One of the biggest problems we have with UK investors is presuming a city or area is saturated because there is a lot more properties being built there compared to when they were younger.
We all have a habit of doing the same, properties ‘feel’ too expensive and there is too much. Its normal, this is why we invest in the UK, the market keeps growing and will continue to grow while people can afford them too.
For affordability, we check average price v’s average salary or gross disposable household income, but that is for another video!
So how can we check if there are too many properties? The best way is to check up on an area of the UK you need to get the postcode and go over to the government website – I have included the link below this video.
Here we want to see the ‘long term vacancy rates’ report (see report and article here). If a property is vacant in the UK you can get some discounts on council tax. When this happens the government will make a note of this property is vacant and we get copies of this each month.
By simply pulling a report of how many properties are in that area we can get a good idea of the % vacant at the moment.
The UK has always been a favourite for investors as there is a huge undersupply of property due to not being allowed to build on green belt land, and it taking a long time to get planning permission to build.
This means that many areas we target for investment have 1% or below vacancy rates. This would mean you will rent your property out for 99 months before seeing a month vacant.
Link to check Long Term Vacancy: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/live-tables-on-dwelling-stock-including-vacants