My Property Journey... so far.

Foreign guys, how are you doing? Welcome back, as the title of the video suggests, today I am going to talk about how I started in real estate. Many of you have asked me for this type of video, so here you have it. I think the thing is that I've always been interested in

property

and I think that's the most important thing. You really know what it is. If you try, if you try to read something that doesn't interest you, you don't really absorb anything. whereas with certain things I don't really need to try to learn it because you just get it, you just get it.

The same goes for cars. I guess I've always had a natural interest in it. When I was a kid, I always watched a lot of real estate shows, like remodeling shows, and you know where they go looking for new houses and all that kind of stuff, so I've always been pretty into the idea and I've always loved the idea. of taking something that people overlook and turning it into something desirable. I do the same thing every day with cars. You've actually seen some of the cars I buy on my other channel. It's the same kind of thing, fixing them up, making them look smarter. then try to make some profits as a kid, my parents have always done this with houses too, this is what made it not a daunting prospect for me because I just grew up around it.

I have never been afraid. Of you know, I got stuck as a kid, I moved a lot, my parents would always buy a house and then spend the next two or three years completely renovating it, then sell it for a profit and then do the same thing over and over again. , so I think before we reached adulthood, I think we had maybe a dozen directions, we just moved around a lot once they did the whole thing, they were never afraid to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. so it seemed like the most natural thing for me to do.

The biggest problem is starting to find the finances to start your first one now here in the UK, especially since the financial crisis of 2008. It is very difficult to get a mortgage, you have to go through a lot of burdens. of different obstacles and I guess it makes sense so that banks and lenders can guarantee that your money is in good hands, so it makes sense, but it is quite difficult, especially if you are self-employed and probably like many small business owners in to the extent that I never used to collect a salary. I always left all the money in my trading account and then used it to buy and sell more cars.

I only took money out when I needed it for certain things, so I was really living on very little money and chatting with other small business owners. I think they do exactly the same thing. It simply makes more sense to leave all the money in your company account instead of receiving a fixed salary, but there is another currency that actually does that. It's hard to try to prove how much you earn, it's only when you apply for a mortgage and the mortgage broker will tell you very well what your annual income is when you think, uh, I don't actually know, I only take money when I need it, but I leave it all up to me. business.

I think there are often people like that who have a proper job and sick pay and you know exactly how much money comes in every month, they can make a budget and they just can't understand people like For me, that doesn't really have a fixed salary every months, so that was the biggest hurdle, trying to prove how much money I made, what you really need to do. I know this isn't an advice video as such, but what I really need to do is find a good mortgage broker and stick with them, someone who understands your situation and knows they can make it work for you basically of all people. modes in 2018, that's where it all started, when I bought my first

property

, now I could.

I couldn't afford anything in the town where I lived at the time, so I had to broaden my search to all the properties in the area I wanted. They all started at £200,000, so I just couldn't afford anything. in that area, so I had to move about five miles further down the road, where property was a little more affordable. The first house I bought from them was a three bedroom attached property which I still have to this day and the previous owner had been there for I think about 40 years and sadly she passed away and it had been empty for a year or two, the People who had inherited the property were living abroad, it just sat there waiting to go through probate and it took forever, but eventually I got the keys now that it was on sale for £125,000.

They made me an offer of 115 because in 2018 it's hard to believe, but the real estate market was not like it is today, so offers could be made. Things below the asking price don't really happen nowadays so I made an offer of 150 which was rejected but we finally agreed on 118. I bought that house in my own name which meant I had to put down a deposit of 10 So that what he needed was 11,800 pounds. I had been saving for that deposit for four years trying to save a few hundred pounds here and there when I had extra money, but at that point my car broke down.

Everything worked out well to be able to do it. increase this 11,800 pounds. I got a fixed rate mortgage which I think actually comes to an end very soon and I think it was about two and a quarter percent mind boggling because you wouldn't get anywhere. close to that these days, but yeah, it was two and a quarter, I think the rates were pretty low and that was done with a pay down mortgage and finally, when I finally got the keys, I walked in there with my parents and my brother and just gutted the whole place tore out the kitchen, the bathroom, dug up the front yard, put in a nice driveway, did all kinds of things to it and really transformed it, so that was my first property and it really showed me the ins and outs that today it's worth about 240.

