Investment & Investing

London flat. Her specialty was cooking a big pot of rice and another pot of veg (always in our pots, not hers) then eat a portion of it and leave the two pots on the stove for next day. Then heat up, eat, leave out and repeat for another 4-5 days until they ran out.

Ten years ago? You should have sold it and invested in bitcoin. Missed a trick there.

At least it was veg. A friend's housemate used to do that with meat, unrefrigerated, for anything up to a week

Who says I didn’t invest in BTC too?

Ten years at a fair yield, minimal expenses and a good chunk of capital appreciation...mmm I’ll take that thanks.

(What I should have done is sold it and bought a terrace in Queens Park - could have made around £1M if cards were played spot on)

But yeah could have bought some more BTC but the trouble is I never had the balls to buy enough for it to be a game changer.

Can anyone recommend any resources,books, websites, etc for learning about investing in the stock market? I'm very aware I know precious little about how it all works and would like to know more. Been reading some of the free articles on the Motley Fool site and getting some of the basics (I think) but a lot of it still seems a bit of a mystery.

Tim Hale Smarter Investing is the one

a lot of it still seems a bit of a mystery

Sounds like you've got a handle on it to be fair

One thing that’s been a bit of a change for me this year is investing in companies I know about - either through use or being in or around them through work. It means I have a good understanding of if the product is good etc

Twitter is also a good place for info - follow people who’s opinion you value.

Suppose this year is pretty mental though

That's obviously based on no mortgage payment though (and some pretty low estimates like letting agency fees of 1%). You'd expect a decent return on that.

You could get a similar return, for a lot less work, with a S&P 500 tracker or similar so really it comes down to whether you want to keep the property to either live in at a future date or hope for significant increases in the property value.

In my case there is no mortgage so the decision is: keep flat and rent it out or sell flat to buy more expensive new place (or reduce mortgage or whatever having more money lets you do).

Where do you get your returns values for trackers like S&P?

Unless Armageddon pretty much any sensible* share tracker will out perform London rental property based on yearly yield alone factoring in fees and expenses.

Rental will get you less than 5% yearly, investing should over a good amount of time get you more when you average it back to yearly yield.

Over a long term timeframe it’s pretty likely you’d come out poorer if you keep the flat and rent it compared to if you did some fairly unexciting and hands off investing.

* moderate - low risk level, well diversified, global. Or just the S&P500

You can't shelter from the zombie apocalypse in a share portfolio though

Could invest in shotguns I guess

But if you factor in selling at this point in time, you will see a possible drop in sales revenue. Id wait 6months to 2years to sell, if you were to sell. The property prices should bounce back once people forget about living in tight confines during the pandemic.

Yeah, I don't really want to sell it. I'd rather live somewhere else that's still modest size. But I don't want the flat to just sit empty and rot, obviously. Who knows, maybe when I start looking more seriously I'll find the perfect place that does require me to let go of the flat and that will be the decision made for me. This is all hypotheticals at the moment while my brain processes options.

The property prices should bounce back once people forget about living in tight confines during the pandemic.

Possibly. But what to do in the meantime? Rent it out. Ok. It then becomes exponentially harder to sell.

It then becomes exponentially harder to sell

why?

But I don't want the flat to just sit empty and rot, obviously.

If thats the criteria, why not rent it. Any meager rental returns put aside for when you have to do the place up because the renters have fucked it up.

You keep your assest. You have some funds to maintain. Keep and forget.

Multiple reasons.

It's probably not going to be pristine and tidy for viewings with tenants in.
It's much harder to arrange viewings where you need to give tenants 24 hours notice.
You're more limited on dates if you're trying to tally up with giving tenants notice and them moving out (and you stand the risk of the property sitting empty if you don't get it right/sale falls through).

You have to get over your inertia and evict your tenants before putting it on the market and then it will empty and will look shit

There's no "risk" with it being empty though is there? Unless you consider 'potential' lost earnings as a risk. It's paid off and I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I "need" that rental income. So with that in mind I could also get tenants out and do a proper clean up before selling, if I'd planned to sell it.

There's no "risk" with it being empty though is there? Unless you consider 'potential' lost earnings as a risk. It's paid off and I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I "need" that rental income. So with that in mind I could also get tenants out and do a proper clean up before selling, if I'd planned to sell it.

I was going to say this.

If you just want the protection of having someone in the flat, then when its time, give them notice, clean it up and sell.

Some thoughts.

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2018/1/whats-the-true-cost-of-holding-an-empty-property

There's no "risk" with it being empty though is there?

Council tax, insurance, service charges and other expenses all eating away at your wealth.

It’s a great way to piss money down the drain.

My costs are about £200-250/month for council tax, body corp, insurance, etc. Possibly less if they still do a discount for single occupant houses and our body corp should come down once we've done the cladding work that we've been paying extra for for the last 5 years.

This is only when it's empty though, so if this only happens between tenants and before selling, who cares? Couple of grand is fuck all when you're talking about buying a house.