Buy to let means the acquisition of property for the purpose to let out. Many people have bought a property for the purpose of investing in something that is considered safe. In the past years, both property and rent prices have risen. People have started to invest their money in properties hoping to make a profit from selling it later or from renting.

There are risks involved when you take a loan to buy a property for the purpose of selling it later – there may actually be no profit, or the income from renting does not cover the expenses for the bank. If you cannot afford the payment to the bank, you risk losing that property.
What to Do

First thing you have to do is to search the market to see what the current prices are for the properties that interest you, how high are the loan rates at the banks and what are the current taxes in that area.
Another factor that has to be taken into consideration is the current crime rate in the area, appeal, means of transportation and schools in the vicinity.

Maybe one of the most important aspects is to make the exact calculations to see if the buy can be profitable or not. Search for the best mortgage deals and do not buy the first property you find just because it might sound cheap.

You have to see what kind of tenants you need and combine that with the property location and price. Do not accept the first rent offer even if it may seem a good deal, it might turn out that further negotiation will return higher profit.

Another thing to take into consideration is the taxes you have to pay for the property, or the profit you gain from renting it. Recent studies have shown that over 70% of the people make a profit, the rest are breaking even or less.

Leading property website, Findaproperty.com, presents The Home Game, an infographic packed with football and property related discoveries for the new season.

As the Premier League kicks off, Findaproperty.com reports on the news you won’t find anywhere else. With facts including…

Each premiership goal is worth £1.28m

Wayne Rooney has 4 properties, valued at £11.3m

Tevez’s salary could buy 108 houses in Buenos Aires

The Home Game infographic comes in two versions, one is a short video complete with soundtrack, and there is a static version for you to download and share with your friends. You’ll also find a cheeky stat on how many players have had an affair, click on The Home Game to find out their strike rate!

This will be the first in a series of infographics with a football theme, keep an eye on the findaproperty.com blog for the latest news and views from the team.

All of us know the types of insurance we need for our permanent homes, we know we need contents and buildings cover then all those other insurances that cover aspects we may not even know of until we are offered insurance for them! But when it comes to our holiday homes do any of us know the type of cover we require for them? After all they aren’t like your normal house as you are not there except for short periods of time while you relax away from the stresses of life. So do you just need standard contents and buildings cover or is there something more to it?

If you are just using your holiday home for your own pleasure and not renting it out to others then you need to choose your policy with care as many insurance companies will only permit a certain number of days of non-occupancy before the cover is void, this tends to be around 30-60 – though this could be seen as an excellent reason to get away more! Endsleigh offer some great policies. For further information on this cover visit the site now.

Obviously if you rent your holiday home out while you are not using it you will need further cover. You firstly need to make sure the policy includes commercial holiday lettings and not just family use, many policies have certain restrictions to them such as turning off the mains water if the house is being left unoccupied and visiting to check for damage in the winter months. For further information and guidance upon these restrictions visit the site now.

As well as these restrictions it is advised to take out public liability insurance along with the buildings and contents insurance. At the moment this insurance is not required by law for holiday home lettings but it is worth having. This will cover you incase any of your guests injure themselves while staying in your holiday home as well as provide compensation incase you cannot let the house out due to fire or flood. For further information on public liability insurance please visit the site now.

Buying your first house can be a confusing and difficult time with many legal processes to go through as well as many must dos such as surveys. So here is a quick beginner’s guide to buying your first home.

Most importantly of all make sure you have an affordable mortgage in place, while you may find many houses that are perfect just outside your price range it’s best to remember you will have decorating and furniture costs to start with as well as the costs associated with running a home. So make sure you budget for these and work out what you can realistically borrow and repay each month and stick to your price range.

Once you have found your perfect home make sure you get a survey done on it, nothing will ruin the feeling of owning your first home than a roof collapsing or finding out you have subsidence. A survey will show up all the faults with your perfect house and gives you the pre warning you need to fix these or find another house.

Through the mine field of legal paperwork it is best to have a guide especially when buying your first home; this is why it is best to go through estate agents. While they can be expensive they do this every day and know what they are doing so are best to guide you through the process. They can guide you through the paperwork and advise you on what you should be doing in order to make sure the house is in good condition and help you secure your dream home.

When shopping for anything, it is important not to go for the first one you see as there could be a bargain around the corner. Buying houses is exactly the same, it is best to shop around and see what you can get for your price range; after all in one area you might just be able to afford a one bedroom flat, whereas a few miles down the road you could get a three bed semi.

