💷 You Make Money When You Sell. Hard Learnt Lessons from trading 150 deals in a year w/ Oliver Adams

Hello you fantastic lovely people and welcome to the Deal Finders Corner, your weekly property 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 property investors and deal sourcing 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 is currently working right now in terms of finding and making deals and the reality of systemizing and running a high performance business. It is my absolute pleasure to introduce one and the only Oliver Adams on today's Deal Finders Corner and trust me, this is a big one. Oliver, seasoned UK property investor and trader with over 20 years in the game. He got his start as an auctioneer before taking the reign of the director of auction house northwest 2010 to 2020 where he truly mastered the art of sourcing and securing undervalued property. He built a name for himself through off market fast acquisitions specializing in distressing and problem properties that most buyers wouldn't touch. With over 300 including eye pocket 150 in a single year. Oliver's approach is high volume, high efficiency and laser focused on flips without renovations and joint ventures. He thrives on time sensitive transactions with a track record of delivering fast cash ready bids that puts him miles ahead of traditional buyers. These days Oliver is a thought out speaker, regularly sharing his deal sourcing strategies and exit tactics at top industry events including the recent 2025 hammered property trading retreat in Portugal. In this episode we are going to learn the three. We are going to learn the three hottest types, property types that fly off the auction floor. Discover which properties consistently attract competitive bidding, sell fast and how to spot them before your competitors do. 2. Exit Smarter how to avoid the costly auction mistakes most investors make. Learn the most common auction exit errors and how to structure your deals to sell smoothly, profitably and without surprises. Number three no refurb needed how to Flip fast to auction buyers See why flipping direct auction can be faster, safer taking on a full scale development. 4. Auction Ms. Busted why it's not just for de stressed sellers think auctions are only for desperate vendors? Think again. Discover why smart deal packages and developers are choosing auctions to speed up sales, reduce risk and lock in profits and of course followed by an exclusive Q and A. So if you have Any burning questions for Oliver, then please pop them into the chat and we'll get to them now. So can we please give a massive, massive property filter welcome to Oliver Adams. Welcome, Oliver.

Thank you. How are we?

I can see you are in a delightful, delightful part of the world.

I am. I am halfway through a property trading retreat with sale to success.co.uk with eight experienced property professionals who have dedicated the week on a yacht with me in Croatia, sailing around Croatia to learn hand to hand more about property auction trading. We've bought deals this week, not sold any yet, but we've bought some deals this week and shown these guys and girls how I do my due diligence, where my deals come from, how I price them, how I deal with the seller, depending on their motivation, various other things to try and maximize the maximum acquisition rate of the deals that come to me and buy them for the cheapest possible price as well. So we're having a tough week, it's been very busy.

The weather is terrible, looks terrible, looks terrible. So would you like to introduce yourself, tell us a little bit about yourself and get straight into your case studies as well?

Yeah, absolutely. So, started off in property 27 years ago as a trainee estate agent, basically doing viewings for local estate agency. Worked for the Same firm for 23 years. Effectively just worked way up the corporate ladder up to director of auctions where I was selling typically 100 to 120 properties a month at auction. The biggest property auction outside of London. Covid came along, changed the landscape in auction world forever. We no longer carried out auctions in public venues like football stadiums. And that was really my biggest strength. I, I love dealing with people face to face. Love those auction days. 4, 5, 600 people in an auction room. Massive amounts of business to be done on those days with buyers and sellers. And as most people will now probably realize, auctions are all held online, ebay style or live stream. And to put it in no other way, it was an absolute passion killer for me. A people person, people first, property second. So I left 23 years, I quit to become a full time property trader, which a lot of people ask the question, what is property trading? It's simply a way of buying property to immediately resell. You don't hold stock, it's bought and sold typically by auction. The speed don't add any value, there's no renovation, there's no flip, no tenants, it's very quick, it's very clean. I would like to say it's very easy, but it's actually not it's very high pressure, very high stress, there's a lot of risk involved. But it is an excellent way of producing large, if you do it well, large amounts of capital, profits very, very quickly. Just to give you an idea, you know, a lot of people say I haven't got any money. All my funds are limited. I started with a pot, a trading pot of 70 grand. January 2021. Four and a half years later, that trading pot is now about six and a half million. And that's purely profits from trading, no debt, no JV partners, finance partners. I had a bit of a jump stop. Many years experienced as an auctioneer. So my confidence level and knowledge level and skill level was already quite strong. Had a lot of contacts in the industry, which helps of course. But the thing that the big disadvantage I got as a property trader is that I don't deal direct to vendor. So every single property I've ever bought, over 400 now in the last four and a half years, every single property has been brought to me by sources or other traders or other dealers. So for all you guys out there listening today, you've actually got a slightly easier job and it's a little bit cheaper to source properties if you go direct to vendor. Use sites like Property Finder for example, Property Filter. Lots of websites out there, lots of other providers of data to help you guys find deals. Finding deals is the most important part. The money comes second. You don't need money to trade property. That is something that you should all take on board. Everyone worries about finding money to buy buy. You do not need money to trade property. There are lots of ways to get involved in auction trading without buying the actual asset and without actually having money. I've dropped some of those in now. You know you've got, at the end of the day you can JV With a trader like myself, I've got the funds to purchase. You find the deal. I can either pay you a fee for that deal or you can come in on the deal on a joint venture basis, on a profit split basis. There are ways to trade such as ias, Irrevocable authorities. Go into more detail with these. If you want assets later on, by all means. Don't want to start boring people to death right now so early. But an IA is an irrevocable authority. If you're direct to vendor, you work with the seller, they give you authority to sell the asset, to sell the property without you actually buying it. So you agree price with the seller. You can then package that lot up and Put it to auction, and providing it sells above the agreed the IA price with the seller, you keep 100% of the uplift on that. So that's a fantastic way to get into property trading without buying anything and without having any capital option agreements, which I'm sure lots of people will have heard of, is another way as well. So there's lots of ways to get into trading without having any money. The main thing is finding the deals, knowing what to look for, where to look for them, and knowing the exit strategy that you want to go into with that deal. The most important part of the exit strategy is having an understanding of what that asset will sell for. So long as you can work out what it will sell for, you can work backwards from there. You can factor in what profit margin you want. Any cost of acquisition if you're buying it, for example, stamp duty, legal fees. It's entirely up to you guys, really, what you then offer. Offer on the property. But we bought four.

Three.

We bought three properties this week. I've probably been sent seven or eight deals. Bought three this week. So as long as you've got an idea of what you can sell the asset for, work backwards from there.

Fantastic. So one of my first questions for you as well is what specifically in.

The first place, what attracted me to auction?

Yeah.

