Where To Invest In UK Property in Q4 2020?

How do we know which areas are good for UK property Investment? 

Let's talk about areas to invest. Because I think this is really important and I think the the thing for me is you know whatever happens there's still going to be opportunities and I think that's one of the keys here.

You know look I would love to say that yeah just go out and buy whatever but i don't think that's the case anymore. I think the trend now in the UK is that the towns the fundamentals just aren't there there's not the money getting spent there's not the change you know fundamentals it's just not a functioning market anymore so you've got to be really really careful now. Sure if you're just going for a cheapy cheapie best yields you know um you know a strategy fine you know okay go out of that cheapy cheapie stuff. But certainly you know I like to have both I like to have the yield and I like to have the capital growth potential. Because yes you know you may go well I'm making this much and I'll pay my property off in 10 years you know but you're going to pay it off in 25 years well actually yeah I am but then I could probably sell it because capital growth you know so it depends on your strategy. And you know you can if you want to know about strategy chat to the team you can go to www.gladfish.com/portfolio-management you know book a portfolio strategy meeting with a team and they can go through whatever you know the current market strategy all that so where should we invest. 

I am a big and you know if you look at where we're sourcing now and I'm being really really pig-headed about this even the point of where you know some clients like well you know i don't want to buy in those areas because I want something cheap you know and I'm like I'm not going to source in that area because I know the quality of the stuff you know. But you know London, London always you know if we do go into this it bounces back the quickest you know because it has the best fundamentals. There's huge amounts of money, regeneration getting spent there's all sorts of stuff like that and I think that's really key and really essential with this.

Look so there's that element there's the other element which is Manchester, Birmingham you know Liverpool. Those sort of places you know which are your major cities and I always say major cities with Universities okay. One of the things I'm interested and not interested one thing I'm really impressed with is back in 2012 okay when I first moved to Singapore we were talking about London being the world city. London being a world city it still is but now Manchester and also Birmingham have both been added to that list yeah and and to a degree Liverpool but not as much Liverpool.

So those areas you've got to be you know you've still got to be careful and the other side of this so there's the area you want to invest but there's a type of developer you want to invest within the type of you know if you've got an existing property fine. You know get it inspected make sure you get rid of all the problems you know and you know of those before you invest. If you're talking about new build go with your proven developers that have got a track record of experience and do your due diligence and if you do that you should be relatively fine. You can negotiate now but obviously you know some developers are you know a bit confident but the one good thing about this whole thing is that with the realisation of the planning things what's actually happened is lots and lots of sites now being bought out and getting converted to properties that are in the town centre. So the town centre is going to change from where you know high streets were desolate you know boarded up and all that sort of stuff. Now it's there's there'll be a you know a renaissance if you like with the high street not in retail yeah retails moved out. Now it's all about you know distribution to get to the where people live quicker you know and that's part of what amazon you know and their successes. But certainly in the high street what's happening now is a lot of those commercial buildings are getting converted to residential through permitted development.

So the government is relaxing the rules but you know what this is the stupid thing is the relaxation the rules isn't actually in such a way whereby that you know you still have to go through and meet various requirements. It's not as simple I think people think with permitted development and we're developing now it's like they've relaxed the rules oh yeah we're just going to go and do build whatever we want. No, you still have to meet minimum requirements fire standards building standards you know codes all this sort of stuff you still have to meet all of that stuff yeah it just means that you don't necessarily have to go through the whole process of a full planning application.

So there's still a lot to do you know it's not an easy process and you know this is where I find some of these weekend warriors and what I mean by that is these guys that go along and think I'm going to become a property developer I'll send a weekend course and now I'm a property developer let me go and find a property and you know and they just think it's easy and it's not so you've got to be careful with a lot of those developers that are just starting out because even if they're on their first or second or third they may not have learned the lessons and they probably haven't lived through you know the ups and downs of the cycles and the fact that you know look one of the interesting things is look bottom line is what we're going to see is this yeah right now lots and lots of permitted development happening yeah lots and lots of sites getting snapped up, snapped up, snapped up now what happens is they then put in the architect they get it all done and now they start building it yeah so what happens when they start building it when all these people start building new homes all of a sudden there's a labour shortage because you guess what we did with Brexit and guess what we did with immigration all the cheap labor went back to Europe and so now what's going to happen is build costs are going to go up and a lot of those builders won't have a counter for that and they won't have allowed a margin enough for that and then potentially they'll either decrease the quality of their stuff you know which means you end up with a crappy property. Or they just will go bust and somebody else will have to take it over and build it out you know so but then what will happen is then you'll have all these come to the market and that market will then drive things up but you know that's a good functioning market you expect that okay and you know.

So for me the market actually is functioning really well you know it's yes there was some pent up demand yes there's some stamp duty stuff but the stamp duty stuff it will end and the market will continue and I don't think we're gonna see 30 drops like some people say um you know I just don't now interesting Ritesh has just written you know should I expect 10 to 20 discounts I don't think so I mean I think if a couple of the worst case things hit we go back into lockdown construction site so you know and it gets really bad and we don't find a vaccine you know well into next year then potentially yeah there will be some desperate in those things but i think we're likely to sit around like where we are now is probably the five to ten percent um you know is what you can realistically expect and I think that's where it's going to sit because most developers are happy to sit at that you know they before Brexit or during Brexit are selling at this level and so actually now I mean they've been selling at that level now sure it's slowed down for a little while but for the most part they haven't needed to give away the big discounts and we're not seeing that which you know is actually you know I think a good thing you know so guys any other question so that's that's my hope that's you know a bit of a summary for today or for this month.

Look you know what do I think what do I think right now things are looking pretty good when they could have been absolutely a shambles yeah and I think that realistically is we had austerity followed by Brexit and then all of a sudden we had you know new government come in that said no you know what now we're going to spend money now originally they said that without the Corona Virus being there so there's been a lot of money spent on coronavirus but they've still maintained their commitment and their willingness and you know to actually keep doing that which is great news. 

So I think that's absolutely essential you know and I think that's where we have to really um you know count our blessings for that thing because I think really that will see us through now will we hit a lot of people saying oh but then we'll get into the you know the winter period and things will drop off yeah they will but that's normal that's the market you know they do drop off so I think that's one of the keys too is we will see this spring bounce this august you know massive you know jump that's going to wane now but don't think that's a wane because of coronavirus or anything else that happens every year you know November, December, January are always dead you know February you know even into February a little bit starts to pick up again but you know it's not until realistically March, April where things now go and we have the spring bounce okay so guys hopefully that gives you a bit of a uh you know indication of where the property market is and my thoughts for this month month of September and you know we watch we'll watch the news you know and there's stats that come out you know on consumer spending on redundancies on unemployment and all these sort of things and keep you up to date but yeah any other questions you know post them in the chat and I'm happy to answer them.