40 Years Of Property Advice In 77 Minutes

I bought and sold nearly 4 and a half thousand properties. The principles in property are the same whether you're buying one house, 20 houses, or doing 150. My three golden rules are this.

Meet John. He started investing in property 40 years ago with a family friend, and since then, he's bought 4 and a half thousand properties in 87 locations across the UK, working on everything from multi-million pound developments to £50,000 flips. So, there isn't really much that this man can't teach. And in this episode, he's going to reveal his three golden rules for investing, the property strategies that are working right now, and most importantly, how to build for long-term success and wealth.

John, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. It's an absolute pleasure, Jack. And it worked perfectly because here we are in a hotel room. I'm not sure we should be telling everyone that, by the way, but it might sound a bit odd on a Tuesday as well, in my suite on a Tuesday afternoon. And I'm speaking tonight at the Together Offices for Refurb Property Meet. Yeah, which is a good meet. Yeah, definitely. And I saw, I saw on LinkedIn that you were popping up to Manchester, and I know you're based down south yourself, so thought it'd be a good opportunity to jump on a podcast. And well, delighted to help be here.

Fantastic. So, for anyone who doesn't know John Howard, could you just explain who, who, who, who are you? What do you do? And give me a brief summary of, um, an elevator pitch, maybe?

On yes, an elevator. Very good. I like that. It's nothing like promoting a show. Thank you very much for that. Um, so, yeah, John Howard. I've been a property developer and investor for over 40 years. I bought and sold over, well, nearly 4 and a half thousand properties. I lose count, in 87 different locations across the UK. I've got a property portfolio. We used to own Auction.co.uk for a while. We sold our shares three or four years ago, and we own some estate agencies as well. So, a pretty broad, there's a broad spectrum of the property market, really.

Very broad. Okay. And so you said you've bought and sold nearly 4 and a half thousand. Yes. So I saw that if someone was to go to your LinkedIn profile, they'd see you bought and sold over 4,000 properties. Could you break that down for me? Is that, is that like you have bought and sold 4,000 properties? Is that in the estate agency? You've sold a thousand of those?

That's purely, that's purely what we've bought and traded, sold again. We refurbish and sold. Don't ask me to name them all. I'd struggle, but I've, I've sort of named all the players where we have done deals. And we've just done two deals in Scotland, for instance. So, we, we, it took me 38 years to buy a deal in Scotland. Now we've bought two, and I've got lots of new friends in Scotland, which is great. So, it's like Scotland's like starting again, in a way, because, you know, I went there with no contacts whatsoever, and now I've got lots of new contacts. It's great.

Yeah, and and the, um, the market and the conveyance process, all a little bit different in Scot?

Bang on about that, Jack, don't they? Oh, it's different. It's this, it's that. Some banks get a bit antsy about it. Yeah. Uh, some banks don't. What I would say is, actually, the truth is, you don't, they don't agree to sell it. They don't exchange in England. We exchange contracts, don't we? In there, they exchange missives or something. It's no damn different, really. Yeah. Yeah. It's given me a little bit of a new lease of life because it's taken me 38 years to do a deal in Scotland. Now we've done two. Both came from receivers. We do a lot with receivers at the moment. Part-finished.

Because for anyone who doesn't know what a receiver is, you want to just explain?

Yeah, sure. Sorry. So, receiver or administrator. Could be an administration or receivership. These accountants that deal with bankruptcy, basically. So, they are, they are an integral part of an accountancy firm where someone has gone bankrupt, and the banks would go to the receiver and say, "Right, this needs to be sold in a legal and proper way to get as much money back for the people owed the money." Normally, which is normally a bank. Sometimes we deal direct with a bank, but most of the time it's through a receiver or an administrator. Same thing, really.

Yeah. So, you got these, these two deals. So, these two deals, both part-finished, 126 houses and flats, the other 12, 12 flats, which we're just completing now and selling.

Fantastic. So, over the four, 4 and a half thousand property deals that you've done, there must have been a few where you've got potentially grey hairs over them.

Oh, grey hairs. I get grey hairs over every, every hair. No, no, I haven't, which is surprising. I should have, Jack. You're right. So, yeah, some pretty nightmarish deals across, across all of those, of course. You, you, you, you ask a genuine property developer investor if they've never lost any money, if they've never made a mistake, and if they say no, I suggest they're liars. Because we all, whatever we buy, and whatever anyone who's listening today, whatever they buy, it ought to have a problem. Because if it hasn't got a problem, it's probably not cheap enough.

So, my three golden rules are this. If you can't ask yourself these three questions when you're looking to purchase, one, can I sell it on to someone else without doing anything to it whatsoever? Because I should be, I should be buying it at well below market value. And hear them up the, well, you hear them below market value all the time, but I mean seriously below market value. I don't mean it's on Rightmove and you know, it's five grand off it, you know. So, you should be able to sell it on to someone else, one of your contacts that you, you know, it's all about contacts, this business. So, number one, can I sell it without doing anything? The answer should be yes. Two, can I refurbish it and sell it and make a good profit? Should be yes. Three, can I refurbish it, refinance it, and get the majority of my cash out to go again? Your dealing money to go again.

Now, the way the interest rates are at the moment, it's impossible just to be to get all your money out unless it's a fabulous deal. So, you've got to be realistic. There's no point me saying, "Oh, you've got to get all your money out and you can be a millionaire in a year." It's just not true, and it probably won't happen that quickly for anyone. However, if you get the majority of your cash back, you can go again. You constantly need to have properties that you are trading, which, in other words, you're selling. They might be refurbished on the market. Keep some, sell some. One very good friend of mine rang me up the other day and said, "John, I'm absolutely stuck. I cannot buy anything more because the money I've got, I've had to reinvest into the properties that I'm keeping because I've had to refinance them because, you know, the loans have run out. And of course, I'm refinancing a lot more money than I was before. And I haven't got any cash to buy deals with." And that's a problem for people, you know, moving forward. You always need to be available in terms of to your agents who supply you deals, and you always should always say the shop sign has always open on it. Even if it's not really open, you need to be telling them it's open because if the deal is good enough, really good, then golden rule number one is you can sell it straight away.

Yeah. Yeah. So, you look at every single deal and you say, if it doesn't take all three of those boxes, you won't touch it.

No. And that, and of course, sometimes we're on a much bigger scale than buying a house. So, we understand that. But the principles, the principles in property, Jack, as you know, are the same whether you're buying one house, 20 houses, or doing 150. Yeah. It's no different. The principles are the same.

Yeah. And that kind of brings me on a little bit to getting 4,000 properties, buying and selling 4,000 properties or more than. You've got to be, do you can't be doing one at a time there. So, talk to me about your, talk to me about your typical deal. Like, what, what would be, if I was to say, "John, I've got a deal for you right now."

Good. I'm hoping you have, Jack. What would you be?

That's why I'm here. I'm hoping you have. What would you be chomping at the bit for? What would be perfect for you?

Well, over the years, of course, strategies change. And when you have an angle that other people aren't doing very much of, and PD was a great example. So, permitted development when it came out, 2012, 13, no one knew about it. Commercial agents were too lazy to even read about it. So, we could make some good money buying these offices, converting them into residential, and selling them. Now, everyone knows all about it. And so, even, even the commercial agents have locked on to that eventually. It took a while. They priced commercial property ridiculously, exactly. Because now, and they don't, they don't understand the cost of it all or anything else. Agents, which does annoy me. But anyway, so, so the PD thing is, is for us, is finished. It was finished five years ago. So, we move on. So, now we're looking at developments where people have, like we said earlier, gone bankrupt and so on. Part-finished sites. We've got eight sites on the go in the UK at the moment, of which five or six are receiver ships where people have gone bankrupt. Because we can't afford at the moment, unless you're in London or some of the very expensive areas, you cannot afford to build the houses and sell them because the cost of build has gone up so much over the last three years. It's a perfect storm. The build costs have gone up 30%, interest rates have doubled, and property prices, okay, in some areas haven't gone down, in other areas have gone down 10%. So, that's the perfect storm. If you can survive that storm, any, you can survive any market, I promise you. It's very, very tough at the moment.

