Street of the Week - Caxton Gate, Bristol

This week it’s not a street as such but a development.  Caxton Gate is our favourite Bristol city centre development.  It doesn’t have any views, the flats aren’t big, it doesn’t have the cachet of other more high profile developments, rents haven’t shot up, and the capital value of the property although it has increased hasn’t been spectacular, so why is it our favourite?

To begin with every apartment has a parking space, you can walk to Temple Quay, Queen’s Square or Bristol Bridge in under 5 minutes, the development is excellently managed with communal areas and gardens well maintained and most importantly flats here always let easily and quickly.

Caxton Gate is situated between Temple Meads and St Mary Redcliffe Church, it was built at the end of the 1980’s and initially fell foul of the early 90’s recession.

The development is split between 1 and 2 bedroom flats.  As stated earlier all properties have parking with some having a garage and some landlords let these seperately for up to £100 per month.  The typical tenant tends to be a professional looking for a quality property but with a restricted budget.  We have let Caxton Gate flats to a lot of contractors who are in Bristol for a fixed term and have their main home elsewhere.  They therefore use this as a Monday – Friday apartment.  Currently you can rent a one bedroom flat between £575-£625 and a 2 bed between £725-£800 per month.  The 1 bed apartments tend to be more popular as the 2nd bedroom in the 2 bed flats are too small for sharers and the extra rent doesn’t justify the extra space.  As a rule these properties tend to be let on a furnished basis.

Whilst these rental values are lower when compared to some of their high profile neighbours what sets it apart is its occupancy rate.  As an example we have been letting a 1 bed apartment for the same landlord since 1991, in that time the property has been empty for 6 weeks and that was only for redecorating and updating purposes.  now obviously that is down to the excellent job we do as her letting agent, but an occupancy rate of 99.4%, over a 20 year period is  stunning and it is not untypical.

So with such great occupancy rates purchase prices are high right?  Well not actually.  Currently Leese and Nagle have a one bed in Berlington Court that we managed for 7 years.  It is in need of  some updating but is currently on the market for £119,000 and we would expect it to rent for £600.  To give you an idea of the return you could expect I asked Fiona Bolt of Vivid Financial Services to put together some mortgage figures for the property:

Fiona told us: 

Assuming the landlord has a 25% deposit of £29,750 there are several options available. 

For the experienced landlord who already has at least one buy to let property we can offer either:

1. A landlord Tracker mortgage for 2 years at 2.79% above bank base rate to give a current rate of 3.29% payment £253.26 or
2. Fixed rate for 2 years at 3.99% payment £307.14

For first time landlord (but not a  first time buyer)   We can get:

1. A tracker mortgage for 1 year 3.49% above bank base rate to give a current rate of 3.99% - monthly payment £304.17 or
2. A Fixed rate for 2 years of 4.19% payment £322.54

That means that mortgage repayments on this property would be approximately 50% of income.

This is why as professional letting agents we LOVE Caxton Gate.  They are relatively cheap to buy, rents are buoyant  and they have great occupancy rates.  The above example shows why we believe that Caxton Gate would be a welcome addition to any landlord’s Bristol property portfolio.