📈 0 to 50 HMO Units: Rhett's Scaling Blueprint Revealed with Rhett Brewer

Welcome everyone. Welcome to this week's Deal Final Corner. And you know this is your weekly talk show brought to you by PropsFilter, hosted by myself, your favorite Frenchman and the CEO and co founder of PropsFilter. You know this is the highest rated platform to find deals. You know our mission to empower our property investor members to do yet another, you know, thousands and thousands of deals again on the platform. And the purpose really with this weekly deal Final Corners is to give you more and the best of the available resources and sharing with you what actually works right now, inviting you expert guests. We'll share with you the latest and most current strategies, secrets and tactics of things that actually works right now at the coal face of things for all things to do with finding and making deals and the reality of scaling and systemizing and running a high performance business in property. So really is my pleasure today to introduce our very own Red Brewer on today's Deal Final Corner. A very probably overdue session. So you know, I can't really introduce Rhett who needs no introduction here. Familiar face behind the Props Filter weekly calls, the webinars, the support calls. I reckon as I said, you probably have 10,000 hours, you know, of coaching and Props Filter demonstration and coaching people in this methodology that really works, you know, so where the crazy, you know, the crazy, crazy Frenchman will get you excited and be all jittery and speaking too fast. Rhett will really be the calmest, most patient coach you will find and really get anyone in the community confident on using Props Filter and going out and being confident they can go and do lots of many deals. So Rhett started five years ago. He left his corporate life just as Covid was eating to build his property portfolio. And Today he manages 50 high end units between HMOs and flats across the midlands, some in London whilst living in the southeast and mastering the art of scaling, systemizing, team building from investing remotely. Really. So you're literally a six hour train journey away from your portfolio and with trainings and expertise in HMOs, title splits, lease options, apartheid hotels, essays and your background in IT sales and coaching, you been hosting these seminars for Propsfitter for like two and a half years now. As well as co hosting some along some, some industry giants, you know, the likes of Simon Ducci, Saj Hussain, Rob Moore, the team at YPN magazine. And really you're very, very known face you've because like literally you've helped you know, thousands and thousands of people in this methodology. So what you do in propy is mainly Work with JV Partners angel investors to build your portfolio and share the results and the rewards. You discovered Props Filter as a customer back when I used to run like one to one demos some time ago and almost three years ago, like two and a half and a bit years ago, you started hosting these sessions and training sessions for us and the many happy members who had the chance of working with you. So it's an opportunity I take to thank you for all this incredible work, effort and patience you've had helping so many people. And there's no way we'd be where we are as a company if it wasn't for you balancing my jitteriness excitement with your calmness and you know, the way you've been able to help all these. Everyone makes the most of this. So today you're going to talk a bit more about all your achievements and how you built and manage your portfolio remotely, the systems, the teams and the reality of scaling quite fast whilst investing remotely without being tied onto one location because I know most that will be relevant to most people. You've worked a lot with JV Partners angel investors. So how have you financed your developments? You found through Props Filter the connections you've made in the property community and while still delivering like strong returns for everyone else. So why and how you are a student of entrepreneurship and mindset and your own. I think you made this comment to me like this whole mindset thing and you've coached me on these aspects more than one time actually without maybe realizing it. But how do this mindset is really the underlying and underrated assets that really help you to to shift into whatever you want to do. So I'm looking forward to hear more of that. And how do you go to turn your goals into reality like practical frameworks you use to connect your property ambitions with the actual things you do each and every day. You're a super busy guy and still actively scaling your portfolio all the time and I'm looking forward to hearing from your lessons from the trenches, from going from zero to 50 units in just a few years and mistakes and learnings you've had on the way. And I think you've got some Props Tutor stories to share with us as well because you've been one of our early adopters and we got on quite quickly and obviously all the time you've grown it. So anyway, I will shut up now and I will stop jittering and hand over to you my good friend. So please everyone join me in giving a massive Props filter Welcome to Mr. Red Brewer over To you.

