Earning money is no small feat, so once you have it, you certainly don’t want to lose it.
Hence, the search for a stable yet profitable investment is universal and at Rocket, we believe London property fits that description perfectly and our clients agree.
We spoke to one of our portfolio landlords, Matthew Bennett, about why he decided to invest his money in London property and here’s what he had to say:
With property, you’ve got something substantial.
If you follow the trends over a number of years, you'll see property as an asset class performs equally as well as the FTSE 100.
But, the difference is that property is a tangible, very solid form of investment, at least that’s what I've always thought.
Property is a bit like having children. There never seems to be a good time to have them or to buy, but with hindsight, it’s always a wonderful thing.
I’ve often ended up thinking that if I'd have known back then how well it would turn out with my property investments, I'd have piled even more money in.
The first flat I bought, for example, was in the early 1990’s at the beginning of a fairly long recessionary period and for the first three or four years, the value actually went down.
It was a three-bedroom flat, I bought it for £92,000 and at one point its value had dropped to as low as £60,000.
At that point you have a few options, sell and take the losses or what I did, which was trust that fundamentally, I knew I had bought in a good area, so there would always be strong demand and I understood that the market works in cycles and it’s all about timing and ultimately the property turned out to be a good investment.
Nowadays, there are a number of issues that landlords have to face that didn’t exist in the same way as when I first started investing in the London property market.
There’s a lot of headwinds, the tax position has altered now and there’s far more regulation, which is a good thing as it has made sure tenants are more protected, but with that inevitably comes more management costs for landlords.
With that being said I’m still confident in the London property market as an investment and I would even consider adding to my portfolio by buying more properties today, which comes a lot down to working with an agent I can trust in Rocket.
The great thing with Rocket is they’re really hands on and the real benefit of working with them is they always present a solution at the same time as the problem.
So, in one call or email exchange, they will let me know about a problem that’s cropped up, while at the same time saying here’s your solution.
They don’t just come to you and say: ‘This has happened, what you want to do?’ They already have a plan in place to deal with the issue, they're very proactive and organised.
And they provide a really personal service, which is something that’s been lacking when I’ve worked with bigger agents in the past and I’ve never had the feeling that they’re acting in my best interests.
Whereas Rocket won’t waste my money, they act as if they’re spending their own money, and make sure I always get the best value and that money is only spent when absolutely necessary.
Rocket are also really hot on technology.
They have apps and platforms to manage everything, they’re really on top of all that stuff. So, it's easy to see at a glance on my dashboard that they’ve set up exactly what's coming in, what's being invoiced for repairs and what's not.
It helps when I'm preparing year end accounts for my tax return and I can just give my accountant access to it and you can see all the information there on the screen, so it couldn't be more straightforward really.