Absolutely nothing. Asif. I didn't like auctions when I was working in the estate agency, I'll be honest, it was a scary, dark art environment, Secrets, handshakes, and all sorts of weird things. I was an estate agent, quite happy in my role at the time. And the firm that I worked for, the auction, the auction manager went off sick. I was asked to fill in for a week or two weeks, which I reluctantly did. The guy didn't come back. The firm spent a couple of weeks recruiting for a replacement. Couldn't find anyone. They offered me a job, which admittedly, I was very reluctant to take, but took it. And it was probably the most. The best, most accidental thing to ever happen in my life. I took to it like a duck to water, fell in love with it. The biggest attraction, once I understood how Orchard works, is the security of sale. Anyone who's put a house on the market or bought a house on the market knows how fragile that sale can be with chains, buyers pulling out, sellers pulling out, delays. You go to auction as a buyer or a seller, and you've got an immediate exchange of contracts with a fixed contract completion date, typically 20 working days. So as an agent going into auctions, that certainty, that security and that Speed of sale was very, very attractive. Again, commission based. As an agent, I might agree. A sale on a property, I might get paid three to six months later. When it eventually completed running an auction, my commissions were coming through in four weeks. So it was an eye opener. Fell in love with it, fell in love with the sellers of auction. The variety of sellers at auction is incredible. People who will only ever sell one property in their life at auction that they may have inherited, for example, to landlords with multi, multi million pound, hundreds and hundreds of houses, multi million pound portfolios who are constantly refreshing their portfolio, getting rid of underperforming stock, housing associations, charities, solicitors. The variety of sellers at auction is incredible and that keeps things really interesting. As an auctioneer, someone working in the auction industry and then I guess the thing that kept me there for as long as it did was the trade I started. As I got more experience and a little, a little, a little bit better known as a reliable guy in the auction industry. Property. I'd never heard of these before, didn't know it existed. Property traders started to approach me. They were asking me to value properties for them that they had been offered or they'd sourced direct to vendor. And I was awestruck at this section of the market. Someone could buy a house in, in a matter of days, a week, one to two weeks, put it to auction and take a profit within four weeks. That exceeded six months of my salary. Working full time, it was just, I was, I was, I was in love, I was in love with, with auction trading and that was me working for the auction trade itself as their auctioneer. Once you're in that environment, the speed, the pressure, the excitement, the adrenaline, it is absolutely addictive. So when I came out of auction house as auctioneer, there was only one place I was ever going to end up and that was on the other side of the rostrum as an auction trader myself. So I spend literally all day, every day doing due diligence on properties. I might get 10 to 20 properties offered a week in a typical week to me. And I will spend all day looking at those. What can I sell those for? Where should I sell them? Which auctioneer should I sell them through? How much money can I make? Because honestly, it all comes down to the profit. Nothing else matters. As a trader, all that matters is the profit. How much can I get out of that deal and how fast can I get it out? And then you redeploy those profits over time back into buying the next deal and just seeing that capital pot grow Grow, grow. And the only way you can do that is through auction trading. If you bought a house, let's say you got a really good deal, say you paid 100 grand for a property, let's say that house is worth 150, 50 grand on the open market. Selling it through your local estate agent, that's typically going to take nine months to sell on the market chain. Sell complete, nine months later, pay the estate agent fee, pay the legal fees, you might be left with 145 grand. Say it's taken nine months or you could put that 100 grand property to auction. Yes, you're going to see sell it for less. You might get say 125 at auction for it, but you've got your money back in four weeks, in 28 days instead of nine months. You then buy another property with that 100 grand and then another and another and you keep recycling that capital. There's no reason why you can't buy realistically three to five properties with that same capital in that nine month period. Let's say you make 25 grand a unit. You are quadrupling the profit potential of that capital by trading those houses out at auction. And the other beauty of the auction is that once it's sold straight to contracts on the day it's a fixed completion, the buyers can't pull out. They can't not complete, but it's very, very rare because they lose their 10% deposit. And you are normally selling to more experienced people at auction as well, people who know what they're doing, highly motivated to buy. They've normally got cash or they've got bridging finance lined up. So it's a very attractive way of buying and selling at auction for the speed and certainty. Brilliant.

Right, should we get into your case studies?

Yeah, sure. Can you see that, what's on the screen now then?

We can see it. So we've got the first one in Huntington.

