Note From Judith | What’s Important?

Ha, ha! Ha, ha!  Ha, ha!   I have total egomaniacal (cue mad laughter) and editorial control this week – and possibly even next – as Nicola packs and prepares for her holiday away.

She’s going for one week to her beloved Stoupa with sister Sarah and I have given her homework: to see if it really is somewhere she could make a life.   Watch her Twitters…assuming she can get a signal.

Does the broadband work well enough?   Is the travel to and from efficient enough?   Is there a community in which she could make friends and play a  role, not to mention poker?

No doubt she will report back in her next Note from Nicola, meanwhile this is a Note from Judith.   Hooray!

So, let me see, what does she tell you?   All about her week.   Well, happily, a lot of our week this week has been in tandem since we spent Monday working together at quite a nice country house hotel near Leatherhead which shall remain nameless.   A very chatty girl in a dark suit and high heels (we in our pink entrepreneur’s flip flops) spent an hour showing us over the old bit and the two new bits and we were nearly taken with it, apart from the dreadful food at lunchtime which depressed us both.   We also couldn’t agree about the conference room itself.

But the killer question came when we returned to our little room we had booked for the day and did some projections about holding our 2010 Wealth Conference at this venue.   Nicola’s body visibly deflated as she contemplated spending two days in that room as compared to say the beautiful state-of-the art auditorium at the Cavendish Conference Centre in central London, where we have run a couple of large events recently, which perks her up no end.   So I am holding the Cavendish for the weekend of 19th and 20th June 2010 for now.   We love working there as they are very Can Do.   We still have some way to go to get all the details right but we learn every time we hold an event there.

The Wealth Conference will include a slap-up party on the Saturday night and so it falls to me (natch!) to organise that in a nearby restaurant – more venue recces upcoming this week for moi.

We talked a lot on Monday about our coaches, Margaret, Marion, Philly and Annie, who we are inviting to take a more central role in the Money Gym in 2010 and beyond, especially at Silver and Gold level and with our Let’s Talk Money events.   The Money Gym is growing up as a business.   I have just completed our 4th set of accounts since I joined Nicola and Steve in partnership.   Our learning is slow because so much of our energies go into helping, coaching, supporting clients and it can be a trap this, for a coach.  You can get stuck in facilitating great things in others at your own expense.   Because of the nature of our business, wealth creation, its vital we lead by example too wherever possible.

Trying to achieve both our own goals and those of our clients at the same time has been complex, rewarding and slow, but I really feel we are getting there now and we have a vision for the business which inspires us both.   I can’t tell you about new projects on the way although I know Nicola has already let slip to one or two of her mentoring clients, but I should be able to tell you soon enough, after all the holidays are over.   For now they remain a work in progress; we love to work on new stuff and bring you new stuff too.

The rest of my Money Gym week has been about Money Gym accounts and VAT, Rent2Own mentoring calls on Friday with Peter Stanley who is now regularly doing two deals a week.   I am also working on my own first deal which is fun.   We are in week 11 of our Silver Elite pilot and I have done at least one of my mentoring calls which are included in the programme and I know Margaret has done one too this week.   Wednesday is Webinar day with one at 10 for Silver Elite and one at 11 for Gold clients, both of which went well this week although Nicola forgot to press Record (easily done) for the first one which is an awful shame since it was about Stocks & Shares and turned out to be really interesting.   I often listen to our calls back as I learn so much more when I am listening as opposed to talking. I know, tragic.   Listening to yourself!   Good grief.   Sometimes I even find myself really, really interesting.   Sad.

Yesterday I helped out a really nice bird who had been to one of our Let’s Talk Money days a while back and was on the horns of a dilemma.  Really enjoyed that one and I am also really enjoying working with Mrs Lucky Winner who won a year’s property mentoring with me at the Property Extravaganza.   The rest of the week has been taken up with shepherding our first 30 clients through their RED investment, all but one or two are using their pensions to do it with and creating a SIPP.   This morning I had a conference call with Darren, Red’s SIPP guy, and now we have a working spreadsheet between the two of us where we are tracking everyone along the road to Pension Nirvana on only 10 years.  So its never too late to start your pension now, I am even working with a lady who is a very youthful 60 years old.

