Hey, I'm Matt. I've worked for several years in financial services & banking for one of the UK's largest banks in London and now work as a senior product manager in a global startup. On the side, I'm building a property development group utilising all my leadership, project management and financial experience. I'm helping share my knowledge of working in these roles mixed with the world of property.
🥶 Finally! This data shows the property market is cooling!
👋 Hey friends
How are your property ventures going? I'm in the process of planning the next project along with the move out of London coming up very soon. We're very close to exchanging on the London flat and a few weeks out from the next personal project which is a large doer upper. I'm very much looking forward to working with some fantastic architects and looking for a solid build team.
I thought I'd share a little bit of insight on the current state of the property market and what we're seeing to help give you some context on what you might be seeing on the ground and in viewings and auctions.
In other news...I counted recently that I had spent over £90,000 on my American Express credit card to collect tonnes of air miles and points, I did a video about it recently on YouTube explaining why I never use a debit card anymore, there's also a link in the video description to Amex where you can get up to 12,000 free points 😍.
🏡 Latest & What's upcoming?
The buy to let is settling well, there's a great family living in there at the moment who are looking to stay for the long term. I put the house on a 2 year fix mortgage so that's up for renewal in October 2023, it means that I need to be careful when consdering the rent at the end of Q1 next year.
Landlords are putting themselves in hard situations where they refinance onto incredibly high interest rates which completely wipes out maintenance costs and profit on their portfolio so I need to analyse this at the time to look at whatever the rates are in March next year.
I'm in the process of planning moodboards for the next project, it's going to be a large personal home conversion so I'll likely have a mixture of managing trades and doing some of it myself - I can't wait to document this over on YouTube in a few months, it's going to be a hell of a process.
After that's sorted, I'll be counting the pennies left in my stocks & shares ISA to look at funding project #2 in the company which will be around the 1 year anniversary of being a landlord meaning I can unlock better HMO mortgage rates as that'll be the focus of the next project.
I'll entertain either a larger conversion into an HMO or take an ok property (for example a magnolia box) and then convert it cosmetically into a super slick luxury student HMO.
I'm very specific about what I'm looking for next - that direction and clarity is key to progressing your goals. Let me know what your next project is!
🏡 Property Market Data
Here's the latest:
- Demand from April vs June has almost halved, this is likely due to the cost of living crisis meaning things are really cooling off in the market, however it's still 25% above normal compared to last year.
- There's an increase in the flow of new supply meaning more houses are coming onto the market compare to April whilst the demand is somewhat lower!
- This has meant that the stock of homes for sale has improved by almost 10% vs last year.
This is really reassuring because the market has been pretty crap for the past 12 years so we're now starting to see things cool off meaning good deals might be on the horizon again. My mindset at the moment is to find a good project that breaks even and hold onto it for the long term, my main focus isn't a magical 30% ROI deal at the moment. But things are beginning to head that way again.
Don't be fooled though - the market is still tougher than it was, it's just not as tough as it has been previously and it looks like we're above the current peak.
Next is a view of accepted mortgages and rates over the past 20 years, with inflation surging at the moment and the bank of england bank rate increasing at an alarming rate - 5 year fix mortgages have surged recently however 2 year fixes are also just as popular which is quite interesting.
It'll be interesting to see this data play out over the next few months of this year.
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Matt Brighton
Hey, I'm Matt. I've worked for several years in financial services & banking for one of the UK's largest banks in London and now work as a senior product manager in a global startup. On the side, I'm building a property development group utilising all my leadership, project management and financial experience. I'm helping share my knowledge of working in these roles mixed with the world of property.
Hey friends, It's been a few months. I don't tend to spam your inbox with lots of these emails for those who have been subscribed for a long time to my updates. As usual, if this newsletter isn't for you - there's a link at the bottom to remove yourself from the list. What's going on in the property market? My latest YouTube video explores the latest figures and provides a balanced view of what's happening in the property market. Rishi is celebrating halved inflation, which doesn't mean...
👋 Hey Reader It's been a busy few months, so I've been a little quiet on emails. We finally moved into the big renovation project outside of London after a stressful 8 month conveyancing process and the house almost falling through (classic). Planning permission has been submitted and we're starting to rip out the house, however living in a project that you're doing up is always tricky with logistics! After we bought the house, a house 4 doors down the road sold for £1.5m in cash to a famous...
👋 Hey friends Premier Property Lawyers are still being the biggest pain in the bum in our property sale. My buyers mortgage expires in 3 weeks and they keep raising endless menial enquiries at the last minute that keeps holding us back. I repeat my advice from the last newsletter - never ever use any of the conveyancing brands under the Simplify group. They're awful. In other news - the property market has took an incredible flip over the past few weeks, we really did not expect interest...