Yeah. So, you look for a minimum number of units or you look for minimum GDV?

Or no. I'm one of the rare, I think fairly rare, developers, investors who have got the ability. I'm not saying I want to always do a very large deal because very large deals take a long time. Take the Wine Rack and Ipswich. We bought 150 flats. We developed in a tower block. We bought it actually off the receivers again. That was five years ago. It was like a shell. That's called The Wine Rack because from a distance, it looks like literally a wine rack, if you get my meaning. Little boxes, concrete boxes. Yeah. And it, you know, £26.5 million later, it's been developed. Homes England lent us 20 odd million to do it. Took us four years. You know, that is hard work. So, although I've got the ability to do that, I get more fun, to be honest with you, out of buying, buying. I bought recently, bought six flats in Birmingham. Chopped off the back garden, sold the back garden to someone else for £50,000, and sold the flats for what I paid for them. All, all within about two weeks. I had more fun doing that than I have doing the tower block. So, I'm one of the, not that rare, a developer who, just because I can do big deals, I also do very small deals, and I'm very happy to do small deals, whereas most developers at a certain level won't look at anything. "Oh, it's not worth my while looking at this." But anything small. But I'm a trader. I'm a property trader that develops property as well. That's how I describe myself. And my first love is buying and selling. Yeah, buying and selling. That's my first love. The quick in-and-out stuff. Love it.

Yeah. Yeah. I, I've grown to enjoy. I know you're talking about the three, um, golden rules of, can you sell it in its current condition? Can you sell it if you renovate it? I don't know about you, on the smaller scale stuff, I.E. individual houses, I found over the past two years, we've got to a point where, especially over COVID, you could sell stuff. Yeah. It would, you would lose money or you'd make less profit by going through the renovation than just selling it as is. We have another golden rule, which is, if we get a third of the profit up front, then you just get rid of it. Then we get rid. It used to be 50%, but now it's a third. That's how the market's changed because there's more competition. If we, a third. The reason, the reason sometimes I'm critical of myself for doing that is if I find it hard to find another deal. So, you know, you can, you can sell, you can buy and sell a property within, well, you can back to back it, which we'll talk about later, no doubt, not even pay for it, but that's tricky, but it's possible. But actually, sometimes I've regretted selling it so quickly because although it's very clever and all the rest of it, I have made, if I kept it, I'd have done much, much better. So, sometimes I pulled the trigger a bit too quickly on occasions, if I've been critical of myself.

You're very, you've got a lot of experience doing lots of different things. Yes. What's, why, why do you not just specialize in one thing?

Because I don't tend to specialize in one thing because strategies change. And you've got to remember, I'm old. So, I've done, I've done most, I've done most things in property. So, you know, I love commercial property. In fact, I'm talking tonight about commercial property and back next week doing a seminar on commercial property. So, I love commercial property as much as I do residential. And there's great opportunities in commercial property where the market's been really in recession for five years, at least in my view. But that's, that's probably another story. So, yes, I, there's not much I haven't done. It turns out I've converted 16 different types of buildings in my career, from piggeries to churches. In fact, I'm buying a church for a pound.

All right. Whereabouts in Essex? Do you want to buy it? I'll give you two.

Well, double my money. Exactly. You haven't even seen it. You're flash, aren't you? So, so, yeah, I mean, yeah, it's just because you can buy something for a pound doesn't always mean you should, by the way.

No. I, I tell you what, there've been, I've had a few conversations with organizations that are responsible for disposing of church buildings in particular. Challenging stuff presented to me where I thought, "You would have to pay me quite a substantial amount of money to take that on."

It's funny, Jack. So, I had a meeting with Channel 4 about my show, Property Graduate, where I give, I give up to a million pounds worth of funding to the winner, and it's on Sky 186 and the rest of it. And they quite liked that. And bits and bobs, we're chatting away. We had, we had three meetings. And in the end, they said, "What else are you doing?" I said, "Well, I'm buying a church for a pound." All over me like a rash. Yeah. Bet. Which is says it all, really. Because actually, all they want is sensationalism, don't they? They don't want sort of, you know, detail, if you like, do they? And, just, I find that frustrating. But, yeah. So, and then we've got The Property Elevator show, which of course I do with all my friends. Well, they're my friends now, I suppose. Most of them. Then, you know, we are competitive on the show, to say the least. And we've done seven series. And the latest series is coming out in June. I can't believe I haven't fallen out with Ranan in seven series. I've come bloody close, I tell you.

I tell you, I need to get Ranan on the podcast. I've always been interested with what he does. And he's very, what does he do? He doesn't commercial, right? Wow. He doesn't come out the M25. He sells courses, doesn't he? Yeah. When he tests, he doesn't come out there in 25. He gets a nosebleed. So, we'll have to go to. In fact, I'm with him on Friday because we're doing a YouTube show together on like a property question time thing. So, I'm actually with him on Friday. I'm hoping he's going to buy lunch, but I doubt it. I doubt it. I expect I'll be buying it again. That kind of guy. Well, I didn't say that.

Okay. So, the, so, the 4,000 properties though, that you've done, I know as we've spoken about, there's not ones, there's, there's plenty of ones that don't go to plan. Is there any that come to mind or any of your flagship stories of how it goes really bad?

Well, surely there's got to be one. Of course, there are. Of course, there are. There are a lot. I don't like to be reminded of them, to be honest with you. But I tell you what, if any of your funding partners are watching, just tune out now. Tune out now. So, what I would say is this, you learn far more when things go wrong than when things go right. And actually, with my seminars, I do, and I don't many because I'm very busy. One of the biggest attributes and one of the biggest things that I try and get across to people is the ability to get out of a difficult situation. And I do a little bit of mentorship, not a lot. But the one people who come to me, some of them have got problems, and it's how I help them get out of those problems, which is more important, actually, than making money. Yeah. Because what you don't want to do, my, when I look at a deal, the first thing I look at, I'm putting in 40% of the deal of my own money. So, first of all, I'm, first of all, I'm relieved when the bank get their money back. Then I'm relieved when I get my money back. Then I'm ecstatic when I make a profit. So, they're the three things. So, if I, long as I get my money back, and I was not saying that I, I just take massive risks. I don't. We do risk everything as much as we can before we buy it. However, things will go wrong, and it's how you get out of those problems that that's the difference between a developer that's survived three property recessions in the last 40 odd years and one that hasn't.

So, it's pull away from the podcast just really quickly. If you are serious about getting into property and you want to get started investing in property, then we've got a bunch of free tools, resources, calculators, video courses, you name it, we've created it for you, completely for free. You can access it through the link in the description of this video or this podcast. So, that is the difference. And a lot of people come into the business, a lot of people make a lot of money very, very quickly when the market is really good, and then they lose the whole lot, and their house, and their respect, and their dignity within 18 months when the market crashes. And the market does crash. And every 18 years, 15 to 18 years, things go wrong. It happens. It's a cycle. And you know, where are we in that cycle now? We had a soft landing, if you like, in my view. But actually, we like it when it's tough because it's harder for people to borrow money, and it's hard, and you need more ability, and you need more experience. And they are the things that hopefully we have over some other people. Yeah. So, we like it when it's tougher. We like it when there's problems. We don't buy anything without problems. And really, no one should buy anything without problems because the problems give you the discount. But the key is this, it needs to be a problem you can solve. Needs to be a problem. If you can't solve that problem, don't buy it. So, if you, for instance, if you buy a house, and next door, there's a hoarder who's got old cars in the front garden on bricks and God knows what else, that is a problem you can't solve. So, don't buy the house.

What's then the biggest lesson that you've learned from a project that hasn't gone to plan?

