I’m hopeful that this month’s article will give you some insight into how to select robust investment areas over time - those who follow Propenomix closely will know that I often refer to a happy home in Sunny Solihull. This is, as any locals will tell you a) NOT in Birmingham (although it’s close) and b) In the West Midlands. With devolution bubbling in the background, and also the largest local authority in Europe as our neighbours in Brum, it all gets a bit confusing these days anyway, especially since the introduction of the West Midlands Combined Authority.

However - it hasn’t worked for me, traditionally, as an investment area for scale. This isn’t to say it cannot be done - indeed, I consult for someone local who absolutely DOES make a success of buying property locally, although he does need to follow a more active asset management strategy to do so, generally (HMO), and - like all successful investors - has some nuances that he can rely on to garner some extra edge as well.

I’ve spread my wings further. Back in the early 2010s when I started taking property investment seriously, it was clear to me that the 4-ish per cent yield locally on single lets was just not going to be particularly attractive. You can argue there were points where that would have worked - and also argue that if you expected significant capital growth locally, then the yield would not have been as important (but assets that cashflow negatively are arguably not assets, because nothing sends businesses to the administrators faster than a cashflow gap). Nonetheless, I decided to travel.

There’s an awful lot of rooftops near Sunny Solihull. The wider Birmingham area these days has around 4.33m people - whilst the city is slightly smaller than Manchester these days, the wider metropolitan area is more populous. That’s a lot of rooftops to go at, of course - and like all good investors, I set an arbitrary target of being within 30 mins of a property (based on quiet roads, ha ha). Luckily that largely ruled out the city centre, which these days is largely undriveable.