Transcription
There's a car park here that's usually chained off and I used to sleep in my truck. I reinvented myself in that parking spot there. What a journey it's been, mate. What a journey. And like I said, this is only the beginning.
So, my name is Martin Adams. I'm 33 years old, a property investor based in the Grimby Clealks area. Got three businesses. The actual property investment business probably does around 10k a month. Airbnb business at the moment is doing around 25 grand a month and the cleaning business does about four grand a month. So in total it's probably getting close to 30-40 grand a month.
As you see we've got the kitchen, three bedrooms, the master room and we've got a little tiny toilet just outside of the room. You wouldn't think, but having a toilet upstairs adds probably five or 10 grand to the end value of a property. So, we always try and put one upstairs if we can.
So, funnily enough, I bought this property with Pokémon cards. Works out that cardboard is worth a lot of money. I spent £6,000, I think, on these Pokémon cards. And then I got paid £225,000. I looked into the market, as we do with property, and see what happens with these Pokémon cards. And it worked out that I got lucky and things went up a lot quicker and a lot higher than I thought that they ever could do. The money that I made from that, I bought this house. It was in a really, really rundown condition. Renovations are going to be about £15,000. I bought the property for £55, so we've been it for around 70. Um, and then on the end valuation it'll be worth about 100 and it should make around £1,000 a month on uh Airbnb.
So, if you've got an uninhabitable property, for some reason, there's no heating system, I don't know, there's no windows in the property, it's got no running water or a kitchen, you shouldn't have to pay stamp duty on those properties because they are classed as uninhabitable. Stamp duty is non-existent. This kitchen, including all of the appliances and everything, it's about £1,250 quid. So, you can do properties and refurbs on a budget if you know where to go, if you can negotiate right, and you can always make the numbers work.
It's taken me a long time to get builders that I can like, know, like, and trust. Um, obviously, I've done maybe 15 renovations myself now, so I know exactly where the costs are. My dad and my granddad had a really successful building company back when I was at school. I followed the family lead and you leave school, you're going to work for your your family and you're going to be a builder. Went into the plastering trade. And within all of that experience, I just gained a load of sort of property knowledge and how things should be done and how things shouldn't be done. And with all of that, I managed to channel myself into the property space and provide those services and that knowledge for my own benefit and my own investments.
So, when I got the property, it was in a really rundown condition. Obviously, because we know what we're taking on as soon as we walk through the door, we're able to plan ahead and make sure that we order the materials that we need for the property at the right time. When I'm walking around properties, when we first do the viewings, things I'm really looking for are windows, roofs is another big one. Need to make sure the roof's in good condition, there's no damp on the inside. Um, obviously if there are, we just use these as negotiations when we do purchase the property because we know the roof's leaky, the windows need to be replaced, there's no heating, and the wiring's old. We're going to offer heavily below the asking price to obviously compensate for these.
So, why did I choose Grimby? I don't even feel like I chose Grimby. I feel like Grimby chose me. Every time I was trying to find something, it always ended up being in Grimby. I don't know if that's because I was looking for the cheapest properties or the worst properties, but in the end I thought, you know what, there's there was no one at the time that was operating in the Grimby area. I thought there was like a little niche. I've got a bit of an opportunity here. So, yeah, I packed my bags in January 2024 with nothing and no idea of what I was doing and come up here and made everything from there.
I come from a very sort of poor background, don't wrong, they gave me whatever they could. And remember buying school shoes from boot fairs and the clothes that I wore were from charity shops and stuff like that. So I think that just makes me appreciate everything that I do have now and what I'm able to buy now.
We could sell the property for 90 to 100,000 depending on the market and make our money and exit that way or we also work with a social care provider and we can give it to them for a guaranteed rent which makes us money as well. I believe I'm one or the only um foster friendly male foster friendly business in the whole of Northeast Lincolnshire. So we're trying to work with children in need that have had unfortunate upbringings. You know, we try and provide them with uh safe spaces to enjoy. Um, we do have a certain amount of the portfolio that we designate to the people of the local community that are really in need.