Well, what an intro. Thank you very much. And you know, it goes without saying that working for and with Property Filter and you, Guillaume, it's really been incredible privilege. And yeah, you know, funnily enough, when I started, I came in as a client and I remember our first demo and probably mid demo, I was thinking, this guy's a genius and they've created something that's unbelievable and unfortunately, they probably need me. So I started then thinking through, okay, what does that look like? And a lot of people don't know this, but talk about manifestation. I literally put together a proposal and said, this is how I can help. And we started talking. And then a few months later, I became involved in showing people how to use Property Filter, but also kind of helping create a bit of a methodology behind the methodology, to teach the methodology so that people individually would understand it. But what a lot of people won't realize is that I had a corporate career before. So I was in the trenches like everyone, Monday to Friday, full time job. I was working in the wellness industry, a company called Mind Body. And even though I was very well paid and, you know, had good conditions, I came to a realization one day that I had made them about £4 million in recurring revenue, passive income. So the penny dropped at one point. So why am I doing this for them and not for me? So then I started looking at, well, how could I go from where I was to then, you know, somewhere that gave me a different outcome. And so I started really with mindset training, shifting the way that I saw my reality first. And then I suppose, you know, property came along because it's something that was comfortable to me in that I'd stumbled into property almost by accident, buying my first home in London a long time ago. Did all the rookie errors on that property, but still landed on my feet, you know, and made quite a decent profit. And just to put it in perspective, I bought it for 150,000. I'd done some work to it. I sat on it for, you know, say 15 years, and I sold it for half a million. And so that was the background going into my property journey. But in terms of really kind of getting into property, I was at an event called, funnily enough, Never Work again. And one of the focal points was property. And this property guru invited someone up onto stage. It was someone I knew, this guy Phil. And I looked at this and I thought, hold on a second. So let me get this right. Phil bought five properties in a year. And I thought, well, if Phil can do it, Then I can do it. So that's kind of how it started. And I asked Phil, well, you know, should I go with Education Company A or Education Company B? And he said, definitely B. Which was a mix of mindset and coaching. And the company's name is Real Life. So that's how I kind of really started. Started in, you know, property training, but HMOs became like, let's say, my primary strategy right at the very beginning. And the reason being cash flow, because I needed to replace my job. I had a little friend come along, which was Covid. So, you know, for many people it was a disaster. For me, it was the beginning of a complete change in, in my life. I had, first of all, furlough for about seven months or so. I also had private redundancy insurance, so I had a year, basically on top of that to just keep developing property. And then on top of that I had redundancy pay. And I'd remortgaged my current home and had a large lump sum sitting in the bank account when Covid hit. So it was literally almost a higher power divine moment where all the stars were aligned. There was only one problem. I knew that I was going to run out of money relatively quickly, so I had to be radical in terms of how I approached it. So my first property was a joint venture with some people who had done HMOs before in London. This was their first HMO in Derby, where my portfolio is. And. And they'd done it before. The way I describe it is it was a bit like sitting in the jump seat in an airplane where they were flying the plane, but I was in the cockpit and then I had a remote control where I was then lining up additional planes to then get ready to take off. So that at one point I had four properties in some stage of development. I was raising funds, project managing three of them. And then as the first one was coming down to land, I was taking a valuation course, just trying to brush up my understanding of what valuations look like when you're doing them commercially. And so literally, you know, the first one was the project with the JV partners, and the second, third and fourth were all ones that I was then project managing myself. And it reminded me in some ways of when I was in high school. I had. I was taking German and Russian lessons when I was in high school and my Russian teacher told me that he ended up teaching people how to speak Polish, despite not speaking Polish. He just needed to stay at least one month ahead of the students. So you know, I took that as a kind of reference point and did very much the same thing. Fast forward to today. I've personally done seven HMO developments from purchase all the way through to back to brick development, then commercial valuation and then tenanting. So I've got now, it's going on about 54 units shortly. And I've been involved with actually nine HMOs in one way or the other over this period of time. A success story, which is very specifically Property Filter. So I managed to find a below market value deal about a year ago, which had all sorts of problems. Bought it for £400,000. I saw that the vendor was selling it for less than they paid for it and I also saw that it was about 30% below market value. So this was a deal I found on Property Filter and I literally just had it valued. So I bought it for £400,000. Rick Surveyor valuation, £650,000 a year later. And so, phew, that basically means I can pay the investor back. I now own this flat in London, which is quite extraordinary. And I've learned more on that single project, probably than all the HMOs combined because of the sums involved. It was the most expensive property that I'd actually bought. And so as a result, the pressure and some of the unexpected challenges meant that I really had to up my game and get out of my comfort zone to then finish it successfully. So that's a little bit about the background.

That's cool. And then you are not from the UK either. So do you want to talk a bit about. More about how you came about joining here?

Yeah, sure, absolutely.

People think, oh, I can't because I'm not from here or I've got an accent, so something, you know, so just me, if you want, briefly around that, it'll be interesting.

Yeah, absolutely. So, originally from the States, I grew up just outside New York. I've been in the UK actually, for a really long time, longer than I was in the States. I've been here now, it's about 33 years, so it's one of those things. But, you know, the UK is very much home. But the accent is state.

Yeah, awesome. And do you want to tell us a bit about, you know, how you went about, you know, we're working with. Sorry. About investing remotely and scaling and the systems you've had to put in place because, you know, like, Brighton to Derby is quite a trip. And are you going there every. Every other day? Every week, once a month. How do you go about converting, you know, seven HMOs remotely like this?

