Questions we get asked.

Yes, and most of our clients do. There is no visa requirement and no restriction on foreign nationals owning UK property. You can buy without visiting: every deal comes with a full photographic set and a video walkthrough before you commit. The property is registered in your own name or your company's name at HM Land Registry, your solicitor is instructed by you, and Manchester Sourcing never holds your money. We work with investors across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

The honest answer is our track record, and the fact that we have been landlords ourselves since 2013 — buy-to-lets, HMOs and serviced accommodation. We test strategies with our own money before we put them in front of anybody else. Since 2018 we have sourced over 450 properties and more than £70 million of property for investors. Your money goes to your own solicitor, never to us, and the property is registered to you at HM Land Registry from completion.

A property sourcing agent finds investment property on your behalf and handles the purchase. Manchester Sourcing goes further than most: we source the property, negotiate and manage the purchase, refurbish it with our own in-house team, match it to a social housing provider or a letting agent, and set the lease up. You buy in your own name — we are not a fund and we take no equity stake in your property.

It means we hand over a finished, income-producing property rather than a set of keys and a list of jobs. Strategy discussion, area advice, sourcing on and off market, viewings, negotiation, refurbishment costing, comparable evidence, introductions to brokers, solicitors and accountants, conveyancing support, refurbishment project management, provider matching, lease setup and aftercare. You are not appointing builders, chasing trades or finding tenants at any point.

We deliberately take on six to eight investors a month, which usually means a waiting list of two to four weeks. That is a real constraint rather than a sales tactic — the service only works if there is enough of us to go round. A refundable reservation deposit holds your place in the queue.

Nothing. We keep sourcing until something fits. There is no pressure to take a deal you are not comfortable with, and the reservation deposit is refundable if you decide not to proceed at all. We would far rather place a deal with someone who is genuinely happy with it.

Three things. We are landlords who source, rather than sourcers who own nothing — we buy these strategies ourselves first. We do not stop at the purchase: we refurbish with our own team and hand the property over leased and producing income. And we will tell you the downside of a deal before you ask, because if a deal is only attractive when it is presented a particular way, it is not attractive. We also will not sell you a new-build city-centre flat, which rules out a good share of the industry.

We source across the North of England. In the North West that means Liverpool and the Merseyside belt — Anfield, Kirkdale, Everton, Walton, Kensington and Old Swan, plus Bootle, Litherland and Netherton — together with Manchester, Wigan, Skelmersdale, Burnley, Nelson, Bacup, Preston and Chorley. In the North East it means South Tyneside — South Shields and Jarrow — Gateshead and the Derwent valley, Washington and Sunderland, and County Durham, including Bishop Auckland, Willington, Crook and Stanley. We only buy where we already have trades, agents and provider relationships on the ground.

Because the rent is similar and the purchase price is not. A social housing provider will pay much the same for a two- or three-bedroom house in either city, but the house itself costs far less in Liverpool — so the contract works harder there. Liverpool typically runs at around 8–10% net on this strategy against 6–8% in Manchester. Manchester's advantage is capital growth and a stronger open-market letting proposition, which is why we still buy there for investors who want a standard buy-to-let.

On a social housing buy-to-let, around 8–10% net in Liverpool and 6–8% net in Manchester. A ready-made social housing HMO — already converted, licensed, leased and tenanted — typically runs at 10–12%. Those are net of the running costs but before your mortgage, finance costs, purchase costs and tax. We quote the purchase price, the rent and the refurbishment cost and let you run your own numbers; we stopped using a single calculator years ago because everyone's assumptions differ.

Several, across Tyneside, Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and County Durham — a mix of local operators and one of the larger national providers. That is deliberate. If one will not take a property, or the rate on offer is not good enough, we go to the next rather than forcing the deal. It also means that if a provider ever stopped trading, your lease moves instead of your income stopping. Between them they run all the main contract types, which is what lets us choose the right one for a given property rather than taking whatever is available.

Price, mostly. A two- or three-bedroom terrace in South Tyneside, Gateshead or County Durham costs £75,000 to £105,000, and reconfigured to four bedrooms for family accommodation it leases at £1,100 to £1,200 a month on a five-year term. That is the strongest rent-to-price ratio we see anywhere. The work is also different — we usually reconfigure the layout and furnish the property, because providers in that region require it, and both are budgeted into the refurbishment from the outset rather than discovered later.

