Transcription
Hey, what's up guys? Welcome back to my channel. In this video, I'm going to be interviewing a couple of property millionaires, and they're going to be explaining how they've built up their portfolio and become financially independent. One of their properties alone, that they secured on a lease option agreement, is bringing in over a hundred thousand pounds a year. Their deals are crazy, and they're going to be sharing absolutely everything. How they've done it, how you can do the same thing too. So, if you enjoy my YouTube channel, please do me a massive favor, smash the like button, and let's get right into this.
So, firstly, Mark and Martin, thank you so much for coming down to my house. Thanks for joining us. So, I remember when we first met, you actually came down to my other house down the road, and, uh, this was maybe a year or so back now, a year and a half ago, and you were working on this juicy lease option agreement deal. And you know, since then, you've gone on to do lots and lots of deals. You've built up a really big portfolio. So, why don't you just, firstly, before we get into all the deals and what you've done, give us a little bit of background as to who you are and why you decided to get into property in the first place?
So, um, started approximately 12 years ago. Did an HMO, which was a BRR, and went in, did all the work ourselves, and then slowly been working our way through and getting bigger and bigger HMOs as time's gone on. And, um, yeah, it's been, it's been good. But it's been just the two of us. Um, we've been doing everything ourselves. And then all of a sudden, we've, um, obviously during lockdown and bits like that, and with kids, been watching a load of YouTube videos, uh, came on your course. And, uh, yeah, I've been done smashing it for the last year, absolutely.
And what you've done in the last year is more than most people would do in a lifetime. So, um, and occupation-wise, you're working as a carpenter, and yourself? I'm into sales, car sales, right? And now you're both going, you've scaled back a little bit on the, on the day job. What's the reason for doing this? Like, what, what, what's the motivation for wanting to build up this big portfolio?
Um, I think it's like with most people, it's just money initially, financial freedom, just knowing that if anything happens. Obviously, when we started, no one ever thought COVID would ever exist. Um, and then as time's gone on, our plan has changed. We've both got young children, and it's just been having more time. We now value time over money. Yeah, it's been our spending time with the kids and family and just enjoying life. Um, but part of that is not having to worry about money. Yes, freedom. Yeah. So the freedom to do what we want, really.
You guys are brothers? Did you decide that you were going to build this together, or how did that, how did that come about?
Yeah, we just started doing it together and just, uh, obviously it's good doing it with someone else, but doing it with your brother, it's probably even better.
I think. Well, I work with my brother as well, so I understand that. Um, so, okay, I wanted to firstly talk about this deal, this lease option deal, because this is just a crazy deal. Um, firstly, why don't you just explain what is a lease option agreement, and how did you even know, like, what a lease option was? And talk to me a little bit about that.
YouTube watch a load of videos, I've read a lot of books, um, and bits like that with regards to learning what a lease option is. So, basically, a lease option is where you control the building, um, normally with a very small deposit, normally hopefully a pound. You then control that building for X amount of time, generally approximately five years, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter, with the option but not the obligation to purchase it at the end of the agreement. So, it's a little bit like buy now, pay later. A bit like when you buy it, when you buy a car, and you sort of put down a small deposit, and then you pay a monthly fee, and at the end, you can choose if you want to buy it or not. A little bit like that, but for houses. Which means that you can start taking on much bigger projects than you would if you, you know, because obviously unless you've got loads and loads of money.
So, okay, you've now got lots of different development deals, or all going on, and you're using this option strategy. But that first option that you did, which is what we spoke about in the early days, which we were in negotiations at the time, and I think I remember when you're in the house, I was like, where are you up to it? And you sort of shared it with me. You knew it was going to happen, you had complete faith, but you hadn't got any contracts, you hadn't got the memorandum of understanding signed. Um, now it's generating a hundred thousand pounds a year and just over. And, um, talk to me, talk me through the figures, talk me through the negotiation, and then we'll go on some of the other properties.
Initially, we're going to try and buy it just as a normal commercial building, and the valuer came out and down-valued the property. So we were like, all right, we're trying to work out ways around it. So instead of just going, oh no, walking away, we then thought, well, what's the solution for this? All right, let's go down the route of a PLO. The seller was happy. So, actually, that's how we got onto the PLO, just thinking of alternative ways of purchasing.
How did you pitch it to the seller? Why would they, why would the seller accept a payment later rather than just getting a straight sale?
