Dear Reader

There's a particular kind of comfort in owning a home back in the UK. A foothold. Somewhere that's still yours while you're living and working thousands of miles away.

For a lot of British expats I speak with, the bricks-and-mortar back home carry a feeling that's hard to put a price on — and I understand that completely.

I also many expat clients buy more than one property in the UK, not to be used by them personally at some point, but purely as an investment. Let’s look at that more closely.

The rose-tinted version

The story we tell ourselves is simple and reassuring and has been handed down over generations.

You can't go wrong with bricks and mortar.

Property is solid, you can see it and touch it, and it always goes up. It feels safe in a way that a line on an investment statement never quite does.

That feeling is real, and it matters. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. But feelings and returns are different measures, and it's worth looking honestly at both.

What the numbers actually say

Take a prime London home, bout for £8m, that grew in value by £20m over a 27 years. An eye-watering figure — until you do the maths.

That's an annual growth rate of under 5%. Strip out inflation and you're closer to 2.5%. Then take off the running costs — council tax, maintenance, repairs, insurance — and you may well be in negative territory. And remember, that's prime London real estate, the best of the best.

Over the same period, a globally diversified equity portfolio returned roughly 9% before inflation, or around 6.5% after — and that's a period that included the dot-com crash, the global financial crisis, and Covid. The same starting capital invested that way would have grown to many multiples of the property's value.

None of this is a recommendation to sell your home or pile into the stock market. It's simply a reminder that the headline “it went up £20m” can quietly hide a fairly ordinary — or even poor — return once you account for everything.

The costs nobody puts in the spreadsheet

When we weigh up an investment, we tend to fixate on the purchase price. But the true cost of owning an asset stretches far beyond what you paid for it.

A diversified equity portfolio asks very little of you day to day. The companies you part-own are run by their own management and boards; the fund is overseen by professionals. The main cost is emotional — the nerve to sit through the temporary falls. The pain of those dips fades; the long-term gains tend to stay.

Property is the opposite. Alongside the purchase price comes a long, often-forgotten list: maintenance, finance costs, insurance, taxes, void periods when there's no tenant, repairs after damage, and management fees. And then there's the “hassle factor” — the calls, the decisions, the time and attention a property quietly demands. For many owners, that intangible cost outweighs the financial one. When you eventually sell, another round of valuation and selling costs is waiting, and you can't usually sell half a house to manage the tax efficiently. It's all or nothing.

The expat double whammy

For British expats, there's an extra layer that rarely gets discussed honestly.

As an overseas landlord, you have relatively few protections in the UK — yet typically you also have no rights as a tenant in your country of residence, for example in Singapore. It can be the worst of both worlds. On top of that, the UK tax landscape for landlords keeps shifting, rarely in the landlord's favour (the NRLA has flagged proposed tax changes affecting the sector).

Then there's the simple reality of distance. Managing maintenance, tenants, and the inevitable 11pm “the boiler's broken” moment is far harder from another continent. A truly excellent local agent can soften this — but, honestly, they're rare, and finding one is its own project.

Potential tax benefit when selling before you repatriate

If you have owned the property since before 2015, you could save a significant amount of UK tax by selling whilst still overseas rather than waiting until you have gone back. This requires specialist UK tax advice.

So where does that leave you?

I'm not saying property is a mistake, or that you should sell the home you love. A house can be exactly that — a place to live, to come back to, to raise a family. Those are good reasons to own one.

What I am saying is this: if the main reason you're holding UK property is that it feels like a sound investment, it's worth pressure-testing that belief against the actual numbers, the actual costs, and the actual realities of doing it from overseas.

Sometimes the honest answer is “this is a home, not an investment, and that's fine.” Sometimes it's “the money could be working harder, with far less hassle, elsewhere.”

There's no single right answer here — it depends entirely on your circumstances, your goals, and what you actually want your money and your time to do for you.

If this has prompted a question or two about your own situation, that's exactly the point. I'm always happy to talk it through — no agenda, just a clearer view of what you're really holding and why.

With best wishes, Gary

Gary Smithson - Partner, Farringdon Asset Management Singapore and Malaysia

​gary-smithson-farringdon.kit.com​

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