That's a fantastic question, Jack. You're good at this. You're good at this. I just need, I'm just asking what I need to know. My goodness. What, what's the biggest lesson I've learned? That's really, really tough because I've learned so many lessons. I've learned lessons this week. You know, you never stop learning. And if anyone thinks they know it all, guess what? They don't. So, I would say the biggest lesson I've learned over the years, and it still doesn't always work, is to de-risk as much as possible. Check everything. So, when you're buying a site, especially if it's part-finished, or someone's made a mistake, or it's an auction, especially, and we do, we buy quite a lot of auction. Just because he's got planning permission doesn't mean you can build it. For instance, they could have got planning permission over six foot of land that they don't own. Because to get planning permission, you don't need to own the land. I can go and put a planning application in on Buckingham Palace tomorrow. I'm never going to buy the damn thing, am I? But I could, I could put a planning application. Long as I let the owners know. So, very important that whatever you buy, especially if you need planning permission, or you're getting, or it's got planning permission, you might think that's already got planning, it's easy. No, it's not. For instance, have you got the visual displays? When you drive out, what about the hedges? The other side, do you own the hedges? Because if the hedges need to be cut back or taken away, you don't own those hedges. Guess what? You haven't got the visibility spell, the visibility. So, you really need to check everything. Ground, ground conditions are super important. If there's a crack in it, you know, why is there a crack? You know, obvious things, really. But also go further than just the obvious things because there is could be a very good reason why that property is for sale. You need to find out why it's for sale, and you need to know that whatever is wrong with it, you can put it right.

It's interesting you say that. I think there's a lot of people, especially auctions, and especially over COVID, when everybody had all their, basically a bunch of government money, too much time, and too much money on their hand. Dangerous, dangerous combination. I'm going to go to an auction and buy a house. Yeah. Online as well. I think it's trickier, personally. I heard a story of somebody who, sold a property at auction, intentionally title split the front garden. Sold the house at auction. Put somebody came in, bought it, thought they got a brilliant deal. Then they get a letter through the post a couple of months later saying, "You're trespassing on my property to get to yours. I actually own this piece of land. You can buy it off me for X, however many thousands." People weren't thinking when they went to buy that. Let me check the title deed and make sure that I definitely own the front garden. Because who thinks that? Well, but you need to. And you need to check these things. And it's surprising how many things are out there that can catch you out.

I totally agree. And what really worries me is people say, "I didn't bother reading the legal pack," or "I didn't get a lawyer slash solicitor to look at it because it was £500." Well, you know, property is a big ticket item. You know, you're investing thousands of pounds, some of which is your money, your own money. And it's so important that, you know, you are going to spend a few hundred or maybe a few thousand investigating deals without buying them. But that's the game you're in. You know, we probably waste, I don't think what we was in a year, probably £100,000. I know we're on a bigger scale, probably, but we probably waste £100,000 on abortive listing fees, abortive surveys, agreeing deals that then we investigate further and find there's a problem. We, we probably waste £100,000 valuation fees. Just goes on and on.

They depress. You're depressing me now, Jack. But if you don't, myself, but if you don't spend that kind of money, and yeah, you can make a big mistake. And you're not willing to lose it, then you can't get the up. Someone said to me the other day, "The reason that I pay you to help me, John, right, is not to make money, is to stop me losing money." And you're my insurance policy. I sort of thought about that. I thought, "Actually, yeah, actually, that's as bad as making money. You know, it's as important as making money is not to lose it."

That's exactly my thought process. When I first started in property, I did some, some training. And you started at 12, didn't you? Were you 14? Not far off that. I was. You only look about 14 now. But when I first started, I invested a few thousand in some education. And people saying, "Why would you spend that?" And I'm thinking, "Well, if I spend that, it de-risks me losing."

Of course, of course it does. As long as it's good education. I'm passionate, passionate about this education thing because you see some good educators, and you, my God, I hear some horror stories. Absolute horror stories. I've experienced. And, you know, and it's just, it should be regulated by the government, in my view. It's unregulated. I'm a, I was one of the founder members of PISA, which is the property. What does it stand for? It's your thing. It's my thing. I should know. Uh, I was one of the founder members, and it's self-regulation for property, uh, educators. And it's very important that they're a member of PISA, in my view. And if they can't become a member of PISA, yeah, they shouldn't, you shouldn't go to them, basically. Uh, but, but I'm passionate about it. And I hear so many stories, it's dreadful, to be honest with you. Yeah, people losing money. You know, why would a property educator want your money? Because if there are any at all, they won't. They shouldn't need your money to do deals. I get people say, "Well, can I invest? Can I invest with you in one of your deals?" No, I don't need your money. Thank you very much. And if I did, you need your money, I wouldn't ask you because I wouldn't want the pressure, to be honest with it, all going wrong. Uh, you know, it's just not right. So, these people are going on courses and then said, then the educator saying, "Well, perhaps you could always invest in this deal." It's not right, is it? Can't be right. Can't be right, Jack.

No. And, yeah, it's, it's a crazy industry. And I think it's good that you've got something or you've founded something that, yeah, that creates that level of regulation. It's definitely needed for so many people I know. So many people that have lost money. It's just not right. It's fraud, at the end of the day, really. Is fraud.

Yeah. So, I mean, if we were to reel it back and we were to start from the beginning, yes, early years, what did it look like for you? What was your first experience in property?

Early years, what I was very, very fortunate because my father was a greengrocer. And when he was 60 years old, and I was 12, 14, he decided he wanted to be an estate agent in the same town. Now, that's a bit tricky. On the Friday, you're a greengrocer with your own shop. Shift on the Monday, you're valuing houses. Didn't go down very well, to be fair, on the whole. And he ran it as a, not as a hobby, but he was a one, what I call a man band in those days, one man and a sector, if you like. Um, and then, but I used to go and help him. In those days, we held, we used to hold a tape. You don't know what a tape is. Measuring tape. In those days, Jack. I got this like laser thing. Yes. Well, I was the first one of the first estate agents to have a laser. Okay. They advertised up. That's fantastic. And I, there's a big bulky thing in those. Anyway. So, but it used to have, hold the tape. So, I used to go and hold the tape for him, holiday, you know, putting properties on the market and all that. Lettings. We did insurance. Can you believe they let us do insurance in those days? My God. Car insurance. My God. I'm giving someone a cover note. You don't know what you're doing. It's scary. Wouldn't let you now, would they? Anyway. So, I got a really good grounding. And not only that, we weren't making any money, which is even a better grounding. Because when you're not making any money, again, you learn a lot more about yourself from lessons. So, what happened was, when I was 17, I left school to because I could then start work and I could drive, which is the most important thing. I learned to drive very quickly. And my father had been in, he'd been in hospital. The secretary, bless her heart, Mrs. Leader, had been running the business on her own. So, you can imagine, you know, she was a secretary, not an estate agent. Yeah. So, there wasn't much business to come back to. He'd been ill for probably eight weeks, 12 weeks. And I soon realized within a month, I realized this estate agency is all right, but you only buy and selling. You know, there's far more money in that. And he went back in the hospital after four months, and I was running the damn show. 17 years old. Four months, I was running it. What a disaster. I stammered badly until I was about 19. So, I didn't, I didn't want to answer the phone, and I certainly didn't want to make a phone call, which didn't help. And Mrs. Leader, bless her heart, gave me spelling lessons every morning because she said I should be able to spell better than I did. So, you can imagine what it was like. She was a bombastic, sort of, powerful woman, you know, it's scary. Anyway, but we muddled through. And I mean, muddled through. And then, and then he, then he, he came back and he's a bit better. And and I, we had one or two clients who were probably developers. And there was a couple of them in partnership. And they'd been, in those days, you were just about allowed to get mortgages. Just started on converted flats. Till then, they were unmortable. I know you can't believe that. You're looking at me like a mad Jack, but it's true, I promise you. So, you couldn't get a mortgage on a converted flat before 1980, probably. Wow. Unless it was London. Okay. You could on a purpose-built flat. So, in the early 1980s, you could start getting mortgages on converted flats, probably 50% loan to value only, though. And these developers had, and there was lots and lots of houses that were converted into flats in, I was in Felixstowe, Suffolk, and lots of seaside resorts and places where they'd been guest houses over the years, been converted into flats. And they had the rump of a deal. So, they had a little cottage and a flat that they wanted just to get rid of. And they both had what, in those days, was sitting tenants. So, you couldn't get the tenants out. So, you paid 50% of the open market value. So, I bought them on my 18th birthday. I managed to buy both of them. Of them. I sold one to the tenant who was living there because they had a result because I paid 50% for it of the value, open market value. They paid 80% of it. Of course, they could work out they could sell it straight on for more money because they were, they could make it vacant. So, I did that. I got the other one for very little, and then I moved on. Did it again and again. And how I funded that was this. My father wouldn't lend me any money because he said you didn't want me to lose it, and he's very cautious. My mother, on the other hand, wanted a new kitchen, and my father was too tight to buy the kitchen. Okay, right. So, my mother had a little bit of money, but she didn't want to spend her own money. I'll leave you with that thought because I don't want to sound sexist, but that happens today, a little bit as well, sometimes. So, so she said, "Well, I'll lend you a bit of money." "How much is it?" And, and the bank manager, who of course, in those days, you knew the bank manager. You know, you'd see the bank manager walking up and down the street. You know, he knew all the businesses and everything. And he lent me a bit of money, and I managed to save a little bit, and I managed to buy this property. And we bought it. Sold one very quickly. Paid my mother back with her profit, and she said, "Great. I can now buy. I can now order my new kitchen. Thank you very much, John." And what's the next deal we're doing? What's the next deal?