So, she's got a couple of hotels in Torquay, and she just wanted to kind of get rid of a couple, um, and just focus on one. Um, so, yeah, it worked for her. Yeah, I think she was struggling to sell it. So, obviously, she's not desperate to get rid of it, but if she's struggling to sell it, we definitely wanted to build in. We knew you could make some good money out of it. So, together, PLO worked. It's weird at the moment, all the hotels in Torquay are getting soaked up. I couldn't believe they go back 18 months, and there's a few on the market. Well, yeah, it's, and it's funny because a year and a half ago or two years ago, when everyone was being all fearful and saying, sort of like, what's going to happen with the market? Let's wait and see. And, you know me, you, you're watching my videos, I was saying, get in now. The problem now's the time. Right now's the time, and it's going to boom. Um, and the newspapers are all saying property prices are going to crash. That's what they were saying. I wasn't saying that. I was saying, no, they're going to go up. Get in, get in, get in.
We met, you came around my house, and since then we've done a lot together. But, um, so you secured this, um, hotel on an option. What have you done with it since?
Well, we did want to turn it into, um, HMO, basically, because it's 13 bedrooms, all on suites, been in a perfect HMO. So, um, we tried to get planning for that, which we couldn't get. And then the council actually contacted us and said, we'll turn it into a HMO. Then the council themselves couldn't actually get planning for either. So then we, uh, fork, we do with it. So we turned it into SA's. And in the end, it's a blessing in disguise for making more money out of it now than we would have done if it was a HMO.
So, talk to me about that. So you wanted to run it as a HMO, but you couldn't get planning, which you thinking, oh no, what am I going to do? But then this is the way the toolbox comes in, man. Yeah, if you only have one strategy or two strategies, you need to understand all the different strategies. You, you understood service accommodation as a strategy. Tell me, what does service accommodation mean?
You'd, um, have a building or a flat, and you basically rent the flat out on Airbnb, Booking.com, and you do it on a day-by-day basis rather than long-term ASTs.
Okay. And how much profit, or is this generating this property?
Just over 9,000 a month. So 109. Incredible. Yeah, incredible.
And what did you think? What did you think when you saw the bookings coming in and the money coming in? How did you feel?
Well, it was good. It was good. It was a good feeling. It's just nice to see. And especially the first, all that hard work, and you just see the first few bookings coming in, and then they just literally just kept coming and kept coming. Yeah. That didn't alone. A lot of people would just retire off of that deal, you know.
So, you, you're presumably saving up the money ready to buy the property?
Yeah. So, no, we'll get a commercial, uh, mortgage on the property, pull all the money out and that we invested, plus probably another hundred thousand pounds. Yeah, 110, I believe. Um, so, yeah, not only is it, um, very little money in, but we'll actually, um, cash flow 109 and it will also give us just over a hundred thousand pound as well. Nice.
A lot of people think that, uh, successful people, if you land a deal like that, oh, just luck. You got lucky. But you've since then, you've gone on and done lots and lots and lots of properties. You've secured a whole portfolio of HMOs. The portfolio now is in the millions, which is, which is incredible. Um, what other deals have you got going on? What are the more recent deals that you've been working on?
We just got accepted yesterday on a, um, [Music] three-bed semi-detached house, which you're going to do, split the deeds, turn into three separate flats, which has already been three separate flats for over 10 years.
And what's the figures? What was the, uh, purchase price agreed?
The purchase price, um, it was up for 250. We got it for 215.
215. How do you get a deal like that in these times, these booming times, where everyone's trying to, 250 to 215, and they said yes? Is this on the market? Off the market?
It is on the market. On the market. Yeah.
So, why did, what, why did they accept your cheeky offer?
Because it's when you actually look at, actually it says a three-bed house, it doesn't actually look that good. When you actually look at the details of it, it's actually three flats. So a lot of people wouldn't actually look at that because, yeah, because we've looked into it.
So, this is the point then, rather than looking at the property and seeing what it is, you've got to be educated and look at what it will be. Yeah. And then you might pay, you know, a price which most people would think, oh, that doesn't, that doesn't seem, uh, cheap. But you know what it's going to be. So you're going to turn into three flats. Of what that cost to do that? Probably around 30,000 to do renovations. There's going to be light renovations, change the kitchens, change the bathroom. Yeah. So you're still under 250. Yeah, even after your renovation. And then what's the end value going to be on that?
Approximately just over 350. So we'll pull out about just over 100,000 pound profit.
Incredible. Incredible. Well, congratulations on that. What, and what else have you got going on? I know you've got loads going on. You've got a whole list on your website of all your houses and your addresses and everything. Anyone that's a a doubter, I'll put a link in the description. Can look and see all the houses, all the addresses, which is crazy. What's the focus now?
