If you go into the purchase with open eyes, knowing how strong the market is likely to be, you'll know most of the risks and can barter the price accordingly if you have to
Bearing this in mind, last week, a couple from Cleadon popped into our offices to ask about investing in their first local property. They were concerned that if we have another property slump (and we will have another slump, and another...because that is what's happened to the British property market ever since the 1950’s), if they did need to sell, what type of property would be the easiest to dispose of?
Nowadays pretty much everything sells, even during a slump, as long as the price is right...but I did some research and followed up their query – I was actually quite surprised with the results
A good guide to judge the 'saleability' of property is the number of properties for sale, compared to the numbers that are sold, subject to contract (STC)
That means only 8.7% of property on the market has a buyer in Sunderland (interestingly in Newcastle 20.4% of properties are shown as sold STC and in Durham it's 18% of a much smaller pool of only 283 properties)
I'd imagine all of these figures are low due to the seasonal nature of the sales market - I'll make a comparison later in the year to put this to the test
In the meantime, I like to delve a little deeper, and in Sunderland today, a 5.0% of detached houses on the market have a buyer and it's slightly better news for semi detached property owners, as 8.4% of them are sold STC
Terraced houses are performing almost as well, with 17 of the 268 on the market now having buyers lined up (making 6.3% of the total available properties)
Somewhat unexpectedly, the properties that appear to be doing best at attracting buyers at the moment are apartments with 9.6% of those on the market having buyers and bungalows where 17.8% are Sold STC (although the latter statistic is less surprising given there is always strong demand for bungalows - a trend which is likely to continue given the ageing population)
I then thought it would be interesting to look into whether there were differences in the various Sunderland postcodes
Looking at the SR2, SR3 and SR4 postcodes, a relatively consistent 9.8% - 10.5% of properties are currently shown as Sold STC
The lowest number of Sold STC properties was within SR5 with only 3 of 160 properties having buyers (1.8%) and at the other extreme 20% of SR1 properties were Sold STC
The latter ties in with the unexpectedly strong performance of apartments shown above but the relatively poor performance of SR5 is somewhat concerning, given this is a great area for picking up good value investment properties
I make myself available to give advice to both existing & new landlords in Sunderland on what to buy & what to avoid
Having this detail of information at my finger tips, allows me to spot trends in the local market, which then enables to me to give the very best advice to my Landlord clients
I don't charge a penny for that advice so if you want to discuss your options then pop along to our offices in Frederick Street for a more detailed conversation about your investment needs
No comments:
Post a Comment