Okay, so these are all properties that I bought this year. I've tried to pick a mix of slightly different ones just to give a bit more background, a bit more clarity as to what I do and how I go about it. So this first one is what's called an auction back to back. And it really is the creme de la creme of auction trading. So this is a property that went to auction. 3 bed semi detached house in need of modernisation. It was a housing association that sold the property. That's attractive to me. Housing association is a motivated seller. They want to dispose of that asset. So it's got to be sold. What's interesting about this is that it went to auction twice and failed to sell. And on the third time to auction, the price was dropped each consecutive auction. I bought it at the third entry to auction. So the thing to learn there is a lot of people say, well it's been to auction already, there must be something and it's not sold, there must be something wrong with it. That's not always the case. It might be that people just haven't seen it. It's not been priced attractively enough so nobody's bothered to look at it. I followed this through two auctions, waited for it to fail, bought it on the third one. But what was really good about this house is that it had a long completion period of six weeks from memory. I work on a much faster turnaround so I could buy this house at auction, exchange contracts, book it straight into what I believed would be a better auction, a better auctioneer for this property which with where it was with the location, booked it into that auction, sold it at auction, exchanged contracts on my resale and timed my purchase completion with my resale completion. So I did a back to back. So I never owned the property for any more than a virtual minute. Which is great. You don't have to deploy any capital, you've got no money out, massively reduces your risk, you've got no holding time or holding costs. But for anybody who's buying property at the moment, you'll feel the pain of the stamp duty increases recently. If you can back to back on a transaction, you have got no stamp duty to pay, so it massively reduces your costs of acquisition as well. So that's an auction back to back trade. And if we look at the next slide there you can see on I'll name drop this essential information group. If you are serious about property trading or buying from auction or selling at auction, then you need a subscription to EIG Essential Information Group. You can see on the first listing there at the unsold 135,000 in November 24, went back to auction in December 2024 unsold at 110. And then it went back to auction in January this year and sold for 111,000, which was me. And interestingly if you look at the last auction in December, it was available at 110,000. So if I bought it in December, I'd save myself a thousand quid. What happened? The way that's happened is the reserve was 110, 10,000 again in January and one other person bid, they put one bid on of 110,000. I then was the second bidder at 111 and they didn't bid again, which was beneficial to me. But the best part here is if you look at the very bottom there, 275 Hearne Road in February 2025, that is my resale through the old firm that I worked for, auction house. And you can see that that sold for 137,000 thousand. So I bought £26,000 in literally in 14 days, which is. It's nice profit, it's good trading profit. I challenge anyone to say that that's a rubbish, a rubbish deal. Come and see me after if you don't think that's a good deal. So what are the risks to me on a deal like that, on a back to back? And it's important to understand the risks so you can try and mitigate those risks or reduce them. The biggest risk because it's on a back to back, the risk to me is that my buyer at auction fails to complete. If they fail to complete, I'm on the hook to complete my purchase because I've already exchanged and I would have the added cost of the sdlt. So that is a risk. The other thing to realise on a back to back, especially if you're doing an auction back to back, is because you haven't completed, you don't physically own the property. So getting access for viewings is a problem. It's always better that you can get access, you can carry out viewings. In this example, the auctioneer that I bought it from, Savills, not slating them in any way, shape or form, but they refused access. So my resale at 137,000, incredibly was to someone who hasn't even viewed that house. There was no access for viewings, so it could have gone the other way. It might have been that no one bid because they couldn't get access and I would have had to have completed. But I took that gamble, took that chance and it performed really, really well. So that's one good example of an auction back to back trade. And if any of you can. So you know, I talk about you don't need money to trade at auction. There's a classic example. The only cash you would need to do that is your 10% deposit on purchase. So 11,100 pound deposit on purchase. Maybe a grand or two for some auction fees, but for, you know, not a lot of capital there. I've just made a 26 grand profit this year. That Property was in a public auction. Any single person watching this today could have done that deal. Anybody. I've got no favours, no special treatment. That was under the hammer. Anybody could have bid. Someone else did bid. So there's no reason why anybody in this room today can't have done that deal. Second one, this is slightly more interesting case. So this was brought to me by a property sourcer. What's interesting is it was bought off market. I did put it to auction. That is my preferred method of exit. And it didn't sell, which is the worst outcome you can ever really experience as an auction trader. And no sale. It's horrible. It's a horrible, horrible feeling. You've got capital out in that deal, it's not sold. I'm not even bothered about making a profit. You want to test it at auction. If it makes a profit, great. If it doesn't, you still want it to sell. Even if it sells for a small loss. Doesn't bother me. The most important part is that it sells, sells and I've got my capital or the bulk of that capital back so I can go again and again and again and recycle that capital. This thing didn't sell. So really, really poor outcome for me. So instead of panicking and putting it back to auction and selling it for big loss or dumping it post auction, I revalued it, reassessed it, looked at the area, looked at the open market, decided that it would be a good one to put up for sale. Downside is it ties your capital up for a long period of time. It's not ideal, but the profit margin in this case was really, really good. So that's the route I went down. That was the exit strategy I followed. But the important thing, to go back to the history of where this deal came from and there's a couple of interesting things here. There was a private seller that lived in the house. They were moving into a retirement flat. It had been on the market for 559 days, long time at 440,000. The property had sold at 400,000 and the chain collapsed, chain collapsed, all fell through. The property sourcer sent a director vendor letter to this address. So for just. I don't know how they sourced it, but they saw that it was on them, it was sold. Then it wasn't. They sent a letter. The seller was highly motivated. They contacted the sourcer, they secured the property for 285,000 from an initial sale price of 400. They came to me, I paid them their fee, which Was in This case was 10 grand. So it was a nice fee for them. I saved on the stamp duty as a trader because it was a chain break. They were moving to a retirement flat. So it was a good deal for the saucer. At this point. If we go to the next slide and this is what I want to highlight about this deal. Everyone have a good look at that photograph there. That is the photograph that the estate agent took and used when it was on the market for 440 grand. Look at that photo. And if you go back to that photo that I took with my iPhone, you tell me who's taken the best image there, which is the most attractive property there. One of the things that I look out for as a trader are poorly marketed properties. And with the right image, look at the difference there. It looks like a 250 grand more expensive property than that lot. And the dad thing is these trees in the background and this grass in, in the foreground. It's not even part of the title, it doesn't even come with the house, it's council land. So it's a crazy, crazy image to take. But if you look at this, I put it on the market, including broker fee, I paid 295,000. I put it on the market for 375. Sold it straight away. Sold in the first couple of weeks it was on the market for full asking price. That made a gross profit of 80 grand. You can see the delay it takes to complete, 240 days to complete. As a trader that really upset me. I was offended because it hadn't sold at auction. I was kicking myself even though I banked 80 grand. So I worked out how much that deal had made per day and it made £333.33 a day. I was, I was slightly less angry with myself and I think I made a cup of tea and had a few chocolate biscuits just to treat myself. But there you go. But the important thing though is if you look at those photographs, the difference there, that was my auction photograph that I took and that was the one that the agent took. So marketing is really, really, really important. And again, if you're auction trading, one of the things that you need to understand are stamp duty exemptions. A lot of people are going to stamp duty reclaim firms. I apologise in advance. If anybody here is running or owns stamp duty reclaim firms. You don't need them. If you go onto HMRC website, look at the stamp duty exemptions for property traders. Understand them, don't Pay the stamp duty at purchase, you advise your solicitor what the exemption is and why you are claiming exemption. You don't need to pay the stamp duty, then claim it back. So just a little bit of a tip there. If you are buying and you think there might be a stamp duty exemption. So we'll go on to this next slide there again there's the example of those images there. It gives you a very good idea of why marketing is so important and pricing is important. You know this house is on the market for offers. You can see on the slide on the left, it was on the market for offers over 400, 440, it sold for 400. I put mine on for a flat price of 375. It sold, literally sold within the first week that it was on the market. So price is really important. We'll do this case study number three and then see if anyone's got any questions about these three case studies. Just while the fresh in people's mind. So this is. And again there's not many people out there that will buy these kinds of deals and it's a good time to say that I will buy. And if you are trading and you want to do it in volume, you need to really open yourself up to every single opportunity that's out there. This is a retirement flat, which is bad enough, one bed, which makes it even worse, even harder to sell. And the third real kick in the in the cahoons on this is that it was an over 70s retirement flat was most retirement flats were over 55, over 60s, it was over 70. So a really limited part of the market. This was brought to be again off market by a saucer. And the only way I will ever sell these is at auction. I've seen these flats all for sale for 1, 2, 3 years before they sell straight back to auction. Motivated seller. Again, really important to me to find out what the seller motivation is because that gives you an idea of what price point they might sell sell at. This had been inherited beneficiaries of an estate. I know these flats come with monster high management costs and service charges. So anyone that's inherited this flat, they are not going to want to be sat on this for months and months and months on end. It's going to be costing them a lot of money otherwise to be sat on that most people just want the cashed out, go on holiday, buy a car, whatever. So good chance of a good deal coming in. I looked at this deal, looked at what it sold for because it looked like quite a modern Block and it sold new build retirement flat for 170 grand. It was on the market for 169,000 from the beneficiaries of the estate. Based on what the agents had valued it at. I offered 30,000 for this flat. A lot of people like why would anybody sell at 30? Where did you get 30,000 from? It's a made up figure. You're never going to buy deals for 30 grand. That offer was accepted at 30 grand because again I understood the seller's motivation. I understood how hard these things were to sell. I understood how expensive this flat would be to hold for the people that have inherited it. So I went to the sourcer, I said I will pay 30 grand for this deal. Okay, so this is important, get this into your head here. So a lot of sources say, you know, I want a three grand fee, I want a one grand fee, I want a five grand fee or whatever. I will offer offer on a property. I offered 30. The saucer offered 20,000 to the seller. That's entitled to them. Doesn't bother me. The seller accepted 20 grand. So this I buy from the seller direct 20 grand and the seller, the sourcer invoice for their 10 grand fee. So really good business for them. The seller again highly motivated. The reason I went into that figure is in my head as an ex auctioneer as an example it as an X valuer. I knew what this flat would sell for auction before I bought it. And I I very confident that it would sell for between 40 and 60 grams. That is the price point, that is the discount level that they sell for auction. Hence I offer so low I want to make 10 to 20 grand out of every deal. If we go to the next slide there bought for 30 000. I thought it would sell for 4, 40 to 60, 40 being 39.99 under stamp duty. So it's priced at that level to make it as attractive as possible and as cheap as possible for a buyer. I'm a trader, I want out, I want it to sell, I want some profit if I can make it. But I'm happy to clear, clear the decks and get my capital back. But as you can see it's sold for 50 smack bang in the middle of my price point. Gross profit 20,000 pounds in 28 days. 714 pound a day for the period that I held held that property. You're mentioned about the holding costs, the risk with this property for me and the reason why I knew the seller would be highly motivated. The service charge and the maintenance Costs for this flat were £1,250 per calendar month. You imagine you've inherited something in and you're now being asked to fork out 1250 quid a month for management service charges. That's not including your council tax, it's not including any utilities, gas, water and electric. So you've got a hefty, a hefty bill there to cover every month. When you've inherited something, it's money for free, isn't it? You've got something for nothing and then you find you have to pay that out. So understand the seller's motivation. Really, really important. Other exit, of course, Course, because I always look at two exits. If this happened, sold at auction or couldn't sell it, how else could I sell it? Obviously, open market was an option, but there were flats for sale in this block. They've been on the market for two years, so it wasn't an option for me. Could rent it out, could let it out. Very, very, very high yield rentals on these flats are two to two and a half grand a month. But you have to factor in those holding costs of 12.50amonth, so that that gross rent nets down to half 50%. But you're still bringing in thousand quid a month rent for it for a 50 grand buy. In this case. I met the buyer at the flat to hand the keys over. I didn't think for one minute an investor would buy this. I thought it would be someone buying it to live in or for elderly parents or something like that. But it was actually a landlord, it was a local landlord that bought this flat purely for the yield. You know, they're netting a thousand quid a month for 50 grand out. If I was a landlord, I'd have kept it. But as a trader, doesn't work for me. Get in, get out, take the profit, move on. But I would do these deals every day. Anything that brings in a 20 grand trade within 28 days is beautiful auction business. Really, really good trading business. Sources made 10 grand. Source is highly motivated. They brought another two deals to me this year. Six months into this year, I paid them 30 grand in six months on three deals. You know, that's, it's good money. But why wouldn't they buy this themselves? You know, there's nothing to stop them buying this themselves, but their choice is not to take that risk for whatever reason. Take a decent sourcing company. Has anyone got any questions at this point? Asif, on those three, three deals, is there anything there that is burning away at them? They want to ask.

