📝 Escape Your Day Job: Real Portfolio Builder's 57-Deal Blueprint with Emad Barday

Welcome everyone and thank you for joining today's Dealfinder corner. So this is your weekly property talk show brought to you by propsfilter, hosted by myself, Guillaume Black, your favorite Frenchman and you know, the CEO and co founder of Property Filter. As you know, it's the UK's highest related platform to find deals because we're on a mission to empower our property investor members do thousands of deals each and every year thanks to the Property Filter blueprint. And the purpose really with these Thursday calls, you know, these deal final corners is to give you more and the best of the available resources we can put our hands on by inviting expert guests who will share with you the latest and most current strategies, really tactics and secrets, but what actually works right now in terms of findings and doing more deals and the reality of systemizing and running high performance business in property. So it really is my pleasure today to introduce my very, very good friend Emad Barnet, which is on today's digital corner. So Emad has got to be one of the most genuine, the generous human being I've had the luck to meet. We've known each other for many, many years. We met on the, we were on a sad Hussein course or like mastermind type program, you know, like back in 2019 or something. I think you used to run, you used to run the hotels where they used to run the PIN meetings and all that, you know, on Broad street in Birmingham. And I'll go into this property thing and then I often tell the story about us building Property Filter for ourselves and giving it away to you know, like basically people asking us to have it. And I must have told 20 people to go on their bike to go and build their own. And after reluctantly we gave it to half a dozen of our very good friends and you would have been one of the first one then. And now you've built your portfolio, you've done 57 deals by just doing lots of deals. You embody the blueprint. The blueprint is inspired by you as well. You've been solving vendors problems left, right and center and really being able to create momentum.

And I know you've got a really.

Really interesting story because everyone who thinks they don't have time to do property or the one who thinks that they can't do property because we live too far. You know, you live in Manchester, you live in Birmingham, you've had this very big career that brought you in Manchester and you are invade in investing in South Yorkshire. So that's a 250 mile round trip. Whilst you know, having A family and being a, you know, a very devoted family man. So it's really, really, really awesome. So really looking forward to hear your story here where you're going to talk about how you transform open market properties into off market wings through different problem solving now or you manage through property to go full time in property, having the freedom to do what you want to do the school runs. I've seen your video yesterday because obviously this is a new development for you. Be full time financially free as one would say. So really looking forward to that. So I'll let you in a second but I've got notes here on what we're going to talk about today. Mindset shifts that separates portfolio builder from deal chasers. So something you really embody or to identify and solve on the problems so that they only want to sell to you. And then all those problem deals, those problem properties that sit on the market are the ones you want to look after because you've got zero competition, you get to get all of them and that'd be really awesome to have some examples on there. And then I know you're going to share some practical strategies on how to structure deals so you don't have to tie up too much, know all of your capital and then the approach you use to turn 57 open market into your, your freedom today. So very much looking forward to hearing more of your share today. So please everyone join me in giving my very, very good friend a massive Crypt filter. Welcome, Monsieur Emad. Bar. Welcome. Thank you so much.

Thank you very much. Guillem, you can see my screen.

I can, yeah. Do you want to go in presenter mode?

So thank you gm. Yes, it's been long time coming and I've got some case studies to share with people and predominantly I think we were catching up and a lot of property filter members who have joined and been doing the work. But I'm hoping to at least help one person who can get to the next step and actually find the property, hopefully before Christmas. And that's the aim. You know, I live in a world of abundance. There's enough property for everybody to go around and for all of us to do deals. So why me? As briefly, Guillem explained, you know, I had a very good career in corporate, working through all these lovely world brands. Worked for Accor for 12 years with different brands and I worked with IG and Things and I did property in a different sense. So top right of the screen, there's a hotel in Dublin we purchased.

I don't know why but I, I'M stuck on your first page. I don't know why. And it's not in presenter mode, but I'm not too sure, not sure why, why is that, but there we go. Yeah, got it now.

