buy to let or holiday let?

Hmmm, Glasgow isn't a BIG city, so what tends to happen is if values rise in one area, say the west end, then before too long the south side starts to rise and then the east end starts catching up. The poor old north end is always the last but it catches up eventually. Would imagine that's pretty similar all around the UK.

The other thing is the expensive property rises more arithmetically, but at the same %age as the poor stuff, so the 500k flat becomes 600k and the 50k flat becomes 60k. So one guy spends 500 and makes 100 and the other guy spends 500 as 50 x 10 and makes 100 too. But the second guy outguns the first guys rent income by a considerable margin. Up here a 500k flat might make 2kpm even 2.5k. But the 50k flats make 450-600. So 10 flat guy makes at least twice posh flat guy's income.

Gentrification often takes place as a result of local government policy or even national government policy which eventually trickles down into every area which means that you can buy a property in a run down area and be pretty sure that it won't stay run down forever, especially when the entire UK nation's property market is moving on an upward value gradient. (with some but really few exceptions).

Other things come into play too. That £35k flat is actually worth £50k. It's a misprice. And I'm also pretty confident it sold for £40k. So whoever bought it has made an unrealised capital gain of £10k or 25% before a ball's kicked.

25% instant capital gain isn't to be sniffed at and is definitely massively harder to obtain further upmarket where IMO underpricing isn't common and overpricing is.

Lots of cheap property brings lots of headaches though even if the yields are much better.

Edit - Sorry can see you typed exactly that. Brain fart!

I don’t disagree with anything either of you wrote but, to reiterate again, my comments were made against the backdrop of someone with £35k to spend wanting to know whether they should buy a btl or fhl. No indication whatsoever that they had the appetite to buy 10.

As for mispriced/bargain purchases, correct that there aren’t a lot of them higher up. They are there but you’re less likely to see them on rightmove. Bought two recently, both well above UK average price, one where there were offers 25% higher, the other never saw the open market and easy to see it going 30% higher if it hadn’t had a defaulting tenant who wasn’t prepared to allow internal inspection of the property (tart it up with 20% of the purchase price and it’d be worth 75%+ more than I paid for it). The difference is that there’s no waiting for government policy or other gentrification of other areas to take place and you could buy, redecorate/renovate, and flip these for healthy returns.

As for the bit in bold, seem to also get some more “needy” tenants towards the lower end who will contact about the smallest little thing. But on the flip side some of them are kept absolutely immaculately. It’s not risk free higher up though where I recovered defaults could be significant and the damage a tenant could cause can run to large numbers.

I’m not saying that your model is wrong, Groat, in fact I’d be looking at the volume side and outsourcing it all if I lived near Glasgow, but that sort of stock isn’t available where I live. For me it makes sense to push a bit higher than my local market’s entry point, save on management costs, and adopt an approach which sees those unrealised gains as being quite important. Different strategies, different return profiles, the important thing is that we’re each happy with what we do/get out of it.

(Typo corrected)

Or if someone claims to be a Finance Director and yet shows no financial nous.

I have had dealings with Groat in the real world.

Whilst he doesn't own half of Glasgow, he owns a chunk of it and is unlikely to be short of a five figure sum of cash at any given time. He owns a lot of property plus other businesses, or at least did when our paths crossed.

Pic 4 - Is there something dead under the covers? Possibly a cat? (see clue in pic 2)

It’s been a fair bit of hard work, but we bought a log cabin on a beach in Scotland last year. Got a mega deal, and including extensive refurb it owes us 210k. We’ve been letting it for 2 months now, and it’s netting £ 4-5k a month so far.

However, so far we’ve only had great customers, no emergencies, and my sister in law is doing the turnarounds and guest support as she lives 3 miles from it.

Without her support on hand it would be a nightmare