Yeah. So one of the, the best things about the journey generally, which was kind of deliberate on the one hand, but then by accident on the other hand, is that when I started, I realized very early on that my strategy HMOs didn't work the way that I needed it to work in the southeast, in Brighton, where I'm based. So I then had to make a radical decision, despite the fact that I had this very comfortable lifestyle living by the sea, to then develop a whole team in order to then harvest the gold in a place that the gold was more accessible. And to put it in context, buying a house in Brighton might cost, say, four to five hundred thousand pounds. Buying a house at that time in Derby might be, say, £170,000. And so, as you can imagine, even though the rents are roughly the same, for me to achieve my outcome of replacing my income from the previous job, it just wouldn't work in somewhere like Brighton. And there was another thing that I was calculating, which was if I was going to make mistakes, which you do, then better to make the mistakes on cheaper properties when the mistakes are less expensive than they'll be if you were trying to learn on the job, let's say, in a high sticker area like London. So that's kind of how it started. And so by team, that meant that, of course, I had to select builders locally, vetted them quite thoroughly. I had remote solicitors, I had remote architects, so everyone involved, whether it's the cleaners, the agents who manage the tenants, all those people had to be sourced, found and then, you know, put to work to mean that I don't have to actually deal with the tenanting, I don't have to even take meter readings. I have people who can, you know, let me know if there's an issue. I had a tenant being evicted recently and I had someone who could, you know, go and represent me in court. So, in other words, there are lots and lots of things, the vast majority of things that you don't need to personally do, but also it helps if your intention is to scale, because if you're doing all the upfront work, which is the hard part of assembling this power team, you don't want to do that 10 times. Ideally, you're going to do that once and then benefit from it as it starts to pay off.

And so because you've built this team from scratch when you started, so how would you go about? What would you say are like, the people, let's say I'm someone living in the Southeast, I'm like, I'm trying to get started into investing a bit more remotely than in my area. I'm thinking of some of the guys on the call now. How do I go about, what is the first person I need the second person, how do I go about building this team?

Well, I suppose the first thing is to almost do a personal assessment to understand where are you? Do you have significant enough funds to then pay people to do everything you need, including, let's say the builders to buy a property and also get the mortgaging? Because sometimes in the beginning that's a challenge. Or are you, let's say someone who maybe has funds but you don't have the time, you don't have the proximity. So what I did in the beginning was that I worked with JV partners who could take a lot of the challenges off of my plate, including the fact that they had the experience. I could use their landlord and HMO development experience to leverage that. And that's a really key word, leverage. So that I, you know, had access to banks, I had access to lots of things.

And can we explain this because I did the same actually my first HMO projects, I did it with an experienced developer. Because you don't have, you can't get the lending right if you, if you are not deemed as an experienced HMO landlord or experienced landlord or whatever it is, you can't do your first project. So I think maybe this is not talked about in education and things like that. Can you explain a little bit? What does it take to get landing on your first HMO development?

Yeah, absolutely. So on your first HMO development, one of the challenges is that banks will perceive you as a risk green because you don't have the development experience. And quite rightly because when you actually look at a full blown development, there's a huge amount of responsibility. People's lives are literally on the line. The bank's money is on the line and you're doing wild and crazy things like ripping out all the electrics and plumbing and taking the roof off and moving walls and putting steel beams and effectively making the property uninhabitable in order to then redevelop it and, and add value. And so, you know, really during that whole period of time, there's a high degree of risk for the lender.

So it's worth a lot less until it's worth a lot more, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Which I, funnily enough, I'm working on A, an HMO, a 10 bed HMO in Nottingham with someone at the moment and, you know, despite the fact that she bought the building, it's worth less now than it was when she bought it.

Yeah. So if you are totally green, it's maybe a good idea to go and work with someone if you want to get the lending on those more complex projects. Who else would you say you need? In the context of investing remotely, you talked about having people doing viewings for you and like, what is this little minimum viable power team you could assemble to start investing remotely? Talking about systems and people.

Yeah, sure. So indirectly, one of the things that led me to Property Filter is that I was using deal sources. So right at the very beginning, I was working with deal sources who would go find me deals, and they were in the area so they could go do the viewings, they could take the measurements, vet the basic potential of a property. And they also happened to be connected with my build team as well, so that the builders were able to go on site, verify what they were saying, let me know what the estimated costs would be so that I didn't have to physically be there for every single viewing. And these days you even have things like Viewer, where you can pay someone to go out and do a viewing for you, or you can, you know, for example, have an arrangement with someone locally who then that's what I'm doing now, where I have people in new areas where I'm looking to invest, go out and do the viewings for me, take videos, take photos, write up a report for me, I've told them what I'm looking for and then they're able to come back with a report. And it's not sourcing. I'm sourcing deals these days on Property Filter because it's. It's cheaper, faster and better. But in terms of the practical side of just making sure that I'm not missing something, then I would get a third party to go out and view. Apart from that, of course, you can have a surveyor go out and have a look at a place to make sure, you know, are there any structural issues, damp, subsidence, those kinds of things. But otherwise you get a knack for it, I suppose, over time. The key thing in the beginning is, of course, you do have to invest that time in going to the place to know the place enough to know whether the place that you're buying is in a good area, is a good deal and it's solid. And then once you know what you're looking for, you can document that and then explain it to someone.