Yeah, I think you've already mentioned it, but we've got a question here. How do you save on stamp duty? Because it's a chain break.

Right. Okay. So if you are a trader and your business model is property trading, there are HMRC stamp duty exemptions. The reason they're in place is because as a trader, you're going to acquire that asset and immediately resell it. So someone somewhere in HMRC has said it would be unfair to tax a trader at point of purchase and then claim that stamp duty again four weeks later when they resell it. So there are certain exemptions in place. Important to understand a lot of those exemptions. When the new government came into power, a lot of those exemptions were watered down or removed. One of the best exemptions for traders was an uninhabitable property exemption, self assessed. You assess as the buyer whether you believe that property is uninhabitable or not. So it was heavily abused, massively abused. There will be, I guarantee there will be hundreds of people in the next five years who will be sought and tracked down by HMRC and asked to provide evidence of why they claimed exemptions on uninhabitable, most of them through these stamp duty reclaim firms. It'll be the next big picture PPI scandal. Guarantee it's coming. Put that to one side for now. So the exemptions that are there for the moment, chain break, the reason exemption there is if, let's say you've got five properties in a chain, so that's five sets of people moving, five lots of stamp duty coming into the to the Exchequer and a buyer pulls out, that's five lots of stamp duty that the HMRC are now going to lose on. So they put in place a chain break exemption. So if as a professional trader, you step in and buy the property, one of those properties to rescue that chain, everybody's a winner, everybody gets to move. The Exchequer gets five lots of stamp duty. As a trader, I get one exemption, of course, when I go to resell that property, whoever buys that will be paying stamp duty on their purchase. So it's a way of facilitating the market, keeping the market liquid and just making it a little bit more attractive for a trader to purchase that property on a chain break. So you may know some of the exemptions, probate properties, they come with a stamp exemption. If you are buying it to trade. If you buy to renovate and then sell, that exemption doesn't apply. If you buy to hold as a rental, that does not apply, is always if you are a trader. So it's really important you do look at those exemptions on HMRC website to understand them fully. So chain break is one, probate is one, there are one or two others there. One of them is, for example, if you buy a house for someone who's buying a new build. So if you buy from a seller and they're buying a new build, that comes with a stamp exemption as well. So there's a couple of real good ones there. But probate is actually the most common one. The second most common one for trade is chain break. We love buying chain break properties. You've got a very, very, very motivated seller on a chain break. They're desperate to buy the house that they're already buying. They're in the process of buying. They may have spent vast amounts of money, legal fees, surveys, mortgage fees, lining themselves up to buy that house and then their buyer pulls out for whatever reason. You step in as a buyer and the rest of the chain moves. So highly motivated seller.

Fantastic. So got a question, follow up question I think you've kind of answered. What if you buy a residence? I assume it's only as a trader that you can do with this.

Say that again, Asif.

What if you buy a probate property as your main residence and basically do.

Not do any work. My understanding if you do that is that you will have to pay the stamp duty. It's only if you are immediately reselling and it's bought in a company name as well. If you buy it in your personal name, there's no exemption. So it's got to be bought in a company and that company has to be registered. The sick code on Companies House has to be property trading.

Okay, so next question is, we've got a question from Adam and it is, what is the time frame for back to backing on the first case study, does that all have to complete on the same day and can the same solicitor be used for both transactions?

Okay, so the whole point of a back to back is that your purchase completion occurs on the same day as your resale completion. It has to happen on the same day. If it doesn't happen on the same day, you need all of the funds to complete your purchase. So if it's one day apart, you've got to complete your purchase, pay the stamp duty it's due and then even if your resale completes the next day, so it's absolutely critical it completes on the same day. The time scale doesn't matter. What you've got to work out is in that case, that example, because I bought that at auction, I've got a contractual obligation to complete in six weeks so I could time my re entry to auction, my marketing period and my buyers completion time scale within that six week period. So my completion on my resale is the same day as my completion on my purchase. So there's a little bit of logistics involved to get those dates right and make sure that they're accurate. They have to complete on the same day. Can use the same solicitor. I can use the same solicitor for my purchase and my sale. Yes, but the buyer can't use that solicitor. They would need their own solicitor. Otherwise you've got a conflict of interest.

Fantastic. Right, should we crack on with the rest of the case studies?

