Six ways to use property data to earn more from property

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I have been asked by the founder of PropertyData.co.uk to review his latest online software for property people.

I think he deserves more than just my opinion though, so I have promised him that I will ask thousands of landlords to review it – you are one of them, I hope you will help.

Please take a look via the link below …

https://propertydata.co.uk

My first impression was that the software must have cost a fortune to develop and had institutional backing. Apparently not though. Its designer, a chap called Michael Dent, is a life-long software developer and created this software in his own spare time – IMPRESSIVE!

This is what he says about it …….

For years, institutional landlords have used data analysis of the property market to fine-tune their property investment decision-making to maximise profit.

There are now tools available for smaller landlords to make property investment decisions backed by real-time market data, boosting your property returns for a fraction of the money that the big landlords spend.

Here are six ways you can use PropertyData throughout the property investing lifecycle:

1. Pinpoint rental yield hotspots

Rental yield is a key metric for an investment property, and good yield data has historically been hard to come by. PropertyData tracks the top rental yield hotspots in the UK in real-time, with several local areas currently capable of achieving rental yields of over 10%.

2. Analyse the local market

It’s surely true that there’s no replacement for property local knowledge, but PropertyData can help you understand any urban area in the UK from a quantitative perspective. You can define a custom area and then see real-time house prices and rental yields, along with historical capital growth, market composition and local demographic information.

3. Comparables analysis

Many landlords will recognise the experience of sifting through Rightmove or Zoopla to identify comparable properties for valuations. PropertyData makes this easier and faster – jump from local area analytics into individual property fact sheets to fgure out whether a property is fairly priced.

4. Compare areas side-by-side

You can save mulitple areas side-by-side in PropertyData to compare key property market statistics, such as rental yields, average prices and 3-year historical capital growth. As well as reviewing possible investment areas, this tool is great for monitoring how your existing investments are faring.

5. Find investment properties fast

PropertyData’s property finder is the easiest and faster way to find investment property, returning instantly available investment properties that match your budget, location and size criteria, looking only in the areas offering the strongest rental yields.

6. Rent benchmarking

For your current properties, maximising your return-of-investment means ensuring you are charging and appropriate and competitive rent to minimise void periods and make the best monthly return. PropertyData analyses the local rental market dynamics, benchmarking your property against similar properties locally.

PropertyData subscriptions start at £6/month with a 14-day free trial.

Find out more at https://propertydata.co.uk

REVIEWS

Please, please, PLEASE post your review of this software in the comments below and share this article if you think this software could prove useful for other property people.

Michael will be signed up to receive comment notifications so he will be reading what you have to say and available to answer any questions you may have. Please feel free to add constructive suggestions too, I’d really like to help this guy out. This is NOT a sponsored article, Michael is just a regular business member.

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HMRC refunds £127m on Stamp Duty surcharge

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HMRC has refunded £127m in Stamp Duty for second home owners since the 3% surcharge was introduced in April last year.

The average refund over 10,700 property purchases was roughly £11,869.

Currently if you purchase your new main residence, but have not yet sold your old one you will have to pay the 3% surcharge on Stamp Duty for second homes. However, if you then sell your old main residence property within 3 years the surcharge will be refunded regardless of how many other properties you may own.

Where it is complicated to understand is in the event of one partner in a joint purchase already owning a property and the other party being a first time buyer, or if you already own a BTL and not a main residence and then buy one. The rule of thumb is that if the purchasers together end up with more than one property then the additional surcharge will be payable. Please see diagram below, but ignore the 18month refund term as it is now 3 years.

£80m of the refunds were paid back in the 2016/17 tax year and so far a further £47m this year. In total HMRC received £8.6 billion in Stamp Duty Revenue last year of which £1.7 billion was from the surcharge for second homes.

The original Government consultation document on the Stamp Duty surcharge is a great resource to use with many different examples of when the charge will apply and we have used it many times to help answer readers questions so please do check out it out by clicking on >> Higher rates of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on purchases of additional residential properties

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Tenants will suffer as supply of rental homes dwindles…

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Private rented sector (PRS) tenants as facing a shortage of suitable rental property, just at a time when demand for renting is increasing.

According to a recent survey of almost 3,000 landlords carried out by the Residential Landlords’ Association (RLA), 22 per cent of landlords are planning to sell at least one of their properties over the next year. It is thought that this follows from the introduction of new tax rules for buy-to-let landlords, which started to kick-in from April this year.

Data published by the RLA from their latest quarterly research report shows that 33 per cent of landlords have seen an increase in demand for homes to rent over the past three years. It also shows that around 18 per cent of those surveyed are still planning to buy additional properties to let.

But this is where the tax measures are filtering through to tenants: faced by an imbalance in the supply and demand for rental properties, 47 per cent of landlords indicated that they expected to increase rents over the next year.

35 per cent indicated that the changes to mortgage interest relief, which will see landlords taxed on their turnover rather than their profit, unlike all other UK businesses, was the main reason why rents might increase.

Commenting on the findings, RLA Chairman, Alan Ward, said:

“As demand continues to increase for homes to rent, punitive tax changes are discouraging investment by the majority of good landlords who want to provide accommodation.

“Whilst efforts by the Government to support institutional investment in the sector are welcome, this will remain a drop in the ocean.

“To meet demand, we need pro-growth taxation that actively supports and encourages the majority of landlords who are individuals providing good housing, to invest in the new homes to rent we so desperately need.”

Teso-isation of Renting?

The government’s apparent drive to address the imbalance in housing supply and demand with more institutional investment, at the expense of the individual or small-scale landlord, would seem to go against the current trend: pushing back against big corporates, while backing small-scale, local independent businesses.

But, when it comes to private renting, everybody seems to want to kick the landlord, the small, independent providers. Have the rogue landlords and the bragging so-called multi-millionaire buy-to-let portfolio landlords, got the profession into such a bind that all landlords are now paying the price for this?

It would certainly seem that the rogues in the industry, constantly focussed on by the media, even though they represent a small fraction of the industry, has done the industry as a whole no good whatsoever. Couple this with the public’s view that buy-to-let landlording is the path to easy riches, and you have a perfect storm brewing against responsible small business landlords.

The government, councils and social housing providers are all getting in on the act of backing big developers and institutional investment, encouraging them into the rental housing market. Increasingly, there are moves to provide new-build housing at market rents, either directly, or through companies, or in partnership with banks and pension funds, egged on by government incentives.

This would seem like a neat solution for government: drive out the troublesome small guys by flooding the market with multi-occupied blocks of rental housing, and as long as the media focus remains on the rogues in the industry, there will be little public sympathy.

All this, including the myth that renting out property is a way to easy riches, ignores the fact that small-scale landlording is hard work.

“The independent private landlord will continue to be crucial to meeting housing need, particularly for those shut out of owner occupation and high-end rentals.

“So, it’s time to re-evaluate the private rental market, to bring the same caution to big development as we do with retail, and celebrate the small independents who can be the heroes of the housing crisis,” says the RLA.

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