40 Years Of Property Advice In 77 Minutes

I bought and sold nearly 4,500 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 4,500 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. 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: 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. I'm speaking tonight at the Together offices for the refurb property meet.

John: Yeah, which is a good meet.

Jack: Yeah, definitely. I saw on LinkedIn that you were popping up to Manchester, and I know you're based down south yourself, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to jump on a podcast. I'm delighted to be here.

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

John: Yes, an elevator pitch. Very good. I like that. It's nothing like promoting a show. Thank you very much for that. So, yeah, John Howard. I've been a property developer and investor for over 40 years. I bought and sold nearly 4,500 properties—I lose count—in 87 different locations across the UK. I've got a property portfolio. We used to own Auction UK for a while; we sold our shares three or four years ago. We own some estate agencies as well, so there's a broad spectrum of the property market, really.

Jack: Okay. So, you said you've bought and sold nearly 4,500 properties. If someone were 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 like you have bought and sold 4,000 properties? Is that in the estate agency you've sold a thousand of those?

John: That's purely what we've bought and traded, sold again. We refurbish and sell. Don't ask me to name them all; I'd struggle. But I've sort of named all the players where we have done deals. We've just done two deals in Scotland, for instance. 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. Scotland's like starting again in a way because I went there with no contacts whatsoever, and now I've got lots of new contacts. It's great.

Jack: And the market and the conveyancing process are all a little bit different in Scotland.

John: People bang on about that, Jack, don't they? "Oh, it's different, it's this, it's that." Some banks get a bit funny about it; 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 Scotland, they exchange missives or something. It's no damn different, really.

Jack: 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 part-finished. For anyone who doesn't know what a receiver is, do you want to just explain?

John: Yeah, sure. Sorry. So, a receiver or administrator could be in administration or receivership. These are accountants that deal with bankruptcy, basically. They are an integral part of an accountancy firm where someone has gone bankrupt, and the banks would go to the receiver and say, "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 a bank. Sometimes we deal directly with a bank, but most of the time it's through a receiver or an administrator. Same thing, really.

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

John: Fantastic. So, over the 4,500 property deals that you've done, there must have been a few where you've got potentially gray hairs over them.

Jack: Oh, gray hairs? I get gray hairs over every deal. No, I haven't, which is surprising. I should have, Jack, you're right. So, yeah, some pretty nightmarish deals across all of those, of course. You ask a genuine property developer or 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 whatever we buy and whatever anyone who's listening today buys, 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 buying it at well below market value. 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. So, you should be able to sell it on to someone else—one of your contacts that you know. It's all about contacts in 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? The answer should be yes. Three: Can I refurbish it, refinance it, and get the majority of my cash out to go again? You're dealing with money to go again. Now, the way the interest rates are at the moment, it's impossible just to get all your money out unless it's a fabulous deal. So, you've got to be realistic. There's no point in 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. 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. 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." That's a problem for people moving forward.

You always need to be available in terms of your agents who supply you deals, and you should always say the shop sign is 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.

Jack: So, you look at every single deal and you say if it doesn't tick all three of those boxes, you won't touch it?

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

Jack: That kind of brings me on a little bit to getting 4,000 properties, buying and selling 4,000 properties or more than that. You've got to be doing more than one at a time. So, talk to me about your typical deal. What would be, if I was to say, "John, I've got a deal for you right now," what would you be chomping at the bit for? What would be perfect for you?

John: Well, over the years, of course, strategies change. When you have an angle that other people aren't doing very much of, PD was a great example. So, permitted development when it came out in 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 even the commercial agents have locked onto that eventually. It took a while; they priced commercial property ridiculously. Exactly, because now they don't understand the cost of it all or anything else. Agents, which does annoy me. But anyway, the PD thing is finished for us. It was finished five years ago, so we move on.

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 were receiverships 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, they have gone down 10%. So, that's the perfect storm. If you can survive that storm, you can survive any market, I promise you. It's very, very tough at the moment.

