PROPERTY MISTAKES I WON’T BE REPEATING

 

In my career as property developer, I’ve made some mistakes.

 

It’s good not to make mistakes to start with, or even better, learn from other people’s mistakes!

 

Here’s a selection of my biggest howlers over the years… laugh along with me… but don’t repeat these daft mistakes yourself!

 

 

One big boo-boo I won’t be repeating: putting laminate floor in rental houses!

 

I have it in my own house just now, it’s already trashed after just 18 months so will be coming out soon… so why did I think it would be hardwearing enough for tenants?!

 

The one rental house I put it in, their pets kindly seeped that laminate in urine… lovely 😖

 

So into the tip that lot went when they left, a mistake never to be repeated! 😱

 

Here’s another property mistake I won’t ever be repeating: asking for investment funding on too short a timescale!

 

A lovely investor offered to lend me money for a project, but I only asked for 2 months to bridge a gap before my refinance money came through - which in hindsight was ridiculous on my part.

 

What happened next was that my planned project got gazumped, and I couldn’t get another property acquired fast enough and time ran out.

 

But because I always do as I’ve promised I then gave the investor their money back plus their couple of grand interest as agreed - despite not even ending up with a project! 🤦🏻‍♀️

 

But… that same investor, having seen I can be trusted, went on to lend me funds for two projects.

 

And although it was an expensive lesson for me, I now know to always ask for at least a 12-month investment period for projects, just in case something goes wrong!

 

Hey ho, we live and learn from our mistakes - we just don’t do them again!!!

 

Another mistake I’ve made was not creating enough storage.

 

This wasn’t apparent at the beginning, where the kitchen units were adequate for a single mum. My logic for not adding more was they might want to use that wall and space for a dining table.

 

But fast forward a couple of years, and the family of 2 had grown to a family of 6, and they were struggling for storage space.

 

There is never enough storage, even in my own house, so we added these additional six units to the kitchen to relief the storage burden.

 

Good learning for the future!

 

Today I’ll tell you another property mistake lesson I learnt the hard way - not inspecting enough!

 

In one of my early rentals, the family just had a baby, seemed nice, so I mostly left them to it.

 

Fast forward 3 years when they moved areas, the entire house and floor coverings stunk and were ruined by the fact the tenants had accumulated SIX dogs!

 

Bear in mind, their letting agency tenancy agreement stated no pets allowed, so the agency obviously hadn’t been inspecting either… it was the neighbour afterwards who told me about their illegal half dozen dog collection!

So there you go, keep inspecting your property on a regular basis!

🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶😱

 

Oh gawwwd, another property mistake not to be repeated… dodgy decor colours!

 

Now bear in mind I am no interior designer…

 

My first few houses all had what I call ‘The BMW Treatment’ - Beige Magnolia White! 😆

 

That was when magnolia boxes were the “in thing”!

 

Then I got a load of cheap paint - about 40 tins of the stuff - which was used in the next couple of houses (hey, we’re always on a budget!)

 

I loved playing the “Mix these paints and see what colour we’ll get, it’ll be reyt!”game. 😆

 

Now I am also no colour-palette-knowledgable artist…

 

So on occasions, we ended up with some very questionable colours for certain rooms.

 

A glaringly bright 1980s custardy yellow adorned one hallway.

 

But it wasn’t as bad as the hideous minty green toothpasty chaos that one bedroom ended up painted with!

 

Even I was glad when the tenant covered that up with a dinosaur mural! 😱🦖

 

Thankfully, those dodgy paints ran out, and since then, I now simply whiteout all the rooms, perhaps with one coloured feature wall on a chimney breast if we feel brave.

 

White walls and ceilings are fresh, bright and airy, and are literally a blank canvas.

 

Dodgy decor is so last season - so choose your colours wisely! 🎨🖌

 

 

I’ve admitted before: I’m not very good at visualising things that aren’t there.

