How to Invest £10,000 In Property & Other Assets (REWIND) — The Progressive Property Podcast

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Welcome to the Progressive Property Podcast, helping you invest in property for freedom, choice, and profit. You'll learn new and innovative, and multiple streams of property income, whether you want to start, scale, or systemize, and even if you don't have deposits.

Hi, my name is Kevin McDonnell, and welcome to the Progressive Property Podcast. This episode is a takeover with Progressive co-founders Rob Moore and Mark Homer. Rob Moore and Mark Homer co-founded Progressive Property in the 2000s and have gone on to build a multi-million pound property portfolio. They own, co-own, and manage hundreds of properties in the Peterborough area. And Mark Homer is the UK's leading property investment expert. So in this episode, you're going to learn how you can perfectly invest £10,000. So let's get straight into the episode. See you next week.

Hi, it's Ron Moore here, and I'm with my business partner Mark Homer. And this is part 2 in our ongoing Monday 7 PM series of how to invest. How to invest 5,000, 10,000, 25,000, 50,000, 100,000, 250,000, 500,000, a million, and then the finale, how to invest or start investing with little or no money. Mark, do you realise we've been, we've known each other for more than 15 years now?

2005.

Yeah, right at the end.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's 2000, nearly 21. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Progressive will be 14 years old in January. Started in '07, didn't we, when I got fired at the end of '06?

We started, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We incorporated, I think, January '07. So yeah, so look, you've been investing, you've been investing since a teenager, haven't you?

I have. I've been investing since my sort of early teens, something like that, uh, buying All sorts of stuff and putting money away initially under a load of pebbles and stones outside and running a little bank. My grandma used to leave money in it. I quite enjoyed that. Nice.

Right, so on this particular episode, we're going to discuss some guidelines, some guidance on how to best invest £10,000. Of course, you should do your own diligence and research. We're telling you our experience. Always do your own backup research. So £10,000 mark, I know it's not a huge amount of money. Would you use that to invest in something passive or would you use that to start a business or might you use that to start building your property business with deal packaging or rent to rent or what?

Well, I think this is down to the individual, how much time they want to put in and how quickly they want to grow it. I mean, clearly, you know, any small amount of money like this, the quickest way to grow it, the biggest returns are going to be when you combine that money with your own sort of effort and, you know, blood, sweat, and tears, and you sort of crack on to create something yourself in terms of a business. You know, for me, that might be rent-to-rent, that might be selling deals, but it could also be investing with somebody else. So that is clearly a more time-intensive strategy. I've got lots of stuff which would work for somebody who doesn't want to put a lot of time in and just wants to put some money away and leave it. So it just depends on the individual really.

Yeah. We'll cover both off. So let's start with if you've got £10,000 and just want to put it away. So would you do ISA, stocks, Watches, cars, anything else? Where would you go with that?

I think the, you know, I'm bound to say that the most reliable and sensible is probably to open your ISA. And as we've discussed before, go and put it into tracker funds, you know, a sort of portfolio of tracker funds that goes into FTSE, goes into sort of overseas, and then maybe the US market spread. Um, if you want something a little bit more interesting, something that you can sort of touch, feel, and enjoy, I'd go and buy a classic car. Um, and I think my favorite at this sort of price point would be a Mercedes-Benz SL. Uh, I met a good friend on Friday evening and he reminded me that, um, 2, 3 years ago we went to a hill climb, uh, and this guy knows a lot about cars. Um, he restores old Ferraris. Um, he inspected the last 2 or 3 cars that we bought. He's fastidious, and that's one word for it. Yeah, yeah, but I enjoy it. Yeah, he, he went through the Ferrari when we, we had a bit of trouble with it. Yeah, he found everything.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, and we, we were, um, we were out, uh, going— we went to a hill climb, we flew in in the helicopter and took a taxi, and we saw this Mercedes-Benz R129 which is an SL, and it was an SL500, and he's gone and bought an SL320 and he spent 10 grand on it. Now he's got quite a few classics and he knows what he's doing, and I just think, you know, the Pagoda, which is the sort of 1960s 230, 250, or 280 SL, if you go a little bit earlier Uh, and you know, you're talking about 300SL, obviously they're a million, million euros now, um, gone up hugely. Um, if you go back to a 190SL, which would be slightly before the Pagoda, um, you know, they're, they're into 150 grand now. So all of that stuff is a lot, lot more money. Um, and I just think that those R129s, they're still quite cheap, even, even sort of Slightly before that, you know, you— if you were looking at the sort of Bobber Ewing with the, the flat face alloy wheels there, um, you know, a nice one might be 30 or 40 grand. These are still cheap and they're completely solid. When you slam the door, that they really thud. Um, and I just feel like they're going to go up. Um, I always like the stuff that isn't necessarily loved at the moment. Because I always feel like there's more room to appreciate. Yeah. Bit like houses.