Let's go. Okay, deal. Case 4. This house as you can see detached, relatively modern estate build house, beautiful auction stock for various reasons. The main reason being is this type of property, this type of asset is very attractive to end users. End users. Being someone who's going to buy the house to live in. Why are they attractive? They're attractive because they will pay the highest price. They will always pay the most. They're driven by emotion and need rather than capital and profit. They're not investor who wants to see a margin. They want a house on that estate in that location of that size and spec and it's the only one and I can guarantee it will be only one going to auction at that time. It's not like going to an estate agent. Twin donors. 10 houses for sale on the same estate of the same type. This is a unique property, one off opportunity. So it attracts a lot lot of interest from a lot of buyers who then compete against each other, compete against each other to buy it. Just laughing here, something's just blowing off. The boat dive team have been deployed to rescue it. Story behind this one private seller owned this house since it was newly built in the 1980s. Which again as a very very attractive proposition to me. I start to get very excited when I find out they owned it since the 80s. They bought it from new and you might ask me why. Why is that interesting? Why is it exciting? Because the chances are a they paid very little for it compared to its current value. So they will have built up a huge amount of equity in that property and that means they can afford to sell it for a lower price point. It's also highly likely that they've got very little debt unless they've been driven by debt throughout their entire period in that house. Remortgage, remortgage remortgage, which is actually quite rare. Most people have got a lot of equity built in these houses and very little debt. They've paid the mortgage down over the years. So as a trader, again, I'm looking for sellers motivation and that is attractive. They can normally sell at a lower price point, which as a trader, you need to buy below market value. Right. Never been on the market since it was built. If you can buy off market, if you can source properties off market, if you can trade properties off market, they are the best of the best. They're fresh stock, they're fresh to auction. They always perform better, they sell better, they attract more people. I wanted to know what the seller circumstances were on this one. Again, seller motivation, whatever reason, the source wouldn't discuss it. So you've got to move on from that. The seller went to a local cash buying firm who advertised locally. They agreed a price to buy it. Instead of buying it, they traded it to me, they added a margin, I bought it. It will almost certainly been on a back to back, back, back to back purchase for me. So they've agreed a price with the seller. Let's say for argument's sake, that was 200 grand. It could have been more, it could have been less. They came to me, what would I pay for it? I offered 235,000 for that. No idea what they made. I'll never find out. Doesn't really matter because I priced it on what can I sell it for? What can I get this? What can I get for this at auction? What is it worth at auction? What's it worth on the open market? What's it worth? Renovated, improved, it was dated inside. It's got solar panels you can see on the roof. So one of the things to look for in your due diligence, if you've got solar panels, are they owned outright already on a lease? If they're on a lease, you've got to be more careful, look at the lease details. But what you've got to be aware of is that it's much harder for your buyer to get finance or a mortgage on that property with leased solar panels. So you've got to either offer less or you are working in a limited market of buyers. There's less people that can buy it, basically, so you really got to offer less. These were owned outright in this case, so no real problem, problem. So I bought this for 235,000. I paid quite strong money for it because I knew it would be a good auction lot. I knew it being demand, these houses were selling 250 to 270,000 on the open market. So I bought below market value at a discount with the intention in my head that I would sell this for 250 which is quite close to its market value. But as I said before, there will be no other properties going to auction like that on that estate or that area at that time. These are not high volume properties going to auction. They're like rocking horse shit. They're rare. There's not many of them out there. So if you've got one, you can justify paying a little bit of premium. So that's important again to understand the market, who's buying it, why, what for? Go to the next slide there. Bear in mind these were selling for 250 to 270 on the open market. I paid 235, it sold for 2, 8 8. 288, 000 is sold for more than the highest comparable on the market. Was always a possibility that would happen. I hoped it would. I thought it might. But I would never buy on the basis that it would. You always buy on the basis of what it should get, not what it might get if there's a little bit of over performance. So really good auction stock. Interesting here. I put it in front of two auctioneers and I had my opinion on its value because it was in an area that I wasn't overly familiar with. As for two local auctioneers opinions, they both said 2 to 2 40. Local agents valued it at 250 and just to push that point home, it sold for 288. So auction. One thing about auction is if you've got two or three people that want a property at auction, they're all motivated to buy it. They've done due diligence to buy it, they've gone to the auction to buy it, they want to buy it. Quite often they will overpay, they will get excited. They don't want to go home and lose the property. And that's a classic example of this over performance. That's one big advantage of auction. It will get you the best price on the day. And if you can get two or three people there bidding, guaranteed to make a good outcome, it's guaranteed to work. So that's another example. This one here. Put this one in for a couple of different reasons. One risk of trading auction or selling auction is that your buyer might not complete. Okay, so if you sell a house on the open market, one in every three sales fall through. Something like that. As the seller, if your Buyer pulls out or doesn't complete, you're left with nothing. You start again. There's no compensation. You've got to start again. Simple as that. One advantage of auction is that you do have some security of sale. There are some financial benefits coming back to you if a buyer doesn't complete. And this is a good example. So I've got a three bed detached house here. If you can look at the first listing there, that was with Savills, who I put it, put it through Savills first. It sold for 106,000. That buyer didn't complete. So I've got to look at how do I next exit this? Stay calm, it's not a problem. Put it back to auction with Barnard Marcus. And if you look at what it sold for, they sold for 111,000. So it sold for 5,000 more than the first time it went to auction, which is great. Made five grand more than it would have done previously. But the big benefit is the security and certainty of auction. The first sales exchanged, the buyer pays a 10% deposit. So they've paid £10,600 deposit. They didn't complete. That deposit comes back to me. So I make 10 grand on the first sale that didn't complete. I resell it and I make another 5,000. So I've got a few 15, £16,000 additional profit there for that first sale, not completing. So that is one advantage of auction. You put a house on the market, sell for through, got nothing, put it back to auction, keep the deposit first time and there's a chance it'll sell for more second time. Of course it might sell for less, it might sell for the same. That's a risk you've got to take. But you've still got the deposit from that first apartment. Ten grand goes a long way to help cover those holding costs in between those two sales. So auction does have some advantages over selling through local agents. In terms of the numbers on this property, I bought it for 90 grand, sold it for 106 initially resold it for 111 gross profit, 21 grand. Beautiful business. You'll keep seeing these figures. 