The Clapham Property Blog

We are about to embark on a busy year of investing in Clapham, Brixton and perhaps slightly further afield. Hopefully you have your finance ready and are waiting for the right deal to land in your inbox. But did you know that you could also invest your pension into property? This has the added bonus of many tax benefits. Together with my esteemed co-host Trevor Cutmore I will be delighted to present the Clapham Property Meet on Tuesday, 31st January at the Bread & Roses, 68 Clapham Manor Street, SW4 6DZ. This month's guest speaker is Mike Holt, active investor for over a decade. Having negotiated over 350 purchases, and continuing to do so, he now specialises in unlocking pensions and allowing investors to access previously locked away funds. Pensions allow access to commercial property but a whole lot more. Mike will run through the options of this very tax-efficient way of investing. Whether you are an experienced property investor, just starting out, or perhaps

Rent growth in London has slowed with annual growth of just 1.6% compared to 3.1% year on year in the rest of the UK, the latest index data shows . This comes to me as somewhat a surprise as London has always bucked the trends when it comes to housing - recovering quicker from crashes and outperforming other parts of the country. Latest data however shows otherwise. Let's look at some factors that could be causing this. Are landlords selling up to feed the first time buyer market?   It may appear so. After various tax changes (stamp duty and the reduction of mortgage interest relief on rental income it may be a sign that "generation rent" is now slowly becoming "generation FTB" and taking advantage of various incentives to get on the ladder, slowing rental demand. Slowly and steadily though, while buy-to-let transactions have slowed in recent months, there is no evidence of a widespread sell-off by investors associated with the softening of the

Excellent news - the first time buyer market is staying strong, and growing ever more. The National Association of Estate Agents has reported that first time buyers accounted for nearly a third (32%) of all purchases in October - the highest since they started logging this data back in the year 2000. But what does that mean? In a nutshell, it's great news! The continued demand from first time buyers will mean that properties at the lower end of the spectrum (starter homes - one and two bedroom flats, anything up to £500k) - will continue to rise in value sharply. A good proportion of these will be former starter homes belonging to now "accidental landlords" (those that couldn't sell at the time so reluctantly held) or couples who perhaps were able to trade up using the old "let to buy" system (letting out their flat whilst remortgaging to release equity for a deposit for the next property). A lot of these non-professional landlords will be sel