About Us & Welcome

Welcome to our London Property for Overseas Investors Blog!
(page updated 15 Oct 2014)

Who We Are
A middle aged Singapore couple with interests in London properties.  We can be contacted at londonpropertyforoverseas@gmail.com; we have started a community forum to complement this blog here.

Our Investment Philosophy
Our strategy is buy-to-let. We buy London,UK properties that would give good yields (circa net 5%), with good chances of capital appreciation. As a rule of thumb, we want to keep to the mass market, so that many Londoners can afford the homes we buy. Therefore, we do not buy properties that require us to let out at more than £500 per week in order to achieve our desired return. Mr Brett Alegere Wood, the MD and Founder of YPC Group, inspired this approach.

Currently, we do not buy in wider UK market.  UK property is very interesting.  However, we do not know enough about UK property, outside London.  Therefore, we are staying out of it.

We do not buy into Student Accommodation (see blog post) and Land Banks.

Our Investment Horizon
Our horizon to buy, hold and sell property in London, UK would be the next 20 years. We plan to sell off the properties in our 60s. We are still looking out for opportunities to invest.  Perhaps, when London gets too expensive, we may start looking at UK properties outside London.  Time will tell.

What We Do
We hold full time jobs. However, we spend free time monitoring the London property market closely. There is a lot you can learn, just by reading credible sources from the Internet.  We hope to share our knowledge with other investors freely, and also hear more views on investing in London as well as the wider UK property market.

Why We Are Interested in London

image courtesy of  http://londonsnap.co.uk

A global city, safe haven for property investments, decent yields, more bite-sized investments as compared to Singapore. According to the Knight Frank Wealth Report 2014, London and New York will be the top haunts for the ultra rich for at least the next decade.  Savills 2014 Report names London & New York as a top cities. (Singapore came in joint 3rd with Paris, not bad for our little island).

London topped the MORI ranking for best global city for business 2014 and was named the most desirable city to work by Boston Consulting Group. 

Singaporean companies like GIC and Ho Bee have gone into London in 2013 and 2014. Many Chinese companies (Dalian Wanda, China Greenland) have invested huge amounts in London.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew was very confident that countries like America and Britain will be around in 100 years, but he was not so sure about Singapore. See his latest book, One Man's View of the World. (page 212)

"Will Singapore be around in 100 years? I am not so sure" (Page 212)

Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong visited London recently, and he had this to say:

"Today, London is not just a financial hub, but a global city for talent, innovation and culture. Each time I visit – most recently in 2009 – I feel the energy and verve of the city. Were Wordsworth to visit Westminster Bridge today, he would surely sense that all that mighty heart is not lying still, but pulsing powerfully*!"

*Wordsworth, Composed upon Westminster Bridge, 3 September 1802.

Food, Culture, West End 
London, the global city, is the place to go for food, for culture, for West End.  London has more than 60 Michelin Star restaurants.  Miss Saigon is back!

Why Don't You Buy In Singapore?
We do not think that the time is correct to buy in Singapore. We could be wrong, so please do not take our word for it. Or maybe it is just us - we don't feel like paying the 7% ABSD to Government.

However, in recent times, we have been looking at the Singapore market more closely as we feel that prices in London have gone up a lot and beyond what we are expected to pay.  Recent statistics suggest that Singapore prices are trending downwards (see blog post), and so we are on the look-out.

How Do We Fund These Purchases?
Currently, Banks (including Singapore ones) are willing to lend up to 70% of the valuation. Our properties are all under mortgage. We borrow 70% and cough up the 30% through hard-earned savings.

Bite-Sized Investments 
We like the fact that our investments are bite-sized.  Take a £300,000 purchase. We need £90,000 in cash and the bank lends the remaining amount. The relatively weak pound makes it more affordable. Thereafter, the rental income stream is more than sufficient to cover the mortgage payments, with some extra to spare. We will share more on the financing aspect in blog posts.

How We Started
It was almost accidental.  We never planned to go into the UK, London property market.  However, an opportunity came before us and after staring hard at the figures, we jumped in.  Read more in this blog post.

Are We Very Rich?
No. We are salaried employees, try to live simply and invest our savings wisely. We don't like stocks because they are too volatile. We used to live in a condo, but have since 'downgraded' to an HDB flat. We find HDB living to be very practical in Singapore.  We find it quite a kick that our HDB flat is probably worth more than any individual London property we have. We do not own any other property in Singapore. Previously, we lived in a condo. It was fun for a while, but after that we didn't really use the facilities and didn't want to pay so much maintenance fees per month.

Which Developers, Sales & Lettings Agents, Banks have we dealt with?
Developers include Barratt Homes, City & Docklands, Bellway, Telford Homes. Sales Agents include Colliers, JLL. Lettings agents include myLondonHomes, Life Residential, Ellis & Co, CityZEN properties. Banks include Lloyds, OCBC, CIMB, Citibank.

The experiences have been mixed. In some cases, services were exemplary (including Barratt, Colliers). In others, poor service was received, resulting in financial loss and a very negative experience (most notably CityZEN). We will share more experiences and we hope you can learn from them.

What you will find in this blog
Our frank experiences and thoughts on investing in London.  This post is on buying a new build.  We have been in the London market since 2009. In many ways, we have been fortunate to enter the market at a time fairly early in the recovery cycle. Prices today (i.e. early 2014) are much higher than when we started, however, there are still good deals.  Currently, we do not invest outside London, i.e. in the wider UK property market.

Some of the flats we have
1. Montreal House, Maple Quays, SE 16
2. Denison House, Lanterns Court, E 14
3. Brickmakers Apartments, E1

Challenges we faced
We will share heartaches and learning points, e.g. with rogue lettings agents and other such problems we faced and how we managed, or did not manage, to get them resolved.

Investing in London from overseas is not a piece of cake. However, with the Internet, the whole world is at your fingertips now.

What Else Have We Learnt?
Property investments are fascinating.  To be a savvy investor, it pays to do sufficient research into the country/city that you are investing in.  Don't just buy blindly into anything - that is called gambling. We have certainly learnt to appreciate our little red dot even more.

For instance, read my blog post on "Heygate versus HDB" as well as Generation Rent in the UK.  See more blog posts on Singapore Property News and UK property news. We even blog about cost of living issues!

Li Ka Shing is buying into UK Utilities and getting out of China.  There may be an impending Chinese credit crunch that may impact the entire world.

Who we hope to get in touch with
We hope to get in touch with more like-minded individuals with interests (or potential interests) in London property market or the wider UK property market.  If you have benefited from reading the various blog posts, it would be very helpful if you left a comment (which you can do so anonymously) so that we know! Cheers.

Community Forum
To facilitate and promote information exchange, we have set up a community forum.  Do drop by and participate if you wish to!  The more we share, the more we know.




Heathrow Airport Landing
I took this video back in 2010, landing into Heathrow on a clear day. Check out the gorgeous views of London below, truly a global city!



Leave comments, share your thoughts! Being anonymous is perfectly fine. We all value our privacy. We will keep anonymous on public posts for this blog too! Have a great day!

Important Disclaimer - . The views contained in this blog and blog post are entirely ours on the UK property market and the London property market.. We cannot be made responsible for any investment decisions you may, or may not, take. Nothing in this blog can be construed as professional investment advice, as we are NOT professional investors and we are ill qualified to give you any advice.  Read the blog at YOUR own risk.