So, that was deal number one for you.

That was deal number one. Because the thing is, whether it's family, and if you, if you borrow money or family, I always say to people, look, family is the best way to borrow money if you can. Not everyone can, I understand that. But if you can, treat them with respect and treat them as if it's anyone else. Because if you treat them properly, and you offer them proper interest rate or share the profit, they're likely to come again. And if they've got a family, brothers, sisters, who go, "Oh, a bit unfair. You're lending the money. You haven't lent it to me." "Oh, yeah, but I'm on a share of the profit." Yeah. That way it keeps everyone happy. Yeah. Because they know the inheritance is safe, then they're going to get a bit more money. So, you don't want family squabbles on a Sunday lunchtime, do you? With people don't have Sunday lunch anymore, do they? They used to. Very traditional. Happily married man. So, that's what we, that's what I did. And of course, next deal comes along. I'll put a bit of money into that. Fine. Thank you very much, Mother. And we did it like that. And then, and then so I started building up and buying property in bits and bobs while I had the estate agency. I then, when I was 19, I bought this agency off my father because he was ill. He wanted to sell it. Ah, it was a leasehold business. Very, was doing very badly. Leasehold business wasn't really worth anything. He had someone who wanted to buy it, but then they wanted to keep me on as like a manager type person, and they pulled out. And I said, "Look, I'm a bit of a bother myself." So, I did a deal, bought it. He retired, and I changed the name. We did much, much better under a new name and a bit of freshness and a bit of bought some new ideas in. And then it wasn't mega, by any means, but I sold it when I was 24. When I met Mr. Boyce. Now, Mr. Boyce was a gentleman farmer, but also he just started at the time, Holiday Property Bond. Wealthy individual. That Holiday Property Bond. Now, I think it's got 500 million invested into it. Wow. And I now still do, I still do deals with his son now, which is nice, 40, 38, 35 years later. So, that's, that's nice. And we do deals together, not that many deals together. So, he was my first backer, if you like. And he had, he showed great confidence in me. And within a few years, we had borrowings of £13 million. One of the better deals we did, we bought in 1986. We bought a tower block and Ipswich. We refurbished the flats, 73 of them. We sold it, sold them all on. We made £985,000 after interest on that deal. 1986. Wow. That's a big deal for 1986 as well. Exactly. I was 25 years old. Wow. 26. I thought I'd arrived. I thought I'd bought a big country house with 80 acres. I'd arrived.

You've done it. Got the Porsche. Got the.

I've got the Porsche. I've got the Range Rover. I've got Rachel. I've arrived.

Four years later, five years later, first property recession. Sold the country house with 80 acres.

Mhm. Bought where I am now with 25 acres. So, still not small. No. But I anticipated. I could see what was happening. I got out when I could. And I bought something, you know, similar, but to be fair, a bit quite similar, but actually, it was actually cheaper. Because I, I did all the, the, the, called Whitewall. I did it all up and everything else and had the tennis court and the swimming pool and the garden and the coach house where we worked from and all the rest of it. And then sold it and then bought and did a similar thing where I am now. So, and I've been, I've lived where I am now 33 years or something crazy.

Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I don't fancy moving again if I can help it.

I have to say. No. I'm in the process of it right now. We're renovating our house. You know what they say, most second most stressful thing after divorce. But if you read my book, Move Right, you'll know how to do it properly, hopefully. I'm midway through it. So, unless I can actually finish the book. Good. Thank you. That's another £15.95 I've made. Thank you very much. But, yeah, it's, it isn't, it isn't fun, is it? No, it's not. It's stressful. But, but, but it's like putting a deal together, Jack, and you know this, because you're doing deals all the time. If you put the deal together correctly from the start, yeah, yeah, you're not under that, you know, if you say to someone, "I can exchange in two weeks," and you can't, you're just setting yourself up for failure. You're setting yourself for failure. You need to organize it properly, get control of the situation from day one, and it can still go wrong, but it's a much better chance of success if you control that situation and deal with it correctly from the start.

Get organized is the key.

Definitely. I, I think, we're, we're in the process of, and a lot of people, I don't know what you think of this, the whole Robert Kiyosaki, "Don't buy where you live." I kind of bought into that a few years ago. And now I'm like, I think that's kind of a load of rubbish. Because, well, he sold a lot of books on the back of it.

Well, yeah, he did. But and a lot of people believe in it. And I did for a while. But buying my own home, we are extending the property, we're fully renovating the property. We bought it crazily discounted. We've got an amazing deal on it. We can renovate that, add a huge amount of value to the property. Guess what? It's tax-free. Tax-free if we ever come to sell it. We then sit on it for, we have a house that we love. That we've made.

Look on the bright side, Jackie. If you divorce, you only lose half of it.

Exactly. That's the thing. So, but then we're, but then if we ever wanted to, just stay where we live, but refinance, you've got a huge property there. You're able to borrow more money against it. Absolutely. You know, makes sense to me. It doesn't make any sense at all. And I'm always suspicious. And I've been, a good friend of mine actually, she pulled me up on it. She's quite successful property developer and investor because she rents a house. And I said, on some event or something, I said, "Look, I'm always suspicious." So, I got asked a question about, "Should you own your own house? You know, if you're an investor developer?" And I said, "Look, I'm always suspicious of people who don't own their own house that are doing property deals." Because actually, your house is your home. It's very important. Okay. It may not be a deal because it's where you want to live, and it's where you want to live, and where your partner wants to live, more importantly. And probably, if it's a man, the lady's in charge. Yeah. Yeah. Probably isn't. That's the truth. So, of the home. So, at the end of the day, but, but, but it should be separate to your business. But at the same time, it is a long-term investment. And I cannot understand why anyone who's in property, who's relatively successful, doesn't own their own house.

Yeah. It's the start, isn't it? When people talk about, I don't understand it. When people talk about getting into property, they talk about, well, obviously the cash flow. Okay, it doesn't work for that. But it talks about generational wealth, creating value, having something to pass down to your kids. One of the best and easiest ways to do that is to, for sure, buy your own home.