Jack: So, you look for a minimum number of units, or you look for minimum GDV?

John: 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. You take the wine rack in 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. It'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.

And, you know, £26.5 million later, it's been developed. Homes England lent us £20-odd million to do it. 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. I 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 within about two weeks. I had more fun doing that than I have doing the big deals.

So, I'm one of the not that rare developers 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 small. They say, "Oh, it's not worth my while looking at this." 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.

Jack: Buying and selling—that's your first love. The quick in-and-out stuff. Love it.

John: Yeah, I've grown to enjoy it. I know you talked about the three 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. 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. The reason sometimes I’m critical of myself for doing that is if I find it hard to find another deal. 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.

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.

Jack: You're very experienced, doing lots of different things. Why do you not just specialize in one thing?

John: I don't tend to specialize in one thing because strategies change. You've got to remember I'm old, so I've done most things in property. 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 probably another story.

So, yes, 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.

Jack: All right, whereabouts?

John: In Essex.

Jack: Do you want to buy it? I'll give you two.

John: Well, double my money, exactly! You haven't even seen it; you're flash, aren't you?

Jack: So, yeah, I mean, just because you can buy something for a pound doesn't always mean you should, by the way.

John: No, I tell you what, there have been a few conversations with organizations that are responsible for disposing of church buildings in particular. Challenging stuff, I’ve had 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. I had a meeting with Channel 4 about my show, Property Graduate, where I give up to a million-pound worth of funding to the winner, and it's on Sky 186 and the rest of it. They quite like that and bits and bobs. We were chatting away; 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." They were all over me like a rash.

Jack: I bet!

John: Which says it all, really, because actually all they want is sensationalism. They don't want detail, if you like, do they? I find that frustrating. But yeah, and then we 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, you know, we are competitive on the show, to say the least. 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.

Jack: I need to get Ranan on the podcast. I've always been interested in what he does.

John: He's very... what does he do? He does commercial, right?

Jack: Wow, he doesn't come out the M25. He sells courses, doesn't he?

John: Yeah, when he tests, he doesn't come out the M25. 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.

Jack: Okay, I doubt it. I expect I'll be buying it again. That kind of guy.

John: Well, I didn't say that!

Jack: So, the 4,000 properties, though, that you've done, I know, as we've spoken about, there's plenty 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?

John: Well, surely there's got to be one.

Jack: 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.

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 do 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. 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.

Because what you don't want to do—when I look at a deal, the first thing I look at is I'm putting in 40% of the deal of my own money. So, first of all, I'm relieved when the bank gets 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. As long as I get my money back—and I'm not saying that 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, 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. 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 every 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 you need more ability and you need more experience. Those are the things that hopefully we have over some other people.

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. If you can't solve that problem, don't buy it.

So, if you, for instance, 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.

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

John: That's a fantastic question, Jack. You're good at this. You're good at this. I just need to ask what I need to know. My goodness, 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 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 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 at auction. Just because it'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 put a planning application in, as 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 visibility splays when you drive out? What about the hedges on the other side? Do you own the hedges? Because if the hedges need to be cut back or taken away and you don't own those hedges, guess what? You haven't got the visibility splays.

The visibility is 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 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.

Jack: It's interesting you say that. I think there's a lot of people, especially at 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 hands—a dangerous combination. I'm going to go to an auction and buy a house.

I heard a story of somebody who sold a property at auction, intentionally title-split the front garden, sold the house at auction, and then 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 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?

John: Well, but you need to, and you need to check these things. It's surprising how many things are out there that can catch you out.

Jack: 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 to look at it because it was £500." Well, you know, property is a big-ticket item. You're investing thousands of pounds, some of which is your money, your own money probably. It's so important that 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.

We probably waste—I don't think what we waste in a year—probably £100,000. I know we're on a bigger scale probably, but we probably waste £100,000 on abortive listings fees, abortive surveys, agreeing deals that then we investigate further and find there's a problem. We probably waste £100,000 on valuation fees. It just goes on and on.