When you are moving home you may decide to move further than your local town or village. This may be due to a change in Job, or simply a life decision to start a fresh. But knowing which places are safe to live and those that are best to avoid can be hard.

When you find a property you like you can then research the area in which it is in, or you can find an area you like, research it, and then find a property. This is dependent on the individual but always comes down to the same area of research.

High crime-rate is something we cannot avoid. If you look hard enough you can probably find it everywhere, but as with anything there are places that have more crime than others.

The top five highest crime-rate cities are said to be Manchester, Birmingham, and Bristol, Glasgow and Nottingham. These cities are high due to a mixture of crime rate, from theft to murder. But other cities have high crime-rate of certain areas. For example London has the highest crime-rate in car accidents, which is no surprise looking at the volume of traffic that resides in London.

When you’re finding a property on a property finder website, you should not just avoid these areas point blank; you should find areas within these cities that are better. No city is completely riddled with crime, they all have an area or two that is better than average. So find what these are and start your property search around that.

As a general rule finding a property that is on the outskirts of a city will mean you are looking at a lower crime rate. The centres of cities tend to be worse. With this in mind you can begin to search for your new property and bare crime-rate in mind when you are investigating.

Buying a home is one of those life changing events, it means that you will own your own property and have proper security for your family and your future.

But the foray into the property market can be a confusing one and the financial aspect of taking out a mortgage isn’t one that you should take lightly. Taking the time to research and fully understanding what is involved means that you are less likely to get yourself into a financial mess. Choosing the right type of mortgage can be tricky and there are plenty of different types to choose from.

There are two main types of mortgage, these are interest only mortgages and repayment mortgages. Repayment mortgages are where you make a regular monthly payment for an agreed period of time, until the loan, plus the interest, is all paid back.

On the other hand an interest only mortgage again consists of monthly payments, but these will only cover the interest you owe on your loan. Interest only mortgages generally require that you pay into an investment or savings plan as well, which will, hopefully, pay off your home loan at the end of the agreed term.

Confusingly, that’s not all you need to think about. You’ll also need to consider the interest rate deals that are available as well. These include:

Standard variable rate: A variable mortgage rate means that your mortgage payments will go up or down in accordance with your lender’s interest rates, as determined by the Bank of England base rates. You can also get standard variable rates with cashback – this means that you will get a lump sum of money, as well as your home loan, when you take out the mortgage.

Discounted rate: You will start off by paying a lower (discounted) rate of interest on your mortgage, before moving to a different rate, which is usually tied to the lender’s standard variable rate, at an agreed date.

Tracker mortgage: Tracker mortgages mean that the rates are tied to the Bank of England base rate (or a suitable alternative). This means they are susceptible to fluctuations.

Fixed rate mortgage: With these deals you will pay a fixed amount of interest for a fixed time. The advantage of this is that you know exactly how much you will pay each month. When the fixed period is over, you will usually start paying the lender’s standard variable rate.

Make sure you do your homework and fully investigate your options before signing on the dotted line, it can also help to talk to an independent financial advisor, who should be able to tell you which mortgage you are most suited to.

Renting out your house can be a good way of raising a bit of extra cash, especially given the current economical climate and the fact that not many people are buying at the moment. We are lead to believe it is quite an easy process, simply spruce up your house, furniture is optional and hand over to a rental agent or estate agent who will find you some nice tenants who will look after it and you’ll only need to come in to redecorate every few years. For the most part this is exactly how it works, most tenants are conscious that the property is not theirs and treat it with care and respect. But for every 100 cases of good tenants there is one case of bad tenants and this is why landlords insurance is vital if you are considering renting your property out.

So what does landlords insurance cover? Well as you would expect landlords insurance covers the building in case of perils such as fire or floods and the contents side of it covers your possessions within the property against damages including fire, theft and malicious damage. Some comprehensive landlord insurance policies also cover legal expenses and even loss of rent. Landlords insurance also covers against liability claims made by tenants, for example a tenant may put in a claim if they fall down the stairs and hold the landlord liable.

Landlords insurance also covers fixtures and fitting such as carpets, flooring, kitchens and bathrooms as well as white goods, most also cover broken windows. It’s important to remember that landlords insurance tends to only cover theft if there are signs of forcible or violent entry or exit. You should also remember that landlords insurance does not cover any of your tenants possessions so they will need to take out their own contents insurance.
For the most part landlords never need to make a claim on their landlords insurance but if you ever do need to you’ll be glad you have it.

