'Property Remains A Good Bet'

Thursday, December 04, 2008

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Post Office-worker turned property investor on the state of the UK housing market
1:20pm UK, Thursday December 04, 2008
by James Silver, Online Media Reporter, Sky News Online

We all know by now what the industry experts and “talking-heads” think is going to happen to the UK property market in the coming months.

A typical recent view came from Richard Donnell, director of research at property consultancy Hometrack.

“A weak economic outlook and limited availability of mortgages are set to keep prices under downward pressure in 2009,” he said.

But how do ordinary, private investors – who put their money where their mouths are on a regular basis - view the current turmoil? And when do they think the market will start to bounce back?

One such “street-level” speculator is Stuart Gibson, a post office-worker with an ever-burgeoning sideline in property development.

The 42-year-old from North West London has bought and sold an average of one house a year over the last decade.

He said he was “bitten by the property bug”, ever since “scrimping and saving” to buy his first home - a one-bedroom maisonette in Edgware - for £42,000 in 1995. He and his wife sold it three years later for £73,000.

When this reporter first met the likeable Mr. Gibson – who still works for the post office - for a radio documentary in 2003, he seemed to embody perfectly the gung-ho spirit of the last decade’s property bubble.

“After that first sale, I knew there was no going back,” he said at the time. "Buying and selling property is like a drug. It’s in my blood now. I’m always scouring for my next investment.

Back then he was snapping up property in investment “hot-spot” Boston, Lincolnshire – an area where houses, according to local estate agents, nearly trebled in value between 2001 and 2004.

Five years on, Mr. Gibson – who admitted he was inspired by TV property shows – has plainly lost none of his verve or ambition.

Interviewed by Sky News Online in a coffee shop near his home, he said he is in no doubt that the market will soon start to recover, also arguing that “now is the perfect time to buy”.

He said: “Times are tight, but if I possibly can, I will buy more properties, because prices are coming down and interest rates are fantastically low and may get even lower.”

Singling out first-time buyers, he continued: “If you’re a first-time buyer – with a big enough deposit to get a mortgage - go and buy now.

“Between now and the end of next year is your opportunity to get on the property ladder – you’ve got an eighteen month window, I reckon. You won’t make a quick profit, but in three years time you’ll be quids in.”

So when did he think the market would bounce back?

“I think it will start to recover late next year or early 2010,” he said.

Mr. Gibson – who left school at 17 without any qualifications and once delivered pizzas for a living – was also highly sceptical about the current sense of doom and gloom pervading the property market.

“I think we were due for a recession, the years of growth in prices were unsustainable and people were getting mortgages without real deposits,” he said.

“But the way some people – and the media – are painting it, is that it’s Armageddon out there. Well, I don’t think it is.”

(Sky News Online, 4th December 2008)

Posted by James Silver - On Thursday, December 04, 2008

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