Jack: You're depressing me now, John.

John: But if you don't spend that kind of money and you're not willing to lose it, then you can't get the—someone said to me the other day, "The reason that I pay you to help me, John, is not to make money; it's to stop me losing money."

Jack: Yeah.

John: And I sort of thought about that. I thought, actually, yeah, that's as important as making money. You know, it's as important as making money is not to lose it.

Jack: That's exactly my thought process when I first started in property. I did some training, and you started at 12, didn't you?

John: 14.

Jack: Yeah, 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 were saying, "Why would you spend that?" I'm thinking, "Well, if I spend that, it de-risks me losing."

John: Of course, it does. As long as it's good education. I'm passionate about this education thing because you see some good educators, and my God, I hear some horror stories—absolute horror stories. I've experienced it, 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?

Jack: It's your thing.

John: It's my thing. I should know, shouldn't I? I was one of the founder members, and it's self-regulation for property educators. It's very important that they're a member of PISA, in my view. If they can't become a member of PISA, you shouldn't go to them, basically.

But I'm passionate about it, and I hear so many stories. It's dreadful, to be honest with you. People losing money. You know, why would a property educator want your money? Because if there are any at all, they shouldn't need your money to do deals.

I get people saying, "Well, 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 need your money, I wouldn't ask you because I wouldn't want the pressure to be honest with you if it all went wrong.

You know, it's just not right. So, these people are going on courses, and then the educator is saying, "Well, perhaps you could always invest in this deal." It's not right, is it? It can't be right, Jack.

Jack: No, and it's a crazy industry. I think it's good that you've got something or you've founded something that creates that level of regulation. Regulation is 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.

John: Really is fraud.

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

John: Early years? I was very, very fortunate because my father was a greengrocer. When he was 60 years old and I was 12 or 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; on the Monday, you're valuing houses.

That didn't go down very well, to be fair, on the whole. He ran it as a—not as a hobby, but he was a one-man band, if you like. But I used to go and help him. In those days, we used to hold a tape—you don't know what a tape is—a measuring tape. In those days, Jack, I got this big bulky thing.

Anyway, so I used to hold the tape. I used to go and hold the tape for him, 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 was giving someone a cover note. You don't know what you're doing. It's scary. They 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 because I could then start work, and I could drive, which is the most important thing. I learned to drive very quickly. My father had 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.

There wasn't much business to come back to. He'd been ill for probably eight weeks, 12 weeks. I soon realized within a month, I realized this estate agency is all right, but you only buy and sell. There's far more money in that. And he went back in the hospital after four months, and I was running the damn show at 17 years and 4 months.

What a disaster! I stammered badly until I was about 19, so I didn't want to answer the phone, and I certainly didn't want to make a phone call, which didn't help. 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, scary.

Anyway, but we muddled through. I mean muddled through. And then he came back, and he was a bit better. We had one or two clients who were probably developers, and there was a couple of them in partnership. They'd been in those days; you were just about allowed to get mortgages. Just started on converted flats. Till then, they were untable. I know you can't believe that. You're looking at me like a madman, 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 were lots and lots of houses that were converted into flats. I was in Felixstowe, and lots of seaside resorts and places where they'd been guest houses over the years, been converted into flats. 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 were 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. 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 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. How I funded that was this: My father wouldn't lend me any money because he said he 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.

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, she said, "Well, I'll lend you a bit of money." How much is it? 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. He knew all the businesses and everything, and he lent me a bit of money.

I managed to save a little bit, and I managed to buy this property. We bought it, sold one very quickly, paid my mother back with her profit, and she said, "Great! I can now buy my new kitchen. Thank you very much, John. What's the next deal we're doing?"

So, that was deal number one for you.

John: That was deal number one. Because the thing is, whether it's family—and if you borrow money from 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 a proper interest rate or share the profit, they're likely to come again.

And if they've got a family, brothers and 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." That way, it keeps everyone happy 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?

Jack: People don't have Sunday lunch anymore, do they? They used to. Very traditional.