Yeah. So the top right is the one of the commercial assets we purchased and then added value and resource. And I did that for a few other hotels in my career. So I used to do this for other bigger corporate people and things. So we decided to do that in a smaller residential scale for now. And would that help change our own lives rather than somebody else's? So before property I used to have a lot of fun. Now I have fun with property now. I used to have be a avid biker, used to go to Formula one a lot and things. So, you know, and life changed. You know, kids come into life and things and spend more time like everybody would have. Reason was purely to share everybody. It doesn't have to be family for everybody, but it, you have to have a very strong why. Guillem himself had a very strong why and things. So you have to have a why, why you want to achieve whatever goals you want to achieve. And that brings me on to some of the deals we started doing when originally when I started using Property Filter and things. And people who are stuck on trying to find their first deal, whichever areas of the country they are looking at, there are still properties out there which are in negative equity. So by negative equity I mean they somehow bought the property at a very high price at that point in time. And now, and I'm trying to be, trying to explain it to a layman's term, to people who are not very experienced, so the ones who know everything, please bear with me and you know, it's understanding why they bought it at a high price and then now they're selling it for less or what is the pain? Why are they selling it? So this property, for instance, was on the market for 75k, which made sense. He bought it for 72 in 2007 and the market crashed. He was trying to sell it for 75, he could not sell it. And then I went, had a viewing directly with the vendor. I understood that they'd outgrown the house. They really wanted to buy a new built house which they put an offer on. They really, they needed to cover the mortgage that was on it, which was 58k, which is actually 60k. We managed to get it down to 58 and they sold us the property at 58k. Now if I'd gone through the estate agent, I would rarely get that price discount. But we solved the problem for the seller. So it was about understanding what does he need. He wanted to move to his bigger dream home and that was his sole purpose. So, you know, we satisfied what he wanted and then we managed to buy a good deal. And then since then we've managed to do very light refurbs in there. We revalued the property and even got all the money out. So the moral of the story is as such, there are still negative equity properties out there. So try to look on property filter where in your patch or wherever you put your lead generators and see what other people, what have people bought it for? And it's predominantly if they have a move somewhere and the market is such that they can't get much more or if it is due to, you know, divorcing somebody or different scenarios in their lives. And that's how you will be able to solve their problems. And I'll come back to solving their problems again. You know, in some of the other case studies, this is kind of the proof in the pudding. This was when the money actually came back and we could go again. So, you know, when you see these things, you can really say these things happen. They're not just on Instagram. They, you can actually buy a property and then get all your money back and go again. So this was another house which was on the market for a while. We viewed sold at that point. It was in my follow up, but it was just in property filter. So it came back on the market and the agent called us and it was already in property filter lead generators as well at the time, saying that's what it's come back at. It was asking for a lot more than this. It was about 70 something. But again we met the vendor and he just, he'd done nothing to the house since 2004. He bought it for 50, just under 55k. And he just wanted to get the same money and move on because he got divorced. He was living with like weekends, he would have the kids and stuff and he just didn't want to live in this house. So we managed to get a very, very good deal on this. And you know, eventually then we refinanced it, we refinanced that 80k. We got all the money out. So on the right you can see I've put cash back was 15, 600. Equity went from 11,100 to 20k. And that was also in acquiring the assets. I also have tried my best every time to go for 80% loan to value Now I understand people say, oh, you shouldn't get highly leveraged. We're not getting highly leveraged. But when you refinance this first time to pull the money out at that point you can go to 25% or 30% or whatever you suits you to acquire the asset. At first you can just get a 20% deposit and pay that extra interest rate. And once we pay off this mortgage, eventually we have the option to convert it to shop and uppers or have two flats. And once you've purchased an area, and if let's say you're not buying in that area or not looking to buy something, it's still important if you can put that into your lead generator. So I was not looking to buy another house on this road or anything, but I had it in one of my lead generators. And this, well towards the end of last year, this house, which is the first one, which we bought is the corner gray one and then this kind of olive green colored house number one that came on the market and that was purely. I would not have known about it if it wasn't for property filter. Now that came on because my flying freehold, which is above the alleyway, that's called a flying freehold, that was attached to this house and it would help our future strategy to convert into flats or shops and things. So we ended up in February this year buying that olive green house as well. So now we own the whole of that corner plus this house as well. So it over time it will compound and it will give us more options to convert it into something else. This again thanks to Guillem and Property Filter. You know, we managed to buy this at 167. This was on the market for one was over £210,000 and it had been on the market for 18 months to two years. I spoke about it briefly a couple of weeks ago on a call as well. You know, it was fallen through four times at least and it was with my favorite agent, purple Bricks. You know, we managed to go and speak to the vendor, we just knocked on the door. So my piece of advice and some of my friends and business partners know I love to go and knock on the door of the neighbors where I'm buying or anything and just have a conversation with them, understand what's the history of the house you're looking to buy, Was there any trouble, what would they like it to be and things like that. Don't tell them you're going to convert it to HMO for obvious reasons, but you