Buying Houses & Bungalows

The advantages of buying a house or bungalow

The big advantage with buying a house or bungalow as an investment is that there are no expensive ground rents or service charges.  There are also rarely an dispute over the lease as houses are almost always freehold. Whilst flats and apartments are ideal accommodation for many renters, many tenants still want their own house with a garden.

The fact that new houses are becoming scarcer as property developers have concentrated on building apartments, often targeted at the investment market, means it might be that houses and bungalows offer a better long-term return.

The most popular investment property is still the terraced house. Terraced houses offers cheap and often relatively generous accommodation across UK towns and cities. They make an ideal property for couples and even small families.  Terraced houses have out-performed all other property types. They have seen the highest increase in value over the last 10 year period. Terraced houses have good form.

The plot of a bungalow

For those landlords with a view to the long term they might want to consider investing in a bungalow.  A type of property synonymous with older occupants, it might not be what the style concious would want. Bungalows might be seen as too expensive by many investors in relation to the amount of rentable accommodation they provide.  However though they are unlikely to appeal to younger renters, with an ageing population, their accomodation provided on one level might rent for an increasing premium as the demand from older renters increase.

Government planning rules which now insist on housing densities of 30 properties to the hectare as well a sky high land prices means that it is virtually impossible to build bungalows on any meaningful scale these days.  The result for instance was that 2006 of a total of 164,000 planning permissions for dwellings only 324 were for bungalows.  Given that we have a rapidly ageing population it can be seen that the popularity for bungalows and their prices may well out perform other types of property in the coming years. For those landlords with an eye on the long term prospects, there’s a lot to be said for the bungalow.

The attractiveness of a house or bungalow will depend largely on their individual qualities, which partly reflects the property period and design.