Landlord Voice Magazine January 2016 - Nottingham | Page 14

LANDLORD PROFILE Wendy Burrows In a post in investment blog Citywire Money, Michelle McGagh said a pension saver would need to put by more than £400 per month during their lifetime to generate the average UK salary of £26,500. And if you are someone who spent their 20s enjoying themselves for whom pensions were a distant thought on the horizon until at least the turn of 30, you would need to up this to £583 per month. Wendy Burrows (59) and her husband, Trevor, came to a similar realisation after speaking with their pension advisor some twenty years ago. They were paying £100 a month into their pension pot – which was no mean sum to them at the time – and were told another £200 at least would be required to generate the income they would need in retirement. Wendy said: “I woke up the next morning after not much sleep and said, ‘let’s scrap it, we’re going to buy a house.’” 14 | LandlordVoice | January 2016 “That house is paid for now – we wanted the rent to be a little wage coming in and we get £380 per month.” Wendy and Trevor ’s first buy-tolet property was a two-bedroom terraced house in Selston, an ex-mining village 13 miles north-east of Nottingham. They started out by re-mortgaging their own house to pay for their first then switched to a buy-to-let, interest-only one so they could benefit from mortgage tax relief. The Burrows’ buy-to-let mortgage cost them £100 a month and all rental profits were used to pay as much of the loan off as quickly as possible. Wendy, a corporate venue finder, and Trevor, a maintenance engineer, followed the same formula with their second buyto-let which they purchased four years ago –a two-bedroom bungalow also in Selston with one tenant which brings in £495 per month. The couple borrowed £80,000 for the £70,000 property and used £10,000 and a lot of help from family and friends to renovate it. “My husba nd has always worked in maintenance and my son-in-law is an electrician who works on building sites,” said Wendy, “but for any other type of work which needs certification he pays tradesmen he knows to get it done.” Though Wendy has contracted a letting agent for their latest property she has learned the hard way that it pays to be a hands-on landlord. She added: “I made the mistake with some tenants of letting them pay by direct debit and I wasn’t going round to collect rent. They ran off in the end. “And that’s when I discovered they had ripped up the carpet and taken it with them and their dog had wrecked the place by messing everywhere and chewing the stairs. “I find it pays to be friendly with the neighbours because they keep an eye on “I find it pays to be friendly with the neighbours because they keep an eye on things for me” things for me – so I pop round with a bottle of wine every Christmas and they let me know if there is any trouble at the property.” But Wendy does not rely solely on neighbours to supervise her tenants the mother-of-two conducts a full house inspection every six months. She said: “I give a month’s notice then just walk around the house with them and the conversation goes like, ‘this is a bit of a mess, can you tidy it up?’, or, ‘this room needs painting.’ “I decorate the houses very basically anyway – just plaster and paint and I don’t allow any alterations. “And I collect the rent personally every month but if one of the tenants has trouble paying then I try to be fair. One of them was £40 short at Christmas but told me her mum was going to pay the rest so I said, ‘OK.’” It’s clear that the Burrows’ buy-to-let strategy has been realistic from day one – they have invested in reasonably-priced property and worked hard to pay down their mortgage loan-to-value to the point where the Government’s planned mortgage interest relief cut will not affect them. And after recently switching to a buyto-let interest-only mortgage on their most recent property purchase they are now in the process of buying their final buy-to-let just one street away from where they live. January 2016 | LandlordVoice | 15