Yeah.

Everyone goes, oh, London, you know, everyone will always want stuff in London, it'll never go down. Well, it has the last few years. And that's, that's what happens when you buy the best.

Premium.

When you buy premium, usually, you know, it, it has a long way to drop. So yeah, I like those. The other thing that I was talking to him about and it reminded me of my experience was a BMW M3 E46, which I had one. You probably remember, it was a gray one, it was convertible. They're 10 grand racing you in my 350Z. Yeah, exactly. And they were almost neck and neck, weren't they?

Yeah, yeah, M3 just had it, didn't it?

It was 344 brake horsepower, something like that. They're 10 grand now, or 15 maybe for a nice one.

It's a lot, a lot of car for that money. Yeah, I sold mine for 15.

In 2008 and they're about sort of £10,000, £15,000 now. I think they've probably started going up. So I think that's got to be a good car. Yeah.

Okay, we'll come back to this in a minute. I'm just going to let everyone know who's watching live on either my LinkedIn or your Facebook page to subscribe to the Progressive Property YouTube channel, which is tiny.cc/PPTV, all capitals. Harry, could you type that in the comments? So tiny.cc, no, tiny.cc/PPTV. Yeah, forward slash, lowercase, and then PPTV, capitals. There you go, just like that. Because we said last week we wouldn't be streaming this anywhere else except the Progressive Property YouTube channel, although we've slipped out to a couple of smaller channels of ours. But next week, 100%, this will only be exclusively streamed live on the Progressive Property channel. I can see as well we've got comments and questions coming in. We will take questions towards the end. Like David has said, does it have to be 10 grand? What about if it's 100 quid? And someone, you have to start somewhere, and someone else has said if you had 40 grand, what would you do with it right now? So we'll probably address those a bit later on in the show. So look, we'll come on to watches, stocks, property, business, etc. I want to add a couple of things. I, Mark, as you know, you know me better than anyone really, I like to enjoy my money. And what you taught me was investing back in the day, but I've always found hardcore investing a bit boring. But what I don't find boring is investing something that I enjoy getting pleasure out of as well. Like I love watches, I love cars, I love property, I love business. And so I get that dual effect where I'm investing in either reducing depreciation or I'm getting appreciation, but it's something that I enjoy as well. Do you think it's important in the investment vehicles that you're in to have a bit of a passion for it? Do you think you'll be a better investor because of it?

I think you definitely will be a better investor if you love what it is you're investing in. But, you know, you've sort of got to love it up to a point, and it depends where you are on your investment journey. In the early days, I used to try and do whatever just made me the most money because I didn't have any money. And so those early compounding returns, the difference between something good and something really good, made a huge difference to how wealthy I thought I'd becoming, you know, later on in life. So, you know, I'd focus on that now. Example, you know, I was just talking about that Mercedes-Benz. I probably will buy one, but I might be persuaded just to buy— well, I'd probably need to be persuaded not to buy a Pagoda 280SL because I love it. And actually my expectation with that is it probably won't go up, but I just feel like it's probably not going to go down very much. So actually my— the pendulum is shifted a lot to me, for me, to getting things that, you know, putting some money into things that don't really depreciate.

Yeah.

Um, rather than don't go up that much because, you know, I've got other income streams that are set up. So it's so individual, you know, to, to where you are in, in your thing. But I know you love watches and it's made you, you know, your knowledge, you know more than anyone I know about watches and specifically investment watches. And I'd say 80% of that is because you love those watches, which I guess you're, you're about to explain.

Yeah, yeah. I'll come to that in a minute, but I want to just explore these points a bit more because I always used to think investing was about getting the best return, and sometimes it is, but it's also sometimes about protecting your capital, isn't it? So if you could, for example, do you know we bought that 430 Ferrari, Ferrari 430 Spyder, all that stuff. Yeah, not, not the best investment, but, but capital-wise, we didn't lose much money.

And you still wouldn't. And, and no, no, I mean, I think that cost—

I think we bought it for 67.5, sold it for 65.