Well, that's, I, I just, for the life of me, if you're into property, why would you own, why wouldn't you own your own home? Yeah. It doesn't make any sense at all. It genuinely doesn't to me. And people say, "Oh, it was easy to buy a house in your day." And all this rubbish. At the end of the day, and I get this a lot again, with with young, youngish people who want to buy their own home. And you'll probably tell me I'm wrong, Jack, because you are a young person. However, I would say anyone who's got a reasonable job, or a couple with reasonable jobs, can buy a home in this country. They may not be able to buy it where they want to live long term. And I have to, they have to accept that. I think. I mean, they might want to live near Mom and Dad, and Mom and Dad might have saved in 20 years ago to and moved up the scale to the where they live now. So, you've got to be realistic. But I do think that, you know, you can, within 45 minutes of where you want to live, you can probably buy a home which you can afford. And that's relative to everyone. I accept that. You know, it could be £100. You can buy a nice terrace house in Derby for £110,000 quid. So, thing. You can get 99% loan to value mortgages. So, anyone who's saying that they can't, I agree with you. I don't understand. I mean, there are some people that can't. I accept that. And that's, and I'm very sorry to hear that for those people. But most people, for the average person, if they want to commit to doing it, the problem is, I think a lot of people want to have everything. So, they want to have the holidays, have the takeaways, car. And I got into trouble with my, I got into trouble a couple of years ago because, it was, it was, I was interviewing this, this interviewer said, "What do you think is important? How can people survive with higher rents and higher mortgages?" And I said, "Buy less cost of coffee. Don't have the takeaways. Don't go on holiday. Save some money. And try and buy a home if you can." And not, it's not for everyone, of course. They cut that up, the tape up, and it all came out as, yeah, um, "Don't buy Costa Coffee and you'll be able to buy a house." Or something. Anyway, long story. My, my stepdaughter, who does my social media, said, "What did you?" Rang me up and said.

What did you say yesterday? I can't remember what I said yesterday or the day before, to be honest with you.

And I, she said, "Well, you've gone viral." I said, "What does that mean?" She said, "Well, you've got 550,000 hits on, um, TikTok." I said, "Right." "Oh, no," she's at 600,000 now, I've just looked. Anyway, got to 3.2 million hits on TikTok because of what I said. Well, yeah, 14,000 comments. One person was relatively nice to me, apparently. I don't read anything, I don't read anything at all on those things. But apparently, one person said, "Nice suit, but you're still a Tory bastard." So that was the best comment, apparently. So there you go.

Can I do? I mean, they comment on the suit, I guess. Yeah, I thought it's quite pleased about the suit, to be fair. Yeah, yeah, that's good to know people like it. People take a lot of things out of context. And but, but the reality is, like you say, I believe most, the most, most people, normal people with a job, the reason they can't buy a house is because they want something too expensive or they're not able to save the deposit. I would, I would say, Jack, it is tough out there at the moment. I mean, interest, interest rates, and also, but the interest rates have been far too low for too long. But, but it stagnates things. So my, my, my daughter is a great example, my stepdaughter's great example. She's got a mortgage at 1.5% for another two years. That's nice. She had five years, she's done three now. She wants to put a big extension on her house, but she's not going to do it because if she does, she's got to go back to the building side, you borrow more money, guess what? It'll be a 6% mortgage. So it stops things happening, you know? Because they would spend perhaps £150,000 on the house, they get the builders in, spend money on the builders and the everything else. Yet they won't, because they, so all these things have a knock-on effect with everyone, everyone.

Yeah, so what, what you spoke about doing that first deal where you bought it, yeah, 50% of the market value, you traded it on, yes, and that was the start of your love for trading properties, yes? And then you kind of jump to having someone back you for £13 million? Yes. Oh, what do you want to know in between? What happened in between? I think ideally, I'd quite like to know how you went from one to the other because, okay, yeah, personally, selfishly, I'd like to know how I can do something similar.

Well, what happened was, so, um, Mr. Boyce had a fair bit of money, uh, but of course, he wants to start small. And what I would say with any backer, any backer, and I've, I've only had two partners, three partners in my career. So I think the people who get all these private investors in, I, I, I admire them because I haven't got the, I'm got this. I don't worry about anything if I'm losing. If it's my own money, I'm losing. I don't care. If it's my partner's money and we're in it together and we've got companies and the companies are worth a bit of money and we lose a bit of money on a deal, I don't care because we're in it together. Yeah. What I would care about terribly, and I wouldn't, it would actually stop me sleeping at night, and I sleep well. You show me a property developer's got no conscience, basically. So we all sleep well. However, if I had investors that I was losing their money, that I would, I would find that very difficult and I would obviously try and pay them back somehow, but that would be too stressful for me. Yeah, I don't like it.

So what was the question? Remind me. How you go from trading a couple of houses to £13 million? Well, in the old days, and you don't tend to do this now, but in the old days, you'd have a company. You, you, you, you'd sell a couple of properties, you'd make the money, you keep the comp, keep the pro, the profit in the companies. You then can then buy, say you sell two, you go and buy four, you sell four, you buy eight, and you keep some, you sell some, and you build up and you build up equity in that company. Uh, and when Mr. Boyce came along, he said, "Look, yeah, if the deal's good enough, John, I can," whoops, I can find the money. However, I'm not going to, you know, when you have a backer or joint venture partner, don't overpromise and underdeliver. I always say the same thing. If they say they've got half a million pounds to invest in you, find a deal where they need £250,000. Because they could be showing off. Yeah. First of all, yeah. And even if they're not showing off, they're not going to want to put all that cash into your, your first deal. So find, find a deal that's half what they say they've got. Yeah. Get proof of concept. Proof of concept. I like that word. Proof of concept. Under promise and over deliver. So if you, for instance, think, and everyone does, we're all tempted to do the same thing. Oh, there's £150,000 in the deal. Turns out it's £125. And in the end, say, just say, yeah, very rarely did you make more money than what you can do if the market's rising. But on the whole, you'd rather make what you say you're going to make or a bit less. So if you think it's £150,000 profit in the deal, tell them it's £125. I'll tell you why. If you make £125 and you told them £150, they tell their friends, "Well, it was all right." And the wife or the or the husband, whichever way, "Oh, well, of course, it wasn't as good as they said it was, and we didn't make as much." If you tell them it's £125, tell them, you know, it's, and you make £125, spot on. We made exactly what we thought. It's the same deal. Yeah. So do not over-promise.

More women are too cautious, in my view, on the whole, with property deals and saying what there is to make. On the whole, there are exceptions, and men are too ballsy, and there is a balance between the two. They're both, we're all at fault. Men exaggerate on everything, and women are very cautious on the whole and don't exaggerate. But there's a balance with property because if you totally dub everything down, and my, my main business partner was in the counter, oh my God, he didn't like crossing the road, it scared him. So he dubbed everything down. But if you don't, that's why you need someone who doesn't do that and who's a bit more ballsy. Because if you dub everything down, you buy nothing. And if you're too ballsy, you go bankrupt. So you need that combination, or you need that to have that combination within yourself. And that's quite hard to do. Because people are naturally ballsy, and dealers, all they, the money people, and a bit cautious. And I've always been on the whole the ballsy one-ish and the one finding the deals and doing the deals. And my partner has always been the money man. Yeah. And I've never had a checkbook, never run accounts. I've been very spoiled. I just do the deals. I sign it. Can you pay it? It's paid. So I don't have a checkbook. I don't have any money like that at all. It's all done by my partner. Now, that's great when you're starting out because if you have a, if you have a joint venture partner, you're the one out there doing the deals, like you, Jack. You're out there doing the deals, no doubt. If you have a, a financial partner, they have a lot more confidence if you say two things to them. One, I don't want any money. Take no money out of this deal until we make a profit. If someone says to me, and we do the odd joint venture, not many, "Oh, well, I need £22,000 a month to live off." Thank you, next. See, I'm not interested. No one is. Yeah. And it, and, and if you start off saying that, you'll get nowhere. Very, very important. And also, I always say, if you want to, if you want to put the deal in your company because you've got money in that company, they've got money in that company, that's fine as long as I've got a legal agreement with you that says I get half the profit or whatever you've agreed after tax, sorry, after interest and everything, then that's fine. You've got to give that back.