I haven't had it's value, but I've seen what other houses on the street are offering, so between two, three, five and 250 I would say I think it's actually good advice, it wasn't my dream. Home wasn't where I wanted to be but it got me onto the property ladder and that's the hardest thing you have to do, you just have to make that leap, even if it's not exactly what you want, I think it's just a Always It's a compromise now that my first rental bike came about two years later, so for those two years I was just working and saving, working and saving the same things as always, and I finally got about 35 grand set aside as a deposit . for a bit of cape now with buy to let properties you need to put down a 25 deposit, you can't put down a five or ten per cent deposit so obviously it takes a lot more capital so I cast my net quite wide again and I was thinking well, I need to find a place with potential.

I eventually found a place in the village where I used to live, which is a pretty nice area, and it was a two-bedroom semi-detached property, an old council property that was on the market. for £170,000 this was previously covered or just before covid um and again it had been empty for about a year because the previous lady had sadly passed away so it was just left by the children, some of the children lived abroad I think Yeah. Again, it just wasn't a high priority for them. I think to do something with that, I made an offer on that 166 place that was accepted, then I got the keys, did all that kind of stuff, and then the remodel started again.

It was the same kind of process where I went there with my parents and my brother and just gutted the place, took down the wallpaper, tore out the kitchen, the bathrooms, all that kind of stuff, my dad tore out the hedges out front and created a off road parking. I went a little over budget, but I think it was worth it in the end. I get a lot of comments from people on this channel saying things like you shouldn't treat rental properties like they're yours, you don't have to. It is not necessary to strive for them, but I disagree.

I think every one I've done I've always done to a high standard and I've always rented them straight away, so that's what I'll continue to do. it was 166, so I had to pay 25, which was, I think, £41.5,000, then the renovation cost me another £10,000 on top of that, so it was a huge struggle trying to get all the money together for that, everything the process took me probably three or four months and then it was valued at £230,000 and today I think it's probably worth a bit more than that, maybe £240 something like that, I rented it in 48 hours and the guy's been there for about two years, is quite happy, the next property that my second bite was my flight, which you may have seen on this channel now that it appeared.

I wasn't even really in a position to do anything about it. One day I was on the right path and this came up and I knew I was in a good location. I knew it had a lot of potential, so I thought, "Okay, I'll go check it out." It went on sale on Friday. I paid a visit. I made an appointment to see it on Saturday and was the first one there, but there were about six or seven other people and by that time it was already booked up, so the prices were going crazy. It was advertised at £125,000 and I knew this because they had shown a lot of interest in it straight away, although it was a disaster, I knew I couldn't, there was really no room to negotiate, so I just offered the asking price in hope. that they would take it off the market immediately now, eventually it took me more than a year to get the keys because I don't know the exact reason, actually, it dragged on and on and I finally got the keys. we could work on it now my plan with that I thought I was really thinking long term now I paid £125,000 for it and it's a two bedroom apartment I guess it's probably more of an incredible act it's not above a shop it's something like that in its own grounds and you know, there's no shared entrance hall or anything like that, so it's not a bad apartment.

I quite like it, so I bought it thinking that one day when I lived in a warm place and you know. Okay, I could use that as my UK, my base in the UK, which could be where I'll live when I return to the UK. I'm thinking about retirement or something so that was my plan, now again that place was a mess, check out the before and after videos on this channel, I actually needed to gut so I ripped out the kitchen and bathroom. I say my dad did most of it, which is the biggest help.

He really likes doing that kind of work, so yeah. I got a complete makeover and then rented it again within a week immediately for decent money, so I think it turned out to be a pretty good investment now that I was buying that initially. I was trying to get a buy to let mortgage so I put the deposit aside for my, you know, my 25 deposit, but I was getting annoyed with all the hoops my bank was trying to put me through so Finally, a little stubbornly, I thought well. I'll just get a bank loan, I won't tell you anything about it.