Yeah, I think we maybe we lost about 10— 8 grand on it, something like that. Maybe 68 we gave, and we sold it for about 60, uh, which I thought was brilliant. He was an absolute nail.

Um, I mean, we picked the highest mileage Ferrari ever, didn't we?

Well, I drove it every day. I was using my old mentality, basically get the cheapest damn one. And it's not, not always a bad way to be.

Um, but I mean, even if it— I mean, I, I remember it being a bit less than £8 grand, but let's say it was £8 grand, and let's say the maintenance was, I don't know, £5 grand a year. It was probably a bit less for us because we did it on the cheap, but that's a cheap Ferrari, isn't it?

Well, it was for a 430 Spyder. Yeah, that is cheap ownership. I, I mean, that— I think even cheaper ownership was the car we got after that. I still— 458. The 458, because, all right, it was a time when, you know, sort of we got lucky with the timing. At the timing, yeah, they, they really seem to firm for longer. But, you know, if we'd kept that car, we still wouldn't really have lost much more money. Um, I think we gave £167,000 for that. I think we sold it for high, almost 150, and we kept it something like 3 years. Um, the servicing was practically free because it was under a 7-year service plan and it was all under warranty. Um, which is good when you and I own cars. Well, the thing, the thing ended up costing, I don't know, 10-15 grand, some interest, you know, on some, some finance which was offset. Uh, fuel and insurance. Yeah, apart from sort of one incident.

Yeah, you can research the world's most expensive crashes website and you can find our Ferrari on there. Sorry about that, Mark. Um, but yeah, so obviously if you've got 10 grand and you're unemotional and you want a hardcore return, then obviously we've given you some tips and we'll give you more because we're going to do at least half an hour on this live. But sometimes it's good to just preserve the capital. So I'm going to give you another example, and I'm not recommending this as an investment, but I love hi-fi. I love like high-end audio and what I try and do. And again, I learned this from you back in the day, probably 15 years ago, is I'll buy a pair of speakers, but I'll wait till they're at the lowest point of their depreciation curve. And that can be 3, 5 years old, but they're still the latest model. So you get the latest model. So I bought a pair of PMC Fact.12 speakers and I paid 7 grand for those and they were 10 new. And then they went up to £12 and I sold them for £8. So I basically got paid £1,000 to have a really nice pair of speakers for free.

Exactly.

I had a free pair of speakers. My record player, I— that was like £25,000 record player that I paid, what, £8,000 for, got my money back on it. So I had a free record player. So I know that you like to preserve capital at all costs, don't you? So do you have that mentality with clothes, maybe buying them in the sale And you try and buy most things when the depreciation— someone else has lost the depreciation.

Yeah. I mean, you know, clothes, you know, Gemma just gets those for me because I'm terrible at buying clothes anyway. And if I'm buying clothes, you know, a pair of jeans is £30 or £20, you know what I mean? So it's better she just buys them and I don't then get too caught up about the price. And it's probably not a good use of my time. So I stay away from all that, and they won't look good anyway if I'm involved. Um, so, so, so, so I'll sort of put my mind to buying everything else. So I'm buying a watch, I'll only really buy something that you, you tell me, um, should, you know, not depreciate or go up. I just expect it's not going to depreciate.

Yeah, uh, I mean, those Nautiluses went wild, didn't they? Yeah, even worse now we sold them.

But best not discussed.

If any of your mates are watching, they'll be gloating, won't they?

God, I think I gave, what did I give, £15,500 for one you found for me. It was a Patek 5711 Nautilus, and I sold it at £19,500 because I thought it had gone up a lot, and then now £55,000.

Well, the chronograph one I had is now £90,000. And I sold that for £36,000.

But hey, look, wise, always 2, 3-year-old plus or contract hire where the depreciation's sort of dealt with in the monthly cost. Everything that I, you know, house, you know, we bought sort of something that needed refurbing and obviously, you know, the money we then spend on Gemma wanting X flooring or X wallpaper or X paint on the walls or this new kitchen, it, all it's doing is putting, adding value to the property rather than sort of taking something good out and putting it back again. I, everything I do would be like that really. You know, I even buy Macs now which have a good residual value. I'd probably spend a bit more on them. I used to think, get a PC, it's £500, I can have 3 PCs for the price of a Mac. Um, but I find I probably use a Mac for 5 or 6 years, and at the end it's probably still worth maybe a quarter, a third of its value.

Yeah.

