By Raj Sharma.
The March meet up of the Birmingham PIP community was a special one – with all the regional hosts there as well as some of the Partners. It was a fantastic opportunity for members to meet hosts and partners and we heard from everyone in the Introductions round where everyone gets the opportunity to say who they are, what they do and how they can help the room!
Rod Turner – In depth Resi Market Update
The first of our speakers of the day was Rod Turner, our London based Partner who delivered a superb presentation on the current state of the market – full of facts, figures, graphs and expert analysis!
We learnt how much rents have risen by over the years, with the South West and Wales becoming the most unaffordable regions for renters in the UK. The average room rates were £660 in Q4 of 2022. House prices fell 0.5% between January and February, the sixth price fall in a row, leaving prices 3.7% below their pre pandemic peak.
There was a reminder of how Math works! If you’re leveraged at 75% LTV, a 5% drop in prices means a 20% drop in equity! If 50% of value is wiped off something, you need 100% growth to get back to where you were!
Rod talked about earnings, availability of credit, interest rates, employment levels and how we as property investors need to understand all of these factors when making investment decisions. It’s important to look at Total Returns and have a long term outlook.
Peter Vandervennin – Monthly Mortgage Update
Peter started off his update by commending Rod Turner’s presentation. He went as far as to say it was the best presentation he’d heard for a while and anyone following and implementing some of the concepts would have a very successful property career!
The presentation started off with a summary of latest rates with 5 year fixes at 4.99% in Ltd companies for BLTs. There was a summary of private rental sector dynamics, with 7.5 properties in the average portfolio with 7% buying a property in the last 3 months and 12% selling a property in that period.There was a summary of average rental yields per region with Wales at the top of the pile at 6.4% and the lowest being Central London at 4.8%
Strategy has never been more important – social housing, HMO, title splits – just some of the strategies being employed to get better returns than single lets.
The Tea & Coffee break followed the superb update from Peter giving another opportunity for networking.
Anthony Davies – Member Showcase
At every PIP meeting, we love to hear from members, to showcase their experience and we were delighted that the very experienced and successful Birmingham member Anthony Davies was next to present.
Anthony qualified as an Accountant and had a large corporate background before he became a full time landlord / developer in 2007. He operates various business models including single lets, commercial lets, SA and is a HMO newbie.
More recently, he has become a private lender providing loans to companies for a variety of purposes but predominantly for property investment, Anthony’s private lending service is fast and flexible and he is a useful contact to have in your toolbox if a deal comes up you need to move quickly on!
Another superb member showcase. We are always looking for members to speak – get in touch if you’d like to be featured!
Tom Edmunds – CrowdProperty
Our last speaker of the day was from our sponsor, CrowdProperty – Tom Edmunds. They are still very busy at the moment with lots of types of rest projects being funded including developments and commercial conversions.
That concluded another morning of informative presentations full of facts and figures and it was time for lunch and more networking,
Round Tables
After lunch it was time for our presenters to answer questions at their Round Tables. This is a superb opportunity for members to ask questions and dig a little deeper into the morning’s presentations.
Our London host Des Taylor, who was supposed to be hosting a table, went a step further and gave a very practical session on fire doors! Always delivering value – come and see for yourself at one of our next meetings!
A date for your diary!
The meeting concluded with a reminder that our next Birmingham meeting is on Wednesday 5th April as it’s Good Friday that week. See you there?
