Emma Wright built a mansion and made a £1.2m profit. She’s now investing it in 30 buy-to-let homes
When Emma Wright’s husband handed her £1m and asked her to invest it in property, she vowed to try to double the money within three years.
The 34-year-old housewife used it to snap up nine acres of land near Sevenoaks, Kent, and borrowed £2m-from the bank to build a palatial seven-bedroom luxury mansion.
The ambitious project was Emma’s first venture into property development but it has been a resounding success. She managed to sell the house to a foreign investor two months ago for £4.3m.
‘It’s the first time I’ve ever done anything like it, but no one who knows me is surprised I pulled it off,’ says Emma, a former sales manager for a credit-management company and now a full- time mother of two young children.
‘I approach life with a lot of confidence and I thought this was really no different from any other house transaction - you buy as cheaply as possible, don’t skimp on making improvements and sell as well as you can.’
Now she is ploughing her £1.2m profit into building a buy-to-let portfolio. Emma plans to purchase up to 30 houses near her home in Wadhurst, East Sussex, on a 60/40 split with a neighbour and friend Jacqui Hollie, 36, who wants to invest with her after they met at the school gate and started talking about property.
Her bank has offered a £1m loan facility at 1.5% above base rate and a maximum of 70% on each property if she wants to use it.
‘I realise house prices may still have further to fall,’ she says, ‘but I’m a cash buyer so I can negotiate hard. No one can predict when prices will recover again, but as long as I spread my purchases and buy one new property every couple of months, my portfolio should benefit from any further price falls and I won’t miss any opportunities.’
Peter Stanley, ex Business Bank Manager, professional property investor, author and great friend of The Money Gym, has written a great report that puts some perspective on the property market which by all media reports is “crashing and burning” at the moment (July 2008). We had a long chat after I read it, and he has given me permission to share it with you.
Peter says: “Regular readers will know how much I dislike media reports on the property market, as they’re often based on a single piece of data, or an opinion that’s passed off as fact, when most articles closely resemble works of fiction.
You only need to watch the evening news to realise that good news is in short supply, not because good things don’t happen, but because bad news sells. Sad but true. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re listening to the news, make a note of every good story - you won’t need a big piece of paper !
So, for anyone who’d like to know what’s really happening out there, here’s the most common myths;
Houses aren’t selling / people aren’t buying
Whilst there was a lull for a couple of months, houses are selling again.
That isn’t an opinion, but fact.
As you can imagine, I get to speak to a lot of estate agents and watch a lot of houses, waiting for the sellers expectations to reach mine and I’m seeing more and more houses bought between those times.
In fact, I was surprised recently (and not much surprises me these days) when I overheard a conversation between two estate agents about their sales figures. One of them had sold seven houses in ten days, which would be a good result in any market - perhaps someone should tell the Daily Mail & The Express.
It gets better though, as seven sales was for one of the estate agents in the office, not the whole office, so even if the rest of the staff had only sold another three houses, that’s a house sale a day !
No-one can get a mortgage
Whilst mortgages are harder to get than they were, there are still mortgages to be had.
If you haven’t got a deposit, or have a poor credit record, then you’re likely to struggle, but this is a knee jerk reaction to the Banks’ over eager lending policy of recent years.
I recently went to see a house where the owner was about to get repossessed, to talk about a deal……
I’m delighted to bring you the edited version (view the out-takes here!) of my personal invitation to a Rent2Buy seminar in Worthing or Essex, with David Lee, The Cashflow Investor. If you are intrigued by the idea of making money from property without a deposit, or mortgage or about how to buy a house for £1, or turning your negative cashflow properties into positive cashflow ones, here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/cashflow
To get 30 seconds of streaming video, you often have to have a few attempts at it! Here Nicola Cairncross from The Money Gym tries, battling against the elements, to get one take at an invitation to a Rent2Buy seminar in Worthing, for David Lee, The Cashflow Investor. I’ll post up the proper one in a moment! In the meantime, if you want to come along here’s the link: http://tinyurl.com/cashflow
Welcome to the world of buying UK property for just £1. Here is the first deal I have done, within 3 weeks too! This is fast and fun……and the best thing is, you are helping people who can’t sell (without beating them down on the price) and helping people who can’t buy due to not having enough deposit, or being able to qualify for a mortgage. Here’s the info:
Charming 2 Bedroom Cottage To Let in Littlehampton, West Sussex.
