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Post by Fletchsmile on Jun 8, 2015 19:15:05 GMT 7
I'm thinking about buying a property for rental/investment purposes in North West of UK, maybe even a future home at some points if the kids go to college there. As I'm Thailand based the funds will be coming from here. The attraction is that interest rates are so low in the UK - I've recently seen 5 year and 10 year mortgages fixed at historic lows + I have family nearby the property I'm looking at + might want the property in the future for family reasons. We could easily get a mortgage in Thailand on our home here, and use the funds from that to buy, but don't want to do that given the high rates and FX risk 6% - 7% THB rates here vs 2 - 4 % initial GBP fixed rates in the UK. Any general thoughts or suggestions or tips would be welcome? How easy it is to obtain a mortgage in the UK for a non-UK resident, although UK passport? Anyone done that from here or experience they'd like to share? Cheers Fletch Note: I have plenty other investments, equities, bonds, cash etc. So only looking at property yes/no rather than alternatives, if anyone has any help. Thanks
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Post by rgs2001uk on Jun 8, 2015 21:21:22 GMT 7
Define Non Resident.
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Post by Fletchsmile on Jun 8, 2015 21:25:43 GMT 7
British passport holder + Thai wife with Thai passport and 5 year UK visa. Both live in Thailand, so not residing in/ non-resident in UK.
(Also for tax purposes tax resident in Thailand, not-resident in UK, though not so worried about tax, just practicalities of buying. )
Ideal would be in house in joint names with a mortgage from UK bank, with a 5 or 10 year fixed rate, while we are still based here in Thailand.
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Post by rgs2001uk on Jun 8, 2015 21:35:19 GMT 7
FS, let me send an e-mail to a friend in Saudia who is right up to date on this stuff, be aware he may take a couple of days to reply.
Be aware, seperate one from the other, too many buy their dream home then try and rent it out, you should invest in what the market wants.
My mate invests in BTL, some of the best returns are to be found in places you and i would laugh at, Barnsley, Middlesborough, etc etc.
Alternatively, go and buy in Prestwich.
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Post by Soutpeel on Jun 9, 2015 8:41:37 GMT 7
British passport holder + Thai wife with Thai passport and 5 year UK visa. Both live in Thailand, so not residing in/ non-resident in UK. (Also for tax purposes tax resident in Thailand, not-resident in UK, though not so worried about tax, just practicalities of buying. ) Ideal would be in house in joint names with a mortgage from UK bank, with a 5 or 10 year fixed rate, while we are still based here in Thailand. Fletch, do you have banks accounts etc in the UK ? If you don't and you have no "presence" in the UK you might struggle getting a mortgage through a UK based bank ie visions of "computer says no" from little Britain
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Post by Fletchsmile on Jun 9, 2015 9:06:03 GMT 7
Cheers guys.
Yes, I still have one bank in the UK - Smile, the internet bank. I let the other ones go over the years. Smile are fine for day to day stuff, and credit cards. The problem is they are now less competitive than they used to be on certain products like mortgages because of all the problems Co-op bank had. On deposits and general banking etc I don't mind, as UK banks pay peanuts on savings accounts these days, plus I don't keep much GBP cash in the UK, as what's held in UK is in investments. On the other hand a percentage point here and there on a mortgage loan mounts up. Also accounts are currently in my name only.
I'm looking to open an account with another bank - preferably joint account. The problem when I tried a couple of years back was having all the right docs: I had the docs for identity, but didn't have a UK utility bill or anything to prove a UK address, and nothing for my wife. So you're right "the computer said no".
Am looking at putting some of my mum's utility bills in our names, and paying them, so we can open an account with another bank. Maybe RBS or First Direct, or perhaps HSBC.
Have a trip to the UK in July, hence looking at ideas, thoughts now...
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GavinK
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Post by GavinK on Jun 9, 2015 19:39:06 GMT 7
If you still have a UK driving license that can be used to prove address. If you've already changed it to a Thai address it can be changed back. Passport can then be used for id. For Mrs Smile with no UK ties it may be more difficult.
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Post by Fletchsmile on Jun 11, 2015 18:57:30 GMT 7
I contacted Smile and asked them about converting my single name accounts into joint accounts, saying we were outside the UK. They told me its very easy to convert single name accounts into joint accounts, just need complete a form for each account. But then went on to say we may require proof of your UK address. Rather difficult for my wife
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Post by Fletchsmile on Jun 11, 2015 19:00:11 GMT 7
Interesting article on UK property made me think a little. Then again I'm not looking at this as pure investment - but it is a factor. =============================================================================== Two of Britain’s best property timers may finally be pulling out of the market Dominic Frisby, Moneyweek
If it’s movies, it’s Brad and Angelina. Music and sport? Posh and Becks. But the pin-up couple of buy-to-let property? That would be Fergus and Judith. And they were in the news again this week, offloading some of their property. Should you be doing the same?
