🏡 How I Built £11k Monthly Cash Flow from Scratch with Timothy Witt

Hello you fantastic lovely people. Welcome to the Deal Finders Corner, your weekly prophecy talk show brought to you by Property Filter, hosted by yours truly Asif Omar from the Property Filter team. We are the UK's highest rated platform for finding deals and we're on a mission to empower our property investors and Deal Sourcer members to find 1000 deals this year thanks to the Property Filter Blueprint. The purpose with your Deal Finders Corner is to give you more and the best of the available resources. Invite expert guests who will share with you the latest and most current strategies, tactics and secrets about what actually works right now in terms of finding and making deals and the reality of systemizing and running a high performance business in property. It's my absolute pleasure to introduce my very good friend Timothy Witt on today's Deal Finder's Corner. Tin Witt is a UK based property investor. Originally from Adelaide, Australia, he began his career in construction management in 2005 and has spent several years working as a Project Manager before relocating to the UK in 2014. Now based in Manchester, the best city in the country, Tim became an accidental landlord when whilst raising his two children, a moment that sparked a much bigger journey. In 2017 he completed his first buy to let deal using the BRR buy refurbished refinance method unlocking £60,000 worth of equity. Since then Tim has gone to build an impressive portfolio of 20 properties housing 98 tenants and generating over 11,000 in monthly net cash flow. He is also the co founder of Property Portfolio Building and Invest Multi Let Property Management and is widely regarded as one of the most successful, if not the most successful members on Property Filter alongside his business partner Phil Bygrave who has also been featured on a Deal Finder Corner. Tim has sourced over 50 deals through the platform showcasing their unbelievable ability to to identify and secure high performing property investments not just for themselves but for their clients today too. Today Tim is passionate about helping others achieve long term wealth and freedom through smart strategic property development and investment. So what are we going to learn in today's episode? Number one Start from scratch. How Tim scale from one accidental rental to full time investing without massive capital or inheritance. Number two Master the BRR method, learn how to find the right deals, raise private finance and recycle cash to grow fast. Number three avoid costly mistakes. The biggest lessons learned from over 50 projects and what Tim wishes he knew from the start and of course followed by an exclusive Q A. So if you've got any burning questions then please pop them in the chat and we'll get to them at the end. So, as usual, can we give a massive, massive, massive property filter. Welcome to Timothy Witt. Hello.

There we go.

Hands of jazz hands, everyone. Perfect. Tim, how are we on this fine day?

Thank you very much for that introduction. Now I'm just trying to work out, am I sharing? Is that working?

It is working now.