John: Yeah, happily married man. So, that's what I did. And of course, the next deal comes along, I put a bit of money into that, fine, thank you very much, mother, and we did it like that. And then I started building up and buying property in bits and bobs while I had the estate agency.

When I was 19, I bought this agency off my father because he was ill; he wanted to sell it. It was a leasehold business. It was doing very badly. The 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.

I said, "Look, I'm AAB 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—brought some new ideas in. 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—a wealthy individual. That Holiday Property Bond, now I think it's got £500 million invested into it. Wow! And I now still do deals with his son now, which is nice, 38, 35 years later. So, that's nice, and we do deals together—not that many deals together.

So, he was my first backer, if you like, and he showed great confidence in me. 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 in Ipswich. We refurbished the flats—73 of them. We sold them all on. We made £985,000 after interest on that deal in 1986.

Jack: Wow! That's a big deal for 1986 as well.

John: Exactly! I was 25 years old.

Jack: Wow!

John: 26. I thought I'd arrived.

Jack: You've done it!

John: Got the Porsche, got the Range Rover. I've arrived!

Jack: Yeah, four years later, five years later—first property recession.

John: Yeah, sold the country house with 80 acres, bought where I am now with 25 acres. So, still not small, 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, quite similar. But actually, it was actually cheaper because I did all the—called Whit Mall. I did it all up and everything else and had the tennis court and the swimming pool and the girl end and the coach house where we worked from and all the rest of it.

Then sold it and then bought and did a similar thing where I am now. So, I've lived where I am now for 33 years or something crazy.

Jack: Yeah, wow! I don't fancy moving again if I can help it, I have to say.

John: No, I'm in the process of it right now. We're renovating our house. You know what they say: most stressful thing after divorce.

Jack: But if you read my book, Move Right, you'll know how to do it properly.

John: Hopefully, I'm midway through it, so unless I can actually finish the book.

Jack: Good! Thank you. That's another £15.95 I've made. Thank you very much!

John: But yeah, it isn't fun, is it? No, it's not. It's stressful. But it's like putting a deal together, Jack, and you know this. If you put the deal together correctly from the start, 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 up 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.

Jack: Yeah, get organized is the key.

John: Definitely. I think 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—

Jack: Well, he sold a lot of books on the back of it.

John: Well, yeah, he did. But 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.

If we ever come to sell it, we then sit on it for—we have a house that we love that we've made.

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

John: Exactly! That's the thing. 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, it makes sense to me. It doesn't make sense at all.

I'm always suspicious, and I've been—a good friend of mine actually, she pulled me up on it. She's quite a successful property developer and investor because she rents a house. I said on some event or something, 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 where your partner wants to live, more importantly. And probably if it's a man, the lady's in charge.

Jack: Yeah, probably, isn't it? You know, that's the truth of the home. So, at the end of the day, but it should be separate from 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.

Jack: 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 they talk 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.

John: Well, I just, for the life of me, if you're into property, why wouldn't you own your own home? 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 youngish people who want to buy their own home. 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 that—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 move up the scale to 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 £100,000. You can buy a nice terraced house in Derby for £110,000.

So, 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 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, the car. I got into trouble with my—I got into trouble a couple of years ago because I was interviewing this interviewer. They said, "What do you think is important? How can people survive with higher rents and higher mortgages?"

I said, "Buy less Costa 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, "Don't buy Costa Coffee, and you'll be able to buy a house."

Anyway, long story. My stepdaughter, who does my social media, said, "What did you say yesterday?" I can't remember what I said yesterday or the day before, to be honest with you. And she said, "Well, you've gone viral." I said, "What does that mean?" She said, "Well, you've got 550,000 hits on TikTok." I said, "Right."

Jack: Oh no, she said, "600,000 now. I've just looked." Anyway, it got to 3.2 million hits on TikTok because of what I said.

John: Well, yeah, 14,000 comments. One person was relatively nice to me. Apparently, I don't read anything. I don't read anything, Jack, 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.

