Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Remember those long silences at dinner parties? The rude e-mails? The even ruder letters? In terms of social acceptance, being a buy-to-let landlady ain’t what it used to be. Now that the chancellor has abandoned us and our pretty little Sipps plans, what could be finer than the news, hard on the heels of No 11’s bombshell, that the Portman building society is no longer going to provide loans for new-build flats. The only buy-to-let mortgages it will sanction are for flats more than a year old; largely, it seems, because there is a perceived glut of new flats and houses in certain areas.
Of course, this will have some investors nodding sagely. Plenty of people have pointed to the cranes going up all over Newcastle, Manchester and Leeds, worried about oversaturation of city centres with new-build, buy-to-let investments. Meanwhile, plenty of people have made, and are continuing to make, a great deal of money out of the old stuff: refurbished Victorian terraces, converted houses, flats in Edwardian mansion blocks and so on. However, the new-build phenomenon still goes on, with landlords insisting they are a viable proposition.
One such person is Manoj Raithatha, who gave up a teaching career to focus on writing drama full-time with his wife. Then he gave that up to focus on acquiring a vast property portfolio with his mum. One of his dramas (the ITV children’s series, My Life as a Popat) was shortlisted this year for an Emmy and won a Bafta. But it was too late to go back because, by then, Raithatha and Mrs Raithatha Sr had a portfolio worth millions of pounds, including perhaps the UK’s single biggest residential deal this year, the £34.5m purchase of Clarence House in Leeds. All 18 storeys, with 227 new-build apartments. In one of those supposedly saturated city centres.
Is he worried? “I don’t think the news from the Portman building society is going to have a huge impact, and I don’t expect other lenders to follow suit,” he says. “I can’t see other lenders turning down new-build. Look at Sheffield, where there is huge regeneration going on, or Hull. Leeds has just had the best six to eight months in rental figures for a long time. Leeds is the second-largest employer in financial services after London. By 2013, there will be 31,000 new jobs there. And it is years behind Manchester. Leeds has a long way to go, in my view.”
The formula Raithatha uses for his portfolio is this: he and his mum invest only in upmarket developments with mixed-use attractions, where there is already a big rental market — city-centre new-builds with, say, a restaurant or tennis courts attached. He tries to buy the entire development off-plan, saying that not only does he get a big discount, but buying before the building has even started enables him to influence the spec inside the building. “I can insist on granite worktops, ceramic tiles in the bathroom, Villeroy & Boch sanitaryware, things like that,” he explains. Doesn’t that do funny things to the price? Apparently not. “When you are buying very early on, these specifications haven’t usually been decided. So you can insist on certain requirements.”
Raithatha, whose company, Summertime Properties, has invested in Sheffield, Bradford, Saltaire and Leeds, sells on most of the units he buys. He has already sold 218 of the apartments at Clarence House and says he can pass on most of the discount. “Word got around that I can get 20% off high-end developments. So it started off as selling to friends and family. This is how things work in the Asian community. If I do a deal and mention it to somebody in my family, he or she might say, ‘Can you buy five for me?’ And those people will talk to other people. At Indian weddings, for example, there are thousands of people there. We sell the properties quickly and move on to the next development.” Perhaps the reason Raithatha can speak with confidence about the buoyancy of the rental market is that he is a landlord as well as a property dealer. After selling his new-build units to investors, he will then furnish them for a further £4,000 (for a one-bedder), then offer the investor a chance to join VH48, his rental scheme which operates as a “virtual hotel”.
“Our investors want to be investors; they don’t want to be landlords,” he explains. “We have investors all over the country who have bought from us in Leeds, but who have never been to Leeds. They don’t want to speak to letting agents. So we furnish the flats for them and then rent them out. The reason I buy whole blocks is because it allows me a powerful position to get them all rented out. Six months before the building is finished, I will get on to the relocation agencies looking for corporate rents for their clients. They know exactly what our product is. I will rent out a one-bedder in Leeds for £650-£700 a month and two-bedders for £850 upwards. Our market is the transient workforce.”
What is the cost to the investor? “Our management fee is £600 a year, plus a licence of £250. VH48 runs like a hotel. The key is flexible rentals. We rent the apartments out for a week or two weeks or six months (the minimum stay is a week). When somebody moves out, we move in and change the linen, towels and completely redress the apartment.”
Surely there is a huge premium for such a service? Apparently, it’s all passed to the tenant. “There is a charge for cleaning and redressing the flat. The tenant pays for all the extras. It’s completely website-based, and we don’t come under the assured shorthold tenancy agreement. So we have no costs for manpower or for organising formal contracts. It’s more like a hotel.”
It sounds very specific, I say. “Yes, it’s a niche market,” he agrees. “We started off small and we just got bigger. Frankly, I went into property just as a way of making ends meet. I never intended to have a big empire. If I could get regular work from writing, I would give it up. But now the company has expanded to such a level, how can I leave it all?” Indeed. Just imagine the conversation he would have with his mum.
- Summertime Properties, 0845 402 7076, www.summertimeproperties.com