Else great. And that's a good segue into sort of some mindset stuff I want to speak with you about on. You know, you talk about leverage and it's almost like, you know, not just delegating, but it's. For me, it's a mindset to not doing. Not be doing everything yourself. Right. So. And you alluded at the start, you know, if, you know, it's like a blessing to be investing remotely because you have no choice but to be a bit systematic and working with other people whilst other get stuck being busy. Being busy and then the plateau. Right, so do you want to talk about this mindset of delegation and letting go of some things and understanding that everything costs, you know, so, you know, you can do everything yourself and if. And if you actually do, it costs you. Do you want to talk a bit about that?

Yeah, absolutely. So one of the things that I suppose even going back to my corporate days, I'll tell you a funny story. My former bosses, they sometimes would want me to do lots and lots of admin. And so what they didn't know.

Horrible boss, right?

Terrible bosses. Right. And the admin just became overwhelming at one point where it was like say one or two days a week. So guess what I did, I got someone else to go do the admin for me, log in as me. And then, yeah, it's a big corporate international company.

You had a VA in the Philippine.

And I had a VA doing some of this admin work for me because I realized I don't want to do that. And it's going to eat up all this valuable time when I could be doing other things. So, you know, that concept I had, I suppose, in my mind anyway. And then also, you know, talking, talking about mentoring, you know, I. I've also gotten a lot of direct or indirect mentoring from you, Guillaume Florian, in. In terms of, you know, watching how you outsource so much to other people, part of it is the ability to. To let go and to trust that actually letting people get on with what they're good at empowers them. And it empowers me in that I can take a step back. Of course, up front, you're trying to find people who can do what you need them to do at least as well as you could, if not way better, so that there's no doubt about whether they're going to be doing what you need them to do. And with the builders, it was a huge thing. It was like hundreds of thousands of pounds of other people's money tied up in deals. With, with these builders. But I picked the right team as a women led team and I specifically wanted them over the competition because I believed that they would work harder for me because, you know, they were in a male dominated world and I was proven right. Obviously, relationships change over time and they became a little bit, you know, arrogant at a certain point and unfortunately they went bustling. But that said, I think the instinct was right, trusting your gut about whether they can help deliver. And obviously I didn't just go on meetings, I went and looked at their work, I spoke with clients and they also synced very well with my sourcing team and also with my interior design team so that I had a whole unified team working with one goal in mind. And you know, for me that was to kind of set the bar in Darby for HMOs.

Yeah, really cool. And I remember our first meeting you on this demo and you're like, you seen the value. The leverage immediately is like, wow, this will save me so much time, therefore I can do so much more valuable shit, you know. And I remember, well, you don't swear because you're not a builder like me, right? But I remember quite vividly. And there were a few other people in the call and it's almost like you were selling everyone else in the call, you know, like, oh, this is, is, this is so meaningful for me. And so, yeah, so everyone, and I'm the same, you know, like, should look at whatever, whatever you are doing and what should you be doing, should you not be doing and do more valuable things. Yeah, it's definitely a big lesson. And from mindset, like going into like your audio, because you talk about manifesting certain things and how do you go about you, like from your goals to reality. You mentioned some frameworks, you know, but what do you sort of exercise on this skill, you know, as you were.

Yeah, well, there's a little story to tell. Years ago, a friend of mine went to his house and I'm looking at this, this, what I call the sculpture on, on the wall where there were all these keys hanging from this little tree. And, and I was looking at this tree and I said to him, so that's a really interesting sculpture. I like it very much. And he laughed, almost falling on the floor, and he said, that's not a sculpture, those are my properties. And I was so shocked and taken aback because I just couldn't imagine that this guy Cotto could possibly have that many properties. In reality. What he had was lots of rent to rent in London, which now I can kind of understand what. What that was about. So manifesting part of it is, I suppose there can be a disconnect between, let's say, the goal that someone has and then, on the other hand, what that looks and feels like. And that was one of my first instances of being confronted with my own disconnect, which is that I always wanted property, but I didn't know what that would mean or feel like. There was a moment when I was doing my first set of accounting where the accountants quite understandably said, okay, we need all the invoices. And as you can imagine, there was a bit of chaos. And I know you a little bit.

