Is this a window of opportunity for Aylesbury investors?

The Aylesbury buy to let market has been a little quiet over the past weeks. Sellers have not been keen to sell at levels that would be interesting to investment buyers who lack confidence in the current market or bought earlier in the year to avoid Stamp Duty changes. But some sellers have come to realise that unless they take action on their pricing they will not be selling this year.

 For those that are selling to make a ‘desired’ move this is not a problem, they will wait until 2017 and try again. But for the motivated ‘need’ to sell vendors time is running out and they are taking action. This is evidenced by Rightmove figures.

 Of the 139 properties that have featured in the last 14 days 29 of them (20.8%) have been price reductions, 23 (16.5%) have been new build homes and only 19 (6.4%) of them have become SSTC in the same time period. That leaves just 68 homes that have come new to the market and remain available.

We have registered more investment buyers in the last two weeks than in the preceding month. Perhaps it is not just me that sees this window of opportunity to buy before the year end at sensible prices? Stock levels are low and the motivated sellers are hard to find but they are out there.

If you do not buy now the New Year will bring the usual inflated prices that come with the optimism of the turn of the year even if it is not warranted. April would then represent the next opportunity to invest if the first quarter does not deliver for sellers. In my experience April is always the first month that you can call the market for the year. If the first quarter has been strong all will be fine. If it has not it will be April before sellers react and start to take action to get sold.

So if you are buying to let in the next 6 months it is worth getting out now and looking for those motivated sellers. Or you can keep watching the market and this blog! with a view to buying in April or beyond. There is of course the possibility that the economic news will be sufficiently good through the first quarter to encourage others to buy…then you will have to go with higher market values!

I hope this helps those of you that are sitting on your hands trying to get a fix on the market. If you want to talk through your plans I would be happy to see you or you can email ian@mortimersaylesbury.co.uk