Uh, whereas the PC, I find you're formatting it after a year, 18 months, and it's not really working anymore. Um, yeah, everything that, um, you know, I'll, I'll look at or I'll sort of introduce into my life, I try and buy non-depreciative stuff.

Yeah, or at the bottom of the depreciation curve.

Porsches. I just— the 911 and the Boxster, um, I think it's partly because of how they control the supply, um, but I think also— and someone said this to me the other day and it makes absolute sense— they never, they never look that— they're timeless, so they never look that old.

They never go out of date.

No, I've got outside, I've got a 7-year-old 911 and it sits on the drive and Gemma often looks and she goes, that just looks like a new car.

Yeah.

And I think that really protects, you know, when you've, when you've got the newer thing and it, it looks a lot, lot newer and you're making yours look a lot older, that, that drives depreciation more than anything, I think.

Yeah.

Um, so yeah, you know, I like them for a load of other reasons, but they just, they work.

Yeah.

For so many angles for me, which I love. I love all that. Yeah, all right, great.

So, um, we've been doing some research. Now remember, do your own diligence. So when it comes to specific mentions of things, do your own diligence. But, um, there's quite a lot of cars sub-10 grand. So you've— you called out the E46 M3, Porsche 924 at 5 to 10 grand. Um, what— this is interesting. So Peugeot 205 GTI, remember the Renault 5 Turbos, all cars like that. A lot of them seem to have—

they're big money. Yeah, they've gone up.

You've got the um, the E34 M5. Yeah, um, I remember that. Yeah, did you have that one?

No, I didn't. Um, but, um, yeah, straight-six if I remember rightly. Yeah, and that BMW straight-six is just awesome.

Sounds good, doesn't it?

Yeah, non-turbocharged. Yeah, brilliant.

We've got Volkswagen Golf and Mach 1 GTI is about £10,000. Ford Capri 2.8i Special, £10,000. Now obviously you don't know what's going to happen to these in the future, but What do you— when you look at investments, Mark, do you track the prices over time to see some kind of trajectory or history?

Yeah. So with cars, you can have a look. There's a few sort of websites that you could use. There are always like auction sales going through for cars. I'll just have a quick look on my phone for the name of it. Often use this sort of aggregator. Uh, it's called— I'll just get it up— uh, glenmarch.com. You can see all of these. So, so it searches all the auction houses for stuff that's sold of the car type that you're interested in. And the other thing I use quite a lot is Hagerty Valuation Tool that shows you on a graph where the value has gone for the last few years. And I quite like How Many Left as well, which shows you how many of that car model there is in existence, which I think drives its value as well.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay, great. So if you want something a bit more simple, like Mark said, you can put your money into your ISA each year. We use Hargreaves Lansdown. Is Vanguard— does that do the same thing?

Vanguard does the same thing, where you can essentially Invest Yourself without an IFA. Yeah, um, they're the two that I would use. I, I don't— I mean, there are others, and I, I think the cheapest is probably Vanguard. Um, but, you know, I've used both of those platforms. I use them. I think they're really good. Um, I just choose tracker portfolios. The, the whole sort of argument for active managers is probably not so strong anymore. If you just want trackers, Vanguard's probably the easiest actually, because it's got them all laid out in a really simple way.