Excellent. I'll get this up. So, yeah, the excellent thing about your introduction is it covers quite a few points of this presentation. So. Perfect. I can focus a lot more of the case studies and bits and pieces like that. So I know you said it before Asif, that, you know, I focused on the BRR strategy. I don't think that's completely true because I've actually focused on the B DRR strategy, which is buy, develop, rent, refinance, repeat, etc. So, you know, my talk is specifically about that and achieving financial freedom through property development. So who am I? Like you mentioned before, I live in Manchester. I'm sort of a man now, almost a mank but not originally a man because I'm from Adelaide, Australia and I moved over in 2014. Everyone asked why. Definitely was not for the weather. Lots of good things in Manchester, but not the weather. And yeah, I just came over, get out of my comfort zone. I wanted to travel around Europe and the UK and things like that. And I met my wife Amy, who's in the. The photo here with the. With the sunnies here. And since then we've had two young kids. I've got a daughter called Isla who's four years old, and a son called Sebastian who's two. So a bit of a timeline. So how did I get here? And a bit about my credentials just before I keep moving on as well if I want it to be a little bit interactive. So if I do ask questions because I can't see your faces and I can't see the type messages, just go off the microphone and say it out loud, if that's okay. Cool. So, like Asif said, I actually have always been in constructional property. So I did construction management economics at University. In 2005, 2006, I started working as a construction project manager for a building company in Adelaide, managing lots and lots of different building projects. New build school projects, conversions of childcare centers and grandstands to function centers, new build nursing homes, you know, conversions and refurbishments of supermarkets and shopping centers and lots and lots of different building projects. 2007, 2008. What I do then? Yes, I moved to New York and studied business management, which is basically just playing beer Pong and party for six months. 2014, like I said, I moved to the UK. I became a landlord. I don't know if it was accidental that, as you've said, but I bought the property in Adelaide knowing that I'd live in it initially and maybe keep it as an investment property. But interestingly I've just sold that property which I bought in 2011, rented out the whole time in Adelaide. So what's that, 14 years? So I bought it and this is a good case study of just buy a property and keep it. It was bought for 290000 and I've just agreed and sales offer of $556,000. So I also only invested I think $23,000 in it initially because I had a low deposit. So you know, it's basically turning whatever it is, 23,000 into 276,000, keeping it in essence. So yeah, just buy property in essence and keep it as a minimum. But anyway, 2014 so I moved to the UK. I was working consultant, project management. So I was working for development, overseeing the full development of large scale like student, student accommodation blocks like this one here in Nottingham. I did a major development in London that was a 35 style, a 35 story tower building. But the consultancy side I was you know, overseeing the whole build process, the design process and managing all the parts on, on behalf of the developer who actually poached me across to work from direct as well in the last few years. Like Asif said in 27 I actually bought my first property in the UK. It wasn't a buy to let, it was the one that we were living in at the time but we got it below market value, did a bit of a cosmic cosmetic refurb and we were quickly able to raise about 60k of equity through that for, through a further advance. So that, that was good. And then I use that initial capital to then buy four basic buy to lets that needed refurbishment works. I did four BRR type projects in 2018, 2019 which sort of added in like a little bit of a portfolio and a little bit of cash. So I think it was about 1200 pounds of cash flow from those properties at the time. Oh and I also wrote book in 2018 which is a little plug for that, quick lessons for the real world what they don't teach you in school. So it's a heap of stuff that I wish I learned as a teenager, young adult through school, the university that basically you don't, you don't learn and you know, I learned through Experience I put that and summarized in about 65 or 66 different sections in that book. So if anyone that's got a teenager, a younger young adult in their family, you should pass on that book if that's all right. Right, so moving forward then. So 2020 through to now. So I've been able to grow my property portfolio, I think like Asif mentioned, to about £11 million in total. Currently it's about 22 properties, about 45 units in conjunction with some of my joint venture partners. And that net clears me cash flow wise from that portfolio around about £11,000amonth. In 2021 I had enough cash flow through the portfolio that I could know leave my day job. And then in 2022 myself and Phil Bargrave we formed the business property portfolio Building and invest multilac property management and a key thing here. I think Asif sort of touched on it before but you know, pretty much from 2020 onwards I didn't use any of my own money because those original buy to lets with the BRR strategy tied up all my funds that I had and I ran out of money at that point. So I had to use private investor finance, joint venture predominantly to build up that portfolio. And now I use that in conjunction with profits from our other property businesses to keep building. And also from 2022 to 2025, like I mentioned, we've been doing projects in our property portfolio building business which is a turnkey service, which is a source build managed service for clients and we're now to about 43 projects for them. And also in that time, in those, in that period while doing all those projects, I was able to spend a total of 6 months in Australia with my family. So obviously a lot of work going on, a lot of building projects but still been able to build a team and systems and things like that that I could, you know, disappear predominantly out of the business for decent periods of time. Obviously some good business partners as well, like Phil on the ground. Right, so I talked about it before but bdr, what is that? So anyone that knows the BRR strategy is basically replacing the refurbish with develop because you know, instead of just doing your light cosmetic refurbishments, you know, replacing kitchens, bathrooms and decorating, whatever, we're talking proper developments where we're changing use. You know, we might be converting from a house to a hmo, a large residential to a large hmo, commercial building to a HMO or a commercial building to blocks of flats and things like that. So it's a bit more removed from your Basic refurbishment project. So I just want to touch on a few challenges and I want a bit of engagement here, if that's all right. So these sort of projects that I'm just mentioning there, what are some of the challenges you could face in some of those projects? Can anyone help me out with something you could face, especially through the build aspect of the project? I'm mainly talking about here.

So, yeah, folks, just put. Put it in the chat and I'll shout them out for him. People want to do that. I was going to say build teams because.

Yeah. So having challenges with finding good build teams, you're saying, or them actually delivering both of them.

Really?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yep. Definitely. You've got coming through our cards.

Planning, finance, delay costs, structural issues, issues with builders, cost overruns, finding great trade suppliers, builders keeps coming up. Planning, permission.

Yeah, yeah. All good stuff, all good stuff. We'll see what I've got in a sec. But, yeah, so in essence, over my 20 years, I've. I've managed and been involved in hundreds of building projects. I did used to think that I'd encountered every problem that could possibly have come up in that period. But recently, in the last two weeks, I had two scenarios I hadn't heard of before.

One.

One investor actually said their builder died, so they had to replace the builder because he died. I hadn't had that before, so that's horrible. And the other one was someone had. They had a project where they had gone through three different building contractors to get it complete. I'm like, oh, my God, that is. You know, I've had. I've had builders go bump it into liquidation and, you know, we get a second builder. I've never had a project that's had three builders. Right. So thanks for all those bits and pieces, everyone. Let's see what I had. So structural issues encountered on Strip Out. I think someone said something about that. Structural issues, material and labor delays. So general, you know, program delays and things like that. Utility delays. Did someone say that?

No, we didn't have that one.