know, just to get that understanding. It's really good. We managed to speak to the vendor directly. It was their family home for over 60 years they had it in the family. It was never registered, so it fell through four times because people could not be asked to register it on the land registry and wait the time. So we waited six months, helped them get the solicitors correct, solicitors who could help them register it. At the beginning they expected us to pay, but they managed to pay themselves because the solicitor convinced them that it was their cost and they should pay for it. So they paid for it, we waited, we gave them assurance that we will still go ahead and buy it. So we then managed to buy it for 167,000, converted into a six bed HMO. It's for social housing, so hence why the refurb cost is so less compared to 80 to 100k for all en suite HMO. And the cash flow for the investor is thousand pounds per month. This was in plain sight, anybody could have bought it. And when I found it in my inner circle, when I was discussing it, there was at least three people in the inner circle who wanted to buy off the deal with me, deal of me because you know, it was such a good deal and it was on plain sight on rightmove and property filter and everywhere. You know, this again is another negative equity in a way because it was marketed at 60,000 and we bought it for 59. And again the person had paid in 200665 rand for the house. It was in a right state, it was not in this. This is the refurbed photographs of this house and that shows again, if you keep looking in your area where negative equity works then you will find the right houses. And that's been my kind of strategy as such, trying to find a niche. And then when you go on to property filter in your areas, you set your lead gens, look at the properties where there is a issue. So issue in the sense might not be a massive issue, but first time buyers or people who don't want to do any work or they might not want this bathroom on the bottom left or the accessible bathroom up there because it was done under grant from the government for the person who was living there. But it was accessible. Not everybody likes that. This bedroom had a shower open shower enclosure in the bathroom in the bedroom between the two windows in the corner. And that put a lot of people off. You know, nobody wanted to buy it because there was an open shower there and they did not want to deal with it or thought it was going to be a nightmare to remove it. And the agent and the agent confirmed those things to me. Oh, there's a shower in the bedroom. So they don't. Nobody wants to buy it and you know, it's not a difficult thing to get that changed. But trying to solve problems will get you the right options of buying the right property at the right price. So looking for problems and then trying to see how can you put two and two together, resolve them and in the right areas in the south of the country, in the Midlands, you could do assisted sale for these, you don't have to buy it. So, you know, we talk on property filter about deal sourcing. You could do assisted sales as a strategy on that. If. If some of the house owners don't need the money then, then you could also do lease options. So there's wide variety of strategies you could apply, helping problem solving problems. We've done so many 57 deals so far. We've in the last two years, when we started doing social housing, we've done 44 bedrooms for providers for homelessness. So it's not asylum contract, it's a contract for a local council that take homelessness. So it's a give back to the community kind of things. And I obviously, unlike just giving the house to them, I've also visited and seen the tenants, spoken to them and see understand why or how they managed to get into this thing or why council is giving them a room and stuff. So it, it's a something to give back and get the people back onto the track as well. We got 14 plus rooms in the pipeline and we're looking for more houses to get these HMOs up for homelessness. That's what I do in South Yorkshire after Guillem bugging me for at least two years. When are you leaving the job? When are you leaving the job? And at least for the last 12 months I could have left the job, I kept on in the job. And you won't hear this on Instagram from many people because many people will just try to tell you you should leave the job. And from the first service accommodation that works for you or the first deal sourcing deal that you sell or you sold two, three and you can leave your job. My advice would be complete opposite to others. Try and stick to your day job if you have one, as long as possible while doing this. Yes, you'll have to sacrifice some things so you can sacrifice other things in life. Note down what is important and what can be on hold for some time or where you can time manage better and things. But keep the day job because that way compounding will be your best friend. You'll buy a property or whether you're doing some other strategies, whatever you're doing you, it will help you reuse that cash flow and invest again and go again. And having a day job will help you if you're looking for mortgages or finance, it'll help you get better deals and faster because you're not, you don't currently have a portfolio and you might not be able to get all the options of finance. So it will catapult your growth. So don't underestimate having a day job. And when the time comes and when you will know, you will know that time has come, that you're more than comfortable or you are happy to leave the job or so you know. And you'll have a much better feeling to leave the job when and for the last 10 months I actually enjoyed my job more because, you know, you're doing the job not to survive. You don't need the job to survive and you're still doing that job. You'll really start enjoying it and you'll give more of a straight answer to certain people doing that as well. Now I have more time. We've started doing more flips as well. So we're doing flips in Midlands and we're basing it on an ethical financing. So it's based with partnering with people like yourselves and sharing the profits with them. So this one is in Solihull that we're doing right now. We did a bungalow earlier this year as well. And yeah, so if you find, if you want to sell your first deal and you find something worth flipping, you can reach out to me and I'll buy the deal off you if you want. And, and with my friends and colleagues everybody pushing me, I'm planning to do more stuff on YouTube and Instagram, Instagram, Facebook. I've been okay with not very. My videos are very raw, very spur of the moment things. Not very planned or well designed. But I'm planning to do some things on YouTube as well in the months to come. So please follow me. And yeah, I want to open up for a lot of questions and help a few people.