10 to 20 grand profits. If you can trade consistently and make 10 to 20 grand out of each trade, that money soon adds up. You do that. What you do one a month, 240 grand a year. If you're making 20 grand, 20 grand a time. Big bucks, big money. Not. I won't go into the not. I bought 150, 52 last year, bought 152 properties. I kept two for different reasons, two commercial ones for different reasons, and I traded all the rest. And if you think that on average, you're making 10 to 20 grand per deal, which is basically on average what I do, doesn't take a mathematician to work out the profit margins on, on those kind of, that kind of volume. It's a very, very high capital profit strategy, this, if you can get the volume of deals. So that's that one. Case study 6. This was a beautiful house in Ripley in Derbyshire. If you look at the red outline plan there, there was a lovely plot to the side of this property. A lot of people when I, when I first put this to auction, were like, crazy. Why would you just offload that straight at auction? Explore the plot planning, explore the uplift potential. Do a title split. Split that plot off to the side. Yes, you could. Why wouldn't I? Hey, I'm not a planning expert, that's not my business model. I don't want to hold that asset for six months, nine months, while the planning goes through, or to do a title split on it and enter into something I haven't got the experience on the contacts with. So again, as a trader, I'm looking at offloading those potential uplifts and those benefits to the next buyer. I'm just looking to take a margin. I'm not looking to extract maximum profit, I'm not looking to extract every last pound and every last penny. I'm a trader, I've paid a price for it, I want a markup, but I leave something on that deal or in that deal for the next person. So it's an interesting lot with added value to whoever buys it at auction. So that's important to factor in as well. As a trader, you're there to take a slice of the pie, but not all of the pie. You want to pass that deal on, you want to leave enough meat on the bone to make sure it sells at auction, as you can see. Highlight the plot, sell the whole thing as one lot. Beautiful lot. It's a private seller selling this property. Been long term vacant, have it? Been empty for nine years? Yeah, been empty for nine years, Never been on the market. Been broken into, been vandalized, squatted, drug addicts, you name it, they'd all come and gone. Steel, shuttered up. The interesting reason this came to market is the council served a notice, a possession notice on the seller, on the owner. The non payment of council tax. That was their trigger, that was their motivation for selling. The council were going to take possession, compulsory purchase, that triggered them to sell this property. When I went in there, this house, there were dozens and dozens of direct to vendor letters. There were dozens of them. So people had been targeting that house for years and years and years, years, we'll buy your house, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The seller approached a cash buy firm through a Google advert. They sent a surveyor in and the surveyor valued it at zero. Rick's valuation zero. There was some issues with the house, with the floor. The floor had been dug up. It was odd, it was like someone had been in there with an excavator trying to dig a basement out. Really odd. Zero valuation. Point being here is that that cash buy firm, although the Advertiser is a cash buy firm, they haven't got any cash. This particular firm, like most of them actually, they don't have any money. They all buy with bridging. They're all borrowing money and that is a really important thing to factor in. So they have to get the Rick's valuation. Rick's valuation came in zero. They couldn't borrow money. They couldn't borrow. It ends up at me. They come to me when they've got a problem property. I paid them a three grand fee. I bought this at the price level they had agreed with the seller. I had no idea if it's end value. All houses in this area were terraces. There were terraces, some semis, there were no detached. So there were very few comparables. High risk. But at the price point I bought and bought and how attractive it looked for auction and the uplift potential as an hmo, a title split, a new building, that corner plot, all those things got me really, really excited. Look at the figures on this one. I bought that for 125, paid a three grand fee and put it straight to auction and it sold for 194 grand. So that, that is a really nice auction trade, 69,000 profit. The only thing that had to the downside of this is the buyer needed finance to complete, they needed access for survey. Pure bad luck on my, on my front, my part, they used the same survey firm that had already been in and done a zero valuation. That firm went back in and valued it zero zero again. So they wouldn't lend. So the buyer then had to go to bridging finance. I'm not going to say who it was because it took them 150 days to get the finance. It's not a good advert for them, but not the point. So as a seller at auction, my contract is 14 days. That buyer had 14 days to complete. So after day 14, if I wanted to rescind that contract and keep their deposit, £19,400 I could do. But I didn't because it performed so well and there was so much profit locked into that deal and that buyer was still trying to buy the property, they were desperately trying to complete it. I allowed them a huge extension, a huge period of time to extend their purchase, literally 150 days. But that protected that profit margin baked into that deal. If I rescinded and put it back to auction, it could have sold for 150 grand. It could have sold, it could have sold for 200 grand. But the chances are, in my opinion is that that performed it overperformed on the day. I don't think I'd have got that profit back if it was resold at auction. So I waited a long time for that buyer. And that's just something that you've got to decide as a trader. Where's the risk? What's the profit in that deal? If the profit in that deal was 20 grand or less, I would have taken the contract back and I would have taken that £19,400 deposit because the value of the deposit is the same as the profit in the deal. I could put it back to auction, sell it, no problem, again, take another 20 grand profit. So these are all the different things you've got to consider as a trader when things go wrong. Not, not everything is straight sailing, no pun intended, things do go wrong and you need to have an exit strategy for those things. But beautiful auction lot, beautiful auction trade. Last one, last example for today and again, really, really relevant to all you guys that are watching this now. This was a direct to vendor, off market, market purchase. Someone who lives locally, believe it or not, all they do is they, they've got a young baby, they've got a dog on their dog walks, on their baby walks, they walk around the local town, where they live, the local area, this place, St. Helens. And they're looking for properties that are empty. That's it, neglected, overgrown gardens, curtains drawn, blinds drawn, whatever posts sticking out the letterbox. They're looking for properties that are empty, they look neglected, they stick a letter through. I tell them to do what's called a 20, 20, 20 strategy. So if you find an empty property and you put a letter through, drop 10 houses either side and say you're looking, you just say you're looking to trace the owner of that particular property. Very high chance someone will contact you with that person's details. Yes, there's lots of other ways. Gutterland registry, blah, blah, blah. These are all the different things you've got to trace the owner. Cut a long story short. Empty bungalow. Here it was. Turned out to be probate. Someone had inherited it. The reason it was empty, the reason they hadn't taken action to sell is of emotion. It was their mum and dad's house. They both passed away, they didn't want to go back in the house, so it was sat there doing nothing. Next thing, they get a letter through the door. Door. Neighbour contacts them. Someone's put a letter through your door. That's all it takes. Director, vendor letter, local person. They don't have the funds to buy. They're not a buyer, they're a sourcer. We agree to purchase price with the seller. I paid them a 3,000 pound fee for going on a dog walk, taking the baby for a walk. Great business for them. Inherited probate. Trader stamp exemption. Makes it even more attractive for me. Quality, quality auction stock figures on this. Bought it for 90, sold it for 122. 32,000 gross profit in 21 days. So again that 20. It's a bit higher than the normal, but 2010 to 20 grand profit margin 32. These figures soon stack up. Massive capital growth, massive capital profits in a very short space of time. So auction trading works for me. One thing to, to, to notice on here, you guys, if you're looking at auction stock, if you buy an auction stock, you might have seen this, you might have seen something guided at a level that you thought, wow, that's really, really cheap. I'm buying this in the. I'll give you some my mindset on this as a trader, as a seller. I paid 90 grand for that. I put that to auction at 40,000 guide price of 40,000. The reserve price was 40,000. Massive potential risk if there was only one bidder on the day. Puts the hands up. They're buying that for 40 grand. Chance of that happening, really nil. We've got a 40 grand guide. There were over 100 people registered to bid on that property. Over 100. A lot of them get knocked out really quickly because they think they're going to buy it for 40 or 50 or 60. The point is it attracts everybody in the marketplace to that lot, to that day, to that auction, to that hour and they are all bidding against each other. They get excited, they're highly motivated and that's where you. This Property was worth 144,250 renovated and it needed a 25 to 30 grand renovation. So the numbers don't stack up to a renovator. Again, the person that bought it is an end user. They bought it to live in. There weren't any for sale at the time that this went to auction. They wanted to live on that road. They wanted a bungalow, it's close to right next to a school. Their grandkids went to that school. So you've got special circumstances, circumstances for someone to buy that property and it's still cheaper than they would have had to pay if it was on the market. So they've got a good deal, they've got what they want, where they want it, quickly at auction, quick completion, I've made a profit, source has made a fee, Everyone's a winner, can't lose. But direct to vendor, straight to auction, they are the best deals that you can, you can source best ones going over to you, Asif.

