LOOK AT
WHAT YOU COULD HAVE WON!
In my property career I have a couple of regrets and disappointments over a couple of properties that I didn’t buy.
In fact, I have a folder, with a
name inspired by Bullseye’s Jim Bowen, entitled LOOK AT WHAT YOU COULD HAVE
WON!
This folder holds sales leaflets
or details of around ten properties that I really really wanted, but didn’t end
up getting, for a myriad of reasons.
This folder includes:
⁃ the house next door to my childhood home. Why didn’t I buy that?!? It was such a good price at the time! 🤦🏻♀️
⁃ An old hairdressers shop that I could have converted, but was too scared to. 🤦🏻♀️
⁃ A direct to vendor lead where she was about to be
repossessed, in an estate where I have three other houses. 🤦🏻♀️
⁃ A really cheap flat next to a lovely church, one
which the solicitor made an absolute balls of and caused me to lose the deal. 🤦🏻♀️
I occasionally look back in my LOOK AT WHAT YOU COULD HAVE WON folder to reflect on what went wrong with these deals, and what I could have done better.
Reasons, and more importantly, key learnings, include the following:
⁃ Having it drilled into me that every property deal should be an ‘all money out on refinance deal’. This cost me a lot of potentially good deals, because for far too long I believed that you shouldn’t end up leaving any money left in a deal. FOOLISH!
⁃ Faffing about, umming and ahhing, not making a decision quick enough. Success loves speed, and if you sit on the fence too long deciding, you get splinters in your arse!
⁃ Being a little bit too tight with my offers. Some of them eventually went for only 5-10 grand above what I’d offered. I’d have made that back within a year in rental income.
⁃ Hiring absolute garbage solicitors that didn’t know what they were doing. Incompetence on their part, really can, and did, ruin my deal.
⁃ Not knowing exactly what to do in a certain situation and then not asking for help.
⁃ Being too soft in thinking that because I hadn’t done a particular type of refurbishment before, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I should have said yes anyway, and then learned how to do it on the way!
I’m a very low risk person, and hate being uncertain, not getting things rights, and even worse, the ultimate Yorkshire sin: potentially losing money.
But I have to take responsibility for all these actions - me not getting each of these particular deals is Entirely. My. Fault.
Hey ho, hindsight’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it?!?
Nobody’s perfect, and nobody knows it all. I’m continuously trying to learn.
But if you don’t learn from your mistakes, then making them was futile - because the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.
Also pain is a much stronger driver than pleasure.
So I keep this folder to remind me of those painful disappointing lessons.
That feeling of regret spurs me
on to LOOK AT WHAT YOU COULD HAVE WON! - to avoid doing those same silly
things again!
# IF YOU’RE NOT EARNING, YOU’RE LEARNING
# Did anyone ever regret not winning that speedboat in Bullseye?!
Most of us live miles away from the sea!
Kellyann is a property investment strategist from Leeds.
Visit her website for more details:
https://kellyannmartin.co.uk/investment/
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To learn about
STARTING OUT IN PROPERTY...: What I Wish I'd Known At The Beginning!