Right here.

So, you know, there's a bit of chaos with four, four builds and, you know, money. Money. I had never dealt with so much money in my life. I mean, you know, because once you're doing a development, people don't tell you this, but you've got invoices for 15,000, 20,000, 30,000, 40,000. So every week. And I didn't have time while I was doing it to even think about it. So it was only when I was doing the accounting that I almost had a kind of heart attack because I was just thinking, how did you manage to pay all of these invoices? Because you know it at times, let's say with one project, a concrete project, block of flats, I bought it for £265,000. I budgeted for £100,000, very naively being the refurb budget, and it ended up costing about 200,000. So I had to borrow an additional 100,000 of other people's money in order to then develop this property. Luckily, the end valuation was much higher than I was expecting because I was very scared about losing other people's money. So in the end it was valued for £650,000. So in the end I managed to get the money back. It was money in, money out, and it's actually one of my most reliable income earners today. But manifesting, I suppose it's this thing of working out what do you actually really want? And rather than worrying about how to do it, taking the next best step in terms of getting closer to it. So that partially means surrounding yourself with people who think on a very bigger plane. So in other words, all of a sudden stepping into property, you meeting people like Simon Zutshi or yourself, Sad Hussain, people who've built enormous portfolios. And so normal starts shifting away from, well, yeah, I have my home through to, well, what about 50 properties or 200 properties? Or how could you get properties for free or how could you buy a portfolio? And so in other words, the.

The.

Scale of possibility has increased over time. As I've stepped into my power, powerful things have happened and so sometimes it's stepping out of the comfort zone. You know, Guillaume has been part of that as well. And that, you know, from, from day one he's been like, rhett, here's the software. Can you teach some people tomorrow at 12? And you know, all of a sudden it's like, yeah, okay. So, you know, I was thrown in the deep end. But then the funny thing about it was, and it was a good strategy, it's helped me, you know, I was thrown into supporting Simon Zucchi. So I've been in a number of co hosted sessions with Simon Zutshi and the first time it was really out of the comfort zone. But then I learned a lot from him and people are benefiting from that, I suppose, in the group calls at Property Filter as well.

Yeah, awesome. And then from manifesting to getting the end results, I'm sure it's not a straight line. So we got some stories from the trenches you'd like to share.

Yeah, absolutely. Let's see, I'll give an old story and a more recent story. So the old story was there's one hmo, it seemed like the easy one, right. And this is one of the things that people don't explain when you're getting into property. A friend of mine put it beautifully, which is that property is problem solving. And so once I heard that line and I understood it, I then gave myself the credit to say, ah, it's not you that's always finding problems. It's just that property is problem solving. So if you solve the problem, then you're given the benefit at the end of it. So, long story short, I buy this seemingly simple hmo, everything's lined up. The architect says yes, gives us the floor plans, we get building. Little problems included that it was in a conservation area. The neighbors on both sides complained, went to the local council. That was the easy part. The hard part was that we finished the hmo. And you're going to laugh about this. The HMO inspector comes around and no one quite tells you that they're going to be measuring every inch of this place two or three times.

The licensing.

Yeah, this is the licensing woman. So, you know, very nice woman. She's going around with her little piece of paper taking notes. When she gets to the smallest room.

Oh, no. Right.

May we? So the smallest room. So she hesitates with the smallest room, and she measures it two or three times and that's, that's a very bad sign. So anytime a licensing officer is measuring something for a second or third time. So I ask her, is everything okay? She says, yes, it's absolutely fine. Then I get a call from my agents as we're starting to market the HMO to say that the 6, 8, 6 bed HMO has been licensed for 5 people, not 6. So the small room ended up being 1 meter too small. And the net cost of it was, number one, that room could not be let until I found a solution to the problem. Situation two was that the investor involved, then we're going to refinance. And I had to refinance it as a five bed and not a six bed just to get some funds out. And so, you know, all of a sudden you're in this situation where the numbers haven't quite, quite added up. The furniture is sitting in bedroom six. It's all been done. It's just that it's one meter too small.

The one meter, like, like five and a half square meter is quite, Was.

It that it's, it's literally one meter. So we had to find a meter. And so the way to resolve it was to take the brand new offsuite, make that smaller, and then borrow the meter for that unit, and then find another meter or two downstairs in an.

Off.

External area for a shower room so that there'd be a split between toilet and shower room. And that was a way to resolve it and to then find the £80,000. But you know, that kind of thing could really crush a lot of people. If you, if you embrace the challenges and you remember property as problem solving, then you'll think, oh, thank goodness for that because I'll never make that mistake again. And in fact, I'm only going to buy houses that are big enough to make sure that there's never a dispute about, you know, whether it's big enough.

