friends” from a homeless hostel across the road.  Apparently a lot of the people in the hostel have drug issues and judging by the look of the person being helped by the authorities that might be the problem with the person who is unconscious. Not such an attractive scene.

We look round the flats which are very nicely proportioned but in a very poor condition. They are going to need some work on them to get them up to standard. We then start researching the area. We walk around to get a feel for what type of area it is. It is actually very nice.

We are literally a 3 minute walk from the Town Centre. Just one minute away is the best café in Sunderland (according to trip advisor) which seems to have a very nice class of person in it including a lot of people who we assume are Overseas Students (as we were told they were potential tenants in this area). Definitely worth exploring which our next blog will cover

DIARY OF A PROPERTY INVESTOR – DAY 10

The viewing trip for Sunderland and Manchester is upon us. We are doing this over 2 days. The Manchester viewing will take most of the day because there are a lot of properties to look at.

We start off in Manchester meeting at 10.30 at the first property  (it is a two hour plus journey for us to get there) Although I say the properties are in Manchester they are actually based in and around the Wigan / Leigh area. We consider that Manchester but no doubt those who live there would not.

The first property is not a good omen. It is in a nice enough little town but it is at the end of a row of terrace houses next to a railway bridge / railway line. To us it looks as if it might have some structural issues. There is a Tenant who seems genuine and seems ok (you would be amazed at how many properties claim to have Tenants but in practice do not have genuine ones if at all) but for the price proposed the yield would only be about 8% which is below our normal criteria. Having said that because we are potentially buying up to 17 properties in one go and because these are houses that may have capital growth potential the yield is not the only factor in this particular purchase

As we carry on round we become more and more concerned. All the properties are potentially in good areas but the specific ones chosen by the Seller do not on the whole appeal for one reason or another. The Seller is a very nice person and via his family (the business was started by his father) they have built a very substantial portfolio but we can understand why they are selling to take advantage of the Manchester market moving up.

But the conclusion we have come to is that these are just not the right properties for us. We consider if may be there is a smaller selection of the better properties we could make an offer on but even then we decide the answer is no. So we move on to Sunderland. If you look back on this blog you will find the full details of the Sunderland properties in Days 4 and 5.