Confidence in you, and also the process, so important. I've been on both sides of it. And, and I said, I don't really do many joint ventures. I, the odd one, we've done a deal in Cardiff, which has been quite good, which is a joint venture. But to be honest with you, even there, we've ended up sort of stepping in and making sure it's sorted, everything's okay. I've used my team. I've got, you know, I've got a sales director and I've got a full-time building surveyor. And we've totally involved in it. And then you think, to be honest with you, I've done them, you know. Uh, and I don't mean that disrespectfully to the people we've done it with, but really, yeah, we, we've put in the top slice. And actually, but to be fair to them, they found the deal. They found the deal. So, you know, you've got to give him some credit for that. Yeah. Yeah.

So what does, uh, you said you got a, a full-time survey, you've got salesperson. What does a, what does your team look like right now? And what does a, It's a massive team, Jack. I've got, I haven't, I'm lying. So the team is very well, the team is a little bit bigger than it ever was because it used to be just, it's really just me. It's not, it's not true, actually, because that, that's being disrespectful to everyone else. So I've got my stepdaughter, who tells me constantly that I'm, um, I'm too generous, uh, we sell things too cheap, and, uh, I'm not tough enough on builders, which is interesting. So that's great. So I'm been told constantly that, you know, I need to sharpen up and improve. Yeah, which is good. And some of the time, she's right. Um, I've got a building surveyor, who is full-time, who you definitely need a building surveyor because on every job, you need to do a schedule of works and you need something to oversee that project. And I don't care if it's two flats or 150 flats, you need a building surveyor to oversee that project, but protect you from the, from the builder, contractor. He's your link to the contractor. Uh, hopefully, if there's any, he sees it before you do. If I have to step in there's a problem. Yeah. So I don't step in unless there's a problem. And if I step in there's a problem and we have to deal with it. And then, uh, we've got Alfie Croft, who won the, uh, Propy Graduate a couple of years ago. He's doing a deal with me. U, we're spending the million pounds that, uh, the prizes. Um, and the idea of that is that we set a company up, old-fashioned idea, I know this, Jack. You set a company up, yeah, and you do a deal, you leave the money in the company, then you do another deal, and then another deal, and another deal. Long-term part, long-term partnership. So that's the idea of Propy Graduate. Tristan, who won it the second year, we're hoping to buy some flats in Norwich that I actually converted in 1998. They got sold off. Uh, and for us, unfortunately, the guy's gone bankrupt. And now we've got the possibility to buy them all back. And the cheeky sod said to me, "Well, you could have done them a bit better in the first place." Which is a bit rude, but anyway. Tristan and I are trying to do that deal together. Yeah. So that's great. Um, yeah, so, and Victoria, that won in 2023, we're busy trying to find something for her. So it's a great opportunity for people.

So, so a lot of what you do then is constructing the deals. You've got your, uh, your backer who works you a bit on the, I don't really have really a backer. So these days, I, I, these days I don't really have a backer as such at all. So I do my own, a lot of the stuff is our own money and our own deals. I, I do work with a guy who, um, had a hedge fund, who, funny enough, I rented his, uh, I rented a stone mass to his father many, many years ago. And he, and he always said to me, "My, my, my son is going to be a multi-millionaire, John." I went, "Yeah, of course he is." Guess what? He is. Yeah. So I, I do some deals with him. He said to me a few years ago, when my main business partner, who's retired now, said, and I, I said, "You know," he said, "What are you doing, John?" I said, "Well, to be honest with you, my business partner's retiring. We're going to split the companies up and, uh, so we own them individually. You, so he owns one company, I own the other company. So we're not going to pay too much tax that way." And, uh, I'm not sure, really. I'm doing a bit of education now. It's good fun. He said, "Well," he said, "Um, would you like to do some, some more deals?" I said, "Yeah, I'm happy to." So he backs me on some deals, but not all deals. But he backs me on some. Uh, and, and we use our own money on the other deals.

So you're able to, so you work with joint venture partners who bring in deals? You find your own deals as well? You've got your, It's misleading to say we, we work with lots of people who bring deals to us because we don't. The people have won the, the show. Yeah, we do on that show. We do. And with Property Elevator, we do across as well. Yeah. So we do with if there shows, we do. If they, if they're not in the show, I, I tend not to, to be honest with you. Yeah. But you, but you work with people to do deals, sure, all the time. And it's all about networking. Yeah. I'm hoping you're going to find me some deals. Oh, yeah. I'm sure I will. And guess what? We pay 2% finder's fee. And people say to me, "Well, that's interesting. You should say that because we'll pay more for the deal if it's good enough." One person that came on, on my seminar this year, well, over, over 12 months period, he's going to earn £70,000 off us. Yeah, because he found us a deal. And that's the fee. Yeah. Fantastic. Yeah. But, and he, he came on a, he was, he came on a seminar.

And you're able to keep your hands off from the day-to-day development side because your building surveyor handles most of that? My God, you wouldn't want me handling it all. So, you know, you wouldn't want me doing it, Jack, to be honest with you. I step in when there's a problem. Yeah. But, you know, I'm spoiled in many ways because I don't deal with the finance side much. I do a bit more with the finance and banks now. I have to. Every, we're all in the same boat, to a less or greater. We're all in the same boat. The only difference is maybe there's extra on the end sometimes. And there's much bigger developers than me with two or three kns on the end. Yeah. So we're all in the same boat. And, and, and properties are a very simple business. You know, it's made complicated by these educators who try and make it complicated. So, and, and so people have no confidence in what they do. The biggest thing I find is that people will hang on to a deal because they feel they'll never find another one. Yeah. And that's just not true. That's just not. I have you find that as well, Jack? But I really find that. And I say, "Let it go. Bang it in the bin. It's not good enough. Move on."

Yeah, I had that literally. We had a, um, a seller pull out of a, a deal that we were buying. We've been trying to buy it for a couple of months, and they've just pulled out on Monday. Yeah. Um, and just had to come to the realization of like, there's more deals to be had. And it's fine. You can't just, you can't, no, you can't worry about it. Please, anyone listening, don't get, if, don't get so obsessed with one deal that when it falls through, your heart sinks, you think, "I'll never find another deal like this again." You will. I promise you. You will find another deal. If you're good enough to find that deal, you can find another one. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like you say, um, at the beginning, keep, keep the, keep the door open. Kind of always say, always open, always deals coming. What annoys me? I've got agents I've dealt with 30. "Are you buying at the moment, John?" I said, "For Christ's sake, you know, stop bloody asking stupid questions. I'm always buying, whatever the market's like, I'm buying." Yeah. On paper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In reality, might be slightly different. But it means that if you get three on the table, one falls out of bed, you still got the other two, rather than just having the one, putting all your eggs in that basket, hoping it's going to come off. And the problem is, of course, that three, three deals come up at once, and they all, and then you can't do all three. We've all been in that situation. But that's where the three golden rules. Because you can, exactly, Jack. You can sell the deal on. And I, what I do, I, I look at, even now, what are my top five potential deals? My top five, which ones do I want to buy most of all? And that top five can change when you get more information on another one or whatever. But I have, I have a, might be top 10, to be fair. But if you work on top five. So what's the worst? What's the best? And then you can analyze. And the one thing is so important is how long will those deals take to do? Because if you got a deal that takes two years to do and you're making 35%, you think, Christ, that's brilliant. I'm making 35% on that deal. No, you're not. You're really only making 17.5% if my math is right. Yeah. A year. Whereas if you've got a deal you can do in a year and it's 20% and you're guaranteed you can do it, do it. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's velocity of deals, not just, not just like, even the quality. Cash flow. Keep the money moving.

