Locating the highest yielding locations for buy to let

Reply to the comment left by “Mary Latham” at “21/08/2013 – 11:03”:

Hi Mary

I follow what you are saying but I’m pretty sure that Will is trying to create a formula which calculates gross yields. That in itself I suspect is impossible to achieve with any level of accuracy but I admire him taking on the challenge. If it wasn’t for innovators like Will, society would never progress. I wish him well.

If he does manage to crack this it will only serve as an initial reference point. The important think will be to drill down to the detail on each and every prospective purchase and that’s where our Landlords Calculator comes into it’s own 🙂
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Reply to the comment left by “Neil Patterson” at “21/08/2013 – 11:00”:

Thanks Neil, you’re spot on RE sample size. I suppose I could exclude areas where there isn’t a sufficient number of properties to estimate accurately. Or provide a “confidence” rating based on the SD which the user could filter on.

Reply to the comment left by “Will Ogden” at “21/08/2013 – 11:42”:

A confidence filter based on the Standard deviation !

Now I like the sound of that in a very geeky way 🙂

Reply to the comment left by “Mark Alexander” at “21/08/2013 – 11:16”:

Thanks for your positive comments Mark. The site was only ever intended to be a guide, and try and get some insight into trends. I was just interested in whether a better opportunity existed within X number of miles to me…I wouldn’t ever suggest the data provided should be the only metric used in determining where or what to buy. Might be interesting in linking to your calculator when the user wants to drilldown further?

Reply to the comment left by “Will Ogden” at “21/08/2013 – 11:49”:

Hi Will, feel free, the link will help our SEO too 🙂
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Reply to the comment left by “Mark Alexander” at “21/08/2013 – 11:16”:

I do hope that Will did not take my post as criticism, I am sorry if he did, perhaps I did not word it well but I guess that I am hoping that it is possible to build a system which gives the initial gross yield and then allows an investors to put in further known information to get a more accurate figure.

Will I wish you well with this and look forward to watching your progress

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Reply to the comment left by “Mary Latham” at “21/08/2013 – 12:26”:

Thanks Mary for your feedback. I think I will be able to improve the accuracy of the site, but it’s never going to replace expert (and local) knowledge. Just another tool to use to help make informed decisions. Will keep this site updated with progress.

According to this data, my area, which has a great many rental properties, is yielding 0%. Ermmmm….

Reply to the comment left by “Paul Shears” at “21/08/2013 – 18:19”:

Hi Paul. Showing 0% means there probably aren’t any properties for sale matching the ones available to rent. Going to see if I can use historic sold prices instead.

Reply to the comment left by “Mary Latham” at “21/08/2013 – 11:03”:

I have been extracting data from rightmove, and placing it within a database. I have spent many hours refining my program. To give the information detail required to calcuate a gross yield requires collection of specific data. Without collecting specific data, i.e. property types within a given road / postcode your result wil be scewed. For example if you look at prices sold data, the description text given is distorted because it reflects the prices of all property types in that postcode.

You may ask why I am doing all this work! I hope to be able to sell data services to investors. With the database I can search and analyse many different critera. For example recently Paul Ribbons was giving some advice on searching, and one criteria he gave was looking for “out of town” estate agents advertising a property. I can now do this via my database! If you want to develop something similar you will need to learn a scripting language, I am using python.