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, yeah, thanks a lot. Thank you very much for sharing. I'll get you, I'll find you, I'll find your links and I'll put there because I know you're too shy. Find your Instagram and Facebook there. I'll put it in a sec. Thanks. All for sharing. So obviously just like some of the many deals you would have done over the years and it's really, really, really, really cool. I've got a couple of questions and I encourage everyone to type your question. If you have any questions for Emma, you know, like how could you do something similar for yourself as well in the, in the chat and we'll come to, I'll come to you in the interns. So like don't leave it to the end and we rushed and we, we can go for your question. Anything top of your mind, just please type it there. I've got a question on your, your providers. How did you find, how did you find your homeless charity or providers?

We, we worked with somebody called Sarah Walker who's well known in the social housing sector. She works with the government on a lot of things. So I worked with her to try and find a number of providers and then we tried to tackle, understand what, how they are funding it, how they're running, how long they've been going on. So the ones we caught with, they do emergency housing for a council for Rotherham, council for Bradford and Leeds and things. So they've been going for good 12 years now. They are well established. They have owned some of the assets themselves as well. They actively acquire some of their own assets as well. But it is a registered charity. They had some staff members, procurement manager and people who we met. They've been in the company for five plus years. We spoke to some of the landlords who were already giving them houses as well. So we did our due diligence as such because ultimately, although it looks all fashionable to give social housing, it's funded by the government. So yes, there's always going to be an element of withdrawal of the funding from the government, but this is the lowest of the low people on benefits who really need the government. Regardless of which political party comes into power, it will be very difficult for them to remove, unplug this funding because there'll be chaos and uproar against it. So it's understanding where it is for. So if it's like for asylum, yes, they can solve the problem or send people off to, on a plane to another country, but homelessness for people who are from the uk, they can't do that. They will not be able to do that, how much ever they want to do it. So you know, and it's also about helping those people, trying to get them back into life or some of them, some of them are literally because they were in a care home or without parents and stuff. Before and they've now turned 18 and they become homeless and the counsel has to give them a room. So it's trying to get them back into working or starting to do part time and whatever. So the socializing company that we decided to go with is doing something good for the community and giving back to the community as well. So that was our kind of thing. And then for getting understanding of rates we worked with two, three other companies. We worked with mirs, everybody might know they have a national contract with the government in the north. There is clear waters in London. You know we've given some houses to them but they are very much different. And you know there are people who like to give it to them but they are very corporate. Like for instance M is, you know, they are black and white and because they've become so big, I doubt how they spend their money. Like what, what is the need for a company like Mears to sponsor, let's say Rotherham United? They sponsor one of the stands in the stadium. Now I don't think a social housing company should be sponsoring a stand in a football stadium. That's not good use of the money. So you know, that's for each individual and investor and everybody to think about. But we've done whatever due diligence we could and we tried with one house and when we tried the first house was my own. So I, I wanted to try it for myself rather than go through the whole process before I could get other investors involved. And that's how we've built that relationship. And they don't like to work with single landlords so they will not just entertain anybody and everybody. So we show them a pipeline of okay, how many rooms and what's our ambition? To get to X amount of rooms in two years and things. So that's how they've worked with and this way we get the deals approved by them before we can buy. So I have come across a lot of people who buy a house, be it in Birmingham, buy a house, do it up and then they go start looking for a provider who's going to take my house and how much are they going to pay. This way we know what's the rent going to be. Or a six bit and then what is the back? You know you can work it backwards and you can get that the correct numbers involved basically.

Yeah, yeah, great, great. So you find those providers through recommendation, through your connection with Sarah Walker and then to pitch to them to work with you directly because generally they don't work with landlord. So how would you Go about someone working with the. Doing something similar to you.

Yeah. So people can go onto their council websites, just. They will have details about who they work with or who they are, who are their home partnerships or shelter, and some other organizations might come in. They will say, we work with these companies who give us housing and things. And then when you go to theirs, then you can try and get in touch with their managers. And it will take time because unless you have properties to show them or if they are not in very much need, they might not get back to you. So there will be some back and forth. It's not going to happen in two weeks. But if somebody wants to do that, that's the way to do it, to find it through the council website and then find them.

Yeah, thanks a lot for that. So we've got questions from Agne and. And Matt actually, which are quite similar. So how would you go about. How did you. So how would you go about investing remotely? You know, So, I mean, he's asking specifically, like, I'm based in the south and I'd like. I'd like to flip properties in Liverpool, let's say. Oh, you know, like, how would you go about it? And then Match is a similar one. So what's the biggest tip for sourcing deals outside? You know, finding deals outside the area where you live?

So first thing is. So sourcing outside the area, I would say, don't say I will source throughout the country, because that's just a. You're not going to be an expert throughout the country unless you're at that level and you have teams in the local areas and things. None of us can be expert in every area. So whichever area you want to focus in, be it miles away from where you live, we studied the whole of. So I did South Yorkshire. It's a pocket between four councils and it's a pocket because certain roads, you can literally change councils. So we studied that area. You knew the. You spoke to the estate agents. This is what I'm looking to do. I'm looking to buy, not source, but you say, I'm looking to buy X amount of houses over the next two years and is there any road? What's. You know, engage the estate agents because they will be your best friends. Engage the estate agents who are doing lettings. Ask them. Or can you send me what is your lettings package and what are the different options you do? You might not have any intention of using them for lettings. And in the beginning, if you are buying a buy to let or hmo you can give them if you bought it from that agent and if they provide that service, it's good to give them the first, first or second house to manage because they will then give you something more because they've got recurring income from that property for, for you as well. And ask them because they will not, they'll tell you which other roads, which roads are bad because you will not, they will not want a problem property. And then knowing that area, where is a good school? Why do people work here? You know, for instance, South Yorkshire compared to Blackburn. Blackburn, you can have cheaper houses but there is no employment. I have a lot of family in Blackburn, but I would not buy a house in Blackburn. No offense to anybody who is from Blackburn or has properties there. But you know, you can find cheaper properties there but there's no employment. It's all just a benefit driven and there's not enough employment or growth. What is the government funding looking like in your area? What are the, what is the ten year plan for the city council? What is their, you know, growth plan in that area? All these things you need to know and understand. And so wherever the government is putting money and the council is looking to put money, you can be there a step earlier and try to regenerate the area while you do the investing. And that's key so it does not matter where you live and you become an expert in that area. And then that's how I would say. And if it's a few roads. In the beginning we literally bought houses between four to six roads. That's it. Literally those roads. So that helped us really understanding the area very, very well. And then the question about flipping, flipping is slightly different. So you would one, if you going to do just one property in a different area, that is going to be more challenging. It is doable. But if you're going to do a few and you're going to continue doing it then that way you'll be able to create a team. Now we've done so many deals in a certain area, so we have a team. They will go, you know, even the gas engineer will go even on a weekend if we have a problem because we give him so much business for a flip. Again, if you have flips one after the other, at least the same team, you can employ them, give them enough employment and jobs and contracts to get those things done. Then you need to have the churn of those projects. If you don't have, if you're going to do one in Liverpool and then the next one in Sheffield and then the next one in Birmingham, you're never going to have that continuity because the teams, it won't be commercially viable to transport that team to this project and that project. So that just doesn't work. I've got. I've spoke to investors from London and say, I have a team in London. They don't mind going to Sheffield, do they really? I mean, is it going to be the best use of their time and your money? Probably not.