House insurance falls into two broad categories building insurance and contents insurance, and some policies even combine both. But what is the difference between the two.

Buildings insurance is often taken out with mortgages and covers the cost of rebuilding your home. Put simply it covers the actual house rather than the removable contents found in your house.

Generally it will cover any damage to your home caused by things like fires, floods, natural disasters, bad weather, burglary or attempted burglary, man-made disasters like a riot, explosions or vandalism. However, different insurers offer different cover, for example some companies will not cover you if a theft has been carried out by people who are legally on the premises but offer comprehensive cover in other areas.

Mortgage lenders often ask to see proof of home insurance as part of their mortgage offer so it is vital to take out cover when you are buying a property.

Contents insurance will cover all your contents of your home against theft and damage by things like fire, flood, smoke, acts of nature or malicious damage. This means that anything in your home that you would take with you were you to move would be covered under your contents policy. So this includes furniture, electrical equipment, clothes, bikes etc – basically anything that isn’t a fixed and permanent part of your home.

Unlike buildings insurance you don’t need contents insurance to get a mortgage but wherever you are living, whether in your own home or rented property it is a good idea to have some kinds of contents insurance. Could you really afford to replace that laptop if it got stolen?

It is also important to access the level of contents insurance you need. Most basic policies will cover the standard items in your house but may not cover the things that mean the most to you. For example what about your grandmother’s engagement ring or any valuable jewellery? Do you have enough cover to replace those if they are lost or stolen?

You can also find a range of non- specialist insurance policies online including home insurance policies for listed buildings, houses of non-standard construction and for landlords.

Deciding to purchase property to rent out or renting out your own space is a huge decision and one of the most important things to consider when taking on this responsibility is the type of tenant you wish to take on.

The perfect tenant is the Holy Grail of property and unfortunately you are very unlikely to find them so you need to be prepared for what you can do when you find yourself having to deal with a problem tenant.

There of course a number of reasons why tenants might begin to cause problems, the obvious being unpaid rent or bills, causing damage to the property or excessive noise levels.
Our first and probably the hardest solution is to establish what exactly the problem is and find out WHY the tenant is causing that problem. Unpaid bills may be due to personal problems such as the loss of a job or relationship/family worries and so it is important to be sympathetic until you know exactly why the problem has occurred in the first place. Remember that it might be hard for a tenant to confide in you that they are in trouble.

If your tenant still refuses to communicate with you then the problem will escalate and so you need to start a course of action and we would recommend written communication in all circumstances. A polite letter is your first move and it is then up to the tenant to respond. If for example, they are causing neighbours problems with excessive music and fail to improve after a gentle warning you should do your best to keep records of complaints and specific incidents.

For something such as noise, the correct route to deal with this is through the Environmental Health Agency NOT the police or any other department of the council. The EHA will keep note of these incidences and inform your tenants that their noise making equipment could be removed if they persist. This is a pretty serious threat and is likely to help in the long run.

You are legally within your right to evict a tenant with appropriate notice as long as you serve the correct notices in the proper manner. Always treat tenants with respect no matter what happens, keeping a professional head is an absolute must especially if a tenant does not agree with your reasons for wanting to evict them. Know your contracts inside out so if a tenant breaches them you can step in at the right time.

Entering the property market is always a big decision to make, whether you are buying a new home for yourself and your family or if you are considering becoming a landlord and trying to purchase a property to let. With the current economic situation, many potential buyers are even more uncertain about whether or not now is a good time to buy. There is fierce debate over whether the economic climate provides valuable investment opportunities, or if it would be better to wait until the country’s finances are more stable. Either way, it is best to do a great deal of research before making any big decisions. Before deciding if now is the right time to buy, you need to really think on whether you want to buy at all.

If buying for yourself and your family, buying a house is a big step. It may be one which you cannot avoid; for example if your family is growing and you can no longer live comfortably in your current accommodation. If this is the case, you should definitely think carefully about the new kind of property you wish to purchase. Your family’s comfort and quality of living is extremely important, and should be weighed carefully against the risk of entering the property market at a time of financial uncertainty. That said, there are some great opportunities at the moment for bartering with a seller and some real bargins to be had, if you are quick enough to catch them!