And finally there’s the minutiae, the detail of running a business, emails, queries, letters, follow-ups, liaison between the three of us at Head Office (often at cross-purposes and I use the word cross advisedly!) – could you just look this up, could you just help this person, what do you think about this opportunity, shall we diversify our focus, shall we bring forward a project or delay it?   In the end we decided that our watchword for the week would be “What’s Important?”   You often have to take up that stance before a holiday. And, come to think of it, it isn’t a bad one to run your week – or your business – by, is it?

Personally, there were more huge advances in my garden.   My Twitter followers have been baying for photos of my meadow, my tree seat, my acid bed, my climbing roses, my new shrubs, my lavender and my olive tree, but they are just going to have to wait, Twitpic being a bridge too far for me.   I mean, I’m in SOLE CHARGE here, I’ve got a business to run!   All I can say as a sun worshipper who loves the sun and as a gardener, who loves to look out of the window at Nick’s handiwork but not much else. is “bring on more of that Big Rain!” It means I am on light duties with the hose.

Until next time…

This week’s Good News from Judith

On Monday I spent the day with my Property Boardroom.   There are 12 of us, a dirty dozen!   Ben, Christian, Rob, Julien, Colin, Darren, Peter, Tim, Ian, Carol, Julia & me.   We ladies are surrounded by handsome, young property investors and outnumbered three to one.   Heaven.   We talked about property all day, BMV, finance for repossessions, Rent2Own, Cartel, development, HMOs, negotiation skills, rent to re-rent, holiday properties, overseas investments, buying without a mortgage, falling interest rates, SIPPS, selling parts of our portfolios, shifting remote investments hard to manage because of the travel, refurbishments, on and on and on.

This was our third meeting and this time we introduced a rather coachy format – what have you been doing, what successes do you want to share, how can we help and what will you commit to achieving by this time next month?  We were in glamorous new surroundings at St Pancras International Station which has the longest champagne bar in Europe!   Thank goodness the lads don’t know that yet or we will never get any work done.

A day out with us is one of the prizes at our Property Extravaganza so make sure you are in with a chance of that one, raffle tickets in your goody bags on the door, registration at 08.45 if you want to choose your number 1-200.   You are visualising winning, aren’t you?   Tap, tap, tap.

Rob emailed last night to say he had been listening to the interview I did with Peter Stanley (who is the Peter mentioned above, and he said “Hot on the heels of a great property boardroom day…I listened to your pre property event interview this evening and I wanted to let you both know that I think it’s excellent.  If that’s set the tone for the day itself, it’s bound to be amazing.  I’m gutted I can’t be there.  I love the quiet, unassuming vibe of confidence through experience you both give off.  Thank you.   And it’s prompted me to want to read your book Peter … I’ll get on your website and order it tomorrow.” A RAVE testimonial for Peter, with much thanks to Rob.

I knew the interview was good, but I popped back to the site to have another listen with Rob’s ears on, as it were. And I found myself enjoying it so much I went on to listen to the one with Katharine again.   These interviews are fantastic, and even if you can’t come on 21st, do yourself a favour and scoot on over there and listen to them, each lasts about 30 minutes with the exception of Anthony from the Big Issue who we allowed to ramble on a tad because of his special topic.

(Click image to enlarge) As we put last week’s issue of this ezine to bed, Hasmita Reardon was agreeing to come and speak for us, despite having just had a serious operation.   She is bringing her husband Steve and her son Kiran. She says Kiran has met Martin Roberts and been on Homes UnderThe Hammer and also met Rick but is, of course, interested to hear both of them again and get reacquainted.   Kiran has appeared on Martin’s programme after he bought a house at auction (he’s 18 by the way).   He has also founded The Tenant Registry website which allows landlords to check potential tenants’ honesty and reliability, an idea he thought of when he was just 16. Kiran plans to develop it so tenants can find out how good or bad a potential landlord might be.   Sounds like I might have to get that lad onto the stage also.

