Buying an investment property is a tricky proposition. If you hope to do well you really need to do your homework. So here is a list of useful sources of information that can help you find the right property, get the right buy to let mortgage and make a profitable investment.
The first point of call for beginner buy to let landlords should be the Association of Residential Letting Agents (ARLA). This is an organisation that represents the letting and management agents that you may need if you ultimately use someone to help you find tenants and to manage your property. It is a well respected organisation with a membership of more than 3500 agents around the country.
There are two reasons you might want to go and take a look at their website. The first is that they publish a quarterly survey of landlords. You can download the one for the second quarter of 2010 here:
This give an indication of returns on buy to let and property investments and is a good gauge of investor sentiment in the market because it asks questions about issues such as how many landlords are thinking of selling their properties over the next 12 months and what the Loan to Value (LTV) of property portfolios is.
The other really useful thing that ARLA publishes is a guide for buy to let landlords. This beginners guide covers most issues that people need to be familiar with such as insurance and mortgages – many of the issues that I also try to cover here. But I’m just a one-man band rather than a full organisation with thousands of members. You can check out their guide here:
Another useful source of information is Rightmove which is a website that lists properties for sale and to rent. You don’t just want to go there if you’re looking to see what’s for sale (or what rental prices are). You also want to take a look at this website for its buying guide. This is not the most comprehensive guide on buy to let out there but it does have some useful mortgage calculators and the like.
You can find it here.
To find out what your responsibilities and rights are as a landlord you can go to the government’s website on private rental property at Direct Gov.
This site is really very useful because it explains exactly how rental contracts work and what you have to do as a landlord when holding a deposit (something I’ve also covered in my post on the tenancy deposit scheme).
The government has also got a really useful guide to assured and assured shorthold tenancies (the sort you will generally be involved in when letting out a buy to let property). It has sections on setting up a tenancy, what the rights and responsibilities are and what to do when a tenancy ends. You can download this guide here.
So there you have it. All the information you could possibly want on buy to let including beginners guides and legal guides. I hope this helps.
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