Didn't get that one. Cost and budget overruns. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned that. Builder going to liquidation partway through build. Upcoming, unfinancial. I think someone said something like that as well. So these are all very, very common things that come up. I'd say these are probably the top five challenges you'd face on these sort of projects. So the good thing is there's solutions to every problem, aren't there? Sometimes they just cost money or, you know, you need a bit Of a backup plan for it. So what are some of the ways to resolve these problems? So, you know, structural issues for these sort of projects. The essence is where we're expecting, you know, some things that could crop up. Also you can do things like structural surveys, structural engineers on involved as well to review. So that will. You'll help sort out these things. But generally you got to have the right contingency in place. So if there's any unforeseen issues that come up, you've got the right level of contingency to deal with that. Material labor delays. So really, you know, we talked about builders before, but you want to have the builders contracted so they're responsible for material, materials and labor, in essence. So you have a contract in place where they're responsible for it. You have a Gantt chart program in place. You can monitor those works and see how they're performing against that program, and then a system in place to sort of deal with it with the delays and things like that. Obviously, if there's crazy delays like we had in Covid and material availability was terrible, and you know, we've had labor shortages because of Brexit and all these sort of things, you just have to be reasonable with your. With your build contractor. But ultimately there's ways to deal with it. Utility delay is very, very difficult. But you can have utility management companies, you want to do a good financial check of them because they can also go bust. You want constant direct management and communication with the utility consultant or utility supplier as well. But you can delegate that work to your project, manage so cost and budget overruns. You know, you got to have an accurate budget in the first place. You've got to have a really solid base of accurate scope of work, Accurate building regulation drawings, accurate drawings in general, fully detailed and accurate finishes, specifications and all those sort of things. And that way, the cost that you've got from the build contractor is very, very accurate to what you're going to deliver. And then it's only sort of unforeseen.

Or.

Differences that could crop up in the build process that you have your contingency to manage those costs against and build it going to liquidation or unfinancial. So the key is, if you've just got one good builder you deal with, you're at a bit of risk. But if you have a panel of, say, three, four, or five really good build contractors that suit your sort of project, if one goes bump, you can sort of bring in, bring in the next one. In essence, other key thing is just to make sure you pay the builders in arrear for works complete. So if you know they do go into liquidation, you've only paid them for works complete at that point. And then when you bring someone else in, hopefully you don't, you don't. It doesn't cost you too much more than it would originally. Right, so this is possibly why Asif invited us or invited me to talk today. Obviously my business partner Phil's talked as well on Property Filter, the deal corner. But yeah, we're up to 53 deals through property Filter since, since it started. Also we have a podcast called the Financial Freedom Podcast which is basically, we've got lots of guests who are either achieved financial freedom or on their journey to achieving financial freedom and lots and lots of technical topics about what we do and how we go about things. And we were very fortunate enough that Property Filter have actually sponsored us on that podcast. So if anyone here today is listen to the podcast, please, please go and listen to it. And even better, you could like and subscribe to the podcast because that helps us a lot as well. So. And also with the support of Property Filter, so I've got a few case studies to go through today of deals that we've sourced through Property Filter and then developed out.

Sorry, sorry to jump in. So there's an icon at the bottom. Could you just hide it? Because it's coming over the words which.

On this screen, on you, on your.