The interview that Nicola and I did with Rick Otton, our keynote speaker, is also now live on the Property Extravaganza site.  This was rather a hectic interview, Rick was in Perth, Australia, wine-tasting and it was the end of the day for him.   For N and me it was 8 a.m. on a Monday morning!   That’s no time of day for an internet marketer, we had to set up a complex set of reminders for Nicola to be there to run the desk.

I got cut off half way through, Rick was alternately funny and impenetrable and I am sure he thought the same about me.   I managed to get in a cheeky joke at his expense, see if you spot it (probably only Rent2Own students will, sadly).   Nicola Skyped me to tell me I was a bad girl for that one, tee hee.  I didn’t let him talk too much about Rent2Own and Lease Options for two reasons.   Firstly I want him to explain to you face to face on the day, and also I want you to plan to go to his bootcamp on 4/5th April in London.   More and more clients write to me for advice about their property investments and I know that Rick’s principles contain the answer.   It conditions you to think differently about every deal and offers you choices which the old-fashioned ways simply do not.

My second reason is that I promised the Money Gym Let’s Talk Money group in January that I would run a FREE teleclass on this topic by today.   Yikes, there’s that accountability thing again.   I haven’t done what I said I would.   I propose to rectify this forthwith by running it at 10 a.m. on Friday 13th March and an introduction to what Rick teaches.   We will endeavour to record it, no promises, but if you want to be there live book here.   Please know that in this hour you can only hope to get a very sketchy outline of what it’s all about because we bought 36 audio CDs, a manual heavy enough to prop my office door open and a workshop day with Rick in Ealing, but I am up for it if you are?

Coming soon:

Judith’s 37 reasons why you want to be at our Property Day.   I am going to be writing at greater length over the next week or so about my 37 great reasons, but meanwhile here’s a sneak preview.   My reasons to attend fall into  7 categories as follows:

Inspirational – 8 reasons
Opportunities – 10 reasons
Negative – 2 reasons
Financial – 7 reasons
Incentives – 5 reasons
Educational – 4 reasons
Joke – 1 reason

Total reasons – 37

So many reasons, I have had to compile a spreadsheet of them all.

3. And finally, Cyril… my special promotion coming during the course of the next two weeks is this…free Money Gym Silver memberships for 90 days. If you have already bought yourself a ticket and can persuade just one more person to book, not only would we double the number of tickets we have sold and double the money we can donate to the homeless charity, Big Issue, but we can give away free Silver memberships!   Watch your inbox for that one.   If you already have Silver or Gold membership you could donate it to the friend who books, or snaffle it for yourself if not.

Sorry, this was such a long bulletin.   It seems that when you go looking for it, there’s plenty of Good News out there so see you at the gig!

An Interview with Peter Stanley

Last week Nicola and I interviewed Peter Stanley of Property Made Simple in Manchester.  Peter and I are old friends and he and Nicola go even further back. Peter and I made our respective public speaking debuts at the first Wealth Conference in 2005 and we are taking to the stage together again on 21st March at the upcoming Money Gym Property Extravaganza day in aid of the Big Issue.   The tie in with The Big Issue was Peter’s idea; he and I have long been trying to work out how we can do some good with our property profits and for that good be directed at the homeless.   Now our dream comes true.

Peter is opening our property day with a short talk on the theme of Anyone Can Do It.   Now I don’t want you to think that Peter is ordinary.   He isn’t.   What sets him apart is that he has actually done something about changing his life.   The vehicle he has chosen to use to do that is property.

Listen to this 30 minute interview and hear how Peter feels about opening the day and why he believes Anyone Can Do It.   In this interview Peter explains how he did his first deal and what that looked like and how he leveraged it to get out of the day job.   How he was “scared witless” to be thrown in at the deep end and how he learned to swim pretty quickly.   Hear how his friends and family were dubious about his ability to pull it off, how Peter doesn’t wait for perfection, he just gets something rolling.