That's it. No, that was a really, really good presentation. So we'll take a few questions. Now the first one that we've got is something that I was thinking as well during this presentation and it's from Ed and it says, Oliver, what are the best ways of estimating what a property might sell for at auction? Is there a minimum percentage discount from market value that you look for or you're looking more at the property vendor?

That's a very good question. Repeat that for me, Asif.

So essentially, so essentially the question is what are the best ways of estimating what a property might sell for at auction? Is there a minimum percentage discount from market value that you look for or are you looking more at the property vendor itself?

Okay, good question. So it depends a lot on what the asset is. So I'm looking at who is the buyer going to be, what is the buyer profile, why would they be buying that property and what are they going to do with it? So that for me is the first thing I'm looking at. I'm looking at who is going to be my buyer at auction. Are they buying it to live in, are they buying it to rent out, are they buying it to renovate and refurb? And believe it or not, you can actually work those out. It depends on the asset class, where it is, what the property is and where it is. You do get a very good idea. It's unlikely you're going to get someone buying a four bed detached estate house to renovate and sell. Unless it is really cheap, dirt cheap, or there's some massive added uplift through an extension or a new build in the garden. Highly likely that It'll be an end user. So I'll look at who's going to buy it and why. Once you've established that, all you need to look at is what is the open market value of that property. So let's put a theoretical example in. Let's say you're looking at a four bed detached house and the open market values are 250. They're selling for 250 on the market. There's loads of compounds. It's really clear that that's what it's going to sell for. As a buyer, as an auction trader I want to be seeing really a minimum 20, ideally 30 grand markup in that property. So you've got to factor your, let's say 30 grand markup in that property. So your 250 is down to 220. Okay. But then you've got to factor in an element of discount for that buyer at auction to motivate them, motivate them to go to the auction and bid at auction. Otherwise they might as well go buy one that's already on the market. I normally factor in a 10, 10 to 15% difference for a buyer who is going to be buying something to live in. So 10, 15% difference, let's say that takes the deal down to 200. So let's say you are confident that that is going to sell for 200 auction. I want to buy it, I want to make my profit in there. Factor those in. Realistically you would probably want to be paying 1 70, 1 60. 160, 170. For something like that you might go to 175. That's the sort of discount if you can buy, if you know what the market value is on the open market and you can buy that at 40% below that value, you will make money trading that. It's not, it's not easy. It's a big ask. You talk about, put it into a round figures, 100 grand terrace house on the market worth 100. You've got a bike for 60 grand and then you might sell it at auction at 75 to 85 grand, say on a typical, typical auction lot. So you know, you've got to find the right, the right seller. Seller motivation is important. But for me the first thing I look at who's going to buy it, what's it going to sell for and then work that from there.

Fantastic. Do you take consideration in terms of the amount of work that is needed on that property?

Just say that again as if, do I take consideration for the amount of.

Work that is needed in that property for your calculations.

Okay, really, really good question there. So, yes, you have to to a certain extent, because if you've got a house that's fully renovated, ready to move into, that's always going to come at a higher price point than a house that's 20, 30, 40 year old interior and it wants modernizing. However, the reality is in most cases, if the condition of the house internally is good enough to move straight in and live in, and it might cosmetic decorating, carpets, freshen the kitchen doors up or whatever, I don't bother. Most people won't pay the premium for a freshly renovated house at auction. Their main priority is buying that house because it's in the location that they want at the time that they need. So they're not going to get overly fussy. The fact that it needs new carpets or new decorating, the most important thing for that buyer is that it's at auction there and now they want it, they need to grab it now. As long as the condition is relatively good enough to move straight in, they'll treat it as if it's a house that is freshly renovated inside. If you go beyond that. And the kitchens, it needs a new kitchen. Not just talking cosmetics, but the kitchen's rotten through, the bathrooms rot through. 40, 50 years old. All what's rewire also re plumb. It's all single glazing. That's a bit different. You've got to factor that in. But what's, what's interesting here with, with auction and auction buyers and people getting carried away, let's say a house needs a 50 grand refurb and I factor that 50 grand in into my offer. When it comes to it selling at auction, most buyers will only factor in 25 grand. They always, always underestimate the cost of that refurbishment or that renovation. Always underestimate it and they always overestimate the end value of when they've done those improvement works. And that's just the psychology of people bidding at auction. So yes, you do factor it in, but I don't factor in the full cost of those works because most of that is lost in the auction bidding process. And if you factored in the full cost of all those works, your offer would be substantially lower and you would buy a lot less, you'd buy a lot less properties. Now you might want to keep that profit margin that large and you might want to play ultra safe and ultra cautious and that's absolutely fine. You might want to buy 1 in 10 deals and make a guaranteed 30 grand profit. I would rather buy 7 out of those 10 deals and make 10 to 20 grand on each of those rather than buy one safe one and make a larger profit. For me it's about volume and it's about taking those 10 to 20 grands time after time after time.

Fantastic. Right, so the next question we've got is from ish and it says do you reassign contracts or do you create new contracts with your buyers? If you create new contracts, surely you're liable to pay stamp duty as you owned it for a short period of time.

I think I understand what you're saying now. If I'm buying a property other than on a back to back, I will complete on that purchase. If there is a stamp duty exemption, I will get the exemption. If there isn't, I pay the stamp duty, I will complete my purchase. The reason is I've got control of the asset. I've got full control control of it. I can go in there, I can clean it, I can clear it, I can do my own photographs, my own videos, I can do the floor plans, I can do the epc, I can get it contract ready for auction. I will put all those things into a Dropbox file, send it to the auctioneer, change the locks, put a key safe card up and that thing's ready to go. So typically my turnaround purchase completion so we're going live for auction is 48 hours to 72 hours. I'm turning this stock around super, super fast. If I don't complete that purchase and I'm doing an assignable contract or a back to back contract, that whole process slows right down. I would rather pay the stamp duty complete, have full control and get that thing back in the market faster. Yes, it comes at higher cost but I've got that speed, that transactional speed. On a back to back though the stamp duty, the stab, there's a on a back to back, although they're really limited opportunities on a back to back unless you are director vendor. If you're direct to vendor, you can do a back to back. I'm never direct to vendor. I'll buy some at auction or I will buy 90%. What I buy is from from sources and I am not direct to vendor. The sourcer is direct to vendor. So I prefer to complete, pay the stamp duty, have control and then go from there.

In your early days as well, was that the same case as well? Were you never direct to vendor? Were you always buying through sources?