Sharing bit, it'll say something like. Yeah, can you. That's the word that bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, got it, no worries. Right, so case number one. So this one was a large mid terrace which was an existing 6 bed HMO but it was mainly really residential. But we just used the existing 6 bed HO circumstance for. For planning really. So the deal was to convert this to an. Well, originally it was to a nine bed, nine occupant hmo and during the planning process we submitted it and we end up agreeing as an 8 bed 9 occupant HMO with SUI generis planning approval. During the planning process there were no objections from the community. The only issue was we had a bedroom in the basement and Barry Council just, they just don't really like basement rooms at all. So we took one out but we kept the occupants. So now we rent out one of the rooms as a couple type room. So the price we agreed for this was 280 000, which actually you'll notice that was the asking price as well. The key thing to look at here is see the green area here not very long. And that's basically because we saw the property come on the market, it suited exactly what we wanted and then we jumped on it and got it off for agree quite quickly. So it was very quick speed of implementation. We had a really good relationship with the agent. We'd done a few deals with them before, so they just liked and trusted us. And I think there were a few other people looking at at the time even quickly, but we were, we got the nod to go ahead with it. So this deal was for a client which they're on a joint venture. One of them lives fairly local in Manchester, the other one in Wales and they use full bridging and development finance. So like we said, we paid, it was paid 280 for it. The overall development cost for £209,000 and the final Rick's valuation was £620,000. So the net cash flow from that depending on voids and maintenance is somewhere between 1700 and 2200amonth. So overall return of investment about 29 to 38% on that one. Completely sort of hands off delivery as well for the client. This is what it looks at, looks like now we're about, we've just started lettings process so it's about halfway let at the moment. So you can see some of these rooms have, you know, kitchenettes as well and also they can use the main communal kitchen, living space and utility space as well. So yeah, really nice high end rooms. Right, the, the next case that I'm going to look at, so slightly different one, but it will give you a bit of an idea of how well property filter can help you secure a deal, you know, below market price really. So this deal originally was on the market at £250,000, which you'll see here. The seller, well, the price dropped once, twice, three times, four times before we had an offer agreed. So if you look at this, the agent was selling this originally. It was actually in relatively decent condition compared to the stuff that we usually get. Can anyone look at this picture of this building and tell me why you think the agent would have struggled to have sold this to say a family? No garden, boom, no garden. So if you look at the back, obviously there's nothing there, is there? No garden, there's like, like a single story extension, but no garden space. So even though it was a big footprint of a building, you know what family is going to buy that property because there's no garden. If they got kids, you know, it's just not suitable, is it? So even though it was a good location and those sort of things, it just didn't sell. And I would say that's the reason why, you know, for, for. So our plan was to convert it to a five bed hmo, you know, good high end five bed HMO and using full permitted development rights. So this area, which is actually in tame side of Greater Manchester, currently There's no Article 4 restriction in that area. So we could just buy it and convert it to a fired bed without any sort of planning approval. You know why, why it works for us is the fact that it's a very big footprint, it's got that extension and there's actually some shared outdoor space down that sort of laneway in the corner. So for HMO they share anyway, so shared communal space at the back works, so they've still got outdoor space even though it's not on the title. And obviously the big footprint of the big communal space works really well for hmo. So it works for us. Didn't work for a family in essence. So we ended up securing it for £190,000, which you'll notice that's still 30 grand lower than that reduced price after starting at 250. So obviously you can you just look at this drop in price and the motivation from the seller is to work out what sort of deal you can get. The overall development cost was 118,000. So that's build works, professional fees, project management, everything like this. So again, this deal was for a client of ours who actually live right down in the south of England. The final GDV agreed from a Ritz valuation surveyor was £380,000. And the return on investment for this client 27 to 38% with a cash flow. Well, I'm missing a number there, about 1200 pounds up to about 1400 pounds a month depending on voids and maintenance. So this is what it looks like now. So again, just a nice high end hmo, five bit hmo. So case study number three, slightly different one, just a bit of a bigger deal. This is one that we're doing for ourselves. So it's an old cotton mill in, in Helmshall, which is about 20 miles north of the center of Manchester, probably about 5 miles north of Bury. So basically what we're doing with this one is where it was, it was previously an antique shop. So we, we got it approved through planning to convert. It's an MA class, MA conversion to 10 high end flats. I don't have the property filter graph on here, but basically it's very similar to the first case study we did where it wasn't green for very long at all because we saw it come on the market and my business partner, Phil, I think you're actually on the call, you might be able to chat to him. But he saw the deal and then met the agent out the, the property on the, I think the same day and in essence agreed a purchase price because it was just really underpriced. Directly across the road there was another big mill that had been converted a few years ago. So we had some very solid comparables of flats there and what they were selling for and things like that. So again speed of implementation was absolutely critical to get this deal. So you'll notice that we, we're doing 10 high end flats but we had, we agreed an early exchange with delayed completion initially based on 11 flats. So that's important because during the planning process we actually, we actually agreed to bring it down to 10, add in some extra sort of bin storage and you know, waste management, utility space and stuff like that, which, which actually makes sense because it's probably better than having the bins outside, you know, in the car park and things like that. But it also meant we could go back to the vendor and renegotiate the price. I think originally we had agreed at 595 and then losing the flat and the planning we're able to negotiate it back down to 5:30 for the purchase price. So it's halfway, well, it's almost probably about third way through construction on site at the moment. So it's progressed a bit more than this photo. But the overall development costs are going to be 843,000 which includes the full builds, all professional fees, project management, you know, utility costs, vat, all those sort of things. We used it, we, we used a combination of funding for this one. So we use some of our cash from our profit from our businesses, we use the private investor to invest part of it and then we also use bridging development finance to put in place. So the final estimated GDV is 2.2 million. I think all in costs including finance is around about 1.6 ish. So it shows you it's about 600 grand rise in value or profit through the development. But we originally we're going to sell the flats. We decided to keep keeping for the long term as buy to let and it should cash flow around about 3000amonth. A month, 2600 to 3400amonth. And with a valuation of 2.2 million, it's all money out so it's an infinite return on investment. Right. So some top tips relating to these projects and also using Property Filter in general. So have a great system in place for using Property Filter and really use the pipeline, you know, so the pipeline's great. We had it up before, but obviously with motivated sellers you want to, you want to focus on the, the people that are most motivated. If you're looking to add a value through a development, you also want to look at like the value, the price below the average in the area and things like that as well. That can really help. But definitely is a pipeline. Put, put properties into due diligence, put them in to make an offer once you've viewed it. If you're going to put an offer in, you know, if your offer doesn't get accepted, you could follow up, put it in the follow up section and then continually follow up all the time. And then, you know, once it's accepted, bring it forward as well. So just use the system that's on Property Filter in your own system to use it efficiently. You really need to know your numbers for these deals. So accuracy in numbers is really, really important. You want your appraisal to be accurate but relatively conservative on the front end and then to meet those numbers at the back end and maybe have a bit of an extra uplift during the process. You don't want it the other way around where the numbers are too optimistic at the front end and then it falls to shit by the end of the project. Be trusted, reliable of agents. So basically, you know, a lot of our reputation is building these relationships, doing what we'd say I'll do, we would do having the funds and the buyers ready to go, you know, and don't, don't waste anyone's time, basically. And then those agents will keep bringing you deals, keep wanting to secure deals for you in the Future. Obviously, with HMOs, you need to invest in areas with really great tenant demand. So you should constantly be looking at the demand in the areas you're looking at. So if you've got a, a property spare room account, you can, you can check supply and demand in the areas by looking how many rooms available versus how many actual tenants are looking for those sort of rooms in those areas. So that's a good way to check demand in the area. You can do it for that exact postcode and you can do it for people that are looking across a few postcodes, but it gives you a good picture of the supply and demand in the area. When you put offers in, you don't really want them accepted straight away, do you? Because if they just get accepted off the bat, you possibly paid too much. So you want it rejected initially, possibly you put it in your follow up and you follow up later down the line to get a better deal. You can also use weird numbers and back up your offers with data, you know, things like comparables and all your numbers stacking up and all those sort of things. If you do weird specific numbers, you can sort of say, look, we've actually, you know, our spreadsheet just doesn't let us go any higher than £193,562 because at that point it's just not viable for us. So, you know, they might think that you, you really looked into it and that's, that's the absolute top end you can do.