Awesome. So you focus on. We focus on one area. Then you build your team and expertise on the one area which is really great. Or you go about building the team and finding, you know, are you trying people and playing lots of people over the months? Or have you got a process to pick people for different trades or stuff like that?

Or do you go or do you.

Or you build your team?

We. We did try a few people at the beginning for trades, different trades, and always have a backup trade as well. So we tried few gas engineers. You soon know somebody is genuine or not and what are they doing. And there'll be people who will try to be the contractor, try to take the work and subcontract it out. So you kind of. You might want to stay away from them and you. I prefer to have different trades, direct trade. So the electrician does his job, his job at the best and then just leaves the rest to others. And same with. So at first it was. We asked estate agents as well, or do you have somebody who does this in their lettings or whatever. We went on the trade websites and tried to get people in from there. We asked a trade, who are the other trades that you work with or do you know? So a plumber will tell you who the gas engineer or kitchen fitter or somebody and then get a few people on their sites. Courts, not necessarily the cheapest is the best or the most expensive is the best. It's just how you get on with that person as well is important. And then understanding are they from this area? How long have they been doing it? And Facebook is a very good place. You know, you go and join the local community of that area. Don't say you're a developer or you're building HMOs.

Developer doing social housing stuff.

Yeah, yeah. But you can say, you know, you're moving to this area or whatever you're looking for and stuff and people will recommend people and you'll figure out some people are good, some trades are good in doing buy to let stuff. Some trades won't be suitable for you because they do more residential Stuff which is higher rated or higher priced. So you'll figure those things out. And you know, we understood we wanted to like a gas engineer. We wanted to ask the questions how do you do? Can I have a look at your certificate? Because I wanted something that is digital similar to the EICRs. Normally everybody gives a EICR digitally but gas sets a lot of people give these paper written ones on a triplicate booklet which is very outdated. And we wanted a digital person who will do has invested in a software and stuff and gives us digital piece. Plus we wanted the person to make sure they can do a couple of things. Don't mind them charging 10, 20 quid extra. But they every year when the guy does a gas certs he also writes on it as separately. He's checked all the fire alarms and smoke alarms and they are in place and they work. So legally a gas engineer will only check your CO2 alarm. But we take that opportunity with this guy going in. Officially a third party from us or a letting agent is also doing the check annually and saying all the smoke alarms are in place and they are all working and they are tested. So that covers us, you know, for insurance purposes, for anything else. Because typically tenants will remove it or take the battery out and things. You can't have control but you are liable. So you know, those things are important that they will work for you similar to somebody doing an essay. The cleaner will do more than cleaning and keep an eye on your property.

How do you go about running the works?

You know, that's the long and short answer of finding traders.

But how do you go about managing the works between, you know, because if you deal with the individual trades, you have to kind of manage things on a pretty much day to day basis. You know, like so and so go to this day, so and so goes that day. So and so needs to finish this and that. How do you manage this from afar? You're on the phone, you go there every other day.

What's the thing?

Especially at the start. We.

Yeah, so we would have shown everybody. Can you hear me?

Yeah, can you hear me? It's maybe me. My wi fi is a bit maybe poor.

I don't know.

Can you hear me?

Okay? Yes. Yeah. So I think it's getting everybody to understand what they're doing, what point they will need to do. You will over time, if it's your first project you can. You'll have certain characters in your team who will lead you or a builder or something. But then over time you will know how to project manage it as well. So understanding okay, electrical guy needs to chase everywhere and once we've removed the plasters where we need to remove and wallpapers removed and everything we need the electrician in to do their bits. We tell them when are they available they can go and we normally we use couple of key boxes on every property so we know we'll have one which nobody else has access to because typically always one of the trades will forget to put the key back and take it home with them. So you have a backup. So have two key boxes, one maybe in the back of the house or something and just one in the front. The one is for everybody to use. We will change the codes every. Every so so many days as well. So a trades can't. When they turn up on a Monday or something, if I visited the property on the weekend or something I would have changed the code because then I know they've turned up to work and I won't automatically send them the. So I'll wait for that call from the outside the house or they'll message you normally. So we know what time they've turned up. It's not actually nine, they turned up at 11 or whatever or which day actually they turned up. So they're not going to just tell you I was there on Monday and I did this plus having that conversation up front saying I will need photos of you to send me this and this what works they're doing. And then you might say I'll be there every week or every two weeks because whether it's you or your representative or somebody will have to go there every couple of weeks. If you're doing a decent refurb or a conversion or something you will have to go or somebody will as a project manager go and check their work. So you pretty chilled.

You seem pretty chilled about it all, you know. So do you. Did you have a like a building experience before or do you sort of. What was your experience before you started?

