tired of 9-5 office job. any other job recommendation?

[Wd40]

My post was actually more in response to PH's post where she mentioned how she got on the property ladder and wants to help her daughter too. For you guys it worked because look at this interest rate chart:



From 80's from close to 18% over a 20 year period rates have come to 0%. Basically all your property investments would have imploded if there was no cushion to reduce rates to 0. Now from 0 where can it go? If the economy implodes this time, for whatever reason, the property bubble will collapse and its true worth will be discovered. Is there any reason why property should be worth millions of dollars and for someone starting out now, to put their lifetime of earnings into it? All that money could be used to do something move productive instead of dead property investment.

[JR8]

Nope. It is common mistake for those today to believe that those who endeavoured previously had it easy. Whereas in actual fact those today tend to have it a lot easier (just one example: internet, availability of info), just they can't be bothered to get off their rear and go and find their own next big idea.

As I said in my case the business plan was based on a fixed rate of 9%. I.e. I paid a large margin (vs a floating rate), to prevent against the risk of rates *rising* yet higher. Rates dropping did not figure on the radar. The plan would have ultimately worked where ever rates went, as by the time I remortgaged to a lower floating rate, I'd saved enough up to be ok taking that new risk.

What was a 25 year plan, came good in c10. That's nice but not particularly relevant IMHO. Perhaps the brightest aspect [edit: of getting out of landlording earlier than planned] was it drastically reduced the quantity of tenant-issues that arose, a couple of which I've mentioned before.

.... and so on and so on. Anyway, what's your big plan? How does the business case stack up?

[Wd40]

My plan is to save as much money as possible and have a diversified portfolio of fixed income and equity. I still rent, which means I am short real estate. When I buy my 1st house I will be neutral real estate and then 2nd house will be long real estate. I will wait for the global real estate to crash before I buy my 1st house.

[Primrose Hill]

WD40, hahaha I am not that old. We bought our first property back in mid 90s, sold that 5 years later and more than doubled our money, but it was an apartment which in today's estate agent's lingo would have been "in excellent decorative order". We moved up the ladder with an awful eyesore, to quote my late father in law to a 70s box house. Once again, we did it all up with a study converted from a integrated garage. A family room and a playroom cum store area for my daughter from the side land that we had since we were end of terrace/townhouse. Also extended the kitchen from a small galley kitchen into a larger galley kitchen and then converted the small box room upstairs into a miniscule walk-in wardrobe and shower room. Sold it after living there for 12 years after the govt announced that the High Speed Rail 2 (HS2) will come directly under but being a Londoner we aren't entitled to any compensation. We tripled our investment and left and came here. We rented out another flat that we own in West London from 90s out permanently but for years, every pence we earned from the rental income we plowed back into the property. The service charges were rather high until the past 2 years when a sinking fund was started and the lease extension was a killer too.
We bought a house here in SG after we were handed our PRs. We bought a flat for our daughter, OMG its at least 300 square feet smaller than our first flat together for an obscene some of money.
Rental yield isn't fantastic on that flat either. So where do we go from there?
I was back in London recently and what I saw was frightening indeed. North London was full of new builds or developer conversions; Hendon is now being called extension of Hampstead. Holland Park has been extended beyond the Shepherd's Bush roundabout, beyond the Hilton Hotel, there are plenty of new builds there too. Places near or on Harrow Road but nearer Notting Hill are now called Notting Hill, when did Harrow Rd became Notting Hill? I mean, not forgetting new builds in the city (Shoreditch, Wapping etc), trendy converted wharfs/warehouses- but where's those exposed beams/bricks and duckings and why are 2 bed flats/apartments are now 550 feet which is tiny.

Any we worked for everything we have. Nothing fell onto our laps. No banks of mom and dads either.

[JR8]

Good stuff PH, sounds like you worked to get a good hand, and then played it outstandingly!

Estate agent lingo does make me laugh, 'located in a vibrant neighbourhood' = hookers, crack dealers etc if not in your building, then on your street 24/7.
'Now a little tired, but gives a buyer a unique opportunity to put his own stamp on it' = it probably should be demolished and you start again from the foundations up.
... and so on ... I actually recall there was one London agent back in the late 70s or 80s who wrote honest particulars, to the point of being brutally frank. They were hilarious!!! they even came to be quoted in the press, and parodied in comedy. Smart/reverse marketing?

Buildings, especially 'purpose built' [i.e. not conversions of period property), that have communal hot water and heating boilers can be a killer. Tenants don't directly pay for the HW/heating, and as a result their usage/cost via the service charge to the owners is often huge.
Even owner-occupiers then tend to think, 'Well, if I'm paying 2k charges a year, then I'll run my heating all year long. too hot? Sod it, I'll open a window' etc.
Over 4-5 floors = needs lifts --=> hideous cost, especially to replace.

So to break-even (as a landlord) you need to charge relatively high rent. The 'free' H/W+heating is not a selling point to a tenant, or not a headline one. That probably makes them harder to let. But I've no direct experience of lifts/communal boilers etc, I have heard a lot of anecdotes.

'Borough creep' is an interesting social phenomenon (lapped up by buyers in the new extremities of an area). Notting hill (IIRC) is purely London W11, but now I've seen property as far east across W2 as Paddington (it's own borough lol) described as NH, since the latter is far more desirable.

Oxford and Cambridge Gardens, safely into W10 to the west also 'became' Notting Hill several years ago. Harrow Road, isn't that W9/W10, is now NH also you say? hehe... it wasn't that long ago that Harrow road and around there was positively dangerous. [My first flat-share in London was off Fernhead road just north off Harrow Road. On the way there with my bags the very first time (fresh from uni), some '''vibrant cosmopolitan young man of Afro-Carib heritage''' offered to sell me drugs in the street and it was mid-afternoon, not 2am). Sorry I digress

That end of Holland Park down by roundabout, and over towards shepherd's Bush Green has always been rough. The Swanscombe Rd blocks, to the NE of the roundabout, that was, and still is, a bad, bad, and damned dangerous area, esp after dark. There is NO way I'd live there, and ***NO*** way I'd live there with my wife. Let's see if Holland Park somehow manages to leap the roundabout and morph shepherd's Bush (a dump) into Holland Park (vvv posh).
[In passing: you mention the hilton down HPAve. That is 'lay-over central' for air-crew in/out of HRW].

funny how when you move around the typical home size, on a similar locally adjusted rent budget works out. I.e. you should getting roughly the same in each international city, but...
London - my baseline, = say 100% space
Tokyo = tiny say 35%
Singapore = about 70% based on the SGn agents GFA. But take out the bomb-shelter, baclony, air-con ledge, internal ledges etc (which they all quote as habitable floorspace), and it might be 55-60%
NYC + suburbs (I've lived in both), 100 > c75%

The surprise was moving to a capital on the European continent (can't name for privacy etc yawn), where the number would be about 130-140%.
Ditto the above, but another country, the place we've just got, perhaps 150%

IME it's very easy to get used to more space. I suppose that's why moving back to smaller space takes quite a lot of adjusting. I wonder how many FTs move home, and find the space they once had and were happy with is now simply not enough, solely because they've got used to having more?

Funny how some of these moves, esp. large -> small turns you into an immediate expert in the latest storage solutions

Anyway, great track record there:
American would say: 'Yo [high-five] way to go man!
Brit: 'you played a good wicket jolly well, congratulations'
Italian: 'Your family must be so happy, bellissimo'
German: 'This is none of my business (embarrassing to hear)'
SGn: 'You did what? <death-glare>'.
hehehe....