Right?

So this may be fairly controversial, but the development process is where you make your money and I'll tell you why. Because if you're buying a property for say, or you have an offer accepted at £220,000, but you wanted to pay 200,000, you've got a swing there of say 20 grand, you know, is that, how much is that going to affect your numbers? You know, maybe a little bit, but, but not too much. Especially if you're doing a development project. If you've then got a bill budget of £150,000 and it's supposed to take six months to deliver and you end up, it ends up costing you £250,000 and it takes 12 months to deliver, there is a major swing there in your numbers. You're talking 100 grand plus interest. So you're probably more than 200 grand different to the original appraisal. So that 20 grand initially comes very, very insignificant in the scheme of things. So the development process, delivering on time and on budget, is where you actually make your money and keep your money and protect your risk no matter what anyone else says. And basically, if you up the development process, you can, Sorry, I don't know if I can swear at this, acid apologies about that, but you can seriously lose money. And the scenario I've just talked about, there, there's a lot of risk, you can lose money, you know, you face challenges, bridging finance, investors, loans and all these sort of things. So you really, really need to know what you're doing and use the experts. Right? So a bit more engagement. Could anyone tell me or just give me any idea what they think the difference is between these two businesses? The one with ppb just to Remind everyone and investors is mine and Phil's business where we help our. I won't say it actually because I give away the clue, but we do these sort of projects for clients so they make money and then obviously the other brand there, everyone knows, everyone knows that one. I'm pretty sure they just make handbags and, and like that. Anyone got any ideas what the differences are?

I assume you don't make handbags.

We don't make airbags though.

People are typing in. People are typing. Who's gonna put in first? Branding, We've got branding, we've got slowly coming in.

Brand identity maybe, but that's not exactly what I'm getting at.

One costs money, the other makes money. I think someone's nailed it there.

Ah, that's pretty close. Pretty close. Obviously you've seen this before, haven't you? But our business of our property portfolio building and invest multi out property management have a mission to help our clients achieve and maintain financial freedom. Whereas this other brand, I think they do the exact opposite. They probably stop their clients from achieving financial freedom. So that's our mission, like I just said. And then our vision is just to basically be the best HMO portfolio building and management business in the uk or maybe stay the, stay the vest potentially. So what can we do to help you or anyone that's on this session? So property portfolio building, we source, build and manage, we do turnkey end to end service for the projects that we've just, I've just displayed to you there and then invest mult. Property management is our lettings and management business specializing predominantly in HMO management. It's by investors for investors. We are investors. We set up the business because we knew we could do it better than A the other specialist HMO managers around and B the other letting agents, which, you know, high street agents that you can barely call them specialists at all. And we think like investors and manage it the way that investors want it to be managed. Anyone just interested in these sort of things? We actually do site visit days which we call discovery days, where we visit three projects. Actually one of them we're visiting is that big mill that's converted to, to 10 flats. We're also visiting construction of a nine bed HMO and a completed five bed HMO as well on the 1st of August. So anyone on this that can get up and wants to check those out, let me know asap because we're literally about to close it off because it's next Friday. We've literally got I think two spaces left. That's it also we mentioned before, we've got the Financial Freedom Podcast, 36 episodes live now. Lots and lots and lots of nuggets of information, especially from some great guests.

We've got.

We've also we've had the co founder of Property Filter G Black on the the show, one of the earlier episodes. You can check that out as well as long as all the other episodes. Phil, my business partner, host Manchester north pin and our team run pin in Manchester north the first Thursday of every month bar August. So back in September, if you want to get in touch, Timothy Wit on LinkedIn and Facebook, Timothy with 12 on Instagram. Anyone who wants to scan to book into Discovery Day, you can use a QR code. I'll just hold it up for a second. I can't see if anyone's doing it or not.