I have never bought a property direct to vendor, not one there's two, there's two reasons, two main reasons for that. One, I made a decision right at the start. When I decided to enter into property trading, I had two options. I could either put together a load of advertising, marketing, Google, set a website up, letter drops, all this sort of stuff, source my own stock and buy that and deal with it, or leverage the contacts that I spent 23 years building up in the auction industry, leverage those contacts to supply stock to me, supply deals to me. That's the route I went down because those people were already there. I didn't have to go out and throw find them. But the other thing that came became apparent really quickly is all those people that supply that stock to me who are sources who are spending time and money doing it, which is why we pay them. If I entered into the direct to vendor market, I was competing directly with them. So quite a few of them very quickly turned around and said, oliver, if you start advertising, we will chop your legs off and we will never sell you another the deal. So that was a big enough motivation for me to never go into that market. So I've never gone into it, never will. Don't have a website, don't have a business card, I've got no brand. My daughter set an Instagram page up for me in, in January last year. Been on Instagram for 18 months. Hate social media, not really my thing, but I'm on it. We were talking today, some of the, some of the guys on this boat today who are not on socials. I picked up 5, 5, 6 deals this year off Instagram, people messaging me directly. So none of those, those people who are messaging me directly, they're not sellers coming to me directly. They are sources who have found me on Instagram who have got a deal, they've got a lead, they've gone to socials. So socials are important, but I don't do direct to vendor either. Some of the top sources that the supply stops me, believe it or not, this will blow your mind. They're spending quarter of a million pounds a month. There's some big sources a month, quarter of a million a month. They've got 50, 55 staff. They take me out once or twice a year to some very, very nice places. Been out, I buy a lot of stuff off them. I pay huge, huge, huge amounts of money to this. These guys been to Vegas, fully paid trip to Vegas for a week, Ibiza for a week. Been some very nice places where they spend massive amounts of money. They don't buy property, they don't buy anything. They've got 50, 55 staff. They've got huge. They do 50 to 60 deals a month. With that quarter million quid, they source every single property out. That's their business model. So I don't do direct to vendor. I spent 23 years talking to to sellers as an auctioneer, going out, telling people I'm the best guy to sell the house at auction through the firm I work for is the best to sell their property through auction. Spent 23 years talking to sellers. I never want to talk to another seller in my entire life. I would rather deal with the trade, rather deal with sources. Business to business. The only way for me. Fantastic.

So a few people have asked this and I think you've kind of touched on it, but how do you find these good sources?

I'm being told to t the last question here asked if. So, yeah, we'll ask this and then unless there's like a really, really good one, we'll, we'll have to call it a day. But good question, difficult one to answer. The only way I can answer that is you've got to deal with every single person, every single saucer that comes to you and you've got to sort the wheat from the chaff. And so going on Facebook, going on, on social media, going on Instagram, I put the old post out on Essential Information Group. Tell people what you do. I tell people I'm a buyer, I'm a trader, I'm looking for deals, I'm looking for stock. Constantly buying. I buy all over the uk, England, Scotland, Wales, I'll even buy Northern Ireland. I'll buy anything, anywhere, any condition, and people will bring stuff to me. But I'll be honest with you, 9 out of 10 deals that get put in for me by sources that are new to me, they don't go anywhere. They're talking about, oh, we found a deal, we've sourced this deal. We've got a discount for market value. Okay, send me the address, send me the details. They send me a rightmove link. It's been on the market six months, it's on 100 grand and they've got a deal agreed at 90 grand and they want a five grand sourcing me. So 5% discount for market value. I do some quick comparables on there and it's overpriced by 20 grand. It's only worth 80 anyway, you know, so there's a lot of that comes in, but you've got no choice but to deal with it. Try and educate them. I Don't. I don't bin them off. I'm not rude, I'm not arrogant. I will educate them, I will show them the comparables. I will show them why it's not worth 95 grand and why a trader wouldn't pay 95 grand and hopefully they will learn from that and they can go out and source some better stuff. I will educate these people, I will help people. I want them to bring me quality deals. So it's very difficult. All you need to do is get out there, be present, turn up to networking event, you'll remember. I remember you turning up at a networking event four years ago. It was the first networking event I ever went to. You were there as well. I don't know how long you've been in the market, but I remember you from then because you brought a bunch of bloody light year to a networking event, waved it up at everyone. You never forget that kind of stuff. Turn up, be present, make the effort, meet people, tell them what you do, go from there and that stuff will just come, people will come to you.

Brilliant. Right, final question then. And it's the one. So how can you help our wonderful community members? And how can our wonderful community members help you?

Good question. Dead easy. If you have got something, a deal in front of you and you are not sure what to do with it or how to deal with it, you're not sure about what it's worth, you're not sure about how to exit it, you're not sure about how to present a purchase to the seller, you want a second opinion. Let's say you've agreed a price with the seller and you are in the you're looking to buy it or trade it and you want my opinion or a second opinion on what it's worth at auction, message me if you want to share my email or mobile. I see if that's absolutely fine, put it out to the network. If people want to message me on Insta, which is where I get 90% of contact property Freak on Instagram literally will help anyone. I will guide people, I will advise them, I'll help them. If you take the piss and ask me more, more than three times for the same thing, it's because. It's because you're asking a stupid question, so don't be offended, rephrase the question, look at something that's a bit more attractive to me. But if I can help you, I will help you. If you've got a deal and you can't buy it because you haven't got the money or you haven't got the confidence to deal with it, drop me a message, I'll look at it, I'll look at what you should be buying it for, I'll look at what it can be said sold for and we'll either bite a bite off you, agree a fee, pay you a fee, I'll take over from there, you're out, you've been paid. Or if it's a really good deal, then we might look at doing a joint venture on a profit share basis. I put the money in, I put the experience in, I put the contacts in, but you've got to come up with the deal and it's got to be a good deal. So from their side, come up with a good deal. If you want a JV or me to buy it, I'll do that. If you want to do it yourself and you want help, guidance, advice, drop me a message and I'll give you whatever information you need to let you take that to the next level.

Fantastic. You want to put your email in.

The chat, put your phone number, but your email would be good as well.

Any final remarks?

Happy hunting, everyone. Get out there. The deals are there. People say there's no deals. Absolute rubbish. 152 properties I bought last year and I offered on over a thousand. The deals are there, they're everywhere. And I'm only one guy. I haven't got a team, I've got no one. It is literally just me, but I know 50. There's eight traders on this boat, you know what I mean? The deals are there, everyone's busy, everyone's buying. You've just got to look, you've just got to put a little bit of time and effort in. Just keep your nose to the ground, easing, eyes open, you'll find stuff.

Brilliant. Right, let's wrap it up then. Thank you for joining us today for another edition of Deal Finders Corner. It was an absolute pleasure having you here, Oliver. Crazy that you've done so many deals and as you mentioned, pretty much a one man band. I'm sure our community members are blown away by the value you've given them today. So next week, dfc, we have Nicolette Hunter, currently a senior consultant at a Fortune 500 tech company and also building a property business focused on HMOs in in Reading and flips across Berkshire, no doubt. For now, all the rest, if the usual, visit propertyfilter.co.uk log on to your Property Filter account, check out the deal blueprint, Define your gold mine area, engage with motivated sellers. Assess properties within seconds, 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 next week. But in the meantime, as Oliver said, go and grab them deals. Catch you soon, guys. Thank you.