Inflation: Your worst enemy or your best friend?

This week we’re talking about inflation. But don’t turn off yet! It’s not the most glamorous subject, but it’s one of the most important factors in property investing. And you probably don’t think about it anywhere near as much as you should.

We discuss:

• Inflation defined
• Understanding inflation with the help of a pint of milk
• How inflation means that a 400% increase in house prices actually means a 100% increase
• Does inflation mean that prices have actually fallen this year?
• What causes inflation?
• Rob B’s conspiracy theory
• Will inflation reward or punish you?

As a prelude to this episode you might want to listen to Episode 15 of the Meaningful Money podcast – Inflation Explained.

We drew data from this article from the ever-excellent Monevator when we were talking about historical house prices, and borrowed some analysis from Richard Brown about what house prices have really been doing over the past year.

We’d always wondered how Sarah Beeny stayed so stoic in the face of people blithly ignoring her advice – and it turns out this week that she really was annoyed by it at the time, although she says it was balanced out by the satisfaction of helping people dodge bullets who did pay attention to her.

Our resource this week is propertytorenovate.co.uk – a site that uses some clever algorithms to only show you properties listed on Zoopla that need a bit of TLC.

So if you’re in the market for a property you can add some value to, take a look: it might just save you a lot of time trawling through irrelevant search results.

Rob B mentioned that he’d met up with Nick Stott and Mark Loughnane from Homesure Property up in Liverpool. A better class of estate and letting agent, rather than some of the horrors we’ve talked about in recent weeks.

Rob Ds been nattering to Sam from What Sam Saw Today, as they’ve both got books coming out next year and no-one else will tolerate their authorly pretentiousness.

And finally, next week’s episode is inspired by our favourite podcast – Tropical MBA. Listen to their episode #40 if you want a sneak peek into what we’re going to be relating to property next week.

Tell us what you thought of the show!

Do you have any questions about inflation?

How do you plan for it or take advantage of it in your own business?

Do you buy into Rob B’s conspiracy theory?