So, next one we are off to is another below market value offmarket BRR2SA property that we're doing at the minute. Call it what you want, but when you work hard for these nice things, you got to look after them. So, I only got the car literally a week ago. I wish everyone could experience what I experience when I drive this cuz it's just fantastic.
I was always looking at houses and when you go cheapest first, the top four or five were always Grimby and I thought, you know what, if I can't move to this area and try and invest in one of the cheapest areas in the UK, if I can't make that work, then I won't be able to make it work in any county. That was the the reason why I did move. But then, yeah, when I did move, it was a big shock to the system. I've been up here since January 2024 and I've only just got the keys to my own house literally last week. So, I've been living rough now for best part of 18 months. Sometimes when you want to achieve certain things, you have to sacrifice certain things, you know, and I have sacrificed everything for this. Honestly, I could cry. If I didn't want to cry on camera, I would cry right now because when I first said to my family and my friends like, "Look guys, I'm going to move to Grimby." They thought I was crazy. They thought it wasn't going to work. They thought it was impossible to be able to go back to my family and show them and tell them that like I'd done it. Like I can't wait for that day. Like that's going to be the best day ever.
So this is where it all started for me 18 months ago. There's a car park here that's usually chained off and it's right next to the Weather Spoons and you can see the sea and I used to park up there and I used to sleep in my truck and think to myself, what am I doing? Like the amount of times that I used to get all emotional in the truck and think, you know, like I used to have a really nice house down south. I had a good job. I was well paid and I've traded everything to sleep in a little side road in the middle of Cleorps. Now, all of this has happened and it's all because of that little spot there. Like, that spot there means more to me than most other things in life. I built my whole self. I reinvented myself in that parking spot there.
Project number two. So, this one, it had a lovely couple in it, bless them. And they was paying their rent, but the landlord wasn't paying his mortgage. So one day there was just a guy at the door and said basically you got half an hour pack all your stuff you got to go. The house is being repossessed. House got sort of trashed in the process cuz obviously they was quite upset. We came in made a cash offer. Um worked with an investor on this one who we raised the money but yeah can't have a look around for this. We purchased this for £60,000 cash. We spent £20,000 on it. So our investment in this is £80,000. If it's then worth £120,000 and we'll get a mortgage of 75% which means 75% of 120,000 which is 90,000. So we will be able to own this property and earn £10,000 for the for the enjoyment of owning this property and going through the renovation. So, it'll be all money out plus £10,000, which is is an incredible investment really because it's going to make us £750 to £800 every single month once we've staged it and done everything that we need to do. Got all of our direct bookings in place and it will be hands off for us and the cleaners will just come in. They'll do their job and everyone's happy, everyone's making money, and we'll just go on to the next one.
And then upstairs, we're going to be building a second bathroom. So then it'll be a three bed, two bathroom house, which is why we're going to get the valuation of sort of £115, £120,000. This one was lived in um, it was just everything that was hiding behind what you see originally. So all of the wallpaper was hiding all the damp and all of the Yorkshire stone wall was hiding all the damp. So it wasn't until we pulled all of that out we then realized that there was obviously quite a big damp issue. But it's not a problem because obviously we've done it so many times before now. We know how much it costs. Yes, it puts us back a little bit, but that's why we have a contingency. So if we're going to allow £17,000 for a refurb, we'd contingency of £5,000 into it. So we say, right, it's going to cost us 22.5, but we're only expecting to spend 17. If something does come up, we've already allowed for that 5 grand buffer. So it's really, really, really important to make sure that you've got a little buffer in your uh renovations.
