Making money from Buy To Let property

anybody can purchase a property and rent it out, but there are a lot of things you should consider first. experts will tell you location is most important, but to me the numbers are much more important. i believe that ANY property will rent out so location is not too important. good locations normally command a higher asking price but not necessarily a similar increase in rent prices.

cashflow is more important to me then location in a buy to let property. your property portfolio must be cashflow positive or neutral at least. the income must cover the outgoings and ideally there will be profit too.

in todays market i look to make about £100 per month profit from buy to let property, usually a standard house occupied by a working professional or a family. or about £300 per month can be made when a house is let to multiple occupants such as students or other sharers. this is after all costs such as insurance, mortgage and agents fees. if managed correctly by a good agent this will truly be passive residual income. money you make in your sleep. that could be about £3000 per month if you owned 10 student properties.

lets not forget the capital appreciation that you get in property. the last figures i read were that property values double on average of 7 years and on average that means they increase in value by about £80 per day.. So if you kept a buy to let property for 7 years you would eventually have made £80 per day in your sleep, how is that for passive income!

the drawback of profits made from rent is that it is taxable income, this can however be offset against business expenses, but tax is tax and it always hurts to pay tax. some super savy investors make money without paying tax by releasing equity from the property by remortgaging their buy to let property. for example:

current values:
property value: £170k
mortgage: £100k
rental income: £750pcm
mortgage interest: £450pcm
profit: £300pcm

after remortgage:
property value: £170k
mortgage: £145k
rental income: £750pcm
mortgage interest: £680pcm
profit: £70pcm
equity released: £45k

so by increasing the mortgage ammount to £145k you could actually release £45k to play with. this does however reduce the profits from the rents to £70pcm but at least we are still cashflow positive. in this example the mortgage used was 85% loan to value (LTV) allowing you to borrow up to 85% of the value for the property. there are other products on the market that will allow up to 90% but then the rates may be higher.

in this example i am assuming that the buy to let property was originally bought for £100k and the property is now worth £170k. this would usually be due to buying the property a few years ago and with capital appreciation, but it could be due to the fact that you bought below market value (BMV) at £100k when the true value is infact £170k (a great deal in my book!).

most people will tell you the £45k released this way is tax free and you can do as you please with it as it is not profit but in fact a loan. this is true, but be careful the inland revenue can refuse to let you claim the extra £130pcm mortgage payment as a business expense and may continue to tax you as if you were making £300pcm profit as in the orginal example. so if the £45k is used to reinvest this is ok, but if its used to buy a luxury cruise then i guess not.