See, like rule number one of HMO investing, you know, like, measure the bloody rooms, right?

And the architect measured the room, the builders measured the room. But you know, you work with people.

And you, you know, I've learned to never trust the professionals as well. You know, it's like challenge everything that you're told. That's quite a, that's quite, that's quite a big one, this. And then a more recent one you said.

Yeah, a more recent one is the flat in London. So the flat in London, simple, seemingly simple deal. But I knew from day one that it had some subsidence.

So what do you mean a flat with subsidence? How does that work? Is it the old building or it's the whole building. But is it one flat in a house or one flat in a block.

Or in a block of 3? An Edwardian conservation area. Great location. But the telltale sign was that there was an almighty crack going down a wall and there was a subsidence monitor over the crack to see whether it was moving or not. Okay, so the cause was some trees that were next to the building. But what I realized up front about this is because, you know, it's a flat and not a freehold building that I own, is that I was going to have to prove that it was the trees, force the freehold owner to cut the trees, and then effectively to prepare legal action before buying the property so that I had the certainty that I was going to be able to line things up and protect my investors funds in the process. I ended up having to basically get a mini master's degree in subsidence. And the moment where I realized I was going to do it was when I had some subsidence experts come and then explain that they actually, their main strategy is to find properties with subsidence because then they can use that as a way to get the price down. And then they know that 99% of the time it's something that can be solved relatively easy.

Yeah, yeah, great. And then you do need to invest in going down these rabbit holes and figure and solving these problems. You know, it's just one thing after the other. And as you say, like, and then therefore you become the, the official problem solver for that problem and it becomes a whole strategy on it, on itself. Some people just go and buy properties with Japanese, not weed, because they know how to solve it really easily. And talk about this on the pinning thing now. So, yeah, it's just the deals are made by solving this type of problems there you talked quite a few times about working with investors and stuff like that. So how did you. So what's your, like from someone who is, you know, like saying, oh, but I don't know anyone, you know, and no one's got money around me. I've got no contacts in this country. Like, how do you go about, how did you start, you know, like working with investors? And what does that look like? You talk about JV and angel investors. So what's the, how did you learn this and you know, how would you tell the stories for that for someone sort of, you know, new to this or can they sort of go out and do something similar?

Well, you might be surprised to, to know that I'm actually very risk averse and I also don't like debt, which is kind of one of the strange things about getting into property is you have to become very comfortable with debt. But it's high risk, but it's, it's, but it's good debt versus bad debt. And so good debt is where you're, you're working with people in a win win way. And so a number of projects have been financed by people who, you know, let's say they're getting into HMO development or blocks of flats, they want to maybe learn on the job so they, they would lend passively as, as the bank, they get a return maybe plus some education in understanding the process and.

The, I'd call this more experience than education, right?

Yeah, exactly. Like experiential win win. And on the other hand, sometimes with people with a larger pot of funds, they're lazy, maybe they don't really want to do all the work and the sweating to make sure that things go well. And so a number of times I've done JVs with people where it's a win win. Let's say we do two HMOs together, one for them, one for me. And you know, obviously their money is protected by legal agreements, et cetera. So I studied it formally with the Real Life Group. Originally I had a coach mentor who got me out of that comfort zone of taking on debt. But you know, really, ultimately it comes down to finding the right deals where you're buying something that's below market value from a motivated seller, where you have a path to money in, money out, and where let's say if cash flow is the main thing, you're also then making sure that you've got that cash flow by doing the numbers desktop research in Property Filter, but then also maybe speaking with agents and just sense checking whether the figures you have in mind are really viable for the property that you're looking at as well.

And you have a process of like quality, you know, getting people to put their hand on up and say hey, you know, like I'd like to be involved in your thing and, and then you have like initial conversations and what do you sort of, how does that sort of look like, you know, like from when you speak with investors or getting investors on board?

Well, as I've heard you say many times, people tend to invest with people who they know like and trust and ultimately a certain degree of visibility and consistency is part of it. So, you know, a lot of people have added me as a friend on Facebook or LinkedIn and so, you know, I post what's happening so that they're seeing that, right? You know, he bought that house, it was a mess. And now look at it now and wow, you got evaluation that is more than double the value of the property in a year. So. And it's not a one hit wonder thing. You know, people sometimes have followed me for a couple of years and then all of a sudden I get a message out of the blue saying like, hi, I've just inherited a hundred thousand pounds. Is there anything you could do with that? You know, and the answer is, of course, always yes. Because when you find as many deals as we do on Property Filter, then really you want to take advantage of them and it just comes down to having the funds to hand at the time.