Jack: So, there you go.

John: Can I do? I mean, they comment on the suit, I guess.

Jack: Yeah, I thought it was quite pleased about the suit, to be fair.

John: Yeah, yeah, that's good to know.

Jack: People take a lot of things out of context. But the reality is, like you say, I believe most people—normal people with a job—the reason they can't buy a house is because they want something too expensive or they aren't able to save the deposit.

John: I would say, Jack, it is tough out there at the moment. I mean, interest rates—and also, but the interest rates have been far too low for too long. But it stagnates things. So, my daughter is a great example. My stepdaughter is a 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, 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, get the builders in, spend money on the builders and everything else, yet they won't because they—so all these things have a knock-on effect with everyone.

Jack: So, what you spoke about doing that first deal where you bought it at 50% of the market value, you traded it on, 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.

What do you want to know in between? What happened in between?

John: I think ideally, I'd quite like to know how you went from one to the other because personally, selfishly, I'd like to know how I can do something similar.

John: Well, what happened was Mr. Boyce had a fair bit of money, but of course, he wants to start small. What I would say with any backer—any backer—and I've only had two partners, three partners in my career. So, I think the people who get all these private investors in, I admire them because I haven't got the—I haven't 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.

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 who's got no conscience, basically, so we all sleep well. However, if I had investors that I was losing their money, I would find that very difficult, and I would obviously try and pay them back somehow, but that would be too stressful for me.

I don't like it. So, what was the question? Remind me how you go from trading a couple of houses to £13 million.

John: 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'd sell a couple of properties; you'd make the money, keep 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.

When Mr. Boyce came along, he said, "Look, if the deal's good enough, John, 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.

Jack: Yeah, they could be showing off.

John: Yeah, first of all, even if they're not showing off, they're not going to want to put all that cash into your first deal. So, find a deal that's half what they say they've got.

Jack: Yeah, get proof of concept.

John: Proof of concept! I like that word—proof of concept. Underpromise and overdeliver. 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 £125,000. And in the end, just say, "Yeah."

Very rarely do 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 £125,000.

I'll tell you why. If you make £125,000 and you told them £150,000, they tell their friends, "Well, it was all right," and the wife 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 £125,000, tell them, you know, it's—and you make £125,000, spot on! We made exactly what we thought. It's the same deal.

So, do not overestimate. 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. 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 dumb everything down—and my main business partner was in the counter. Oh my God, he didn't like crossing the road; it scared him.

So, he dumbed 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 dumb 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 are a bit cautious, and I've always been, on the whole, the ballsy oneish and the one finding the deals and doing the deals.

My partner has always been the money man. 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 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 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.

And if you start off saying that, you'll get nowhere. Very, very important. And also, I always say, 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, after interest, and everything, then that's fine.

You've got to give that back a confidence in you and also the process. So important. I've been on both sides of it, and I said I don't really do many joint ventures. The odd one we've done, a deal in Cardiff, which has been quite good.

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 a sales director, and I've got a full-time building surveyor, and we've totally involved in it.

Then you think, to be honest with you, I could have done it myself. And I don't mean that disrespectfully to the people we've done it with, but really, yeah, we've put in the top slice. And actually, to be fair to them, they found the deal. They found the deal, so you've got to give them some credit for that.

Jack: So, what does your team look like right now, and what does a typical day look like for you?

John: 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 me. It's not true, actually, because that's being disrespectful to everyone else.

So, I've got my stepdaughter who tells me constantly that I'm too generous, we sell things too cheap, and I'm not tough enough on builders, which is interesting. So, that's great. So, I've been told constantly that I need to sharpen up and improve, which is good, and some of the time she's right.

I've got a building surveyor who is full-time. 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. I don't care if it's two flats or 150 flats; you need a building surveyor to oversee that project, protect you from the builder or contractor.

He's your link to the contractor. Hopefully, if there's any—he sees it before you do. If I have to step in, there's a problem. 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.