No. They are four-bedroom houses used to accommodate a single family, on one lease. They are not let by the room and they are not shared occupancy, so they normally need a selective licence rather than an HMO licence. The reconfiguration exists to create the fourth bedroom and to meet the provider's room-size requirements, not to turn the house into a shared property.

Usually. Adding a bedroom and modernising typically lifts the valuation above the purchase price and the works combined — an £85,000 two-bedroom reconfigured to three has valued at £110,000 or more. We do not promise it and we never price a deal on the hoped-for valuation; we quote it on the rent, and treat any uplift as a bonus rather than the plan.

Sometimes not, and it is better to know that at the start. Several lenders set a minimum property value and the cheapest stock falls below it. The routes around it are to buy with cash, or to buy one that values up after the reconfiguration and refinance afterwards. A broker will tell you where the floor sits for your circumstances, and we will tell you honestly whether a specific property is likely to clear it.

Two- and three-bedroom terraced houses do the most reliable job, for both social housing leases and standard buy-to-lets. They are what providers want, they are what families want if you ever sell, and they are cheap enough to buy several. Larger four- and five-bedroom houses come into their own as HMOs or supported housing, but they are a different proposition and need more from you.

Yes, when good ones appear — they are not constant stock. A multi-unit freehold block, or MUFB, is several self-contained units held on one freehold title and bought in a single transaction. Blocks are valued on rental income rather than on what the individual units would fetch, so a freehold block usually trades at a discount to the sum of its parts, often around 10 to 15%. They can later be title split into separate leasehold units, or leased whole to a provider. Lending on blocks is specialist and we will be straight with you about that.

An established social housing provider takes a lease on your property, usually for three to five years, and pays you a fixed rent every month whether or not it is occupied. Crucially the lease is with the provider, not with a tenant — there are no tenancy agreements in your name and no evictions for you to deal with. The provider manages the residents, covers internal maintenance, and in most arrangements covers the utilities and council tax as well.

Partly, and it is worth being precise because this is the most common misunderstanding we have to correct. This is not a full repairing and insuring lease — an FRI lease is a commercial arrangement and a residential social housing lease is not one. The provider covers tenant management, internal maintenance and tenant damage, and carries its own insurance. You insure the building and keep the structure — the roof and the windows — plus the boiler. Boiler cover at around £15–£20 a month takes care of the item most likely to go wrong.

That depends on the contract type, and there are four in common use. Emergency and temporary family accommodation houses families who have been made homeless, and this is the bulk of what we source. Prison-leaver resettlement houses people leaving custody, and flats in particular suit it; we take these selectively. Supported housing covers care leavers, people in recovery and vulnerable adults, which pays well but is more intensive. Asylum accommodation runs under large national Home Office contracts, and we do not source it, for commercial reasons — it is the most exposed to policy change, the contracts are too big to have a relationship with, and the properties tend to sit in weaker locations. Which contract your property goes on is a decision we make deliberately, and we tell you before you commit.

It is the right question and the honest answer is that money goes where the votes are. Emergency accommodation for families is the most politically durable of the contract types, single British applicants next, and large national asylum contracts by far the most exposed — which is precisely why we do not source those. We are not simply picking a provider, we are picking which of their contracts your property sits on. It is also why we buy ordinary houses in ordinary residential streets: if a contract ends, you still own a normal family house with normal options — relet it to another provider, put it on the open market, or sell it.

We work with several providers in every area we buy in — never just one — precisely so that no single organisation is a point of failure. In the North West those are local, council-level operators; in the North East we work across a number of providers covering Tyneside, Sunderland, Newcastle, Middlesbrough and County Durham, local and national. If one exits or will not take a property, we go to the next and move the lease. Area selection matters here too: we buy in built-up places near a town or city with decent commuter links, because those are the properties providers want and that let easily on the open market if you ever need them to.

