Houses

With house prices rising but wages being still, it is thought that 2016 is most likely to be the year of worsening the affordability for homebuyers, particularly for low middle-income earners according to real estate data-tracking company, Zillow. 

This for many people is bad news for those that are hoping to buy a new house. Although for those who are looking to invest in rental properties, these sorts of economic conditions have continued to strengthen the market.

Local Market Monitor screened the 100 most popular Metropolitan Statistical Area and Divisions, where geographical designations are used by the US Census Bureau to define a city and the suburbs. This includes all populations of 600,000, for characteristics that would make for a good investment. 

To find out which houses are either overpriced or underpriced, Local Market Monitor heads the local income and housing data to calculate the ‘Income Price’ which represents what the typical home price for a certain market would be without the distortion within the market, such as the housing crash or heavy investor speculation. 

The idea of this is to see that there is a rather steady relationship between local home prices and local salaries. Investors willing to buy homes that are priced below the Income Price are thought to be more likely to make a good return.

It has been said by Forbes the American Business magazine, who teamed up with Local Market Monitor, who is a North Carolina-based data company that tracks the prices of homes and economic factors in over 300 housing markets. They found in the 2016 list of Best Buy Cities the top 20 housing markets to invest within this year.

There are many benefits to buying houses as a buy-to-let; one being that the finance for a single-family unit is more available. There is also more privacy and feeling of space for tenants and other buyers, they also attract longer-term tenants like families with children who are more likely to maintain the property themselves. 

There is as well more room for capital growth, ability to buy property at market value converting them into flats, creating leases and either selling or remortgaging or both. In doing this, it is thought for the houses to have larger land size value which in turn gives you flexibility to develop, convert or extend creating value to flip or refinance.