It took Peter about 2-3 years to get to the point where the estate agents were coming to him.   He bought 7 houses in his first year and has now expanded his business to the point where he has bought 88 houses.   Not all for him!   Peter now buys for clients for a fee of £5,000 and/or coaches clients to do it themselves on his apprentice programme at £500 pcm (allow for at least 3 months).   Peter now has clients all over the world, but you will come to understand from listening to him speak that he’s just a down to earth bloke who prefers to meet you face to face and chat to you and find out how he can help.

Six years into self-employment, Peter’s greatest joy is the time freedom he enjoys.   He believes that as we come out of the recession there will be a stampede of demand for property and that 2009 is a year of great opportunity.   Hear how he is gearing up to take advantage of that stampede.

I have strong-armed all the speakers into giving me gifts of books and vouchers for coaching and mentoring sessions with each of them and Peter is no exception. He’s a very generous man and loves to help people and Peter has A Special Challenge on the day – listen to the interview and hear details of that Special Challenge.

Will you be Peter’s Lucky Winner?

Peter was scared witless to use his own words, but he’s done it and he believes that if he can, anyone can.

I couldn’t agree more.

Click here to find out more about The Property Extravaganza!

Ready Fire Aim! Memberships, Marketing & Multimillions

It’s been a busy old week, what with the first draft of the Property Extravangza info page going live at http://www.themoneygym.com/events/property and the first flurry of bookings coming in.

We have decided that this event is in aid of The Big Issue, who help the homeless to help themselves, we have a great set of speakers, including Rick Otton as the keynote speaker, and Martin Roberts off the tele, property expert and star of Homes Under The Hammer. Judith has written a stonking bit of copy, quite inspired, and we are just waiting for photos of speakers, video testimonials of other events and suchlike. Then the page will really sing! http://www.martinroberts.co.uk/

I’ve just been watching Rick on national tv in Australia, walking folks through his whole “rent to own” system – they are really getting it there and the UK will follow behind. Only today on page 4 of “Property Today” which comes with my Worthing Advertiser, there is a big article about a new Rent To Own scheme launched in Littlehampton, on the back of the Government’s own “Rent To Buy Later” scheme.

On the same page, funnily enough, there is a property advertised with a “zacuzzi” in the bathroom….some little estate agent getting it totally wrong! Bless ‘um.

I started work with Debbie Winterbourne this week, winner of the “Gold For Christmas” competition – where she gets to work with me going through the Gold programme, then gets to hang out with us for life! We are doing one call a month where I cover the material module by module in the first half hour, via video webinar, then Debbie gets to ask general questions about what she’s just heard, then she goes off and does her homework, and comes back for a second call, where we explore her personal circumstances, and particular challenges around that module.

I had forgotten quite how bossy I was when coaching…..”directive coaching” it’s called. Phew! Must remember to ask more questions and issue less instructions. Debbie took it all in good part and she’s an action taker so right up my street. We need to do some work behind the scenes on both her websites as I can make an immediate difference there!

You can find out more about Debbie and her particular passion for deciphering the power of dreams here and if you need a nice but affordable workshop space in London, she owns Quantum House which you can find here

(some time later………..)

Lord I got totally distracted by Google Calender there – saw one embedded in Pat Lovell’s blog (Pat’s from GotAccess.com among other things and I met him on the cruise) and thought Wow! that would be great to keep my speaking gigs updated for the GP (general public LOL) and ended up embedding it to my blog, Ecademy account and all. You can view my peramulations around the world speaking here >>

Off to London this weekend for “Build Your Wealth” again, and I’m in Manchester for “Build Your Wealth” events – you can book here for just £7 for both days

Did you know, it’s over £70 on the train and takes 4 and a half hours, and it’s one hour on the plane and costs just under £100. Madness. Early start though! Which of the lovely boutique hotels to stay in, eh? Recommendations on an email…..