You've got an, you've got a similar mindset to somebody that, um, coached me quite a bit when I first started. Um, he's got a good, good size, really healthy size portfolio. Um, and he always talked about, he was very, he's very straightforward with it. None of the site rent-to-rent, none of this anything confusing. He had buy-to-let portfolio, some HMOs, and would do some developments as well. And it was just constantly the, what he talked about was, "Keep the cow alive." He talked about having a cash cow. So for anyone, just flip houses, trade houses, do whatever you got to do. Commission, commission's great. I mean, we, I call it walkout. I call it walkabout, Jack. Yeah. So we all need a bit of walkout. Yeah. Yeah. You, so you get this big pot of cash. And he was saying, "You buy a deal, you sink some money into it. Let's say you, you, you manage to save up a quarter of a million pounds. You buy a deal, you refinance it, you pull out £200,000. You then go and trade a property to make the other £50, and you go again." It's about keeping the, the cash cow alive, I guess. Keeping the balls in the air. Absolutely right. I think that's so important. Yeah.

For somebody who is wanting to, I, I know you said you talk about, you, you work with a lot of sophisticated people who are already quite successful in property and almost help them to get from a certain level to up. What's your average person that you work with? Well, I would say the average person I work with is someone who's already in property, uh, perhaps doing HMOs, rent-to-rent, moving on. Perhaps they got HMOs and want to move on to slightly more sophisticated property. That's one group. How do you define sophisticated? Uh, I would say, uh, the next step up would be to convert a house into six flats, for instance, or three or six flats. And then I've got the next group that already doing that and want to move on to bigger deals. I've got others that are doing residential very successfully, want to do commercial, which I've done a lot of. Uh, and then I've got some who are selling a business for a few million pounds and want to get into property, want to make sure they do it the right way. And I've got others, a few, who have, we had one at my last seminar, got over 100 properties already inheriting it from his family and wants to know what he's doing, wants to make sure he knows what he's doing. So helping him. So all sorts. I got a couple of footballers I help. Um, one's on about £100 grand a year, £100 grand a week, I should say. And my advice to him is, keep scoring the goals, keep turning up at 10:00 in the morning, don't get injured. And he buys, he can buy property every month. Yeah. It's crazy, isn't it? Crazy, crazy, crazy. It's a, yeah, that is a crazy world. But it doesn't last long in football. No. And you've got to be investing it into something more long-term, for sure. I, I, I've got a couple of friends who are, who were in football, and they hadn't planned for retirement. And so you can get yourself really stuck. Yeah. They can. Yeah. Yeah. They need to plan.

So is it, sounds to me like you buy and sell. That's your, that's you say you're a trader. I love trading. I mean, we, of course, we do most of the, at the moment, we're just finishing a lot of projects that other people have started. And the reason we're doing that is because build costs are so high. But if someone's halfway through a project or three, three quarters away a project and goes bankrupt, we're not paying the full money for the build costs. We're paying perhaps 50p in the pound for it. So that's the only way we can really make money at the moment is by buying part-finished stock. If, if on, on that type of new build situation. Yeah. Yeah. But then you sell everything. Yeah. So you don't actually, do you have a buy-to-let portfolio? Have, yeah, I, we don't call it buy-to-let, to be fair, but you've got a portfolio of, you rent out? Yeah. Absolutely. All across the UK. Did you ever get into the single-family home, HMOs, anything like that? You just always, Well, we did bedsits in the old days, of course. They were called bedsits. Uh, now they're called, uh, professional HMO or something, aren't they? But the same, same damn thing. And by the way, in those days, we had meters. We had for the, for the electric, we had meters. 5p you put in, then 10p, then 50p. Yeah. Uh, and actually, people could learn from that because the ones who given away free electricity, free gas, free water, free everything, have been hit very hard in the last two years. Whereas in the old days, it was always a meter. Yeah. And it's just, I said, use, absolutely.

So I'm just trying to get an idea because, um, there's a lot of people who watch my content who are, um, getting started in property. People who maybe are wanting to do the buy-to-let thing. They're wanting to do the, eventually build up quite a big, sizable portfolio. There are people who are in that space. Yes. Obviously, you started with those flats, those 50% discount flats you bought and sold. Yes. And it sounds to me like you bought and sold for a while before you started holding anything long-term. Um, I think to hold things long-term at the moment is very difficult. Because HMO is a bit different because you've got, you've got some. And I think HMO is a great way to start because it gives you that income, hopefully that net income that gives you a bit of a cushion and everything else. But if you're, if you're buying, if you're buying individual houses to refurbish and then refinance, three golden rules, and get all your money, enough money out of them now, or have to, or you have to put so much cash into them. So in the old, you know, a few years ago, a buy-to-let, you might be able to, might only have to put 20, 20, 20% in. Now, to make those buy-to-lets work in most places, you have to put 50% in. Yeah. Of your cash. Because of the interest, because of the interest. So at the moment, they're not very fashionable. Now, it may be when it's not fashionable, it's time to do it. Yeah. If you've got the money. But if you haven't got that money, it's very, very difficult. And getting all your money out, like I said, is probably unrealistic. But what you can do, if you buy, um, say three flats, refurbish them, you can probably sell two, refinance the last one, keep it, and get all your cash out that way. So you might need to have do two or three to get one out to keep one, rather than expect to get all your cash out on one. Yeah. You might get all your cash out on two if you do two at once. In, you know, house, house into two flats. And of course, the government are bringing out this new rule of course. Devil's in the detail, but how you get a house, you can put straight into two flats. Yeah. You know, but that could be great angle for some people because whatever you do, if you split them up, you can normally get better, uh, square footage. Yeah. Cost-wise. So say, say if it's a house and it's £250 a foot, but if you put it into two flats, you can get £300 a foot for them because they're smaller. So it goes up. So that could be your angle. So it might be you want to be look for houses that you can put into two flats because you'll be able to do it under PD. So that might be the next strategy that all these educators tell everyone about. I've just told you, Jack. Charge. No need to go on a course.

I, I actually have thought about doing that a while back. When it's probably about a year or two ago, before the, the PD thing came in. I was thinking about how there's an area in Manchester called Hale. It's a very nice area. Hale. Very nice, very wealthy. That's where you live, isn't it? Uh, not too far, but I don't quite live in Hale yet. But, um, but the plan was that I, I was looking at a few different properties, big Victorian houses. I've got loads of them. I was thinking, what if we bought a house, yeah, split it, yes, in half, have the downstairs in the garden, and we sell the upstairs to pay for downstairs? I was like, that's a great. I didn't, I didn't manage to get around. The one thing you've got to be careful there is parking because they'll want parking because it's not in a town center. Uh, but apart from that, I think, I think that's a great strategy. Great strategy.

But a lot of people who watch my content, they want to grow quite a sizable portfolio. Yes. Ambitious. What that means to them is subjective. For someone that might be 10, for someone that might be 100. If I, I'm thinking about this, thinking you've, you've bought and sold over 4,000 properties. If somebody wanted to build a portfolio of a thousand houses or a thousand properties, going from zero to a thousand, there's going to be lots of, lots of different phases within that. Yes. So going from 0 to 10 is different from 10 to 100. Yes. Going from 10 to 100 is different from 100 to a thousand. What does somebody need from your experience, from the number of deals that you've done? What does somebody need to be thinking about in terms of their, their mindset, their skills, their knowledge, their team? What do they need to be aware of at each one of those stages? So if someone wants to go from zero to 10 units, what, what do they have to be thinking about?