So, back in the day, I don't know if anyone's aware, inside some of this, there's loads of horse hair inside this. So, back in the day, that's what they used to make the plaster with, and it'd be a fiber that they use. Like, nowadays, you don't need it. A good thing about being an expert in your patch, and like I really have good roots here. We get messages like this all the time. I have an investor looking for their next project, but their budget's quite low, up to £90,000. So, for me, I can either source them a deal. I could work with them as a joint venture. I might be able to raise the finance and work with them, you know. So, having a good reputation and a good brand in the property space is unvaluable. You know, you can't buy that sort of stuff.
So, we are at my latest lease option agreement. A lot of people think you need money to get invested in property and to get started, but this building behind me cost me just £1 and over the space of 5 years, it's going to make me a quart of a million pounds. Let's come and have a look. So, this is probably in the worst condition that you're going to find in property investing. This here is the second part of the building. You'll see upstairs it goes the bedrooms go over and across, but in here and this way, we're going to have it as more of a games room, luxury sort of fun house. All of these baths and sinks and shower trays and stuff like that. This was all inherited with the building and we're just slowly but surely selling it all on Facebook Marketplace. This kitchen space is about 45 m. So, it is quite big. But the plan is to have a big U-shaped kitchen here with a breakfast bar. But yeah, there was a terrible leak here. And the builders that This is a funny story actually cuz this ceiling nearly collapsed and crushed me about a month ago. Anyone that follows me on Instagram would have seen it, but um the pillars that you can see on the cutouts on the floor, they was just made of this 3x two, which is a non-structural timber. Those little pillars were holding up the whole ceiling. And me being me, thought, "Oh, you know what? They look ugly. They're not made out of structural uh material, so they shouldn't be structural." I ripped them down and then the ceiling fell down nearly. I managed to fix it and we've put it right and we've corrected it. So, for anyone that was watching my Instagram before, we fixed the issue now and we can start repairing it and getting it back to looking like a normal kitchen. This room originally when we first bought it, I didn't even know that there was a window there. The the rubbish was so high it took three or four skips and a couple of men. It's really, really close to being done. I know it doesn't look like it, but you'll be surprised.
We purchased the property. It was essentially it was uh the main doctor's surgery for the local area. It got turned into a HMO about six or seven years ago. He got all the bad tenants in. It got a really bad name for itself. In the end, all the tenants left and the property stayed vacant for about 3 years. But the good part is is that we get to take it on. We negotiated it as a lease option. Um, we've agreed to buy it for £200,000 in seven years. So, the lease option model is essentially where you purchase a property at an agreed price today for a purchase in the future. I got this property from an estate agent actually and I see it at I think it was about 280,000 and then over the months it went all the way down to 240 or 230,000 I think it was. And I said to the estate agents like look I've viewed this property six or seven times. It's absolutely huge. How about we offer something like this to the landlord where we rent it off of him for seven years and then at the end we're going to buy it for £200,000 which is what he's asking for essentially today and then we'll be using it as like a guest house/ hotel. Should be making about £75,000 a month. So it's definitely going to pay for itself in the long run. Until then we've got to refurb it, get it done to a luxury hotel where we offer the same services we do for our other Airbnb properties but just on a much bigger scale. And hopefully it should bring in some great returns. And then I've got four or five years to save it and then at the end purchase this property for 200,000. By then the commercial valuation is going to be half a million pounds at least.
The academy is like my second family. To get to where I am now wouldn't have been possible without the academy. The knowledge that I've got, the friends that I met there 2 years ago are still my some of my best friends now. They were business partners. They're now like brothers. Um, sometimes it is nice just to go to the gym, put your headphones in, do your workout, go home, cook dinner, and watch Samuel Lee's latest YouTube video. You know, if Samuel was watching this video, I would say, "I love you, brother, cuz you have changed my life so much. He helps me massively. You know, he always puts me in front of a crowd to try and help speak. Without him, I don't think there would be me if I'm honest. Like been through some rough times, had some struggles, but we get through them. And you know, it all worked out.