Yes, through any of three routes. You can sell with the lease in place to another investor, sell empty to an owner-occupier once the term ends, or simply let it on the open market. Because we buy standard houses in standard residential areas rather than specialist buildings, all three are genuinely available. If you sell during the term, the lease transfers with the property, so an investor buyer is usually the practical route.

The rent under the lease is contractually payable by the provider for the term of the lease, whether or not the property is occupied, and that funding comes through the local authority. So yes, for the length of the lease. What is not guaranteed is that leases will be available on the same terms forever, or that the property will grow in value — nobody can promise either and we will not pretend to.

We only work with long-established, council-approved providers with a solid payment record, and we deal with local providers rather than national contractors. A local provider covers a couple of North West councils, knows them properly, and can be phoned — we speak to the owners most weeks. A national contractor cannot offer that, which matters a great deal when something needs sorting out.

Yes. We only work with providers using lease templates that lenders have already accepted, because a lease that a lender rejects is worthless to you. This is also why the property has to satisfy the mortgage valuer as well as the provider — there is a balance to strike between the two, and getting it wrong is one of the more common ways these purchases fall over.

For a social housing buy-to-let bought with a mortgage, budget around £40,000–£45,000 all in. That covers the deposit, stamp duty, solicitor's fees, the light refurbishment and the other purchase costs on a typical Liverpool two-bedroom house at roughly £100,000 with rent of £850–£950 a month. Cash buyers work too, and a ready-made HMO needs considerably more because lenders value it vacant.

Because for most properties the arithmetic no longer favours buy-refurbish-refinance. A BRR project costs you three or four months of council tax and utilities, the cost of your money while it is tied up, two sets of solicitor fees, two sets of survey fees, and the rent you are not collecting. Added up, the refurbishment has to add roughly £20,000 or more in genuine value simply to match buying with a mortgage and being paid from month one. Where a property truly justifies that, we will say so — but most of what we buy needs a light refurbishment, not a heavy one.

Yes, overseas buyers can borrow, typically with a larger deposit and at a rate above what a UK resident would pay. Rates move constantly so any figure here would be out of date quickly — at the time of writing, non-resident investor products have been in the region of 7% to 7.5%. We introduce brokers who place this kind of lending regularly, and you should take the rate from them rather than from a website.

Gross yield is the annual rent divided by the purchase price, before any costs. Net yield accounts for the running costs — management, maintenance, insurance, voids and bills. The figures we quote for social housing are net of running costs but before your mortgage, purchase costs and tax, which is why a lease looks so different from an open-market letting once you strip the agent's fee, the bills and the voids out.

Most investors use a limited company, particularly at higher income levels, because of how mortgage interest is treated. It is genuinely a question for an accountant rather than for us — the right answer depends on your income, your residency and what you intend to do with the property. We can introduce accountants who deal with property investors and with non-resident landlords.

Yes. Additional-property and non-resident surcharges both apply on investment purchases, and the rates have changed more than once in recent years, so we will not quote a percentage that might be wrong by the time you read it. Your solicitor will confirm the exact figure for your circumstances, and we include the current amount in every deal pack.

Yes, and plenty of our investors do. Remortgaging or refinancing an existing property to release a deposit is a common way to fund the next purchase. A broker will tell you what is available against what you already hold. It is also the mechanism that lets a portfolio compound — buy one a year for five years, then refinance the first one and go again.

Not for standard residential buy-to-let. A SIPP can hold commercial property but not residential investment property, so this route is not available for what we source. An independent financial adviser is the right person to talk to about it.

Around eight to twelve weeks from offer accepted to completion is typical, and a leasehold property can take longer. A cash purchase with no chain can complete faster. Light refurbishment usually adds two to four weeks; a heavy refurbishment, which we rarely recommend, can add two to three months. We give you a timeline for the specific property in the deal pack.

No. Every deal comes with a full photographic set, a video walkthrough and a survey where one is warranted, and we view everything ourselves before it goes out. We look at roughly ten properties a week to put forward about two, so the ones you see have already been filtered hard. You are very welcome to come and see properties, and some investors do combine a trip with viewing refurbishments in progress.

We have our own in-house team for painting, carpets, joinery, kitchens, bathrooms and general building work, with external specialists for gas, electrics and roofing. You get a full cost breakdown and timeline before you commit to anything, and because the team is ours rather than a subcontractor's, that price is quoted up front and held. We charge a project management fee on refurbishment work, which is set out with the quote.

