MY RULES OF PROPERTY INVESTING

  

1. Never buy a house I wouldn’t live in myself

A nice simple self-explanatory rule to start with!

With all my houses, even the ones in the less popular areas of the city, I would still be content to live in them myself if I had to. Because if I’m not prepared to live in the homes I’ve created, why should I expect anybody else to?

If the street or area is rough and ropy or unsafe, or the house is not refurbished well enough, then it’s not suitable for customers / tenants / people. And if I think it’s not good enough for me, it’s not good enough for others either.

 

2. Only buy houses within 20 minutes from my front door

I’m Leeds born and bred, and have lived here all my life. Whilst I can understand the appeal that some other investors have about buying property in different areas all over the country, that’s just not for me.

My goal was always to provide local homes for local people in my home town.

And because my houses are relatively close, I can visit them easily, or get there quickly if there’s an emergency to deal with.

 

3. Ensure the property cashflows a minimum £250 net profit from the rent per month

From a monetary business aspect, each house must create positive cashflow every month after the mortgage has been paid.

 

It astounds me to hear of landlords where the rental income only just covers the property’s buy-to-let mortgage.

Or even worse - the mortgage is more than the rent, so the landlord is effectively paying for a tenant to live there!

Make sure you make money from each property, or you may end up in debt, stress, and trouble.

Another key property business mistake to avoid is this: don’t get too emotionally attached to the houses either - it’s a business, so they are effectively just boxes that you make money from. As long as you maintain and look after your boxes and their contents (people included!) all should be well.

4. Have the potential to add at least £25k to the end value

Buying houses below market value is not always easy. But that’s the way my business model works. I’ve got to be able to uplift the value via refurbishment to be able to pull out mine and my investors’ money when the property is revalued, after all the work is complete. So you need to be realistic when checking end values and ceiling prices of the rest of the comparable houses nearby.

Be cautious when researching likely end property values, so take your cheerful rose-tinted glasses off!

Here’s one of the very few places in life where it’s better to be cautiously pessimistic / realistic in the financial figures rather than overly optimistic.

5. Don’t deal with dickheads

There’s no other way to phrase this nicely.

Some people will just cause you chaos, stress, anxiety, and cost you time, money, effect and energy.

There’s lots of lovely people, tenants, contractors, and professionals around…So we don’t need to waste our time with unscrupulous and unsuitable people who just do not respect us.

They may be rude or disrespectful or patronising to you, not do as good a job as they promised, trash your house, lie to you, and generally cause you a headache. The key is being able to spot these types of people before you engage with them.

Which leads us to…

6. Use your gut instinct when working with other people

Spotting genuinely good people from those who just pretend to be, is difficult.

I’ve had a plasterer that promised me he was awesome - then walked off the job because he couldn’t get his plaster to stick to the ceiling.

I’ve had a HMO tenant be such a charming manipulative liar that he lied to my face with ease - only to then stop paying rent, and become an avoidant problematic bullshitter.

I’ve had a tenant wanting a fresh start of stability from her chaotic past and provide a secure home for her children - only to repeat her same mistakes, get involved with drugs and violent boyfriends and utterly trash my house and abscond leaving a horrendous and expensive mess for me to deal with.

The common factor in these, and every case I’ve had which has turned out badly, is that every time, I had a niggling feeling in my gut that something wasn’t right about these people.

But I chose to ignore that uncertainty I felt and gave them a chance anyway, because I try to be nice like that, and trust that they won’t let me down with their chance.

I don’t do that anymore.

If my gut instinct tells me something isn’t right about something or someone - I believe it.

 

7. A void is better than a headache

Following on from my last point, if your gut instinct tells you someone will not make a suitable tenant in your property, wait until you find one that is.

There’s plenty of people around needing housing, so we shouldn’t be so desperate to grasp rental money that we end up putting someone unsuitable in our properties.

Not only because if / when it all goes wrong, it’s then very difficult to get rid of them, especially if you have to go down the costly eviction route.

Do stringent checks on your potential tenants, and if someone’s not right or you just don’t get a good feeling about them, say no.

It really is better to have a void than a headache.

I’ve left rooms and properties empty for weeks and weeks sometimes, because I haven’t been totally happy about potential tenants that have viewed them.

The right tenant is worth waiting for.

You’re looking for long term stability and reliability in your tenants, not just filling your wallet with short term cash.

 

8. Avoid false economy during refurbishments

It may seem like a good idea at the time, not doing certain things during refurbishments to save time or money - but it is false economy in the long run.

Examples I have made like this which taught me this lesson include:

⁃ Not putting radiators in kitchens. Only to then later have to retrofit electric heaters.