The maths teachers who got aggressive and got lucky
Like so many who stumbled into buy-to-let property in the 1990s, former maths teachers Fergus and Judith Wilson are accidental landlords. Or at least, they were at first.
“We had a house to sell and another to buy”, Mr Wilson told the FT. ‘”I thought with a fair wind, I could keep both at the time and rent one out.”
Many people made that same decision back then. And the winds really did turn out to be fair. A generation of buy-to-let landlords was born.
Plenty of them grew their portfolios beyond that first flat, helped by a mid-to-late-90s financial innovation known as the buy-to-let mortgage.
Easy lending and a rising market made it all so easy. You borrowed against a house. You watched it rise in value. You re-mortgaged at a higher price, took out some of the equity and used it as the deposit on another place – or in the Wilsons’ case, many other places.
“Be aggressive in a bull market”, runs the saying, and that’s just what the Wilsons were – more so than anyone. “In early 2000, the main requirement for gaining a mortgage was the ability to sign your name”, says Mr Wilson. They took full advantage, so that by 2007, they’re believed to have owned as many as 1,000 properties, mostly two- and three-bedders in Kent.
They survived the financial crisis – just – and were bailed out, like all landlords and debtors, by the subsequent suppression of interest rates. Their debt-servicing costs were minimised and their portfolio has since benefited from the asset-price inflation brought on by zero interest rate policies (Zirp), quantitative easing (QE) and all the rest of the manipulation of money that has gone on since 2008.
“We’ve never made money like we’ve made in the last five years”, says Mr Wilson. “God knows how much we’ve made daily on capital value.”
The gains they’ve made at a time when ever fewer people can afford their own home – and no doubt, comments like the above – have made the Wilsons the poster-children for the loathing many feel towards buy-to-let landlords.
My own view is a little more benign. I don’t blame the Wilsons for trying to make money, so much as I blame government policy for creating this distorted market in the first place (stupid planning laws, debt-based money, a failure to include housing in official inflation measures, and all the rest of it – read this if you want to know how to fix housing).
The messy business of tidying up a property portfolio
That said, Mr Wilson has hardly shied away from controversy. The Wilsons benefited perhaps as much as anyone from government largesse in the form of Zirp, yet they have been very critical of people on benefits.
They evicted 200 such people last year, with Mr Wilson saying he preferred Eastern European migrants “who don’t default on the rent”. The fact that housing benefit no longer matched the rents achievable in the private sector was another factor in his decision.
There was further provocation this year, when he began to evict Eastern European families who had moved more people – particularly children and grandparents – into the homes than originally agreed.
Wilson declared he had no choice due to council overcrowding rules. “Contrary to what may be depicted by the leftwing media”, he told The Guardian, “I do not eat little babies alive… I do not make the rules, but I do play by them… welcome to ethnic engineering at the coal face.”
I suspect, however, that the main reason behind these decisions was in fact to make the buy-to-let portfolio as attractive as possible to a potential buyer. As long ago as 2008, the Wilsons have made noises about the portfolio being up for sale.
And this week, they are reported to have sold 100 of their properties – most already tenanted. Fifty were bought by one Chinese investor, while the others also seem to have been bought by overseas investors in multiples of five or ten. If we are to believe The Telegraph, the average price is £250,000.
The portfolio is so location-specific – in and around Kent, but particularly Ashford and Maidstone – that it makes sense to offload in this way, if one buyer for the whole portfolio can’t be found. Selling the properties on the open market would simply drive down prices.
But the idea of one landlord – whether it’s the Wilsons or, worse, an institution – owning so much property in one town, as the Wilsons seem to in Ashford, is scarily reminiscent of Pottersville in Oh, What A Wonderful Life!
But what does all this say about the UK property market?
But what does all this suggest about the UK property market?
The Wilsons are, no doubt, shrewd. And the fact that they are finally starting to pull out of the market may be a sign that the great era of buy-to-let is drawing to a close.
Mr Wilson says current prices may have got ahead of themselves: “Prices always used to go up so that a property would double about every seven years, so about 13% a year. I used to say 10% was quite healthy, but when you see them going up at 25% you think – it can’t continue.”