Land development, mainly. Um, big commercial, um, to residential, or big, um, conversions is what we're after, basically. We're just scaling up and going bigger and bigger. Um, as time's gone, it's just natural progression for us. Yeah. So we've currently, uh, secured a Grade II listed building, which we're getting subject to planning to convert into nine flats, um, which is awesome. I've got another PLO for a commercial building to turn that into a six-bed HMO. It's a bit smaller than we generally want, but, um, so we've got that in the, we're just waiting for them to come back and say, yeah, but by the sounds of things, everything's a go. Yeah. Um, we've got a big seven-figure profit, um, one in the pipeline, um, that somebody came to us with. Amazing.
So you've got so many deals, and these deals, we're not talking about making five grand a month here, five grand a month there. You're talking about million-pound profit in some of these deals. What would you say to someone that was starting out? Because, you know, I mean, it wasn't that long ago when you were just small-time investors with a few little buy-to-lets, now working on these huge deals. What would you say to someone starting out that wants to get into the bigger deals, development? Um, what advice would you give them?
Once get started training. You, you need to know all the different avenues that you can go down the route of. And in this sort of business, you will find out there's roadblocks, and it's just different routes to get to the end destination. Um, so going down and just going, oh no, that doesn't work. Well, actually, if you go down that road, it might actually be better. Um, it might actually be able to make a better profit. Yeah, it's just different solutions. Um, and also, because you're dealing with a lot bigger monies, um, you don't want to mess it up.
Were you reluctant to spend? I don't know how much do you guys invest in the education? Even with us, a thousand pounds on it for the, for that development mastermind in total in education so far? Yeah. And was that something that you had to, um, you know, was that painful, or did you just think it's just obvious that we need to do it?
It's, it's strange because when you, yeah, you're paying the money over, you're just like, that's a lot of money. But when you're on the course and you're doing it, and after the course, you're like, why is it so cheap? Yeah, it's, it's strange how you, your mentality changes as soon as the course, um, progresses. Yeah. Yeah.
Development mastermind course, if it's like ten thousand pounds, seems like it's a lot of money. Then if you do one deal and you make a hundred thousand pound out of it, that's ten percent of your first deal. Do you mean one deal that you could do? Yeah, you could do lots of deals, you mean. It's nothing. But to begin with, and again, what you did, which I think is a good thing, is, you know, I mean, you watching me on YouTube for ages, you must have spent hours and hours watching the YouTube videos first. Yeah, my kids are the same age as yours. You know, when you're doing the night feeds, and it's just, yeah, I've just watched hours and hours and hours of, uh, yeah, videos. Yeah. And it's just, yeah. But that's, that's a really good way to get started. But then if you, when you want to start actually investing big sums of money into property, invest a little bit in yourself first, just to get that. Because you, you know, you guys, if you ever have a deal, you can pick up the phone, you can speak to myself, the team, Russell, Ben, bounce deals off them. And, you know, you might miss something. Even when I'm buying the deal, I've got, I'll pick up the phone and I'll ring Ben and Russell and the guys, because everyone has blind spots. You might not realize, oh, actually, there's this issue, or the road isn't, the access point isn't quite wide enough, or there's flood risk, or there can be so many different things that you can miss. And having, I think, just having a group of people around you, consultants and mentors, um, I think is a, you're either going to pay for your education, or you're going to pay for your mistakes, ultimately. Yeah, definitely.
What's it been like over the last year or so then on the, uh, on the mastermind? What sort of happened?
Yeah, it's been awesome to, well, it's just been so good, just obviously the training to start with, and then just being around the same people as yourselves, who are looking to do exactly the same stuff. And then obviously, you keep in contact with them, and then you're sort of, dead doing some deals, we're doing some deals. It's just nice to see what's going on around us as well. It's good. Yeah. It is. It's just the whole ethos of everybody, the trainers, the other students on the course, everyone just kind of brings everybody up. It just motivates, motivates. Yeah. Yeah. And when I shout out to Russell and Ben as well, because I know that they're, you know, very involved with the hands-on sort of mentoring and stuff. Um, so, okay, so moving forward then, you've got these land deals and stuff. I want to ask, how are you finding deals? Because that's one of the biggest questions I get at the moment. People are saying, where are the deals? I'm going into agents, I can't find anything. Where are you finding these deals? And how do you know whether a deal is good or not? How do you go about appraising sites? And because, because you know, you just bought a deal recently for 215, presumably if it was, if that was on the market, other people have passed on that deal. So how do you spot a good deal and where are you finding these opportunities from?