People are saying I would like the site visit. So yeah, just keep that on for a second.

Yeah, we'll keep it on for. I'll keep it on for another like 30 seconds or so. Should we.

And then we can put it the link in the chat as well if people want to book it up.

Yeah, good plan. Or maybe Phil, have you got the link? If you're on the call, could you put it in the chat as well?

He is on the call.

Excellent.

Yeah, the link tree has all of the things. Perfect.

My next slide might have the link tree as well, which is this one. So this, this is the link tree. So if you want to, I think if you want to add me on any social media or go to our website, join, find the podcast or do the discovery, I think you can get it all on this link tree hopefully and we can move on to Q&As then.

Brilliant. Thank you for sharing that. What a wonderful presentation. And as Guillaume says, deals are made, not found and you two are a great example of that. So we've got quite a few questions in the chat that we'll go through. But one of my first questions for you is one of the things that impresses me of you, I suppose, is your successful joint venture partner with Phil. So a lot of people in this community are looking to joint venture with people. What qualities should they look for in a partner and what pitfalls should they be aware of as well?

Yes, I think it's a very, very good question because joint ventures can go really, really well or they can go really, really badly. So it's important to understand that from the outset. So I think for me is probably one of the best things you can learn is when you're going into a joint ventureship, you know, there's some key ingredients that work initially. Like, you know, someone that, if you got someone that's got time, expertise, but no money, obviously they can join up with someone that's got money. But the challenge with that is you don't know necessarily if you can work well for the long term, because if you're buying property to hold for 10, 20 years or whatever, it's basically, it's basically like a marriage or a relationship to a certain extent, isn't it? So you've got to be able to work with that person for that, for that long term. So I think one of the key ways is understanding your strengths, your weaknesses. And then if you're teaming up with someone you know, leaving aside time and money and expertise and stuff is like, what, what are their actual physical strengths and weaknesses as well? And also what, what are you trying to achieve? What is the other partner or potential partner trying to achieve as well? So if you've got quite shared vision, goals and things like that, it could work quite well. If you're too similar, it might not work that well because you'd just be agreeing on everything, giving high fives, drinking a beer, but maybe not actually moving forward or progressing the way you should. If you're too different, you might just be, you know, different wavelengths and not, not really understanding each other at all. So it's a weird one. You want to be different but not too different and share, share goals and vision and things like that.

Brilliant answer. Right, so we've got a question from Yan and it says how much time typically between a quote from a builder and the actual contracting of the builder? Because the time you need them, they may work on other projects.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Excellent question. It's a really, really good question. So what, what happens here? You sort of. You need a bit of a system leading up to getting to site or into contract in the first instance. So it doesn't just start at the point that you get a build quote and then you're trying to work out the time, you're sort of warming up the tires, potentially months before they need to get to site. So if you've got a pipeline and you're working up a pipeline, you're working builders regularly, you're keeping in constant communication with them as it is. If it's just a one project that you've got, as you're sourcing the deal, you should have been building up your sort of panel of builders or your build contacts before that point anyway. So Then once you find the deal, you've got those people that you can, you know, a, you need architects, you need principal designers for health and safety, structural engineers. Did I say project managers, all those sort of people to, you know, to get things moving. So you find the deal. Then you need to decide once you've found the deal, maybe before you've completed the purchase is, you know, how much, how much money or time can you risk on progressing what would I call the project management aspects of the development. So what I mean by that is getting the drawings in place from the architect, developing a fully detailed tender pack in place with everything the builder needs to price and to get into contract. So you know, those things will take time and cost money. You know, you just need to weigh out whether you're happy to do that before you complete on the purchase or not. So if you, if you've got security the property, like you've exchanged contracts, like an early exchange or you get an option agreement or something like that, you can do it early and have the security. If you don't, it's just, you know, just looking at the chances like you know, there's h, there's a little bit of a small chance the seller could pull out. You might not be able to commit, go through with it or whatever, but that they're the things that need to weigh up. But if you run that process. So a, you've talked to your builders well in advance, they know things are coming and you've started that process, you know, well in advance. You do a tender pack. In the tender pack you want to specify when you think the build project can start on site. So you'd say like tender period, whatever it is, three or four weeks, you know, a couple of weeks for you know, quote assessment and you know, contract negotiation time and then a two or three week lead in time to start on site to get all their everything in order. Because you need to do asbestos surveys, building control notices, you know, you might need side amenity setups, you might need a principal designer works for the health and safety pre construction work. So you want to, you want to do all that process and have it mapped out for the builder. So he knows that roughly you should be starting in like you know, eight weeks time or whatever. So it's, it's already sort of planned out. You've had the wheels in motion that you know, say months leading up to that process. So by the time you've got the quote and you're moving into contract, the build is already knowing that he would need to start in three or four weeks or something like that. So. And also, you know, from your early checks, you know, his resource availability, his team availability and all those sort of things. And if he doesn't have it from that period to meet your time frame, you know, he's not suitable to be on your sort of tender process anyway. So you should only be using the guys who can actually work to your time frame. So, yeah, I hope that answers it. I could go, I could go all day about.

