...you dont build income tax into the workings out of a yield on property...
Agreed - I didn't mean to suggest otherwise.
For clarity, this is what I mean by the following terms:-
The
gross yield on a property is simply the gross annual rent that a property can generate, expressed as a % of the purchase price for that property, plus acquisition costs (or the estimated realisable value of the property, where appropriate).
The
net yield on a property takes account of
all costs and expenses, actual and imputed, relating to the management and maintenance of a rental property. It is the capitalisation rate for the property - in effect, the equivalent of a firm's E/P ratio.
Even if a property is self-managed, a landlord should still account for his time in calculating the net yield on a property in order to arrive at a figure that can be usefully compared with the return on truly passive investments, such as bank deposits and publicly traded securities.
With a long lease, a tenant will typically be responsible for repairing, maintaining and insuring a commercial property but a landlord should still include a provision in his calculations for future expenditure on items such as the property's roof, windows, floors, etc that become dilapidated over time as these will not typically be the tenant's responsibility.
Finally, there's the
effective (or after-tax) annual
rate of return, which takes account of the taxman's share of the net income on an investment. If you have a marginal tax rate of 50%, then your effective rate of return is obviously half your net yield. In contrast, the effective rate of return on repaying a loan is simply the annual interest rate that would otherwise be charged on that loan.
A gross yield of 8.5% on third generation, prime office space in Dublin's CBD would certainly be considered a very strong yield. For retail or industrial property in a provincial town, that kind of gross yield would be considerably less impressive, given the increased risks inherent in such an investment.
To be honest, I think a (properly calculated) net yield in excess of 6% on any property is pretty attractive in the current environment. But not if it's being finance at 5%+....