In my next few articles, my aim is to guide readers through typical investment decisions and options, hopefully shedding some light on interesting angles and ways to increase your returns.

The buy-to-let market is currently a difficult place. There are numerous tax headwinds, making life especially difficult for higher tax rate earners so it has become even more critical to purchase the right investment. In this article I am not going to focus on the taxation issues but simply the overall gross returns, the investment’s fundamentals.

In past years residential investment was relatively straightforward, especially in London and the South East. Even if you made a poor decision (e.g. paid too much, or bought in the wrong area), huge capital value increases usually helped carry you through to make a decent overall return in the medium/long term. Many people made staggering returns doing properties up and selling them on, even simply ‘flipping’ properties between exchange and completion. With today’s higher and additional stamp duty rates, these ‘easy money’ days have gone – investors will simply have to hold the properties for a longer duration to make sensible returns. Just like the rest of the investment world, quantitative easing has crushed the investment return. Residential property has long been viewed as both a capital and an income play but, with very subdued capital growth going forward, the income element has now become critically important.

Most residential investors though are looking at property as a long-term investment rather than a quick, short-term gain. It is often viewed by many of them as a quasi-pension for later life income or a nest egg for their children/grandchildren but, rather like choosing the right fund to invest in, you have to pick your properties very carefully.

The simple, but costly, mistake most investors make is picking a property in an area that they would like to live in (usually investors are 50+ years old) compared to one in an area the tenants (mostly under 35s) would love to live in. The second key error is brushing over the actual net income generated. Professional investors in stocks and shares focus meticulously on dividend yield and income growth. Property investors need to adopt a similarly disciplined and rigorous approach.

Professional investors in stocks and shares focus meticulously on dividend yield and income growth. Property investors need to adopt a similarly disciplined and rigorous approach.