Wednesday, January 20, 2021

My Life In ... Homes (2 of 3)

The ninth (part 2 Places to Rent) in an occasional series of alternative Curriculum Vitae because no-one on their death bed says "I wish I'd spent more time in the office".

We have failed to grasp the basic principle of sell one house when you buy the next. In this way our property empire has snowballed.

Homes 2 of 3: Places to rent out.

New readers start here:

I’ve been very lucky with my homes. I have always bought my home from the heart not because it’s a good investment (buy-to-let purchases not included). As it turns out the bounty of the universe has provided and the homes have doubled in value on average every eight years starting with £25k (yes, that little) in 1980 and finishing up at just under 1.1 million in 2017. The last downsize freed up enough capital to make retirement an easier decision.

Starting with one flat for me to live in we now have three homes to live in (two in the UK, one in Italy), four apartments to rent (three buy-to-let flats in the UK and an AirBnB apartment in Italy) plus a garage and a timeshare. 

Thinking about how we acquired the homes, I realised that there has been a great deal of serendipity involved and those tales I want to tell. That makes for a long post so I am splitting it into three: Homes to live in, Buy-to-Let apartments to rent out and Holiday homes abroad.

I think (hope) we have peaked and are now planning a gradual winding down of the portfolio!



Flat 28 Fairfield Court, Wandsworth. 2002 - present. A 20th century, third floor, two bedroom, ex-council flat in Wandsworth built in 1938. We bought this as a pied-à-terre because we were either working in London or flying out from one of the London airports. We converted it to a buy-to-let in 2005 when we decided to move three doors down the street to house 28 Fairfield Street and it was not a good time to sell. We thus become accidental landlords and kickstarted our rental portfolio.


Living room from where we used to watch the planes on the descent path to Heathrow.


8 Bolting House, Wandsworth. 2010 - present. A purpose built third floor, three bedroom, one reception apartment in Wandsworth, another purchase on the one-way system. Our second buy-to-let investment and the first made intentionally.


It was a repossession and came complete with nearly new furniture from Ikea, "the landlords' friend".


36 Fairfield Court, Wandsworth. 2014 - present. A two bedroom apartment directly above Flat 28. Our third and final investment property. 


We wanted to invest in another buy-to-let property as part of our pension plan. Flat 28 had worked out well so we kept an eye out for other properties in the block. There are 38 flats in total but it had to be one of the two-bedroom flats and at the back which ruled out more than half the flats. Mary was working at home when the email alert came in. Straight onto the estate agent, viewing half an hour later, offer made and property off the market by the end of the afternoon. No messing about!

That is it for now. The next step is to incrementally sell off our property portfolio to fund our retirement.

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