I did commercial. I did. We did a lot of conversions in hotels and there's always. The thing is I am very chilled about it that you're right because kind of there's always going to be a problem. It's just how what is the solution? And this is more being solution oriented rather than. So I'll give you an instance. On the 1st of October this month we finished a 5 bed HMO, gave it to the providers and then the day before the EICR was done, smoke alarms were working. Everything was working on the 1st of October when they decided to take over, the smoke alarms are not working. Nobody can figure out why. The electrician said, I can't be there till tomorrow. And he said, I checked it yesterday. I said, that's all fine, but right now they're trying to test it, which they test every week. They just can't work it, so they can't occupy the house. So, I mean, there was. I could have panicked and tried to get another engineer. I just waited. I told them, that's fine, you can't. You can't start paying me rent today. Then that's fine. We'll just have to delay it by a day. We send the electrician the next day. For some reason, we had an issue with these fire alarms. We hadn't used them. We tried a different fire alarm, it wasn't good. We managed to change them. So it cost me £400 to change all the fire alarms. The heads. Heads were not interlinking for some reason, so we had to change. There was a cost? Yes. In the grand scheme of things, was it a major cost? Probably not. And then we solve the problem the next day. You know, it's. And builders will always badmouth the other builder. Apart from them, everybody else would have done a job. Sorry for my language, sorry for my French. Shall I say, you know, the. Everybody, oh, the painter's done this and the plumber has done this wrong. And they would not look at their own job. So you just have to take that with a pinch of salt and just, Just see what is the finish you are looking for. Is it correct? Telling them what you need and not.

Listen and you find they'll send you like video walkthroughs every day. Every other day, yeah.

We'll get video walkthroughs and things. We also invested into, like. So we have a three business account, so they do a. Like a mobile modem. So we can plug it in and we can plug it into a store that we're going to keep locked or in the boiler room or into the loft or somewhere where nobody's going to steal it. And then that way that gives us Internet access there. And then we can put a couple of cameras outside and inside if you want, especially outside on the door and things. So we can put a couple of cameras in and out. So we have them mobile ready. We move from project to project and then there's a mobile modem that you can just move.

Yeah, cool. If we circle back to the sourcing part, can you explain a bit more about how you work with agents and how other people basically can start conversations with agents out of Aria to be starting to do more deals remotely like you do.

So I think you Guillem always remind people in every call every week that find your niche. So don't confuse the estate agent too much because they're not being one. Yes they are in property, but they're not always in property. They probably don't even own a single buy to let sometimes. So they don't understand stuff the way you might understand. And telling them that you're looking at buy to let and looking to convert something to an HMO and things, it doesn't always work and they might not know what HMO is sometimes and they might have a negative connotation to an HMO as well sometimes. So you and they might say, oh, I live here, I don't want HMOs in this area as well. I've come across that as well. So you know, you just have to say I'm looking for a 2 reception room, 3 bedroom house up to the value of 250k or whatever that keep it simple. And that is what I'm looking for. Or I'm looking for anything that is probate or non mortgageable that I can add value and resell with you. So you will get fees twice from the house. So in that you've told them what's in it for them, it's them getting fees twice on the same house. Now legally they can't come like they can't force you to sell it with them if you don't want to eventually.

But obviously the models you do with.

Them, the more they bring, that will give you some good relationship, you know. But yeah, so that, that's kind of speaking to the state agents, understanding what they're doing. And yes, when you go with a, a box of donuts or something into the office, you might not get the time. So try and book some viewings with those agents in the weekdays or whenever they are doing the viewings. Not a viewer guy from Viewer or something because on weekends typically it's a viewer guy or somebody who works weekends because that agent will give you that 15, 20 minutes when you're at the house and you don't have to talk about that house, you can just talk about how long they've worked at that or have they been in the state agency. Have they come from working for Halfords before or what were they doing, you know, and just to get to know that person a bit more and that person then starts having connection with you. I'VE had chains like Connells call me and say, oh can you come and view this house? It's we just trying to get a few people. So sometimes it's because Connells incentivizes the agent to do a few viewings and they've not got enough viewings on this house and they want to show the company and the vendor that we've had some viewings but it's just your property that is not getting any offers. So just go and help them. If they tell you oh can you do a appointment with my mortgage broker? Fine. You know, eventually just book one in and have the appointment. You don't have to take a mortgage out with them, just do it.

KPIs especially the, the, you say the corporate ones, you know, the kernels.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So and then with, so initially did you used to go and do a lot of them viewings to build those relationships and then to a point where then now you don't really go anymore.

Or what all these. Oh yes, initially I used to go regularly and view a lot more houses. You know I think the first house I must have done around 80 to 90 viewings before I bought my first house.

And I think things in perspective for people who tell me this property thing doesn't work. Yeah for you to get your first deal, you've done 80 viewings, you know and fast forward three years you've done 57. Right.

So, so you, you know, eventually if you're concentrating on that area or something, you'll know very well which areas you want the house and things. So like now for instance for let's if I'm talking about the social housing where we need to convert to an hmo I would know looking at property filter which house is suitable or not. We know roughly in this area they will take it. We will then get the address. We would give it to the social housing company. They will tell us if they will take this house as a four or five bed hmo. I would have looked at the floor plan, I would have known, okay, I can convert it. Not, not deep diving exactly where things are but knowing okay, we can do this. And a lot of agents now put a video tour of the house as well. So you can do all of that. Only once they've said yes will we do a viewing because by this point we know and my viewing, so my offer letter along with my id, my proof of funds agreement in principle, solicitor details and anything else you want to attach to it is already. So if I do the viewing that's the last tick. Because agents will not let you offer unless you viewed. Unless you have a very good relationship with the agent or something. They won't let you offer unless you or somebody's viewed it on your behalf.