Okay, watches then. So I said when we did the Series 1, how to invest £5,000, you should probably wait till you get a Rolex Daytona. And actually I got quite a lot of comments from people, one guy saying you should never advise anyone to invest £20,000 into one watch. And I did mention things like Swatch Jellyfish, and I probably gave you other, other couple of watches under £5,000. The problem is you look at a watch, you think, oh, that's under £5,000, I'll get it. Let's say it's £4,000. But in a year it's worth 2. So I'd rather you wait, build up the capital, and get a 15 or 20 grand watch that in 10 years is 30 grand or hasn't gone down than just buying one cheaper just to get in but it go halved in value. So straight after that, um, live we did last week, how to invest 5 grand, someone messaged me saying, oh, should I invest in Tudor watches? Because Tudor are made by Rolex, but I've never seen any of the Tudors go up. 99.9% of them go down. Sometimes occasionally people will cite me a particular model that might have done well. That'll be a very rare exclusive. So fundamentals when it comes to watches, which is probably similar to cars and other classes like this, is rarity. So I'm wearing here an Audemars Piguet Biblos, and they made 50 of these. So out of all the Royal Oak Offshores, this one is either done the best or one of the best, unless it's like a really old one, or it's just held firm when things aren't good because of the limited run. So in any watch manufacturer that's probably well own, if you got— if they made 50 or 100 or 200, I mean, if it's a big volume producer like Rolex or Omega, you know, you might get away with a 1,000 run. But I'm trying to go for the really limited edition models because at least then you may not make, but you'll lose the least amount. But I got someone to do some research for me just because I thought this would be interesting because I didn't think I'd agree with it. So someone's done some research for me and put Hublot Classic Fusion Black Magic Chronograph. Now that is a watch you can get for under 10 grand, in my opinion will be worth half within a year. So don't go anywhere near Hublot, um, just because I have never seen any of them go up. I'd probably stick to Rolex on anything sub-15, 20 grand. Now you can get a sports Rolex around about 10, 15 grand. You can get these GMTs, they have the Pepsi, the Batman, And a lot of people are telling me, oh, Pepsis, Batmans, all of these, they're going up like crazy. Yeah, but they don't normally go up. So whilst they're strong now because, um, production of Rolex is probably less than supply— uh, sorry, less than, um, demand— because obviously Rolex is a massive brand, um, they've been banging their prices up to keep up, I think, looking at it from the outside, with the Royal Oak from Audemars Piguet, etc. Um, but the only Rolex that's not a limited edition or a special run, the only Rolex I've seen consistently do well over time, unless it's really old, really old, like some of the really old Explorer ones worth really good money, um, is the, the Rolex Daytona. So I would probably say wait and get yourself a Rolex Daytona. Get what I like, the I forget the model number because it's a 6, it's 116 something something something.

It's the steel one.

But yeah, the steel one. I like kind of 2005 age, around about that age, because they don't look the same as the ceramic bezel now. But if you put 2005 Rolex Daytona, I think it's 116550, but I'd have to check out the model number. You can private message me if you're looking to buy a Daytona, and I'll—

I'm 16520.

That one, um, is— yeah, no, no, yes, 116520. There you go, 116520. That's the, um, that's the APH. So that's, um, got us— the thing with Rolex that happens a lot is they'll make these runs and then there'll be a little error in the printing, you know, or like, so there's an APH which has got a slight gap between, on the chronograph near the APH. Um, so when you get these little quirks, like, um, usually, um, all the, the lettering is white and you've got double red where there's, um, the lettering is in red for the Sea-Dweller instead of white. So these little, these little quirks and isms and these models or faces that are rare that, you know, or they were not necessarily rare at the time, but they become rare later because they didn't make that much of a production of them. They can generally do quite well. Did you, did you have the Kermit? Yeah, green bezel. Yeah, so the green bezel, I, I bought, I bought more than one of those. I bought quite a few of those and, and got Mark to get one. Um, and, uh, that was the 40th anniversary of the Submariner, I think. It was an anniversary anyway. And so they made it in a green bezel. And back then, that was quite a rarity to get that kind of color in a bezel. Of course, the Hulk's all green now. Um, and when I, I thought, an anniversary Rolex, they're probably not going to continue to make them. So I started buying them. $3,250, $3,500, $3,750, $4,000, $5,000. Uh, and I, um, you can get $12,000, $15,000 plus now for an early model one. So anniversaries, limited editions, um, or smaller runs if they're in the sports. So 50th anniversary, Matt said, for the, for the Kermit. Um, but I don't know if it was, um, back then it was 40th. Anyway, 40th, 50th. So, um, that's what I'd probably do with watches. I'd probably wait for the Daytona or get in on one of the sports ones, but try and get an anniversary or a watch that they don't make anymore. Right, so let's talk now about property and business, and then we'll do a bit of a quick Q&A. Um, I mean, you gotta stay away from their mass producer, uh, unless you get a really low limited run or a really old one. Um, so 10 grand, um, would you put that into growing a business like a training business like we have? Would you put that in to build a property deal packaging business? Would you try and get on the property ladder with that? What might you do with that?

I would put it into a business if you've got the time and inclination, a business which you really love and therefore you're going to be really good at. So if that means you love going out and doing deals and buying property, I'd do that. If it means you want to go out and sort of hire staff, um, you know, and, and, and sort of start a training company. I would do that.

Marketing money there.

Yeah, I, I, I think first and foremost, if you're going to put your time in and you're going to build a business, you're going to multiply that, if you're successful, up many, many times more than any of these investments and make a lot more income from it, as long as you put your blood, sweat, and tears into it, you're totally committed. You're passionate and you enjoy it. Yeah, of course that's going to be the highest. I mean, we started this business on how much? £300 each.