Then you've got Alfie Croft, who won the Property Graduate a couple of years ago. He's doing a deal with me. We're spending the million pounds that the prize is. The idea of that is that we set a company up—old-fashioned idea, I know this, Jack—you set a company up, 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 partnership.

So, that's the idea of Property Graduate. Tristan, who won it the second year, we're hoping to buy some flats in Norwich that I actually converted, would you believe, in 1998. They got sold off, and for us, unfortunately, the guy's gone bankrupt, and now we've got the possibility to buy them all back.

And the cheeky s 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.

So, it's great. And Victoria, that won in 2023, we're busy trying to find something for her. So, it's a great opportunity for people.

So, a lot of what you do then is constructing the deals. You've got your backer who works you a bit on the—I don't really have a backer, really. 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 do work with a guy who had a hedge fund who, funny enough, I rented a stone mas to his father many years ago. He always said to me, "My son is going to be a multi-millionaire, John." I went, "Yeah, of course he is." Guess what? He is!

So, 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 said, "You know, he said, 'What are you doing, John?'" I said, "Well, to be honest with you, my business partner is retiring. We're going to split the companies up, and so we own them individually. You own one company; I own the other company, so we're not going to pay too much tax that way."

I'm not sure really. I'm doing a bit of property education now. It's good fun. He said, "Well, would you like to do some more deals?" I said, "Yeah, I'm happy to." So, he backs me on some deals—not all deals—but he backs me on some, 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—

John: It's misleading to say we work with lots of people who bring deals to us because we don't. The people have won the show, yeah, we do on that show. We do with property elevator; we do across as well.

So, we do with—if they're not in the show, I tend not to, to be honest with you.

Jack: Yeah, but you work with people to do deals, sure, all the time. And it's all about networking.

John: Yeah, I'm hoping you're going to find me some deals.

Jack: Oh, yeah, I'm sure I will. And guess what? We pay 2% fees. 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 my seminar this year, well, over a 12-month period, he's going to earn £70,000 off us because he found us a deal, and that's the fee.

John: Fantastic!

Jack: Yeah, but—and he came on a seminar.

John: And you're able to keep your hands off from the day-to-day development side because your building surveyor handles most of that.

John: 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.

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. We're all in the same boat, to a lesser or greater extent. 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 Ks on the end. So, we're all in the same boat, and properties are a very simple business.

You know, it's made complicated by these educators who try and make it complicated, 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.

Jack: Yeah.

John: And that's just not true. That's just not true. 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!"

Jack: I had that literally. We had a seller pull out of 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.

John: Yeah.

Jack: 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 worry about it.

John: Please, anyone listening, don't get so obsessed with one deal that when it falls through, your heart sinks, and 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, and it's like you say, at the beginning, keep the door open. I kind of always say, "Always open." Always deals coming. What annoys me, I've got agents I've dealt with for 30 years. "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."

Jack: Yeah, on paper.

John: Yeah, in reality, it 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 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 come in because you can sell the deal on.

Jack: Yeah, so you look at your top five potential deals.

John: 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 my top five. It 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've 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.

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!

Jack: Yeah, it's velocity of deals, not just quality.

John: Cash flow! Keep the money moving!

Jack: You've got a similar mindset to somebody that coached me quite a bit when I first started. He's got a good size, really healthy size portfolio, and he always talked about—he was very straightforward with it. None of the rent-to-rent, none of this anything confusing. He had buy-to-let portfolios, some HMOs, and would do some developments as well.

And it was just constantly—the way he talked about it 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's great.

I mean, we—I call it walkout. I call it walkabout, Jack.

John: Yeah, so we all need a bit of walkout.

Jack: Yeah, 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 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 £50,000, and you go again.

It's about keeping the cash cow alive, I guess, keeping the balls in the air.

John: Absolutely right. I think that's so important.

Jack: For somebody who is wanting to—I know you said you talk about—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?

John: Well, I would say the average person I work with is someone who's already in property, perhaps doing HMOs, rent-to-rent, moving on. Perhaps they've got HMOs and want to move on to slightly more sophisticated property. That's one group.