 

So when it comes to planning out where electrical sockets and switches should go, in terms of planning out where the future imaginary furniture would be in a house: mistakes, I’ve made a few!

 

Yes, I’ve had light switches put on the wrong side of the door, so it opens onto the switch instead of next to it. 🤦🏻‍♀️⚡️

 

Yes I’ve not added enough plug sockets to rooms and had to have more retrofitted afterwards. 🤦🏻‍♀️⚡️

 

The worst mistake I made was putting a switch for a hallway inside a HMO room, with the intention of converting that bit of hallway into a self-contained unit kitchen bit… until I realised that I would then be billed for two sets of council tax, so I scrapped that plan. 🤦🏻‍♀️ ⚡️

But it was too late! The electrician had followed my orders, and now that hallway -missing-switch-cos-it’s-in-that-room bit annoys me every time I see it! 🤦🏻‍♀️

If you’re not earning, you’re learning, right?!

 

 

Here’s the final property mistake I won’t be repeating, one I definitely learnt my lesson from… the first and only time I did it!

 

In my house of multiple occupancy, we were bringing a new room into use.

 

My beloved Mummio was helping, in the days before we started employing professional fitters - she’s a dab hand at laying the odd carpet in the odd room.

 

I was sent out to get a carpet for said large room.

 

Did I go for a high-quality, hard-wearing, decently thick and lovely textured carpet?

 

No: I went purely on price and got a cheap, thin, corduroy-type carpet, at a bargain price of just £39. 💥

 

And when she saw the utter cheap tat I had bought and brought back, she went absolutely nuts.

 

“Look how thin this crap is, it’s like bleeding paper, I can cut it with scissors it’s that thin. Don’t buy this sh!t again, we’re not having it.” 🤬✂️

 

And that was me duly told.

 

But of course she was right, because not only was it thin and poor quality, it wrinkled and ruffled up once on the floor.

 

So I never bought cheap crap carpets again! 🙄

 

That’s why we don’t buy cheap rubbish, ladies and gentlemen, it’s false economy - you get what you pay for 🤷🏻‍♀️

 

If nowt else, get better quality stuff just to save the earache and stop your mum whining!

 

Remember… nobody gets everything right first time every time. Mistakes are all part of learning, so embrace them – and learn what those mistakes teach you!

How My Past Experiences and Skills Benefit My Property Career

 

Have you met me in real life?

Do you know anything about me?

It’s very important that you get to know anybody that you’re considering working with!

So in this post, I’ll be sharing a little bit of background information into me… but more specifically, how my previous experience fed into my current property investor career!

When I was little, I wanted to be all these things at various times:

 hairdresser – but too clumsy, and all my Sindy dolls had mohicans  

 pilot navigator – but had bad eyes and likely not clevererer enough! ‍ 

 teacher – managed that, but that was waaaaay too much hard work for me! 

 property developer – by Jove, I think I’ve made it!  

But it’s interesting that lots of skills and things I’ve learnt along the way have all fed into helping my career in property.

ie, because I did this, or went on a night course on that, it’s massively benefitted me.

And I love learning, the latest benefit paying off is my accredited Diploma in Internet Marketing, which has been wildly helpful in building up my online presence.

So, here I go: some major skills that I learnt ages ago which still benefit me now!! 

The biggest one you may know about me is that I used to be a high school teacher. This taught me a lot about patience!

But also it’s honed my public speaking skills.

I know glossophobia is the number one fear of many people… but once you’ve tried to keep smiling and be positive and talk to stroppy disinterested year 11s about Shakespeare, whilst they argue back with you, any crowd or audience after that is a breeze!

Another good skill that came from teaching was resourcefulness, and the ability to think on my feet: “Oh the interactive whiteboard screen’s not working / my photocopying’s not ready / there’s no work been left for the class I’ve been called in to cover, etc, I’ll have to think of something else on the spot” –

Makes you think of a resolution fast!

Most teachers are organised and time efficient, calm and enjoy planning and things running smoothly – me too!