⁃ Not replacing the old gutters at the same time as having a new roof done. Only to then have to replace them a few years later - and the majority of the cost was having to put scaffolding up again.

⁃ Buying cheap poor quality boilers - only to then have to replace them way before the usual boiler lifespan because they went kaput.

Better to do big jobs all at once during the refurb, rather than kicking the can down the road to have to deal with at a later time - and likely with more expensive retrofitting or replacement costs.

 

9. Be a good person

Unfortunately there are a lot of wretches in this industry.

They talk a good game, give a nice winning smile, extort money from people… only to then do them wrong or rip them off for vast amounts of money. Eventually though, all these wretches get found out, and rightly so.

Because it’s not enough to just PRETEND to be a good person - you’ve got to actually BE a good person.

And that means caring about other people, rather than taking advantage of them for your own selfish needs.

So be understanding when your tenant is genuinely struggling.

Pay your contractors’ invoice swiftly when they have already completed the work for you.

Repay your investors in full and on time - and if there’s a problem, be open and honest about it, and work hard to get it resolved.

Things do sometimes go wrong - in projects and in life - but radio silence and lack of communication just causes mistrust and makes things worse.

My final thought on this topic is one personal life rule I live by:

Don’t ever say anything or do anything or behave in a way that would make your favourite grandma ashamed of you.

Your Nanna and your conscience are watching - so don’t let them down, and do yourself proud.

 

10. Have great integrity and do what you say you will do

Last one, which is a nice follow on from the previous rule.

It surprises and appals me how many people in life don’t actually do what they say they will do. I think if you do have great integrity, you really are in the minority of people.

You wouldn’t believe the amount of people I book tenancy viewings or meetings for, who don’t even turn up.

They don’t appear, they don’t call, they don’t do the thing they agreed to. It tells me a lot about that person.

And an unreliable, untrustworthy, flaky person of poor integrity is not the sort of reputation you want other people to have about you.

Having great integrity is always doing the right thing - even when no one is watching.

 

So those are my own personal ten rules of property investing - and as you’ve seen, it’s not just about the tangible bricks and mortar aspect of it!

Best of luck with building your own property portfolio, because it’s not easy.

Because if it was, everyone would do it…

Wouldn’t they…?!?

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Kellyann Martin is a UK-based property investor.

She has a book available for purchase on Amazon, click here to buy:

STARTING OUT IN PROPERTY...: What I Wish I'd Known At The Beginning! : Martin, Kellyann: Amazon.co.uk: Books

What I’ve Learnt from my House Getting Trashed

What I’ve Learnt from my House Getting Trashed

 

You might have seen on social media over the last couple of months that a tenant left one of my rental houses in a horrific state.

 

Despite the tenant only being in the property two years, and the first/only tenant since it was all newly refurbished, poor choices meant things spiralled out of control in their life, and the property suffered badly because of this deterioration.

 

This included: trashed and ruined carpets throughout, broken kitchen units, smashed windows, a kicked-in door, damage to the walls and electrical sockets, a garage filled with illegal waste removal items, plus a couple of tons of asbestos dumped on the drive.

 

I was left to deal with all this, along with the disposal of all the furniture, rubbish and items left in the house, which had been abandoned. Oh and I nearly forgot to mention getting rid of the cannabis farm that had been set up in the loft.

 

Deep joy, eh?

 

It took several months and many thousands of pounds to get it back to a lettable state. It caused me stress, headaches, drama, worry, sleepless nights, and money.

 

But still, I’m a strong believer in karma, so I’m not too worried about those people getting justice. Everyone gets exactly what they deserve in life; whether that’s good or bad is down to them!

 

And writing this blog is almost cathartic – because if we don’t learn anything from the harsh unpleasantries in life, we are destined to repeat our mistakes until we do learn the lesson!

So here we go:

 

Five things I’ve learned from my house getting trashed:

 1. Some people just don’t behave themselves.

No matter how nice or helpful or trusting you are of some people… some people just don’t give a shit about how much time, effort or money you’ve put into a property. It’s not theirs, so they’re not bothered if it gets trashed.

If you get an initial unusually cautious feeling in your stomach when meeting them… even if it’s only a teeny tiny gut reaction… listen to it, and don’t let your empathy in wanting to help someone overrule the concerns.

Even pink flags are closer to red flags than white ones!

So check, but verify.

Especially if you get *that* feeling, no matter how minute.

2. The council doesn’t give a shit about you.

Don’t think for a second the council want to help you as a private landlord.

They don’t.

And even if they say they do, they drag their feet, and you have to chase them for weeks and weeks to get them to do the thing they’re are supposed to do.