I will get the bank loan. I'll buy it using that money and eventually I'll pay off the bank loan and there's no mortgage, so that's exactly it. What I did in between all this was meeting a good friend called Dano who I hadn't seen in years, anyway we had lost touch towards the end, not last year, the year before we started dating again. together and he wants to do the same type of thing with rental properties, he's a little more impulsive, he's a little more risk-taking than me, so he was immediately eager to buy a property between us, so the first one we bought It was a three-bedroom house in Lancashire that you may have seen on this channel.

I've done two videos with that property and it's almost done, probably three or four weeks of work and then it'll be done now. We paid 75,000 pounds for it and I expect to spend maybe 20 22 so it should always be the best part of a hundred thousand pounds and I expect it to be worth maybe 125 130 when it's all done so it should be. It was a pretty good investment and amongst all that Dan sent me a link one day to a property he had seen at auction and it was a community center not far from Wigan, it was quite an interesting building, it was actually owned by he. by Wigan Council, but they were no longer using it, so in the end we put in a bid and won.

The price we got it for was £90,000 plus fees, so it cost us around £97 or £98,000 in the That property needed a complete renovation and, due to its scale, it's quite a large building, the cost it went up a bit so we spent about £30,000 on it but it's currently rented and they took five. -Contract year, so it turned out to be a pretty good investment. We overspent on that Community Center, but it really needed it and I think the return we'll get, you know, on the five-year contract. leasing it is a good return now the next thing we bought was a couple of garages on a small landing plot in the High Peak area that I would eventually like to knock down and build alittle cottage, that's really the end goal, but I think for now what I'd like to do is rent it out to someone who needs a workshop or warehouse like that and we pay £44,000 for it, which I don't think is the best investment What have I done. done, but I don't think I'll lose money on it either because it's relatively low value compared to the rest.

I just put it at the back of the queue, but eventually I'll do something with it. I was chatting to a relative who had a three-bed semi-detached house that they were going to sell, they had had a tenant there for the last decade, they were moving out and were going to put it on the market, so I thought I might as well try to buy this. now off the market and I did some kind of deal with them so that's what I did, I put down 25 and got a buy to let mortgage on that property and then I did the same kind of thing so it needed a renovation, but really just a light renovation.

So it only took about six or eight weeks, then it was turned around and then it was put back on the rental market and again within 48 hours it was rented. Now the problem was that all of these properties came to fruition in the last 18 months, so there it was. It's been constant stress, constant juggling of trying to find the money for all of them and then paying for renovations for all of them, so it's taken a lot out of me, so I think going forward over the next two or three months I think I just want to take it easy, see how it all goes, try to get some ground cover and then eventually move on to another one, but for now I just want to focus on what I have and just have a couple of months of not struggling trying to beg , stealing and borrowing, basically saying I'm already on the right track, now I have a quick nosy, but I'm a little addicted to that whole process.

I just enjoy doing it and it's the same for my friend. Dan, um, we were both in very similar stages of life, uh, his company was doing well just like mine, so we just wanted to do something, um, as a little distraction, something that we were both really passionate about. , something we could. be a little creative and something that would be a good investment to tick a lot of boxes, so I think that's it. I've had a pretty busy five years and that's my

journey

so far and I think in the future. That's what I'll continue to do, maybe not as angry as it was last year, but that kind of thing I will say is you might sit there thinking, have you done it?

I can understand how you get a deposit. but two, three, four, it's not an easy thing, it's happened, it's taken me about five years to get to this point, it's just that it's a bit small and often you just need to stay focused on your work and eventually everything happens. together, it hasn't happened suddenly, it's that all paths have led me to that point, so I had many small businesses that I had. I always think of it like spinning plates, you get one plate, you spin and then you have to move on to the next one it's kind of like and suddenly, especially now that I have my partner on board and you also have two people pulling in the same direction , so I think that's been a big help.

Really, and apart from spending money on cars, I'm a pretty sensible person. I like to save a good chunk of my money and then reinvest it outside of properties. I don't know what else I could invest in and enjoy the process of I don't want to just call a stockbroker and send them thousands of pounds that they may or may not see again. I prefer to see a little old fashioned, I really prefer to see bricks and mortar, so I think that's it, thanks once again for watching. Be sure to like the video if you enjoyed it.

Make sure to subscribe if you haven't already and we'll see you next time. Greetings guys.