Week 31: Location Location Location...continued
Wow! What an interesting week. We recently celebrated a religious festival lasting 3 days and I kid you not in these 3 days I'm sure I've gained 3 stones, that’s a lot of 3’s! It's the festival of Eid-ul-Adha, where prophet Abraham was told to sacrifice his son as a test. Which he obeyed and then God replaced his son with a sheep thereby saving his son. Well that's the jist of it, enough of the Quranic/Biblical references. I have to confess I have not done any work for about four days as it was a three day event, a long weekend plus the night before which fell on a Thursday I was fasting and prepping for this. Sunday was great as we finished the weekend by visiting the wonderful waterfalls of the Welsh valleys. Wish we could do this more often. The only thing is it's so hard fitting all this in when spending several hours on your business. At some point you just have to see what’s more important. My elderly mother as a result of lockdown has been stuck indoors for four months so this was really for her and seeing the smile on her face was priceless.
During the first half of the week I was looking at more potential areas for investment. It's better to spread the risk and have a few hotspots around Britain. From my research it is apparent that some areas are performing much better than others and some will start to decline as a result of the upcoming recession. Some of the emerging cities would be:
Doncaster
Sunderland
Gainsborough
Lincoln
Salford
Kettering
Corby
Peterborough
Preston (some parts); and
Liverpool
This is a good list to work from and certainly keeps one occupied. There is a lot of historical data to look up and evaluate. Buying an investment property is no joke as you have to be spot on with your chosen locality. Within a single city you will have good and bad areas and within this area you will have good and bad streets. You pick the wrong street and you will have problems securing a management company to manage your property. As it would make it awfully difficult to let your rooms and no agency wants unlettable houses on their books.
Tip: Before you make your offer speak to some local agents about the property in hand as they could advise/guide you to go ahead or not.
Be respectful of their time, call beforehand and schedule in a meeting in person or skype during quieter times. Offer to pay them for that hour if need be as they too are running a business and not a free advice bureau. All this will take time and you will have to cover each of the above districts but at least you will gain the right property in the right area with the right agency to take care of your investment. Get the first two or three right and you will be well on your way to a great start. When you get scalded in the beginning it can wreak havoc with your confidence, as positivity breeds positivity. Once you secure your first property the research doesn't stop there as local economics is in a constant state of flux, so what was great last year could actually be terrible this year.