Thursday, 7 September 2017

What is the best Property Location (In Berlin)?

In my career as a property professional I have heard plenty of advice about property investment and to come to the conclusion right up front -  there just is no lid that fits all pots.

There are investors with various investment philosophies, one that will go for prime locations for investment, put the lid on the pot and see what happened after 10 years. You know what, if it was not a major natural disaster area (take your pick) or politically unwise like Crimea, they will most likely be delighted about the value appreciation.
Now turning that theoretical value appreciation into cash through a sale to someone who believes in this new value is another story. This is an investment philosophy for someone who wants to park their money in a safe and useful way but does not need it for income purposes - this comes from somewhere else. They say that only poor investors look for income from property.

A different weathered property investor in the GERMAN rental market, the emphasis is on purpose, told me once that he would always invest in blue collar areas, anywhere in the world, because these are straight forward people who would do anything to pay their rent and stay out of trouble (eviction) as opposed to white collars who would rather pay a lawyer than their rent.

Let's take another angle:
If you invest 500k in a rented apartment(s) and buy a top tier apartment in Berlin-Mitte it would buy you 1 with about 60 m². How are you going to monetize it? Lock it up, air it once a month and run the taps and hope the authorities will not catch up on you for "housing speculation"? Rent it - furnished or not furnished? What will be the extra cost for furnishing and upkeep and frequent change of tenancy? How big will the gaps be? Did you choose the right location for furnished rentals? What is the cost of vacancy - 100% plus. You don't only not get the rent but you have to pay all utilities charges etc. (Betriebskosten) throughout the vacancy.
If you bought 3 apartments at the same price in a blue collar area you were hedging your bets: How likely is it that all three tenants would default at the same time? Given the current housing market, it is very unlikely that you would be facing a vacancy of more than one month on any of those three units. I think going into more details at this point would be insulting your intelligence ...




Now here comes what you have been waiting for while you were reading: My proposal for the income orientated investor. At this point, I have managed to source two offers for multi family properties that are a fair offer in the current market scenario and have room for improvement in the mid-term. Have a look at some of these locations and maybe you will get interested. ... https://propertylocations.blogspot.de/



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