How do you define sophisticated?

John: I would say the next step up would be to convert a house into six flats, for instance. Or I've got the next group that are already doing that and want to move on to bigger deals. I've got others that are doing residential very successfully and want to do commercial, which I've done a lot of.

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. I've got others—a few who have—we had one at my last seminar who has 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've got a couple of footballers I help. One's on about £100,000 a year—£100,000 a week, I should say. My advice to him is keep scoring the goals, keep turning up at 10:00 in the morning, don't get injured, and he can buy property every month.

Jack: Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it?

John: Crazy, crazy, crazy. It's a crazy world, but it doesn't last long in football.

Jack: No, and you've got to be investing it into something more long-term for sure.

John: I've got a couple of friends who were in football, and they hadn't planned for retirement, and so you can get yourself really stuck.

Jack: Yeah, they can.

John: Yeah, they need to plan.

Jack: So, it sounds to me like you buy and sell. That's your—you say you're a trader.

John: 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 bill costs are so high.

But if someone's halfway through a project or three-quarters away through a project and goes bankrupt, we're not paying the full money for the bill 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 on that type of new build situation.

Jack: Yeah, yeah. But then you sell everything.

John: Yeah, so you don't actually have a buy-to-let portfolio.

Jack: Yeah, we don't call it buy-to-let, to be fair, but you've got a portfolio that you rent out.

John: Yeah, absolutely. All across the UK.

Jack: Did you ever get into the single-family home HMOs, anything like that? You just always—

John: Well, we did bedsits in the old days. Of course, they were called bedsits. Now they're called professional HMOs or something, aren't they? But the same damn thing. And by the way, in those days, we had meters for the electric. We had meters—5p you put in, then 10p, then 50p.

And actually, people could learn from that because the ones who gave away free electricity, free gas, free everything have been hit very hard in the last two years. Whereas in the old days, it was always a meter.

Jack: Yeah, and it's just—

John: I said use ABS, absolutely.

Jack: So, I'm just trying to get an idea because there's a lot of people who watch my content who are 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.

I think to hold things long-term at the moment is very difficult because HMOs are a bit different because you've got some. And I think HMOs are 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 buying individual houses to refurbish and then refinance, three golden rules, and get all your money out of them now, 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 only have to put 20% in. Now, to make those buy-to-lets work in most places, you have to put 50% in 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.

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, 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 do two or three to get one out to keep one rather than expect to get all your cash out on one.

You might get all your cash out on two if you do two at once, you know, 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.

You know, but that could be great for some people because whatever you do, if you split them up, you can normally get better square footage cost-wise. So, 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 looking 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, so you can charge no need to go on a course.

Jack: I actually have thought about doing that a while back when it was probably about a year or two ago before the PD thing came in. I was thinking about how there's an area in Manchester called Hale. It's a very nice area—very nice, very wealthy.

John: That's where you live, isn't it?

Jack: Not too far, but I don't quite live in Hale yet. But the plan was that 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, 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 idea!" I didn't manage to get around to it.

John: One thing you've got to be careful there is parking because they'll want parking because it's not in a town center. But apart from that, I think that's a great strategy—a 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 houses; for someone, that might be 100.

If I'm thinking about this, thinking you've bought and sold over 4,000 properties, if somebody wanted to build a portfolio of 1,000 houses or 1,000 properties, going from zero to 1,000, there's going to be lots of different phases within that.

So, going from 0 to 10, yes, is different from 10 to 100. Yes, going from 10 to 100 is different from 100 to 1,000. 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 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 do they have to be thinking about?

John: Okay, I think to build out 10 houses or 10 flats is hard bloody work. 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. So, if you can find houses that you can convert into two flats or three flats, like the PD is, two flats are 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 it 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. 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 market hits the fan, property market hits the fan, 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.

Jack: Keep 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.

John: 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.

Then you'll be doing 15 flats, keeping six.