Finally it’s a great ability to be able to start each day afresh and not drag resentment with you from the past.

This particularly paid off with Samantha, as no matter how disruptive she was one day, I never held it against her the next lesson. And although she was a problem for other teachers, being given a new chance every lesson led to one of my teaching career’s greatest moments: on GCSE results day, when she told me mine was the only subject where she’d earned her only grade C, and she thanked me for not giving up on her.

And thus another skill learnt: no matter their circumstances or issues, people matter!

The next experience that fed into my current property investor career – photography skills! 

I’ve always been interested in photography, and have hundreds of photo albums documenting the last 30-odd years!

I firmly believe that a photograph captures a memory and freezes it in time indefinitely 

So about a decade ago I did a photography course at night college to improve my skills.

And whilst I’m no David Bailey, I am pretty decent a getting a good photo shot, having some concept and thought process of lighting, framing, angles, focal planes, the rule of thirds, and so on.

This skill has been particularly useful for photographing my property projects, both to document the transformation process and as rental or valuation photos for the end result.

It also helps with my social media content; hopefully you’ve seen some of my jazzy photos online!

Here’s another way that my previous skills and experience fed into my property career….

At Leeds Metropolitan University I studied an English degree and a few years later I went on to do a creative writing course at night school.

I’ve always liked the written word, and my mum informs me I could read and write before I even went to school.

This has meant I have built up a superb grasp of many written skills, and I love to use language and vocabulary to entertain people. And I can spot a grammar or spelling mistake a mile off!

So how has this benefitted me in property?

Well it effectively means I am my own copywriter. I write the content myself for property adverts, my website, my investor email mailing list, this blog and my social media posts.

This has the added benefit of all my content and resources being authentically me!

You’re welcome to check out all my written resources on the platforms I’ve mentioned!

Here’s the fourth way in which my previous experience fed into my current property investor career.

I have studied a range of counselling skills and psychology courses. This means I have learnt some great interpersonal skills, and have developed my ability to understand people and get on with them.

Some find it really difficult to walk into a room of strangers and begin a conversation, but I’m quite decent at networking, and am reasonably good at making people feel at ease.

Learning about counselling helped me develop patience and empathy, whereas the psychology course showed me different ways in which people think.

I love the nature versus nurture debate, and it really interests me why people are like they are, usually because of the past experiences they’ve had.

How is this relevant?

Well, I have to deal with clients, tenants, investors and contractors – people.

It’s often said that property is a people business, so it makes sense that I should continuously try and improve my people skills!

The final thing I’m going to mention on how my past experiences fed into my current property career, is computing.

Bear in mind, I’m from a time when your junior school had just one computer between us all… and you took your one hour go on it a year, one-finger typing out a paragraph to print off!  And you weren’t taught much more about computers at high school either.

Even when I reached the Sixth Form in the late 90s, the Internet was only just starting up, and a laptop in every home was still a good few years away.

So I cajoled a friend to sign up with me to Joseph Priestley College (named after the discoverer of oxygen, FYI!), and after Sixth Form once a week, we would go and sit at their computers and learn the new-fangled arts of ‘Word Processing’ and ‘Spreadsheets’. I’ve still got the certificates to prove it!

Anyway, fast forward twenty years later, and my keyboard wizardry skills mean I can do a range of computer-based tasks which are vital to my property business.

Creating documents, templates, letters, and most importantly, those fiscal spreadsheets showing me that things are going well in my portfolio (well, mostly, barring a few evil months involving excessive repairs and maintenance! )

Eeeh, who’d have thought in the last century that everyone in the future would be taught these skills at school?!?

Shame they don’t do the same with teaching kids about business, tax and mortgages!

So thanks for reading… who knew I had so many skills, eh?!

What, you want to hear more?!

Oh go on then…

…but as long as you have a go at recognising how your own skills and experiences are beneficial!

Posted bykellyannmartinproperty20th Jun 2021