Interview with Chris, a South African engineer who moved to the UK ~12 months ago and began investing in below-market-value (BMV) UK property using Property Filter and support from the Inner Circle community. He focuses on short leases and refurbishments around Leamington Spa/Warwick (near Birmingham). In his first year he has secured properties with an end market value of £495,000 and a purchase cost of £380,000 (≈£115,000 equity). He describes using Property Filter for rapid first-pass evaluations (10 minutes) and details a standout deal: a one-bedroom maisonette advertised at £90,000 with a market value ~£150,000 where he offered £48,000 and negotiated lease-extension costs down to £28,000.
At Property Realtor, where we love hearing about the successes of our members. Today I'm with Chris. Chris, do you mind giving us a brief introduction about yourself, what strategy you're focusing on and I guess where, where you're investing.
Sure. Good afternoon or good day. So, as you can hear, I'm a South African but living in the UK and working in Europe. I travel between the two on a weekly basis. My property. So recently started investing in the UK, recently started living in the UK, only just over 12 months now. We are investing primarily BMV property and that includes looking at short leases, refurbs and the like in terms of those particular properties. So, so we, we're looking to help people that have problems get out of their problem and obviously solve, solve these, the problems for them. And in so doing work with the properties.
Lovely stuff. And is there a, is there a specific kind of location you're focusing on at all? Is there or.
Yeah, so I'm based actually in Leamington Spa. So that's just outside Birmingham, 50, 50 miles from Birmingham. And we look, we are focused around that area. Leamington Spa, Warwick. It was, where was it? Was it November, November or early December last year? So to give you an idea, I moved to the UK in September last year. Yeah, yeah, it was late November, I think. I went, I came to the one day sort of introductory session with Guillem and crowd of people where we, we were running through. Hanif was actually talking about short leases at the time and it was like an overview and a bit of detail and obviously they spoke about the inner circle and so I went away and I had a bit more, I'd looked at it a bit more and actually that week or so afterwards I signed up for the inner circle. So there were two aspects to it. The one side was the day that I came in and I saw the community and I met Guillem and Hanif and I could see that they were genuine people that were on a mission to help people be successful. And obviously Guillaume on the day spent some time showcasing Property Filter to us and it was kind of like in my business, time is really important. And I was like, well, if I could cut out the whole having to search on rightmove and then having to do the analysis by hand, all these components, it would put me that much further ahead on the journey. That's exactly right. I was like, I knew, you know, I knew all those things were coming, but it was kind of like, you don't have that problem today, so let's work through it and get to that point, focus on, unless you've got a property that you, that you want to acquire, you don't need a mortgage. I'd already signed up at that point. I'd already decided in November. This is the community I wanted to be with.
Yeah.
And I could see that the support that I would get would help me along this road. Yeah. I mean that crazy offer, did it.
Get your first offer that got accepted on that one?
It was my first offer on that property, yeah. Yeah. And it was actually an auction property. And what was really funny was like we had the training session about the short lease side of it. I had an idea on how to do the calculation and I did some stuff online. I went and viewed the property and I had a long discussion. I actually got on really well with the agent. So I made that connection straight away. I went back and I was like, it's an auction property. So I was going through some of the previous videos and it said, you never go to an auction. I was like, okay, now what do I do? And again it was like, you know, look back, yeah, there's a support. No, send an offer, but tell them that you can't come to the auction. So far this year, so this is my first year in the UK, we've secured 495,000 worth of property. So it's actually three properties we're now either purchased or in the process of going through finalizing. That end value is, is 495 and the actual purchase value is 380. I was actually going to do the maths before we jumped on.
Yeah, 115k of equity. Is it?
Yeah. My favorite is being able to do the evaluation of that property. First pass. First pass, 10 minutes, I can see a property, see does it fit my criteria of what I'm looking for. In 10 minutes I can turn around and say, is this the property where I need to contact the agent? Or not. Even if it's shown as hugely below market value, I can see what else is in the market around it. I can see what the sales and what the activity is in the market around. And I can know straight away that's a property that we could get below market. We can flip. That's a property we, that we could get really cheap put in our portfolio. And it's just that first pass just saves so much time. So on that first deal they were looking for, it was advertised at 90, 90,000. It's a, it's a one bedroom Masonette, by the way, which since I got signed for it. We actually see that it can be a two bed. There's an uplift there. Market value was around 150. They wanted 90. We, we offered 48. Wow. Obviously we have the lease extension. Even the lease extension. And that's where I said I break things down. So I knew there was a lease extension and we had an overall evaluation that it was at the time 38k with the training on Inner Circle actually went and met with the freeholder and we did an informal agreement and I ended up paying 28 through negotiation and that was all from the Property Filter team. And the training and direction given that's quality.
I mean it's amazing to hear. Certainly you got a considerable discount there, didn't you?
That as soon as rolled out will be a free property. So I think the real key is to decide what your strategy is. Mm and, and, and, and hone what you're doing around that strategy until you build the confidence in that strategy and then only start looking at the next strategy. Then only start branching first be successful in one before you go to the next because if you try and cover them all you get lost and the volume that there are so many opportunities out there really. But if, if you don't narrow down, you actually won't get to something that you can close and be successful on. I would say that it's for everyone because, and I say that because like, like I said at the beginning I could see that it was the fastest way for me to get to the deals or to the selection of, of properties that I wanted to see. So whether you're a newbie or whether you're experienced, you want to save the time. Time is the important thing and that's what Property Filter does. It does that step, that first initial step of finding the properties, of doing the evaluation so that you only looking at property that has a high potential, that's what Property Filter brings in my view and that's what it does for me. At any stage in the journey, whether you're a beginner or more experienced, you want to save that time. We talk about the software and that's, that's really fundamental. That's the base. What's as important for me is genuine caring people that are that own that business and are trying and are supporting everyone who comes into that Property Filter group or community and helping people come along that you're starting to see the community helping each other and that strength of that community is just growing stronger and stronger and partnerships and all these sorts of things that are coming out of it that are helping people to scale faster are helping people when they're stuck.