And there’s no doubt that buy-to-let is not the game it once was. The yields are not there, especially in London. In London in the 1990s you could find yields well over 10%, plus you had the capital appreciation of the property.
Now average yields are closer to 3%. In many cases they are lower. I was also amused to read this in the comments section of the Guardian from ‘elwoodjblues’: “I am BTL landlord and my net yield after costs is… 0.5%. Not exactly the scandalous profiteering guardianomics would have you believe”.
Those kinds of returns don’t matter as long as the market is rising. But if it reverses – particularly in such a heavily leveraged market – then the whole market can look very shaky, very quickly. No yield, falling capital values, and a whole lot of debt that is suddenly that much harder to pay back. Leverage works in reverse too.
The Wilsons got in at the bottom. Now they may well be getting out near the top. But top or not, they are right to offload.
You can argue the toss as to what a sensible asset allocation would be for today’s world – a lot of it depends on your own time horizon and needs, but I’d suggest that property, equities, bonds, cash and precious metals all have a role to play in varying amounts.
But what I can say with certainty is that, for where they are in their lives (I’m guessing late-60s), the Wilsons are way too geared to Kent real estate.
They’ve made the decision to diversify. And I don’t blame them.
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The Arrow
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Post by The Arrow on Jun 11, 2015 20:29:18 GMT 7
Time for UK housing to go through an almighty banging great crash.
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Post by rgs2001uk on Jun 12, 2015 0:08:28 GMT 7
Time for UK housing to go through an almighty banging great crash. Great stuff, bring it on, been hearing the same for thea last 20+ years. As long as demand outstrips demand there will be a bubble. Gotta make make cheap housing available for all our new Pikey Brits from the former East European markets, how is the Bulgarian housing Invest Trust doing these days, the same one that promised to double my money if I was daft enuff to believe it. Funniliy enuff all the pikey tawats from east europe seem to be heading to London, cant quite get my head round why, any cheapo properties going cheap in Translyvannia these days? No worries take it up with Herr Anglela and the pikey Commie twat from Greece, who wants us dum taxpayers to pay their protected pensions, Taxi for Costas, yo Stavros bring me another Brandy Sour, tout suite.
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Post by rgs2001uk on Jun 12, 2015 0:13:33 GMT 7
PS, can someone pls expalain to me why all these Greek and Cypriot Taxi drivers can all afford to drive Benz taxis?
I couldnt afford one in Blighty, nothing wrong with that but how TF can former camel drivers afford a Benz?
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The Arrow
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Post by The Arrow on Jun 12, 2015 1:34:02 GMT 7
Time for UK housing to go through an almighty banging great crash. Great stuff, bring it on, been hearing the same for thea last 20+ years. As long as demand outstrips demand there will be a bubble. Gotta make make cheap housing available for all our new Pikey Brits from the former East European markets, how is the Bulgarian housing Invest Trust doing these days, the same one that promised to double my money if I was daft enuff to believe it. Funniliy enuff all the pikey tawats from east europe seem to be heading to London, cant quite get my head round why, any cheapo properties going cheap in Translyvannia these days? No worries take it up with Herr Anglela and the pikey Commie twat from Greece, who wants us dum taxpayers to pay their protected pensions, Taxi for Costas, yo Stavros bring me another Brandy Sour, tout suite. The BTL brigade have removed most of the properties for sale to owner occupiers. A whole generation is completely <ducked>. This is down to BTL, interest only and at the lowest interest rates in human history. Wait until IR's go up. I'd ban BTL mortgages, like they used to be and tax the bejesus out of "landlords" living abroad.
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GavinK
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Post by GavinK on Jun 12, 2015 18:40:30 GMT 7
HMRC certainly seem to be heading that way... CGT now chargeable to non-residents... Personal Allowances under threat... CGT allowance probably next... Removal of IHT allowance anybody ? Expats are politically an easy and popular target among the voting majority.
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The Arrow
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Post by The Arrow on Jun 12, 2015 20:05:27 GMT 7
HMRC certainly seem to be heading that way... CGT now chargeable to non-residents... Personal Allowances under threat... CGT allowance probably next... Removal of IHT allowance anybody ? Expats are politically an easy and popular target among the voting majority. Housing crisis in the UK. Not all down to BTL, mostly down to a lack of new build. But the younger generations are being utterly disenfranchised, jobs, housing, debt, pensions . . . they will never be stakeholders in the UK and the boomer generation have the temerity to slag them off! If you make money from Britain you should pay the tax on it. So much needs to change.
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