So, with regards to, um, we'll have a look at Rightmove, like everybody else. Word of mouth. I actually was, um, on the telephone. I was just helping out. I don't know how he got my details, but, um, Ross, uh, phoned me up and said, oh, can you just help me with this? Um, he was looking at purchasing a hotel, um, in Torquay as well. So I was just giving him some advice. And like, I wasn't trying to jump on the deal or anything, I was just helping him out. Happened to be that it didn't go through for him, sadly. And that's about six months ago. Um, last week, he then contacted me, and that's where the seven-figure profit one came, and goes, I've got this, do you want to jump on and you want to help us out?
Okay, so that's like a joint venture? Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. So, how many of your deals would you say are from joint ventures or from deals coming to you from within the network versus you going out and actively picking up the phone, ringing agents?
To be fair, very few. And we've been very, um, we're not, we don't brand ourselves. We've only just started branding ourselves. We've been very quiet about what we do and what we've done. Um, of course, there's quite a few friends, I actually don't know we're in property at all. Crazy. That is. Yeah. Um, so, yeah, we don't go shouting, which is something that we're going to start doing and moving forward. Because moving forward now, um, the thing that's been holding us back is cash flow, or Fraser, our own cash, because we've only used our own cash to build our property business. And the whole idea is to build with joint venture people so we can scale our business and make both ourselves and the joint ventures, obviously, uh, a ton of money, is the idea. Yeah. But, yeah, and that's the way forward. Yeah.
Because I, I guess if you've owned, if you've got a pot of money, even if it's a million pounds, if you're having to use your own money for your deals, then if you invest into a deal, you've got to wait for that deal to be finished, which could be a year, two years, or three years before you can pull it out. Which means that you're only working on one deal at a time. Whereas if you are using other people's money, you can then do five, ten, fifteen deals all in one go and and ultimately make a lot more money and also help other people do the same thing. Yeah.
So, with the last two that we've got in the last four weeks, they've both been, uh, joint venture deals. Um, so, yeah, you, you won't make all the profit, but 50% of profit is better than zero.
What's the plan then? Is it to set, is it to develop and sell, or is it to develop and refinancing?
Yeah, just, just develop and sell on, get the profit, and then hopefully get a few, few more projects on the go and just sort of keep recycling it, bigger and bigger. Yeah. The game plan for this year is to get 10 development deals, hopefully some land deals, we're actually building houses on them. Yeah. So on Nimbus, a lot, sending out letters and picking up telephone, speaking to a lot of estate agents, trying to get, um, any bits of land before it actually hits the open market, rather than waiting for it to be on. Trying to find investors as well, trying to get as many JV partners as we can, trying to get investors. It's nice to have some good relationships. Well, you know me, even myself, I invest in a lot of my students' deals. And being part of a community, if you're trying to do something on your own and no one knows what you're doing and you're doing it in secret, then no one can help you. This is what we've found. Well, after doing the course and bits like that, it's just like, yeah, I wish I knew now 10 years ago. Yeah. Yeah.
So, what are you most excited about at the moment?
Finding some more land, kind of some more land, getting some more developments on the go. Obviously, we've got two, two on the go now. We just want to try and get as many as we can ready.
What do you, what do you think is, um, better to start with if you're starting out? To try and be doing land development, or to start with doing small buy-to-let HMOs?
If you're starting again, small, work your way up. We're quite fortunate that we've now, we've done all the small stuff, we've got a nice cash flow coming in, so we've got a backup. So as and when, um, everything then goes, all right, it's now gone crazy. We've just got three deals landed on our lap last week. We now need to spend time on them. If needs be, we can just quit normal work and focus on that. So, but it just gives you that security and stuff like that. So as and when you want to then jump onto the bigger stuff, you can do. So, and it's just the knowledge, it's just a natural progression. Yeah.
What would, if you were advising yourself from say, two years ago, when you were just sort of getting started on the development side of things, um, what advice would you give yourself from two years ago?