And do you do the viewing or you send someone?

I send somebody else now. I send somebody else.

Okay. But, but most, most of them you would have a relationship with the, with them.

Yeah. So if we know the area and stuff, I have, I have a full time guy who works with me over there on the floor. He does like handyman stuff and stuff. So he'll go and do a viewing, he'll do me a video call and things where we know the road well and the. We know like if we, if we're going to do a HMO and if we know the house is going to need everything, I don't need to go and view it personally. So I will send him the minute he's out. Within the next 15 minutes my offer letter will be in. So they've not even finished like all the people doing the viewing. My offer letter is in the email writing and then I follow it up with a call. So hi Teresa, I've just sent you this email. I would like to offer blah, blah, blah. And because you've made it easy for them, you've sent them all the documents that they would have had to send you an email and chase you for it afterwards. From them, their point of view, you've qualified as such and then it's their job to. So even if somebody else has offered, but they have all your documents, they can, they won't share it with the vendor, but they will say we have the agreement principle, we have the proof, we have this, we have their solicitor details, everything is sound and you can get on with it and stuff. So they will then be your salesperson to sell your offer to the vendor. And that way I think becomes much easier because you've the sales negotiator. The title that they give themselves is the person who basically has to get this house sold and then get, get it off their desk to the person who does sales progression. Sales progression, that's it. So you know the, if you've sufficed, everything, all, everything in the offer letter, it's kind of that file is off their desk. If they manage to just sell it, convince the vendor is off their desk and that's all they want. So they'll still get the same commission if they try to do it over the next three weeks or just do it in one email. So you're just trying to help them.

That's great. And so just so you've been really kind to share in your slides. People can call you but currently what is the. What is this best useful for Evans people come what type of questions or. But it's very generous of you first of all, thank you for that.

You know, if people are stuck with even they don't have to if they're trying to do sourcing or if they're stuck not done their first deal or something and they just want a different opinion or want to run anything faster. I'm not trying to sell you anything or I'm not trying to do another course or anything. I'm just here to help. I just want more and more people to get their first deal and get on with it. And you know, we look at people who have 100, 300, 500 houses. It's just look at the people who are just a few steps ahead of you and just try to get. Take the next step. Because you know, back right at the beginning when I started my idea of it was let me get three, four houses as a pension plan and continue working. That was my original plan. But you know, plans will evolve and you'll do something else and you'll do something.

Yeah. When you realize how easy it is to get your first three houses, you're like, why not get 57?

What have I done in the last 20 years? Why should, why didn't I start earlier? But you know, and you know that's fine, but it's just about evolving your plan. It's fine to evolve your goals and things, but it's just taking the next step and taking it on.

It's really interesting because you say like everyone, everyone starts with the. You know, because we all grew up with like money doesn't grow on tree. And then we have these small ambitions for ourselves and we realize, well actually this works, you know, and I, I could be doing more, you know, so, you know, do you see how easy it is for me to do more? So can you describe a bit if you don't mind. We overrun a few minutes. Describe a bit how this audio goal here transformed, you know, at which point you say like bloody hell this works. You know, like I should be doing more. And all of a sudden, you know, fast forward 18 months you got from three to 60 houses basically.

So, so you know, the. We did three, about five houses in the first kind of 18 months where by the. By that point and then I refinanced and stuff and I thought because at that point I had not raised any finance from other people and stuff. I just literally saved up, sold everything, sold my motorbike and stuff like that and got the money together and just was working to pay for it. And like a vanilla buy to that landlord would have in the past days, but doing it with property at a below market value and trying to refinance and then it kind of penny dropped. When the first time the refinance came and I got, I was like, actually this property's paid me the rent, it's paid me to refinance. There is no money left in the deal. It's actually paid me more out and I still make a few hundred pounds out of it every month and it will go up in value in future and I'm never selling it. And even if I choose not to refinance it ever again or something because I don't want to, and that's fine. And then that kind of puts it in perspective, okay, Now I have four, five and I can make them into 10. So at that point, and I know people go, well, I'm in a five year deal, yes, but there's an early redemption fees for a reason. It's called an early redemption charge, it's not a penalty and it's in the grand scheme of things. If you calculate it, the cost of that early redemption, if you're getting a good deal and if you can release the money and go again and you do that chart on a spreadsheet, understanding, okay, I'm paying this three grand, four grand for redemption for the redemption of that mortgage. But with the refinance, I'm getting X amount and I can buy another asset which will also go up in value and it will add another £700 to my cash flow positively. So it might be thousand pounds, but the early redemption charge and the mortgage on that property will go up. So overall the positive impact will be £700. It's still a better deal to get out of the deal and refinance earlier than waiting five years. So it's about looking at people who have a few houses we also have looked at, okay, what is their deals currently, how long do they have and is it the right time? Can they refinance and how will it look? Because people have this in their mind, oh, it's locked in for five years, I can't touch it. But it's not the case. You can sometimes release the equity earlier, pay the fees and still make a positive impact. I have one more Nagya I wanted to give everybody So I know last year when the SDLT surcharge went up from 3% to 5% on even every buy, people get goosebumps on paying stamp duty. It is a waste of money. I agree and all that. But you know, since then almost every investor we bought we buy on 80% loan to value. So that is just basically evading. We don't pay a 5% deposit but we pay 5% towards the stamp duty and 20% towards the deposit. So that still works because now you don't need to find that extra money, you're just using it towards something different that the government wants you to pay for. And then eventually when you will refinance and you know it's a good deal, then eventually you will make that equity back and the next time you refinance you can increase the equity. So that's something to bear in mind because brokers typically don't tell you to go for 80% because they'll just give you what you want. But we've tried to do comparisons and most of our clients agree and they don't want to pay upfront extra so they can grow the equity in time from that property.