So we're going to take it one step back as well and we're talking about build team. But what is it that you look for in a build team?

Right, so it's quite simple. With a build team, what do we want? We want a builder that's going to deliver within our budget, within our time frame to great quality and do it safely. That is it. Does that sound easy?

How do you do, how do you check for that?

Absolutely not. Yeah, so it's very, it's very, it's very, very difficult to get all of those elements. But in essence, us as private property developers, that's, that's what we want and that's what we need. So, you know, how, how do you check for those elements? Very, very good question. So, so initially you, you obviously you can meet builders. There's lots of different ways to meet builders. You can get referrals, recommendations, you can meet them at networking events, you know, you can meet them through social media. There's loads of different ways to meet them and find them. But then the key thing is finding out that they're suitable for your size project or the project you're doing to meet those sort of aspects. So from there I'd be catching up for them, you know, initially for a coffee, going through, you know, what their business is, the size of it, sort of projects to do, their experience, their revenue per year, how long the company's been operating, all those key things. And then from there you want to do things like you want to visit their site. So you go out to some of their existing projects to see what they're like. Are they the sort of projects you're going to be doing? So if you're doing a five or six bed HMO and they're taking you out to a little kitchen refurb, they might be too small, they take you out to a massive site that's like 30 flats or whatever, they're probably, you know, way too big. And also when you visit those sites, you get a very, very good idea of how they operate so you can see is it well organized, is it safe, are there lots of guys on site? Other guys, they seem like genuine, decent people that are doing a good job. You can literally tell a lot by just visiting those sites during the build process. Then you want to visit completed projects. So when you visit completed project you get a good idea of the quality of finish for one. And also if you're visiting a completed project for a builder that has a good relationship with that client, you know, that tells you a lot about the performance of that builder and that relationship with the client as well. So there's some positives from that. So there are a few key things. Obviously there's other background checks you can do. You know, you can look at companies house, you know, what are their accounts like, you know, what, what size revenue do they do. Also really look for references from other developers. So if they've done lots of these sort of projects, ask for a few references or you know, people you can talk to. Because what happens is when you, when you get those references, you ring up those developers, you know, it's just you talking them, they're very, very honest about that builder's performance, what they're like, what they like to deal with. So yeah, I would say it's a range of those sort of things. Also when you're visiting the projects or talking to the clients, you want to, and you know, you want to get an idea of the size of the building contractor because that might dictate their sort of pricing because if they're too small, like the little kitchen refurbish I mentioned before, they're not going to be capable of converting your house to a five or six bed hmo. They might do it for a fairly cheap price, but it might take them double the time it should. If they're too big and they've got big office overheads and all those sort of things, they're probably going to be too expensive. So you can get an idea on how they'll price it based on, you know, the setup. If their setup is right for your sort of project, they're probably going to be on the money. And then also you can look at the budgets of what they've delivered other projects for other people and all those sort of things to weigh out whether they're going to fit the pricing regime. What were the other ones? Safety, obviously safety. You can talk about references from client, but I think the site visit gives you a very good idea on how safely they work. You know, you any, anyone on this call that's Been on a building project or, or site. You can tell very, very quickly if that build is sort of working safely or not, can't you? And if they're well organized and the housekeeping is good and materials are stacked well and all those sort of things then you know they should, they should be safe. Yeah.

Okay, so the next question is do you operate in the Manchester area and if so what is your range of operation?

So we, we operate in Greater Manchester. So we, we do. Probably the furthest we go is like Warrington or you know, places a bit, you know, north of Manchester. So that you know, the property in Helmshore is probably the furthest north one we're doing at the moment. We don't, we don't sort of go to Leeds or Liverpool or places like that at the moment anyway.

Perfect. And the next question similar is where in Manchester is the PIN meeting held?

It's at the Village Hotel in Berry.

Village hotel. Perfect. So I've got another question for you. You guys have obviously done I think it said 53 deals which is actually now 55 as of today. How long will it be before you do 100 deals on property filter and what plans have you got to celebrate once you get to 100 deals on property filter?

Oh so 100, so what do we need another 47. Right, so well that's, that's pretty easy. Well it should be pretty easy because we do about, we should be doing about 25 projects a year for us and clients. So 47, what's that about two years time?

Two years time. And how are you going to celebrate? What celebration are we gonna have?

Well who's paying for it? Is it, is property filter gonna pay for it? Is a main man but I'm sure.

We can do something.

No, no. Yeah, we definitely have to do something.

Yeah.

So well let's say July 2027 will hold us to account, see if we achieve that and we'll book something in for the summer.

Perfect. Two years from now.

Yeah, it could be a summer trip, couldn't it?

It could be, it could be. Right, next question we've got is would you project manage for a smaller project eg dealing with two bedroom flat that has just been gutted.

Would we personally or I think yes.