So it'll probably be to, um, once again, just do the training. Yeah. Droning. And it's quite literally, it's one of those things, it's just hands-on. If you don't get in the thick of it, you're never going to know. So it's just action, action, action. Picking up your phone, trying to find some land, driving around. Get on Nimbus, get looking for some land. Yeah. The amount of like land sites that we've been to view, yeah, like going through like, um, fields and like fruit bushes and stuff like that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's amazing as well about that, how many opportunities are on the market or being sold that are terrible and shocking. Like this. And we spoke about this at the development deep dive, where I think I showed some examples at the time where some, um, the estate agents had put all the computer-generated images, yeah, and and and sold something and just, uh, subject to planning, but it's like, there's no way you're going to get planning. And there's green belt, there's in flood risk, there's protected trees on the site, there's no access, it's right next to a railway. And it's just like, are you kidding? And then muppets come along and go, oh, well, well, let's take a punt. Yeah. The amount of stuff I look at now, and then if before I've done the training, I've looked at it, and then, oh my god, it's a great deal. I'd have been doing those due diligence, wasting loads of time on it. And then now, as soon as I see it, I think it was a good deal. And then because I know, because of the training, I know it's not a good deal. So just, yeah. Yeah. And you need to, because, because you can, and I have to say this, um, on the interview with development, especially, you can lose a lot of money. Yeah. Yeah. If you don't know what you're doing. If you know what you're doing, then you can even buy on an option. The reason you buy an option is because you don't risk. Yeah. Exactly. It mitigates the risk. If you just buy it cash, which you can do, and we've done that, we've bought land cash, and sometimes then we're a bit sweating. Yeah. Because if you don't get the plan, it's an expensive field. Right? Whereas if you get an option on it, get an option on something, and then if you don't get the plan, walk away and just lose a few thousand pounds. If you get the plan in, bang, ka-ching. Yeah. That's where the money is. Right? But people don't know this. People think that you just have to buy it cash. But it's ridiculous. And not many people are doing this. Not many people are in this space. And I would personally suggest anyone that's wanting to start making a million pounds here in a million development, start. You're going to mess up on your first few deals, right? At least mess up on small deals. If you want to understand how an auction works, don't go and bid on on on on a massive piece of land for an auction with a thing crossing your fingers that you're going to get planned to build. Go and buy a 30 grand house for a laugh. Go down to some auctions and keep your hands in your pockets and just watch and see and learn how it goes before you actually start putting a lot of money on the line. Um, so, okay, so moving forward then, development lands making loads of money. When will enough be enough?
We're very driven people, so I don't think, I don't, we haven't really got an end goal. We just sort of, when you're networking, when your network is bigger than Samuel Leeds, then enough is enough. Do you remember when I showed you that once at the castle? Remember when I had a go at, yeah, telling him he's old? I didn't think you joined the mastermind after, after I did, after I said that, but you did. Yeah. Yeah. You could get on it. I was like, oh, yeah, all right. No, because the thing is, sometimes like when I'm training, I have to remember that my job isn't to be liked. My job is for people to get results. You know, and, and, um, you know, I think one of the things that I pride myself on as a trainer is my students get results. Like there's no other trainer on the planet, certainly in the UK, that's got the success students that we get through the training.
What do you think that is?
Just, uh, I just find it very, very motivating. And we've done training before in like a classroom environment. I just struggle, I just switch off, and I'm not very good in that situation. But with your training, I just felt like I was just in the room all the time. It was just so easy just to soak up the information. Just found it really good.
Well, I'm really pleased what you've done, and it's really, I'm really honored to have been a part, a part in your journeys. So massive respect. I'm going to put a link to your website in the description if you want to look at the houses that you've got going or want to connect or do deals. But before we, we wrap up, what will be your final words of of wisdom?
Connect with people. We found that the bigger we get, the less it is about the property, it's more about the network around you. Yeah. 100%. So with regards to, we're now heavily focusing on, uh, JVs, so we can build, um, our property portfolio. We've got a good power team, but it's just the team and the connections you have, like that seven-figure deal coming to us and things like that. It's a people, it's a people business. Obviously, you guys training us and stuff like that, and the support, um, that you give us, it's, it's brilliant.
Yeah, I appreciate that. Um, and I tell you what as well, for me, one of the reasons that we do train is to meet good people. And it's just been a real honor getting to know you guys and hopefully we'll do joint ventures together in the future. So Martin, Mark, appreciate you coming down to my house and sharing the story all the way from Devon. Yeah, it's a real honor. And guys, I'm sure you agreed that that was a really, really insightful interview. So why don't you go ahead and smash the like button? If you want to check out their journeys, their stories, and connect, there's a link in the description. Also, if you want to come on down to the development training that we do, we have a program called the Development Secrets Intensive. And I don't very often do development training, but I am going to be running the Development Secret Intensive very, very soon. There's a link again in the description. You can check it out. It is free. It's free to come along, but the catch is, there's limited spaces available. So get booked on that right now. If you want to see more interviews like this, you can check out an entire playlist. I've been doing this every week, interviews like this for the last three years. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel, and we will see you next time. [Music]