While in Manchester, I’m seeing an old Money Gym client for the day, to work with him to review his progress and plan for the next five years. Lovely man, really looking forward to it! I also joined a webinar this week with a software company who are thinking of taking me on as non-exec Marketing Consultant – I think I can bring a lot to the table as they come from the corporate world and while aware of internet marketing, are not yet quite aware of the power and speed of it, if you can just get your first ideal customer clearly in mind and communicate straight at them. This is going to be fun.

I hosted what turned out to be a very popular webinar to nearly 100 registered-in-advance “ideal customers” of the Money Gym the other night, quite on the spur of the moment, on membership sites. It suddenly occurred to me that it might be fun to test the whole idea of video broadcasting a powerpoint presentation, making an offer at the end, much like I do on stage. Yes, I know! It’s nothing new, used to do it lots years ago, but you forget things don’t you? I’m going to do more of it, and we did a “Google Analytics/Statistics Tracking” webinar with the Membership Club Magic bods this week as a bonus call. Great fun.

Busy but great fun.

Talking of the Membership Club Magic webinar, from Saturday the recording will be available to watch online again here - those videos take ages to edit, chop up and upload and nobody can get online while you upload them. Howls of rage echo from around the house when you try, as you hog all the supposed 8 meg bandwidth. Runescape gone! Pokerstars gone! Second Life gone! Skype gone! MSN gone! British Telecom…..8 Meg, my derrier.

Steve and I are on ANOTHER diet, this one being a healthy eating one, lots of delicious salads (and beans/pulses, no, don’t ask!), no wine or beer during the week and he even went for a run this week. It’s inspired by a book he’s reading called “Fat Bloke Slims (How I Lost 3 Stone” by Bruce Heron, who you may remember as D.C. Terry Perkins from The Bill. Actually I saw another diet (that’s me) but Steve’s made his mind up to lose weight now too. He does make the best salads and I’ve made some of my best lentil and garlic soup which we are having whenever Steve doesn’t want to cook.

And Judith proudly announced this week that she’s learned to play poker. She went into a game with her accountant and solicitor with 80p and came out with £1.22. Judith, have you not heard of a “fixed buy in tournament”? Even we don’t play cash games!! This sparked a debate about whether it would be appropriate to host a “Money Gym Texas Hold’em Tournament” after one of the Cashflow 101 games?

Hmmm, perhaps not!

And finally……….I’ve just finished Michael Masterson’s brilliant book “Ready Fire Aim” about how to take a company into the multi-millions and beyond. I enjoyed it so much I’m going right back to the beginning and I’m reading it again. Shot straight into my Top 10 Business Books of All Time!!

16% Interest Anyone?

My property investor friend and colleague, Peter Stanley, wants to pay you more for your money than the banks do.   And that’s ironic because he used to BE a business bank manager!!  I’ve known Peter for years – since 2000 odd, and he’s a top bloke and a VERY experienced property investor.

Read what Peter has to say:

“Some of you may know that I offer a private investors plan alongside the property coaching and sourcing arms of my business, Property Made Simple.  This private investors plan evolved after conversations where people wanted the returns you can get by investing in property, but for a smaller stake, over a shorter time and without any of the hassle of  owning property.

At first, I only offered it to close friends and family, but like the other parts of my business, it’s grown by word of mouth and is now something I offer, albeit quietly.

In fact, some people use it as an additional income stream or a way of increasing their nest egg.

So why would a successful property entrepreneur do this ?

I’ve been watching the Manchester property market for over 15 years and I strongly believe that now is the time to be buying property – despite what the media are telling you – so I’m raising money to buy more houses, whilst cutting the investor into my profit.

If any of you have read my blog or my monthly newsletter you’ll know how much I hate the media reports, written by people in ivory towers, whose only experience of the property market is from the safety of their desk.

So what do you get as an investor ?

We ask for a minimum amount of £5,000 and a minimum term of 6 months, which is documented by a formal loan agreement and signed by both of us.

Interest is paid monthly by bank transfer to an account of your choice at 16% per annum, which is around 4 times what you’d get if you left it in the Bank.