There was only one lady at the council I was impressed with during all this fiasco, and she didn’t even work in any of the departments for housing, lettings, tenants or social services, but the environmental waste team. She worked harder than all the other civil servants I dealt with put together, and this issue wasn’t even her remit.

Also, the council actually provided me with this tenant to begin with, under a housing private landlord letting scheme. Let me be clear about why they do this: not only because they have a shortage of houses, but sometimes they are actually glad to have problem people off their books and onto yours. They are glad to have washed their hands of certain tenants, because now they become your problem, not theirs.

The insurance loss adjustor man told me this, which leads me onto our next point…

 

3. The insurance company doesn’t give a shit about you.

Listen carefully: Insurance loss adjustors are not your friend.

They might come and assess your house damage and smile and say nice reassuring things and pretend to be helpful, but they are not on your side. They are there to mitigate their loss.

In fact here’s an industry secret, told to me by an insurance broker: many loss adjustors actually get a bonus if they can manage to reduce your claim. ie – they get monetary bonuses for you not getting money from the insurance. That’s a sly little secret they keep quiet, isn’t it?!

 

Thus, my claim for malicious damage was pooh-poohed away as ‘tenant lifestyle choices’ and ‘wear and tear’, despite photographic evidence to the contrary. Oh, and if need be, they also pull out about a million tiny clauses from your policy, meaning unless you can manage pull some particular minute obscure piece of evidence out of your arse, the claim ‘cannot proceed without it’. ie: you get nothing.

 

4. People are wretches when a house is empty.

Fun and games whilst the property is empty sometimes… not all neighbours are nice ones. Apart from the asbestos dumping the tenant allowed, other lovely people also took the opportunity of an empty property to fly tip the drive. Several times.

 

One person lovingly handballed black bags of rubbish all the way to the front door’s path, and a horrible landlord developer decided to offload all their property refurbishment waste of rubble and plasterboard onto my land. Wretches.

 

Oh and then local naughty kids/teenagers set fire to said rubbish in the garden, meaning two nights running the fire brigade had to be called out to put out the arson fires… whilst hooded teenagers watched them undo their incendiary work. Lovely, eh?

This is what I did: asked the police to patrol the area more often. Allowed the council to put up a warning notice flytipping / CCTV sign. Locked the gate with a bike lock to deter more reversing vehicle flytips.

This is what I should have done: Put the actual camera up, fast. Get a timer switch much earlier so the lamps inside went on to make it look occupied at night. Got the mess of the trashed house sorted out quicker, and filled the house quicker.

Still, we live and learn; every day’s a school day, eh?

And sometimes no matter what you do, certain people will always behave like scumbags.

5. Don’t become jaded because of one bad experience, and continue to give people chances.

Final lesson… listen: one bad tenant does not mean all tenants are bad. In fact, since starting landlording in 2008, that’s the worst tenant experience I’ve had in all that time, so that’s not bad going in 14 years.

Statistically it had to happen at some point!

We can move past it now and just call it what it was: a bad time in the business.

Sometimes bad things happen so that better things can occur instead.

In this case, a new and very lovely tenant. In fact there were three lovely families who viewed the property on the same day that I would gladly have housed, all pleasant, polite, family-orientated, and genuinely nice and good people in need of accommodation.

I have a favourite phrase: don’t bleed all over someone who didn’t cut you.

This means you shouldn’t take things out on people when they didn’t cause you the distress in the first place. It’s not fair to them to do that.

Thus, a new tenant, a fresh start, with the same positive hopeful attitude towards them that all my new occupiers get.

We cannot tar all tenants with the same brush. I have many other lovely long-term tenants that always do the right thing, and for that I am very grateful.

So a snippet of bad luck, a stressful, horrendously difficult and unpleasant time, but now it’s time to learn from it and move onwards and upwards for the future.

I do hope you never have to go through such chaos, but at least we’ve learnt some lessons if you do.

And remember, when bad things happen, remind yourself: I’m too stubborn to let this take me down!

Thanks for reading, and my very best wishes,

Kellyann x x x

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Kellyann Martin is a UK-based property investor.

She has a book available for purchase on Amazon, click here to buy:

STARTING OUT IN PROPERTY...: What I Wish I'd Known At The Beginning! : Martin, Kellyann: Amazon.co.uk: Books

LOOK AT WHAT YOU COULD HAVE WON!

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!

 

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Kellyann is a property investment strategist from Leeds. 

In her work she creates wealth for private investors through refurbishing properties. 

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! 

.... buy Kellyann's book from Amzaon here!

STARTING OUT IN PROPERTY...: What I Wish I'd Known At The Beginning! : Martin, Kellyann: Amazon.co.uk: Books