Yeah. So I put it on a credit card because back then I didn't even have the cash because actually we started a deal packaging business before the training business, didn't we?

We did. Well, it was a, it was a hands-free portfolio business where we sourced properties, refurbished them, remortgaged them, and we did over 500 of them.

Yeah.

Refurbished individually over 500 properties and then sourced them cheap, refurbished them, and then remortgaged them all. And it was a tough business. Yeah.

But it got us going.

It got us going. And we manage a lot of those properties today. Yeah.

So £10 grand doesn't sound like a lot, but actually to start a business, it's not too bad because you don't, I mean, I wouldn't recommend going and getting an office. We started from my house, didn't we?

Your front room, Rob.

Yeah. And we got a couple of secondhand computers. We got a bit of IKEA furniture. We put £300 in a bank. So we probably started Progressive Property on a grand. Hmm.

£300.

Yeah. Each.

Yeah.

Yeah. And then we went to IKEA, remember, and we got the furniture.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And the computers.

Yeah.

But the point is it's not a lot of money to start a business. Everyone thinks, oh, you need money to make money, or there's no such thing as no money down, or all this kind of stuff. Stuff. But in reality, £1,000. And even if you haven't got that, you can put it on a credit card. And do you remember I started running our Google Ads campaigns? Yes. Sitting on the computer geeking out. And what I'd do is I'd spend £10 a day and then I'd get an ad working and then basically could spend £20 a day. And then when we get leads and convert them, we can put money back in and £50 a day. And now we spend— you might want to shut your ears here, Mark, you might not like this one— we spend very regularly a quarter of a million pounds a month. On marketing on all of our ad campaigns. So yeah, I'm with Mark in that I'd set the business up that you're passionate about. You could definitely set up a property deal sourcing business. You could probably get your hands on 2 to 4 rent-to-rents depending, or serviced accommodation, rent-to-serviced accommodation properties depending on your area and how much it's going to cost you to dress them and all the things that you need to set up that business, stock, 'cause you need linen and bedding and all that kind of stuff. We've had a question here from Victoria and that is, to start on the property journey, would you recommend using equity from your home?

It can be a very good way to start, dependent on sort of, you know, what you're going to put the money into. Is it going to generate a good return? What your experience level is, how much other cash you've got. What loan to value your property is at the moment. If you're going to go out and buy something that's been really well researched, you're getting it for the right price, the rental yield is really good, and it's definitely lettable to good tenants, good private tenants, then why not use money from your own home? Because it's incredibly cheap. You're probably paying 1.5%, 2% on it.

You know, not that I have a big mortgage because I don't have a big mortgage, but about what, 2 years ago I was paying down quite big lumps on my mortgage. I just thought I'd get my mortgage paid off in 2 or 3 years, job done. And you kind of told me off, like, why are you paying your mortgage down? And why back then did you think my capital could be used better than paying my mortgage down?

Well, I just think when you're borrowing at 1.5% to 2%, and there's, you know, on your own home and there's, you know, you still want to invest your cash and put your cash into, I don't know, buildings, you know, or other investments, you can very easily get a much higher return than 1.5%, 2%. Yeah. Which is obviously what you've gone off and done.

And most people don't know this about my story as well, but I actually only owned one property when I met Mark and we started Progressive Property, but I actually remortgaged that and that helped me pay down some of my debt and have a bit of capital to get started. So as long as you do something wise with the money that you remortgage and you remember if you go on interest only that one day you will actually have to pay that back because you're not paying it down because it's interest only. As long as you remember those two things, then it can be very smart and it can get you much further ahead more quickly on your property investment journey. Right, so we've had a comment here from, I think this is Gerardo, forgive me if I pronounce that wrong. Let's have a look here. I think it's Gerardo. Leverage and inflation are the tools that make property such a good investment. That's very true. Now we haven't talked too much about property specifically in this episode, because next week, next Monday, 7 PM, put it in your diary and remember it's exclusively on the Progressive Property YouTube channel, which is tiny.cc/PPTV, all in capitals. Harry, can you put that up on the screen? Um, put it, comment it, but put it on the screen as well. tiny.cc/PPTV if you're watching from somewhere else. Um, but with £25 grand, you're probably nearly at deposit territory there, and you're probably nearly at actually being able to put some hardcore capital into hardcore property, which is one of our favourite subjects. So I agree, leverage and inflation are the tools that make property such a good investment, which is you don't get really the power of that in other investment classes. So we'll probably start dealing with that as episode 3 and onwards. All right, so if you've got any other questions, keep them firing in and we'll happily answer them all. So Jane here has said, I've just been made redundant due to COVID-19 as a creative services specialist, currently freelancing. But since 2006 I've renovated 8 properties. I have savings, but how can I invest in property without a permanent salary?