At the end of the term, we return the initial loan to you, unless you’d prefer to continue to the arrangement when we’d prepare and sign new papers.

This doesn’t suit everyone, so don’t worry if it’s not for you, but if you’d like to know more, drop me an email and we can schedule a time to talk or meet.”

Contact Peter directly at PropertyMadeSimple.com and tell him Nicola sent you.

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Wealth Coach Diaries: Nicola’s Week

MYTHS

Check out the property report above from Peter Stanley which explodes some of the myths going round about property at the moment. I think I’m going to print it off and just hand it out at dinner parties when people start to talk to me about property.

I’ll just say “are you an investor then? No? Oh, well you might like to read what an ex-business bank manager and now owner of 30 plus investment properties has to say about it all. Chablis? Lovely!”

MY VIRAL SPIRAL

I’m really getting into the MyViralSpiral system having been on the Freedom weekend, talked to Steve – the expert now – and read the massive manual about five times. Talk about slow learner, which I’m not usually, but this is testing my non-detail orientated brain big time! I can see the prize though and that’s wonderfully motivating.

The principle of the system is that you create a load of free, good value reports (or use the ones supplied) and in those reports, are links to what is known as “back end products” which can be yours (if you have one) or someone else’s (for example a relevent and related product you have found on Clickbank or Paydotcom).

Those free reports are like lots of little fishing nets out on the web, and attract a zazillion potential future customers (PFCs) into one autoresponders system, which then follows up your PFCs over a period of time.

You can have unlimited reports, unlimited follow up, and unlimited backend product recommendations.

Genius bit #1

When your PFC downloads their free report, they are offered the chance to give it away from their own website or ezine, and build their own mailing list, completely free of charge, via the system. This is very attractive to people just starting out in internet marketing.

Genius bit #2

The even more genius bit of it is, that when your PFC downloads the second report, they are double opted in to your main mailing list, if you have one, and when they download the third report, they are double opted in to the mailing list of the person above you (the person who introduced you to the Viral Spiral system).

That’s it, after that they can download unlimited free reports with no more opt in.

So…..they are building their list, and every second download they are building their external list, and every third download they are building your external mailing list.

EVEN BETTER…..they get the chance to rebrand the reports so that they earn the commission from the back end products rather than you, when they give them away from their site, via a simple online rebranding process.

Read more..

4 Deadly Myths About Property

Peter Stanley, ex Business Bank Manager, professional property investor, author and great friend of The Money Gym, has written a great report that puts some perspective on the property market which by all media reports is “crashing and burning” at the moment (July 2008). We had a long chat after I read it, and he has given me permission to share it with you.

Peter says: “Regular readers will know how much I dislike media reports on the property market, as they’re often based on a single piece of data, or an opinion that’s passed off as fact, when most articles closely resemble works of fiction.

You only need to watch the evening news to realise that good news is in short supply, not because good things don’t happen, but because bad news sells. Sad but true. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re listening to the news, make a note of every good story – you won’t need a big piece of paper !

So, for anyone who’d like to know what’s really happening out there, here’s the most common myths;

Houses aren’t selling / people aren’t buying

Whilst there was a lull for a couple of months, houses are selling again.

That isn’t an opinion, but fact.

As you can imagine, I get to speak to a lot of estate agents and watch a lot of houses, waiting for the sellers expectations to reach mine and I’m seeing more and more houses bought between those times.

In fact, I was surprised recently (and not much surprises me these days) when I overheard a conversation between two estate agents about their sales figures. One of them had sold seven houses in ten days, which would be a good result in any market – perhaps someone should tell the Daily Mail & The Express.

It gets better though, as seven sales was for one of the estate agents in the office, not the whole office, so even if the rest of the staff had only sold another three houses, that’s a house sale a day !

No-one can get a mortgage

Whilst mortgages are harder to get than they were, there are still mortgages to be had.

If you haven’t got a deposit, or have a poor credit record, then you’re likely to struggle, but this is a knee jerk reaction to the Banks’ over eager lending policy of recent years.