All the projects to manage other people's smaller projects.

Yeah, we're probably, you know anything over like 30 grand we could have a look at for our source field managed service. We don't really do anything lower than like a five bed hmo. We don't do like single lets and Things like that. So yeah, potentially we could look at smaller things for project management depending on the circumstances and stuff like that.

Brilliant. And a question about your project management as well. What is your fee structure for sourcing slash Hands off HMOs.

Yeah, good question. So the source fees as a whole at 3.5% of the final GDV, the project management fees work out 10% of the design and build costs, sort of paid monthly. Probably the key thing to talk about is that because obviously like I mentioned before, we do about 25 projects a year. We have really good buying power. So if you took like some of the build contractors we work with, you know, because they know the spec, they get lots of consistent work, they're probably like maybe 15% below the market and those sort of things. So when you add up those, you know, it's sort of, it sort of washes its face and that doesn't even take into account the, you know, the stress and the time and all those things associated with project management. But the way our source build manage works is we, we don't find a deal and sell it to market. We basically find the client, agree the criteria, agree the return and go out and deliver, you know, exactly what's agreed as well.

So yeah, brilliant. And do you plan to have an in house build team or part team contractors?

Should I just use the simple answer of no? So we, we operate, we operate as project managers. So part of that is like, so we, we're sort of like a neutral party and we're, we're properly looking at the interests of the property developer, if that makes sense. Builders obviously do and they want to do a good job. But at the end of the day their, their, their business is to build, you know, deliver a build project and then make a profit. So you know, the, the accountability angle is a little bit, is a, is a little bit different, if that makes sense. So there's that perspective. And also, let's be honest, managing lots of tradesmen and subcontractors is difficult, you know, build companies, that is a very big challenge. There's a big trade shortage in the country. You know, there's lots of challenges, these sort of things. And I understand that because, you know, work with build companies and those sort of things even when the trade shortage is nowhere near what it is now. So it's a challenging business to run and make profit from as well. And I've got that from working for build companies.

Brilliant. Okay, so I think when it's time to wrap it up, because we are approaching Halfway past. So my. One of my last questions that I always ask people and it's the following, and I think you've kind of touched on it, but how can you help our wonderful community members? And how can our wonderful community members help yourself?

Excellent. Well, I think we said how we could help you. I think one of my slides put about seven dot points for that. But obviously our Source Bill Managed Project program, our lettings business, loads of free content on the Financial Freedom podcast, Discovery Days you can come out to and Manchester North Pin, you know, they. Those five things we could, we could help you build a portfolio that can give you financial freedom. How can other people help us? Obviously, we're always looking for, for great deals in Greater Manchester in areas that we're in. So if it's something that, you know, looks like that we could deliver, you know, and source and deliver for, for us or our clients. We're always looking for people that are looking to sell properties or, you know, or they may not be able to, you know, buy it themselves. We've bought from other investors at times for good deals. Yeah, so it's, it's those sort of things really obviously come out to our events, support our podcast as well. And obviously, you know, if you want to help us, you know, you know, you can do business with us as well and join the, the Source Bill Manage program and build to achieve your financial freedom.

Absolutely. Like subscribe, the usual question is any final remarks?

Final remarks. So, right, so here's a final remark then, and we probably didn't touch on it too much before, but you know, Property Filter and all these things are very helpful to achieve your goals. But you know, to, to achieve your goals, you need to be very, very clear on what your goal is in the first place. Um, so what I mean by that is like, physically what, what your strategy is, you know, are you, are you delivering for, you know, HMOs for professional tenants? Are you delivering, you know, service accommodation for tourists, whatever? You know, that's, that's your base. You know, strategy is the end product and who's using it, and then you know what your goal is you're trying to achieve, why you're trying to achieve it. Once you're very clear on those things, obviously there's some really good software to find the deals and other people that can help deliver it and all those sort of things. But you need to be, you need to be very, very clear from the outset what you want to achieve and why.

Brilliant. Okay, that's a perfect, perfect ending. Thank you. Everybody. And thank you, Tim, for joining for us another edition of Deal Finders Corner. It was an absolute pleasure to have you here, Tim. I'm sure our community members are blown away by the value you've given them today. So for next dfc we have my very good friend again, Peter Baker. He is the business Development manager at your property furnish. Bringing 23 years of experience in estate agency and property management. He now specializes in helping investors maximize their property potential through expert furnishing and styling. Peter also holds the Bay Property Network in Morecambe and and is a regular speaker at a national PIN and PPN event. I think he's almost spoken at every single PIN event in the last 12 months. But for now, all that's left to say is. Visit propertyfilter.co.uk, log onto your Property Filter account, check out the deal blueprint, define your gold mine area, engage with motivated sellers, assess properties in seconds and load your pipeline and make deals. Have an endless supply of deals, join the top 1% and become a high achiever deal finder. So that's me, Asif and Property Filter. Looking forward to seeing you all again next week, but in the meantime, go and grab them deals. Catch you soon, folks. Thank you.