It's really insightful, interesting. And then anything you can share on your sort of experience, like basically spending, showing property filters to lots of people and on, you know, like what, what does this taught you? Like, basically like, or maybe like they open your eyes on opportunities and things like that. Or you talk about exponential growth in property. So just wondering how, you know, being involved with this environment, community and other, you know, has it benefited you in, in the way of finding deals or what's been the story there for you? It's a bit specific because you, you show it to a lot of people. Just wondering how that helps.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's one of the great privileges, I suppose, of my role is that people don't realize that they're teaching me as much as I help them. So examples of that would be sometimes the questions that people have or the areas they're looking in. And so what happens? And one of the reasons I think a lot of people enjoy coming regularly to the group sessions is that you end up unpacking the whole of the UK with every strategy, you know, one session at a time, one question at a time. And if I had to summarize, let's say the biggest challenge that, you know, I experience from people, it's a lack of clarity. So maybe there's that vision of, you know, this is what I want, but on the other hand, this is where I am. But I think, you know, what happens over time if people commit to, you know, working with the tools of Property Filter, but also really investing in, in their expansion as a person, you know, in terms of like, what can they see, what can they picture, what's possible Then over time what happens is your toolkit expands exponentially to then start seeing how everything is possible. An example of that is that at some point I found a deal on Property Filter in Brighton which was a 1.5 million pound purchase and the potential GDV was 4 million pounds. I thought, wow, okay, that's interesting. And I just posted about it on social media just out of curiosity to see if I would get some responses. And I had three people say like, hi, I'll give you the money. And I was sitting there thinking like, wow, really? And the answer is, yeah, really. It's that thing where Property Filter is a gold mining tool when you invest the time and energy to really master it and understand how to use it as a tool to find deals, but also to help you to raise funds because if you have good deals and the money will flow and also to help you get certainty on the numbers by training your eyes to use the tools to interpret the data so that you've got the clarity and the certainty to take whatever steps you want to take.

I'll share with, with you and everyone a confession. You know, people sometime ask questions and I, and I don't know, I have to figure it out on the spot, you know, so can, can you find this deal in that area? And it's like, let's have a look, you know, and then this is where the, you know, if you look, if you look at something thinking there's nothing, there's nothing there, you'll, you'll find nothing, you know, but if you look at it, say, oh, there's a challenge, you know, let's go and find it. So do you find sometimes you, you know, like, maybe it's the first ever time someone asks you these questions and you know, you have to find an answer. Right? So how much can people learn from having the same sort of, you know, behavior of like, okay, there's no problem, only solutions, you know, like whatever throws at us, let's go and, let's go and find it. I don't know if you relate to this where you have to.

No, but figure it out, you know, 100, 100 constantly. So people, you know, of course we love the, the safe questions where you've answered it 100 times before, but always there will be a question where someone asks a question that you're not prepared for and then you have to figure it out live. And what that does is it forces you to think, to work through what it could be and to make it playful where it's a game and let's get to the bottom of the question and the answer. And what it does is also help to expand your ability to problem solve and come up with solutions constantly so that then you become stronger as a person, but also as an advisor to other people.

For me, it's really forced me to think on my feet sometimes and then be a lot more creative about things and finding an angle where sometimes you just see listings at the face value of what they are. Then you find an angle, you know, like rent to rent, you know, like why don't you look for like those properties were, that were listed for sale but are not delisted, you know, because we don't want to sell anymore, you know, and then no one's pitching it. There's lots of little angles to make things work and, and a lot of the deal making happens outside of the, you know, those strings of strategies and those, you know, recognize the step by step, you know, you can find on YouTube. Right? It's just like looking at it in different ways.

Exactly.

The question from Paul. So, you know, what research did you do on the different areas of investments when you started around assessing demand and what made you go for Derby at the time for your HMOs?

So because I'm very risk averse and I'm also, I was very much in need of certainty when I started. I was relatively lazy when I started. But the fundamentals now I really understand as far as why Darby worked for HMOs. So my property training group was based in Darby. Right. So you couldn't get more certain about numbers than knowing that the people that you were training from had built their entire network around that place. But that said, I was looking at the rents, so I was speaking with agents before buying so that we were kind of reverse engineering the decision making to know what's the maximum affordability that people had at the time. And a little trick I can share in hindsight, I just randomly, just like Guillaume was saying, someone asked me something once in a session I looked up on Google in the group, how much do people in Derby earn? I was quite shocked when I saw it because basically people in Derby earn more than a lot of other parts of the country. And so in other words, surprise, surprise, that meant that the average young professional was able to afford more, which then meant that I could comfortably develop something for that customer base. And I knew that I would be able to get higher rents than even the people I trained from. I was getting 100 to 200 pounds more per room than the people I Trained from because I went right for the top of the market, you know, in my particular area. But I suppose it's really just understanding the base of people in an area and understanding what, what they want, affordability, who your competitors are as far as other developers and what's on the market and speaking with people because it's, it's a numbers game as well as a people's business. So you've got to go speak with the agents and you know, really get fluent with what, what they're looking for.