I think you would probably want to find somebody who has got a permanent salary, uh, and maybe be investing with them in the meantime until you have got a permanent salary or an income from a business or something like that that will keep the banks happy. Um, so Yeah, I, I, I, I think you're probably coming into a really good time where there's going to be deals, um, and you want to keep it rolling, but you probably just need somebody, um, who the banks are happy with if you can't get a mortgage on your own at the moment.

And we have a, um, Facebook group, a big one, Progressive Property Community, with 33,000 members in, and we have some Progressive-approved brokers in there. So that, if you just search Progressive Property Community on Facebook and join that It's always wise to get a second or third opinion from a second or third broker. Not all brokers are whole of market even though they may say they are. And I mean, I know a mortgage broker called Gary Das and he says it's like they're changing their terms every week. It's a very changing market at the moment. So it's always wise to get a second or third opinion. I mean, obviously they're not doing self-cert now, but they've done self-cert before, haven't they? Yeah.

And Boris says he's going to be reducing or increasing loan-to-values for certain purchases.

Boris, come on.

Yeah, probably not for investors. Look, it's changing a lot, but I think if you went to enough brokers and went to enough banks, you may also find that you can just carry on on your own. We had to, we've had to do it various times. I've just lost my relationship manager at the bank that we use. I haven't met the new one yet. Don't know what's going to happen there. I remember when we went through the last credit crunch and they all said to us that we got too many buy-to-let mortgages and they didn't want to lend to us anymore. So I had to go and find commercial borrowing. You can always find stuff, it's just how hard you look.

Thanks, Mark. So Lucas has asked, where would you start today with £70,000 to £80,000? Well, next week— so every Monday, 7 PM, we're doing this as a series. Next week is £25,000. How to invest £25,000. The week after, how to invest £50,000, the week after that, how to invest £100,000. So Lucas, looks like episode 4 and 5 are going to be good for you because that sits right in the middle. This is a good question from Ross. If you could put this one up, Harry. Ross Hill: What defines the line mark between investing and gambling?

I think when you're investing, you are doing so with a sort of predictable outcome. I think anybody that invests with the expectation or the need to have immediate capital growth is gambling on that. I think over the medium to long term, say 5, 10 years plus, you would be right to expect that you'll get some good capital growth. But to say that it's going to happen in any sort of year or 2 or 3 year time frame, would be quite frankly naive. However, when you're investing in a house, it's quite easy to predict the income that that will generate. And I think that is investing, you know, going out and buying certain assets. I don't know, I suppose any capital asset and gambling on its capital growth over a short period of time, um, would be gambling. Um, but you know, anything that's got good proven history over the long term is not.

Um, I think there are a lot of traders that think they're investors, but I look at them and I think, really, you're a gambler.

Traders on the stock exchange? Yeah. And Forex? Yeah, I think for sure.

Yeah, I think a lot of that is going to be doing that for a very long time to know what what you're doing.

Or be some, you know, one of the few people, you know, that usually emanate from the City of London, often with a maths or physics degree, who've learned to trade at a big bank. You know, those guys can do it and most other people can't.

Yeah. Okay, great. So Victoria, Victoria Ray has asked, how would you invest £10,000 for a 15-year-old? If you want to put that up on the screen, Harry. So we got a question like this last week, but it was for £5,000. So I think the most important thing is what would this 15-year-old really enjoy doing? There's a little lad called Ryan who has Ryan ToysReview on YouTube, which has, I think it did something like $24 million last year, and he sort of unboxes toys and you can imagine him absolutely loving that. And I've got to tell you this, Mark, I was going to watch that this. It's random. It's just completely random. Sorry. But my wife said to me today that Bobby is being a bit naughty with his homework because what he's doing is he's phoning up his best mate Pranav, he's getting him on FaceTime, and he's saying to his mummy that he's doing the homework, but he's just getting Pranav to give him all the answers. And I actually thought that behavior should be rewarded. I mean, that is smart. That is leveraged. It's not going to be good for school, but surely that's going to be good for life.