Okay, I think to build, build out 10 houses or 10 flats is hard bloody work. Yeah. And at the moment, like I said, I don't think that really works. Keep them, sell them. Maybe it works, but most people, unless it depends what your skill set is. That's the first thing. Because if you're a builder, you've got a massive advantage over everyone else. Yeah. So if you can find houses that you can convert into two flats or three flats, like the PD is, two flats, going to be two flats, and have a trick that works for you. And that could be, like we said earlier, buying a house, splitting into two, sell one, keep one. You might be able to keep both and refinance and let them and move on, depending on the area you're in. But you've also got to think about capital growth. And in the weaker areas, the poorer areas, the rental return is better, but the capital growth is grim. Yeah. Whatever anyone says, it's grim. And it's always the last place to go up and it's the first place to go down in a recession. The quality areas, less rent, much more capital growth. And when the, when the, it hits the fan, property market hits the fan, yeah, you can always sell them still if you have to. So you've got to get, it's a balance of what you do. But I would try and do house into two flats, sell one, keep one. Don't expect to keep everything. It's not practical, not with interest rates as they are. Buy a house. And then the next one, perhaps buy three, maybe existing flats, just to refurbish, nice and quick, if you can. If not, convert into three, keep two, sell one, maybe. Yeah. Keeps your tax down as well, of course. That's the other thing you've got to remember. Capital gains and everything, tax and everything else. They move on and move on and move on. And eventually, you'll get to the stage where you'll be doing 10 flats, keeping five. Yeah. Then you'll be doing 15 flats, keeping six. So, okay.

But then for somebody who is, is watching this, maybe they've got five buy-to-lets or something like that. Well, and, and they're thinking, yeah, yeah, they, you know, they've worked hard. Maybe it's a case of, worked a job. By the way, don't give up your job. Is the key. Very important. Keep your job as long as possible. But, but if someone's got buy-to-let and they're going, "Right, yeah, people talk about building a portfolio of a hundred properties." What, what would be the next steps that you would advise them to take?

Well, in the old, I said the old day wasn't that long ago. What I, in the before, you would say, well, I tell you, well, every three years, two years, refinance those properties, get your cash out and go again. Yeah. You don't need to sell. If the markets, if interest rates are very low and properties rising, you don't need to sell. You can refinance. And this is probably the only place in the world, by the way, that lets you refinance. Because don't forget, if you're in Ireland, you want to, you want to take money out of your house in Ireland because it's gone up in value, unless you can prove you're using it to, uh, to enhance the house with an extension or something, they won't let you have it. Yeah.

For people who are listening or watching, I'm trying to pinpoint some, some next steps. Well, if you've got five houses, M, and you've got a lot of equity in those houses, and you want to move on, then you can certainly still refinance, not as much as you could, get the cash together, and then go and buy another two. So if you've got five, yeah, uh, three years ago, you could have, you could have pulled money out of all five, probably. Yeah. And gone and bought another two or three. And then wait a couple of years, do the same thing again, same thing again, same thing. Because remember, property, prop, property's gone up 5% a year for those 25 years on average. Now, that's harder to do. So you've got to sweat it more. You've got to, you've got to, you have to get an investor in to go and buy a whole load if you think the market's right. Now, yeah, I still think the only real way to do it is to buy, is to is to produce two or three units out of one, if you see what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah. So multiply the number of units. I think so. Because then you're keeping some and you're selling some. You're keeping that cash flow going. So then somebody obviously can do that alongside their job. Maybe they're doing three properties, maybe they're doing five properties. Well, do 20. Still keep your job. Yeah. But then don't give up the job.

How does somebody go to 100? You keep going. If it's not broken, you don't need to fix it. So you would, so you would be going to buy. So your, your view is number of units. If you can buy more, if you can buy five units, then you'd buy five. Once you then sold them, you can then buy seven, then you buy 10, then you buy. And that's how you'd scale. You wouldn't scale. But also then you then you can cheat. Then you can go, then you can go and buy a block of, a block of flats, 25 flats. Yeah. And sell some or keep maybe keep them all or whatever. And then you can go buy a block of 50. So actually, you're not, it starts up, it's a ball lake to start with. But as you get more capital and, and more and more more equity, you can buy bigger and, and more units. Yeah. So you multiply. So you've got to your 4,000 predominantly, obviously there's been lots of other things that you've done, but predominantly through buying or disused, rundown apartment blocks, renovating them, and yes, that's the main thing I would say. We've done a lot of conversions over 40 years. You have a number of strategies. You know, you don't just stick with one, probably because it doesn't work in the end. So like, like we said earlier on about PD, doesn't it, does work sort of now, and you can, you know, it works at the lower level, probably. But once you start going bigger, PD schemes, cost of them is just. And of course, if you could, if you got someone you know, you need to work your strengths. If you're a builder, you can't really go wrong. Yeah. To be honest with you, we, you know, we have to pay 20% more because we don't get our hands dirty. Is the truth. So, I mean, if, if you can do the work yourself, it's play to your strengths. If you're really good at getting planning permission because you, you're a planning consultant, is your main job, then great, do that. If you're a builder, do that.

Let's say somebody's watching this or listening to this and goes, "I don't have strengths or skill sets." I'd say that's a lot of rubbish. Everyone has, everyone has skill. It might be communicating with people, in which case, getting contacts. I've got builders who are useless at, useless at networking. I'm not. Guess what? I'm good at networking and making contacts. So the builder can buy of me for more money. Yeah, because he can do the work, or she can do the work, 20% cheaper. Yeah. So that's my margin. So I can find properties, sell them to the builder for more money because they, because they spend less on it. Yeah. Or a more naive investor. Or, you know, so you play to your strengths. If you can talk a good game, talk a good game. But there will be people out there who think, "Do you know what? I just don't know what my skill set would be." Or I'm ready to invest in growing a skill set. Yes. What do you think is the, if there was one or two skills that someone, you'd recommend someone to get, what's the highest value skill going to give you the biggest leverage in this industry?

Me standing there. The highest skill is having contacts. If you haven't got any contacts, you ain't going to find a deal. Yeah. And to sweeten those contacts by offering a 2% finder's fee. I get loads of people come to me, say, "You get, how do you get your deals?" That's what I pay 2% finder's fee. And we also pay a fee at the end to say thank you sometimes. Well, I'm not paying that. I don't want to pay that. Well, we don't get any deals then, will you? Yeah. Or I've got a deal. I've got a deal. I can tell you about it, but I want 2% finder's. Oh, we only pay 1%. Oh, okay. Thanks very much. I'll find someone to pay too. Yeah. So they don't find out about it. So, you know, be open-minded. Be open. Help people. People you know. And, and, and I know it sounds silly, but going into an estate agent, identifying the person who you can work with, buy them a coffee. Buy them a coffee. Don't just email everyone. Get on the bloody phone and talk to them. I know it's old-fashioned. It doesn't matter. The amount someone, how much they spend on you, it's the fact that they are making an effort. It could be a coffee. MH. But whatever you, whatever you invest, someone, it's not the amount. You get a lot more back. Yeah. Lot more back.

So if someone wanted to, like you say, the skill set, you'd say, or not even a skill set, it's just what you think would be good, is to go out and make contacts. Get contacts. Absolutely. Who does someone need to make contacts with? And what would be the next steps to do that?

Well, I think these property clubs are good and groups are good. And I'm speaking at one tonight. You know, I think they're great. Don't be put off by people who say they're doing this, they're doing that. "Oh, I'm so clever, I'm doing." Because, you know, I'm one, I'm normally the speaker, and I come away feeling depressed. Yeah. Because there's always a few clever who reckon they're doing loads and loads of deals. Don't, whatever they say to you, cut it in half. A lot of people talk BS. They talk, they talk, they talk, but they talk it up. And it's never as big as they say. And they've never made as much as they say they've made, probably. So don't be put off by that. But you will manage to find somebody who you engage with, and who actually you like, and they like you. And, and then start making contacts. You know, and be genuine. Be decent. Be honest with them. Um, because it all comes back in the end. If you're not.

Well, John, honestly, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. Like I said, you, it worked perfectly. It worked really well timing-wise. And, and what you have to offer the property community, people interested in property, people who want to become developers, investors, the knowledge, the experience that you've gained from the many years of good and bad, success, and you learn far more from your, remember you far learn far more from when things go wrong. And from everything that you've learned by putting it on the line. Yeah. Means that we get to reap the rewards and benefit from the knowledge that you've got. So I just really want to thank you for sharing that with us.

Pleasure. And thank you very much for inviting me.

Thank you. No worries.