And now this whole affordability thing is actually in prop Filter now in the market data on the price versus income thing since a couple of months. And so yeah, you can go and look up any area there to see, you know, where is it that, you know, there's like maybe an arbitrage in the way like people earn and things like that. That's cool. So that was quite a good chat. Any, anything else you want to add and share?

All today, I guess, you know, for people who are new to property and they're figuring out Property Filter at the same time, it's, it's really, it's a gold mining tool in that it helps to radically save time as far as finding things. And you know, if you've been investing in education, which everyone should, one of the things that we see is that sometimes there are gaps between what you learn in the classroom. The reality. Yeah. And so together, I think, you know, Property Filter, the group sessions, the amazing dev team at Property Filter, we're literally there to help fill the gap, to make sure that you find what you, what you need and so that it's easier to be successful. So I'd say I wish I'd had Property Filter when I started my career because I was winging it in the beginning. Whereas you've got this amazing tool.

Ret. Didn't have red.

Didn't have red. Yeah, absolutely. I had a coach, sure, but I didn't have someone available say four times a week for an hour to ask questions and just be going through scenarios and asking questions. But the other thing that I really love about property is that it is very much a meritocracy. So whether you're a woman, you're a minority, even if you're overseas, literally there is nothing holding you back from going as far as you want to go except your own limitations in your own mindset. So I'd say mindset development. And what I mean by that really is not just, you know, saying mantras all day, I mean as in stepping into that next version of you that can use property to step left on an airplane instead of being turning right, you know, like a little. A little funny tip. One of those things I realized at a certain point is that I think I could actually put through the invoices for the builders using my amex card, which means that I would get all these points, which means that then I can go travel around for free. And so in other words, doing property allows me to travel and sometimes to turn left on the airplane just as a bonus for, you know, doing these wonderful and crazy property deals.

Yeah. The points on amex or Capital on Top are like the little perks and secrets no one talks about. Right.

But it's all the property people turn left.

Yeah. That's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing. And then I think people don't realize the we. We don't speak that much. Right. So I'm as much as anyone else spectator because I trust Red with all the sessions and I have for many years now and, you know, I don't get in, you know, that involved, you know, so it's good to catch up as well because obviously we both are quite busy, so. Yeah, so. So that's quite, quite funny. Right. So I don't think we've had an hour together for like, honestly, months, if not years. Right. So certainly not in 2025. Right. So that's quite, quite funny. You got some. Really got lots of love in the chat as well. So we've got Ron saying rot is such a valuable source and resource, not only what he brings in relation with crop tilter, but so much knowledge in so many different areas. A relative encyclopedia. Every session is different. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot, Ron, for sharing. So cool. So if you guys don't have any other questions, I'll close the session. Do you have any, like, just like one last closing sentiment? Right. And then we'll wrap up.

Yeah, one last line, which is, beware of the gold mine trap. So many an investor will probably go down the street asking everyone on the street, excuse me, I'm looking for the gold mine. And then you might speak to someone and they say, there's no gold mine here. But you've got silver mines, you've got copper mines, there's even a diamond mined. And then it's like, oh, I'm looking for the gold mine. And so in other words, sometimes.

You'Ll.

Notice it in the group sessions that magically we find a deal everywhere, because guess what, there are deals everywhere. So in other words, you're all sitting surrounded by gold. You just have to learn how to see it and extract it.

Love it. Yeah. Deals are made, not found. You know, like get a critical view and train your eye finding these deals even in plain sight. This is really why and how we've created this, this methodology, the software, the support. Red, thank you so much. Thank you for everything you do here for us at Propsfilter. Here for the Propsfilter community, the impact you have had on everyone getting the results we brag about. So really grateful for me, the privilege I have working with you and the privilege we have to have you basically guiding this community and being the voice of patience and calm in the storm of French jitter. So thanks a lot for that. I really appreciate everything you do and all that. So thank you and I think everyone will join me in thanking you as well. And thank you everyone. Thank you for joining in today's Dealfinder corner. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I look forward to seeing you just for the next session. In the meantime, go and join your visit propsfilter.co.uk, log on to your Propsfilter account, follow the methodology, find motivated sellers, start those conversations, offer them options, be part of that conversations in the follow up so they only want to sell with you. And honestly, like you'd be in the top 1% of investors out there, become a high achiever deal maker, you know. So I hope you enjoyed today's deal, find a corner as much as I did and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you.

Bye bye bye. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Bye bye. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. Take care.