Wednesday 30 November 2011

Investing for Yield or Capital Growth in Buy to Let Property

By Roger Handsdon


Investing in home property can be rewarding if it is done properly. But many of us often confuse themselves and finish up taking a thrashing in the market because they don't know whether they are investing for rental yield or capital increase.

In Britain, where this type of investing is known as buy to let, many individuals been unprofitable in the huge property bull market up till 2007 because they suspected that property costs would just keep on rising and they would not fall.

So instead of scrupulously considering each potential property investment on its advantages, most of them just purchased any old thing in the hopes that it'd be worth a lot more one or two years later on.

The first step to get round this elemental mistake is to have a look at the rental yield that you may earn from the property. The net rental yield is a measure under which you take away yearly expenses like insurance and agents fees from the yearly hire that you expect to get from the property. You then divide that by the price of the property. If the net yield is lower than your price of capital (mostly that will be your mortgage IR) then the investment makes no sense.

What is more, this calculation allows you to compare the prospective return you might earn on a once a year bases against other possible investment opportunities such as stocks or shares. Recently smart financiers have been able to pick up stocks in great corporations on dividend yields that are way better than what they would hope to get from property.

Now some people may argue this figure does not take into account the fact that the value of the property may go up. My reply is easy. The worth may go down too. There aren't any guarantees in investing, but at least being certain that your property investment can make enough money to cover its own costs puts you in a much safer position than if you were just betting on a market recovery.




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