Pimlico – The Number One BTL Hotspot
Buy-to-let (Photo credit: Alan Cleaver)
Writing in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph respected Property Journalist Graham Norwood fingered Pimlico as the nation’s number one Buy To Let hot spot.
In a typical “New Year” article Graham explains why thousands of people have resolved to dive into the only housing sector that is truly booming: buy-to-let (BTL).
- Average UK rents have risen by 13.6 per cent since 2009
- Capital values in most places have stagnated or fallen.
- The proportion of households renting has increased in the past decade from 31 per cent to 36 per cent. In Westminster, for example, four out of every 10 homes are privately rented, not owned.
Graham’s Top 10 buy-to-let hot spots in 2013
1 London, Victoria/Pimlico
2 Maidenhead
3 Exeter
4 Cambridge
5 Bristol
6 Milton Keynes
7 Inverness
8 Aberdeen
9 London, Canary Wharf
10 Central Manchester
Graham’s How to be a buy-to-let landlord Check List
• Do your research. Pick a sector: students, professionals, first-time buyers or retirees?
• Buy in winter when sellers are anxious and may sell cheaply
• Don’t buy in a large scheme.
• Choose areas with diverse employment, great transport links, such as Reading and Southampton
• Find the right mortgage, or remortgage your main home if this option is cheaper.
• Most buy-to-let mortgage offers require at least a 25 per cent deposit – a few want 40 per cent
• Avoid ground-floor flats, which tenants believe are security risks
• Family homes rent well if they are in key school catchment areas.
• Aim for five per cent return on your investment per year
• If you use a letting agency, ensure it is Association of Residential Letting Agents-registered
Westminster Morris Men
This Saturday is a great opportunity to see the Westminster Morris Men – established in 1953 in the City of Westminster, they have been widely recognised as one of the country’s leading mens’ morris teams.
Westminster Morris Men
Saturday May 12th is the Westminster Day of Dance when 12 Morris Teams will be touring London’s West End laying on free displays of dance. The guest teams joining the Westminster Morris Men are the Jockey Morris Men, Earlsdon Morris Men, Hammersmith Morris Men, Ravensbourne Morris Men, Thrales Rapper, Moulton Morris Men, Thaxted Morris Men, Yateley Morris Men, East Surrey Morris Men and Woodside Morris Men.
The sites close to Pimlico where you can see dancing are:
10:15-10:45
Victoria Embankment Steps
St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey
Westminster Cathedral Piazza,
Victoria Street
Tate Britain
11:00-11:30
Cardinal Place, SW1
St Margaret’s Church, Westminster Abbey
12:00-12:40
The Sanctuary, Westminster Abbey
View WMM_DoD_Morning in a larger map
Full details of the the day are available from the Westminster Morrismen
The New London Bus Hits Pimlico
New London Bus 38 Hackney - Victoria
The New London Bus hit the streets today – the 38 running from Hackney to Pimlico’s Victoria Bus Station. The inaugural journey had the bus tailgated all the way by a Routemaster hired by the ‘Sack Boris’ group and daubed with banners decrying it as a vanity bus (the outlay of £11.37m has bought just eight prototype buses).
Sack Boris Bus
Journey reports are that on the upper deck it quickly became very stuffy, and condensation formed on the windows because the New Bus has fixed windows that cannot be opened, but if things become sweaty on a mild February day, the bus might be a less than pleasant place to be come summer. Once the bus reached Victoria it had to be ignominiously parked up whilst engineers tried to fix it’s software – but hey, that’s why we have prototypes!
If you want to ride the new bus here is it’s timetable.
Blogging on Pimlico, London, Renting, Property, and Flats – Pimlico
I try to keep this blog tightly on the subjects of Pimlico, Renting, and Flats. It’s not too difficult because I can use the Forum to ramble about other subjects, and this keeps the blog focussed.
I thought that I would stray a little to talk about this blog, and blogging, as a way of thanking my many sources of information, and I have broken the story into three parts.