Most need light cosmetic work — decoration, flooring, sometimes a kitchen or bathroom. We deliberately avoid heavy refurbishments because they tie your money up, delay the income and are where hidden costs live. We have done large projects when the numbers justified it, but it is not the normal shape of what we buy.

We arrange the refurbishment and then place the property with a social housing provider on a lease or with a vetted local letting agent, depending on what you chose. Day-to-day management sits with that provider or agent rather than with us — we are a sourcing and delivery business, not a letting agent. We stay your point of contact for anything to do with the purchase itself, and we can refer trades afterwards.

On a social housing lease the provider pays you directly, monthly, by bank transfer, for the term of the lease. There is no letting agent in between taking a percentage and no tenant to chase. On an open-market letting the managing agent collects the rent and passes it on after deducting their fee.

Possibly, but fewer people should than think they should. An HMO produces more income, but its exit is usually to another investor — and investors are a small fraction of the buying market — so it tends to appreciate more slowly than an ordinary house. There is also always something moving: licensing, Article 4 directions, valuations, fire safety. Our own portfolio is mainly ordinary houses for that reason, and we are converting our own HMOs onto provider leases. If you want HMO-level income without HMO-level involvement, a lease is the better answer.

An Article 4 direction removes the automatic right to convert a family home into a small HMO, so you need planning permission. Much of the built-up North West is covered by one. The practical effect is that professional HMOs get pushed out to areas with weaker tenant demand at higher prices, which is a large part of why we think the numbers on them are often overstated. Social housing leases are not constrained in the same way.

A property let to five or more people forming more than one household needs a mandatory HMO licence, and many councils operate additional licensing schemes that catch smaller properties too. Licensing brings minimum room sizes, amenity standards and fire safety requirements. We will tell you what applies to a specific property and what it will cost before you commit.

You only face the exchange rate at the moment you convert, not continuously while you own the property, so the timing is largely yours — if the rate is against you, you can wait. It also means there is no need to over-engineer the purchase: some investors take expensive short-term finance specifically to avoid sending money over, and that usually costs more than the exchange rate ever would. We can introduce currency brokers who beat bank transfer rates, but we are not currency advisers and will not forecast rates.

Yes — UK rental income is taxable in the UK regardless of where you live, and the Non-Resident Landlord Scheme affects how that tax is collected. You may also have a liability at home, though many countries have double taxation treaties that prevent you paying twice. We are not tax advisers and will not pretend to be; you need an accountant who deals with non-resident landlords, and we can introduce one.

Not necessarily a personal UK bank account, though it makes life easier and we can point you at providers who open accounts for non-residents. If you buy through a UK limited company you will need a business account and a UK tax registration for the company. An accountant can set the company up quickly and properly — it is not something you need to solve before speaking to us.

Landlord buildings insurance is essential and your lender will require it. We also recommend boiler cover at around £15–£20 a month, which deals with the single most likely failure. On an open-market letting, rent guarantee insurance is worth considering; on a provider lease it is unnecessary, because the rent is contractual regardless of occupancy.

Set aside around 5% of the rental income a year. On a provider lease your exposure is limited to the structure and the boiler, because internal maintenance and tenant damage sit with the provider — so that allowance goes a long way. On an open-market letting you should expect to use more of it.

Because advertised yield and achieved yield are rarely the same number, and most investors have been burned by the difference at least once. A headline percentage can be engineered by quoting an asking price instead of the agreed price, an optimistic rent, or a figure that quietly ignores the refurbishment, the buying costs and the void. We publish the actual agreed price and the actual achievable rent on each property and let you do the arithmetic yourself. The figures are here — they are just not the pitch.

It depends on the property and how we are working together — it is a conversation rather than a price list, and we are happy to run through it on a quick call. A refundable reservation deposit holds your place in the queue while we source.

Yes. Manchester Sourcing and Strada Capital are the same business, and both are trading names of Northwest Deals. Same people, same track record, same properties. The move to Strada Capital reflects the fact that we now source right across the North of England rather than one city, and that most of the people we work for are based overseas.