Mine's a Guinness... no, wait...

I’m a mere stone’s throw from being a landlord. I’ve spoken to all the relevant people and there’s no reason I can’t instruct the estate agents to start advertising the property *now*. For reasons of sanity, I’ll be leaving it until the beginning of next week, but at least I know I can get cracking pretty much whenever I want. This means stuff will be moving from the flat to Livi’s very shortly. It’s even likely I’ll have my first tenant some time in August. At this stage I won’t actually be making any money from the flat, but at least I won’t be losing quite so much either. The total cost of owning the flat, once there’s someone in it, should drop to around 80 quid, and within a couple of years, as rent goes up (the estate agent reviews rents every 6 months, and they tend to go up slightly in line with house prices), I should be starting to make some cash. Obviously, as time goes on, it will start to become a far more significant income, and the property is still mine, still going up in value and I can sell up at any time. Seems pretty ideal to me.

I have to admit I got a shock when the guy gave me the sale value of the flat. Apparently it’s worth has more than doubled in the time I’ve owned it. An identical property (in the same block) is up for sale at 99,950, and there’s no reason I shouldn’t get pretty much the same for mine. Not bad, considering I bought it less than three years ago for 46,500... It’s sobering to think that, had I not got on the property ladder when I did, I’d probably never have managed it, at least in that area. They’re putting up new apartments down the road, no bigger than mine, and some of those are selling for 200,000. Ok, so they’re a bit swankier, but they’re still not far shy of quarter of a million pounds for a one bedroom apartment in Wigan. What’s the world coming to?