It could be, although it's maybe, you know, sort of taking the easy option. Yeah, well, that's of course could be construed as cheating.

Yeah. Right. So 10-year-old, 15-year-old, £10,000. E-commerce. I think anything online. I mean, a 15-year-old doesn't remember the days of dial-up or pre-internet. I think most 15-year-olds can use the internet better than most 40-year-olds. So anything e-commerce or online-based right now, e-commerce is huge, probably one of the biggest industries. I think also maybe social media. Now, of course, 15-year-old, you're probably just about at the right age where you can completely manage your own account without your parents and all that kind of stuff. But hey, look, there's a lot of big teenage influencers on TikTok, for example, who are probably making a load of money out sponsorships and endorsements and collaborations, but ultimately what that child or that teenager would love to do the most. Have you started a junior ISA for Freddie?

I have. I did it shortly after he was born. I put about £4,000 into a junior ISA and he can't get it out till he's 18. Unfortunately, I think it just cracks open and he gets the money immediately, which I don't think in hindsight is a very good idea. A friend's done a pension, a SIP for his very young children, and I don't think they can crack that open until they're 55, which I thought was quite clever. I think, Victoria, if I, you know, when my son gets to 15, I will probably start, well, earlier than that, I'll be trying to get him into property. But when he gets to sort of, I don't know, a little bit older than that, I'll try and get a house. Maybe it will have to go in my name. He could maybe, you know, I'll work it out so that he sort of really owns it, has a beneficial interest, deed of trust or something like that. And yeah, he can take that. I'll probably put the deposit in and then I'm going to get him to rent the rooms to other people and he can take the income from renting the rooms to tenants. He can manage them. He needs to pay the mortgage, it's going to teach him loads, and then the cash flow he'll get to keep. I think that's a really, really good way to get them started in property and would be very, very profitable, you know, because obviously they get all the capital growth as well. So I think that offers a lot and is quite tax efficient when they're 18 as well, because obviously they get all the personal allowances.

And importantly, the business and life lessons he's going to get renting out a house. Massive. Huge. Okay, so whiskey and wine. That's probably in the 10 grand bracket, isn't it?

Yeah, I think—

I know nothing about either of those, by the way.

Yeah, I know nothing about whiskey. I know a little bit about wine, that you could go on Fine and Rare, or there's, I think it's Liv-ex, where all the values of, say, I don't know, Left Bank, Bordeaux and all those sort of really good vineyards, you can see how the value has moved over time. I think a lot of the en primeur stuff is sort of fully priced initially. So some of it goes up, some of it doesn't. But you need to be careful about storage. You need the right sort of refrigeration. If that goes wrong, the wine can go bad. So You know, I tried a little bit of it, but I was sort of put off by that. The storage really puts me off.

Okay, so Ross has asked this: would you hold off investing until the market turns around early 2021? And if not, what strategies have you seen that have been doing well during the current circumstances? Okay, so there's a few assumptions here. So number one, the assumption is that the market will turn early 2021. We don't know that for sure. I wouldn't hold off anything. Like, let's say you're in property and you predict, you believe that the market will turn early next year. Well, we're already in October, and by the time you get out and visit agents and get yourself seen and known, it's going to be December, and then they're going to shut for 2 weeks or whatever. So actually, if you want to be ready to be, um, a go-to person for either buying an asset fairly cheap, whatever it's going to be, or getting a property, you probably need that relationship with the vendor or the estate agent. So I'd actually start looking now. I mean, Mark, you never really stop doing research, do you?

No, I would find times like when the market's going to go quiet and going to be falling, I would use that to learn new strategies and start getting ready to buy distressed assets. Um, that's, that's, you know, what I would be doing. I'd be out there meeting agents, growing the relationship. Um, it's going to take you more than 2 or 3 months to get a load of good agents on the go. Um, so you need to be sort of ready with that and growing that. Um, so yeah, I definitely get on that wagon now.

Great. So I think we've covered most of it, and we normally want to do about 30 minutes in these sessions, and this is 45 minutes. So what we're going to do is tune in same time next week, Monday, 7:00 PM, and we're going to do how to invest £25,000. So we're upping the ante here. So there's going to be more options open to you. We're going to be able to talk a little bit more about property. This episode was brought to you by Disruptive Media, helping bold entrepreneurs entrepreneurs stand out through podcasting, video, and social content. Visit disruptivemedia.co.uk to learn more.