No, it's great, great advice. Yeah, thanks a lot for that. There was a comment from Lee of another one here, very refreshing as well. So comment from Lee earlier, I don't know where he would have seen you but he said I think I saw you with potentially JV with other property members. If someone was to JV with you on social housing deals, what would you be looking for in JV partner? Would you bring the deal? What's the setup?

We typically do? We can have a separate conversation. We typically don't do JVs on social housing. We will source you the deal. We are like a one stop shop for giving you a converted turnkey project. For the social housing we have a very, very nominal charge. So for instance on a four bed HMO the typical rent from social housing is 1050 and we pay the investor thousand pounds. We're very transparent about it. We don't want to be the middleman and try to charge another 150 and pay you £900 and sit in the middle and make £150. We want the investor to do well and grow their portfolio. While they grow and we find them more deals, we'll make more money as well. They make more money as well. So you know, some investors are happy for and the only reason to charge that 50 pounds is because they don't for mortgage purposes. They don't want the Rent coming from a social housing into their account directly. So they pay us as a. We have a letting agency, they pay us and the letting agency will pay them the, the rent every month. So on their entries it's showing letting agency. So that's just a.

So I've never heard you talk about this before.

So that gives them a, you know, a clean statement showing the rent is coming from a letting agency each month as thousand pounds and it's a nominal charge of £50. So it's about that and we'll just work with their funds, what they have and what would might suit them and finding them the deal and they would buy that deal.

Yeah, that's cool. Yeah. All right mate, thanks so much for your time and coming to share. You know, long overdue. You know, you're one of our poster boys. People will have seen your face on every presentation I do each and every week. But yeah, thanks a lot for sharing. And you know, you know, I think if anything it shows everyone, you know, like, you know, that it's simple but it's not easy, you know, like, I mean it's simple. You make it look so simple but then the not easy is the reality you are sharing. You know, like was it 60 viewings you did before you did your first deal?

80.

80, 80, 80. All right, okay.

So 80 going back to people who are looking okay. I'm not deciding the which area and things. It took me a long time. You know, I've been to Liverpool, I went to Sunderland, I've been to Durham, I went to all places people talk about north, northeast, northwest, everywhere. I went to Blackburn, Preston, looking at Blackpool because deals seem cheap over there and things. And it was just trying to do the research of understanding. Like you know, from my career, corporate career, it was about okay, we wouldn't go in, open a hotel in anywhere and everywhere. You know, we do some market research, why would there be any customers there? And things in the similar way. I traveled everywhere in the north of the country, different cities, why it would be better. And then I chose based on what the facts were, where the companies were investing, where larger companies had logistical basis and there was blue collar but there was still employment kind of not.

Yeah, so that's awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. And you know, I mean the reality of doing 80 viewings before you do your first deal, I think most people tell me it doesn't work after three viewings and one offer, you know, so you know, if you want to look back in three years time and you know portfolio of 50, 60 properties in your belt. Let me know. It doesn't work after you've done 80 viewings.

Right.

So might thank you so much for that. Have you got any sort of closing sentiment for, for us today?

No, I think just get those viewings booked. If you're already in the Christmas challenge with the game, then the best of luck and you have to do those deals. You know, we are. We've only done two flips in Birmingham now and we're doing that more and it's same again. So if you choose a new area and you're trying to build those relationships again, we're doing the same basics that I've just talked about again in Birmingham in certain areas where we want to now focus on that area. So you just have to follow those steps again and you've done it before, you'll have certain changes and we just go again. So I want to know all about everybody who finds out the deals. Share them with us and let us know what deals you in 2025.

Yeah, awesome. Share, share your thing in the, in the community and we, we celebrate your wins on progress as well. Emma, thanks so much. Really appreciate you joining after me. Two years of nagging you because I know you're very private, you know, you don't want to, you know, you're not one for the, the cameras very often. So I really appreciate you coming up for that.

So.

So yeah, I'm really chuffed we managed to do this finally. And thank you everyone for joining us today. I hope you enjoyed today's define a corner like I did and I look forward to seeing you next week. In the meantime, open to prop filter on your Proffitter account. Find motivated sellers, start conversations, propose them solutions, follow up, join the top 1% of dealmakers out there and make the most of this property opportunity. So I hope you enjoyed today's deal final corner and I hope to see you again next week. Thank you, Ahmed, very much and thank you everyone. Bye bye. Thank you.

Bye bye.