I recently went to see a house where the owner was about to get repossessed, to talk about a deal……

Read more..

Wealth Coach Diaries: Nicola’s Week

Are you panicking about the property market?  Or just about the economy generally?  I was watching the news last night and right next to the headline about the awful building conditions of schools in China, a major contributory factor in the disaster out there, I spotted one that said “Banks pull the plug on buy-to-let landlords”.

So I went looking for it this morning.  Found it on Google of course at at The Times Online.  Here is just a snippet of this “good-times” article…By Lauren Thompson and Grainne Gilmore. 
 
“The era of the amateur landlord has all but ended, with banks effectively refusing to lend to new entrants to the buy-to-let market. Thousands of existing landlords also face huge increases in the cost of remortgaging, experts said yesterday. The warning came as HBOS, Britain’s biggest group of lenders, imposed the third increase in the cost of residential mortgages in as many weeks. Cheltenham & Gloucester, the fourth-biggest lender, also increased some of its rates for the second time in three weeks. First-time landlords, including parents eager to buy a house for their student children, will now find it almost impossible to enter the housing market. Lenders have stopped offering buy-to-let loans or severely tightened their lending criteria for prospective landlords and many of the existing one million buy-to-let mortgage holders approaching the end of their terms.

The development comes as senior figures in the housing industry predict up to two years of declining house prices. The problems in the buy-to-let market are compounded by fears that the target of many would-be landlords – apartment blocks in cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Cardiff – are facing a rapid decline in their value.

Katie Tucker, of the broker John Charcol, said: “After another week of turmoil in mortgage markets, novice landlords now face huge difficulties securing a loan, and thousands of existing landlords coming to the end of fixed-rate deals will find it very hard and very expensive to switch mortgage providers if they have not built up at least 75 per cent equity in their buy-to-let property.” This week Abbey withdrew virtually its entire range of buy-to-let mortgages, leaving only an expensive fixed-rate deal of 6.99 per cent for direct customers…..”

READ MORE HERE >>> (if you can bear it!)

Notice they are talking about amateur landlords (none of our Money Gym-ers can be called that), about how new build are going to be worst hit (we always steer our cleints well away from over-priced new builds) and I have to ask what on earth any self respecting landlord would be doing getting their buy-to-let from a high street building society – really, I have no idea…………

However, the “Related links” section included “Housing gloom: the silver lining” and if you need cheering up you can read that one here where David Budworth says

“A falling property market does have some benefits! The storm clouds looming over the housing market grow darker every day. But for some aspiring homeowners there could be a silver lining, with bargains emerging as asking prices tumble and sellers become ever more desperate to get properties off their hands. It takes courage to buy at a time when some commentators are predicting that house prices could fall a further 15 per cent. Even Britain’s biggest lenders and surveyors, which have an interest in talking up the market, now admit that they expect property prices to fall. Asking prices for properties new to the market were down by an average of 0.1 per cent over the past month, according to Rightmove.co.uk, the property website. In some regions the slide has been even more severe: in the North West prices fell by 1.4 per cent and in London by 0.9 per cent. And it could become much worse. David Miles, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, the investment bank, says that up to 1.2 million people – one in ten homeowners – could be pushed into negative equity, where their mortgages are greater than the value of their property.

As the gloom spreads, though, bargains are beginning to emerge. Michael Holt, of Charterhouse Standard Holdings, has been buying residential property on behalf of private investors for more than a decade and says: “We are spotting some great bargains. Even if the market continues to struggle in the near term, buy and hold for five or ten years and you will almost certainly make a healthy profit.”

Now, if you study all that carefully you will see that, again, there is hardly any fact, but plenty of opinion.  On the one hand “some commentators are predicting a further 15% fall, whereas in some regions the “severe slide” has been 1.4% in one month……even multiplying that by 12 months, I can’t get it to make 15%. 

The average fall has been 0.1% which on a property of £200k means a drop of….ooooohhhh…..£200 on value.

Read more..