Pimlico
Renting
Property
Pimlico
Blogging about Pimlico is probably the easiest of my 3 core subjects, particularly since I define “Pimlico” as being anywhere within walking distance of Pimlico Flats – so that covers Central London, and makes:
- Victoria & Belgravia “North Pimlico”,
- Kensington and Chelsea “West Pimlico”,
- Battersea, Vauxhall, Stockwell, Clapham “South Pimlico”
- Westminster, Soho “East Pimlico”
I try to focus on free and little published events and attractions, as the bigger professional things are generally commercially advertised and known about. My biggest source of information is the weekly publication The Pimlico News and Journal which is something that I publish myself and is automatically curated from various feeds. It has been sufficiently successful that I now carry it as a page on this website which can be accessed from the menu on the left.
It’s a great Newspaper but I must give thanks to some of the contributors. There are of course the usual traditional sources of information, BBC, Newspapers, but the purpose of niche blogging is to uncover the real story, and here are the local blogs and websites which I follow in order to reach the news other blogs can’t reach:
London Blogs
- Foremost has to be the Westminster Chronicle just because we need professional journalists and local newspapers in our lives, and if you don’t use them and pay for them we will lose them, and be all the poorer. I don’t know how the power of the internet will pan out, but printed news is under pressure from free blogs like this, and the free “Pimlico News and Journal” that I just promoted. In spite of my competition with the Chronicle all I can say is that we need our local shops, and newspapers, so please buy a copy from your local newsagent.
- Londonist a website about London and everything that happens in it – it’s a professional publication set up in 2004 as The Big Smoker. I like it because, although it is a comprehensive London-wide reference resource, it carries this off with humour and is in touch with it’s community roots (e.g. the Hand Drawn Maps initiative). They provide everything you need to know about the capital, as well as celebrating the quirks, eccentricities, hidden and surprising bits that make up the alternative side of the city.
- Discovering London – which I juxtapose alongside Londonist because Peter’s blog is small, if not tiny, yet it is brimming over with personality, quality, and originality. Peter has yet to reach his 1st anniversary of blogging, but already his website is one of my favourites.
- Tired of London, Tired of Life began in October 2008 as a place to document those moments of inspiration for making living in London exciting & different. Doing the same thing day after day can get anyone down, but our city has an almost infinite number of things to see and do. If you’re not getting the most out of London, it is a sad truth that you have no one to blame but yourself. This site was part of a personal plan for the author to get the most out of the greatest city on earth, and it has worked.
- Going Underground Look at what the mainstream press has to say! The magic, mystery & sometimes maddening shortcomings of London’s Tube are documented with love, enthusiasm & sometimes despair by its unofficial social historian ……. The best blogs have a tinge of obsession about them … On some mornings it can feel like the only reason to be grateful that the Tube exists … one of London’s obsessives
- Young and Poor Cheap/free events, gigs, food & drink, or sales — never paid to mention things so it’s only things worth recommending.
- Ian Visits does NOT list the mainstream music/theatre/film events which are already so well supplied by the major newspapers and magazines – but DOES list the heritage open days, walking tours and mostly, the astonishing array of free (or cheap) lectures that the societies and universities of London provide. It’s a personal resource of remarkable usefulness.
- Boris Watch An act of frustration, at the loss to apparent personality politics, and the accusation that somehow young people are to blame …… but also a great tap into the stories that THEY don’t want you to read about.
- Laura Porter London-based travel writer & VisitBritain Super Blogger, mum, copywriter, tea drinker, afternoon tea addict & all-round London obsessive. She is a professional travel writer for About but I have recommended her twitter feed as she is a model in how to use Social Media. She does so much more than just promote her own writing, and is very generous with the links and information that she publishes. Consequently I would say – if you want to keep your finger on the pulse of mainstream London – follow Laura.
Now publishing any list of recommendations is always fraught – you forget someone important, offend others, and no doubt there are excellent resources that I am yet to stumble across. I have tried to give an honest account of how I produce the Pimlico Blog, but by no means would I say that it is perfect. I would be delighted if readers add their own suggestions in the comments of websites and blogs that we should all be reading and following.