Jack: So, okay, but then for somebody who is watching this, maybe they've got five buy-to-lets or something like that, and they're thinking, "Yeah, yeah." They, you know, they've worked hard.

John: By the way, don't give up your job is the key.

Jack: Yeah, very important.

John: Keep your job as long as possible. But if someone's got buy-to-let and they are going, "Right, yeah," people talk about building a portfolio of 100 properties. What would be the next steps that you would advise them to take?

John: 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 what, every three years, two years, refinance those properties, get your cash out, and go again."

You don't need to sell. If the market's—if interest rates are very low and properties are rising, you don't need to sell. You can refinance.

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 take money out of your house in Ireland because it's gone up in value. Unless you can prove you're using it to enhance the house with an extension or something, they won't let you have it.

So, for people who are listening or watching, I'm trying to pinpoint some next steps. Well, if you've got five houses, 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, three years ago, you could have pulled money out of all five probably and gone and bought another two or three.

Jack: And then wait a couple of years, do the same thing again.

John: Same thing again, same thing because remember property has 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 get an investor in to go and buy a whole load if you think the market's right now.

Jack: Yeah, I still think the only real way to do it is to buy—to produce two or three units out of one, if you see what I'm saying.

John: Yeah, yeah, so multiply the number of units.

Jack: 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.

John: Yeah, but then don't give up the job.

Jack: How does somebody go to 100?

John: You keep going. If it's not broken, you don't need to fix it.

So, you would—so 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 ten, then you buy—and that's how you'd scale.

You wouldn't scale, but also then you can cheat. Then you can go and buy 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

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 skills. It might be communicating with people, in which case getting contacts is essential.

I've got builders who are useless at networking. I'm not. Guess what? I'm good at networking and making contacts, so the builder can buy from me for more money. Why? Because they can do the work 20% cheaper. So that's my margin. I can find properties and sell them to the builder for more money because they spend less on it, or to a more naive investor.

You place your strength. 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 highest value skill that would give someone the biggest leverage in this industry?

The highest skill is having contacts. If you haven't got any contacts, you ain't going to find a deal. To sweeten those contacts, offer a 2% finder's fee. I get loads of people coming to me asking, "How do you get your deals?" That's what I pay—a 2% finder's fee. We also pay a fee at the end to say thank you.

Sometimes people say, "I'm not paying that. I don't want to pay that." Well, we don't get any deals then, will we? Or, "I've got a deal I can tell you about, but I want 2%." "Oh, we only pay 1%." "Oh, okay, thanks very much." I find someone willing to pay 2%. So they don't find out about it.

Be open-minded. Help people. I know it sounds silly, but going into an estate agent's and identifying the person you can work with is key. Buy them a coffee. Don't just email everyone; get on the bloody phone and talk to them. I know it's old-fashioned, but it doesn't matter. The amount someone spends on you is not the point; it's the effort they make.

It could be a coffee, but whatever you invest in someone, it's not the amount. You get a lot more back—much more back.

So if someone wanted to, like you say, the skill set you'd recommend 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?

I think property clubs and groups are good. I'm speaking at one tonight. I think they're great. Don't be put off by people who say they're doing this or that, or "Oh, I'm so clever; I'm doing loads of deals."

You know, I'm normally the speaker, and I come away feeling depressed because there's always a few clever people who reckon they're doing loads of deals. Whatever they say to you, cut it in half. A lot of people talk BS. They talk it up, and it's never as big as they say. They've probably never made as much as they claim.

So don't be put off by that. You will manage to find somebody you engage with, someone you like and who likes you. Start making contacts. Be genuine, be decent, and be honest with them because it all comes back in the end.

John, honestly, thank you so much for jumping on the podcast. Like I said, it worked perfectly timing-wise. What you have to offer the property community—people interested in property, people who want to become developers or investors—the knowledge and experience you've gained from many years of good and bad success is invaluable.

You learn far more from when things go wrong than from everything that goes right. Your willingness to put it on the line means we get to reap the rewards and benefit from the knowledge you've got.

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.