Stop! Think about this for a second……….why rent when you can buy?
I am offering a lovely two bedroom cottage in Littlehampton to let, on a “Rent 2 Buy” or premium rental basis. If you are a first time buyer but can’t afford the normal deposit, or get a mortgage in today’s market, this could be perfect for you!
Click here for a 4 minute, streaming video, tour around the property….
The house is offered at £220,000 and you simply pay a 5% deposit, and then instalments of £1283 per month, and this lovely cottage could be yours in 2-3 years. No mortgage required but you will need to provide work references and some other financial details.
Close to Central Littlehampton, with great road and rail links across West Sussex, in a very quiet private road, and a lovely secluded walled and gated garden - perfect for children. The whole cottage faces South/West and is very light and sunny. Fully refurbished thoughout, the cottage has a living room with open fire and beamed ceiling, double glazing and gas central heating. There are two good sized bedrooms, lovely refitted modern kitchen with modern wood units and integrated cooker/hob, a hall/dining room, bathroom with white suite and seperate toilet upstairs.
Have a look at the video and if you would like to view this cottage, call me for more details on 01273 910986. Stop paying dead rent and take your first step on the property ladder.
** Put your name and email in the box to the top right to get a Free Report on how “Rent2Own” works in the UK and join our priority Property List for 1 bed, 2 bed and 3 bed Worthing, Shoreham & Littlehampton properties**
The author seemed to be putting forward the view that entrepreneurs had been getting lazy and flocking to the property market - they put their premise forward thusly…
“The net effect of this (property) boom has been one where the incentive to become truly entrepreneurial was significantly reduced – why try and create a new product or service if there was a guaranteed high return from property development? Similarly, from an investment point of view, why consider any other investment opportunity if there was a perceived guaranteed high return from property development?”
Interesting how they slipped that “perceived” in the second sentance eh? Do they mean that the return being gurarnetted
Let me give you a bit of context for my fascination for this….
In 2003 I bought my hotel The Acacia. Property investment and business in one I thought. A big TICK x 2 on the Lanes of The Wealth Highway.
I created an E-Myth’d business, one which would run without me, whereas I could market the place from anywhere in the world. Which was based in a building that would appreciate in value.
Then I met Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard, no strangers to business or property themselves. They started to come to a lot of our Money Gym events at The Acacia and we used to spend time in the breaks in the back garden, because some of their team smoked in those days, and we could talk to Steve (the Manager / Chef at the time) through the kitchen window while he prepared his latest sumptuious feast for the clients.
I’ll never forget the day, when one of them uttered the following immortal words ….
“Of course, this place will never make you a good enough return in terms of profit, to make up for how much effort, worry and risk you have put into this place”.
They were not being unkind, just honest, and they knew what they were talking about, because they had had a big business; two factories, over 100 staff who got up in the morning to cause them grief, over 100 pieces of equipment and a fleet of vans that did likewise. They realised that, in their first property deal, they had made more profit than they had made in half a year in their business.
So they sold the business and went into property.
They suggested I sell the hotel business and concentrated on the virtually virtual coaching company The Money Gym, my internet marketing activities and property investing - but focusing on simple little one bedroom flats.
I was in a hurry to get out now, becuase the scales had fallen from my eyes in terms of the best use of my time and efforts.
Then I discovered the other problem - that Andy and Greg had also experienced - nobody wanted to buy my business when I wanted to sell it. Or perhaps I didn’t know how to go about selling a hotel business properly.
And there were other people’s jobs depending on me - you can’t just walk away from a business if there are othere people working in it - your employees. You have a responsibility.
Grim.
Anyway, with time it all resolved itself - not easy but we got there.
Because at the end of the day, as I never tire of saying, wealth creation is a simple matter of deciding where your best return on investment is, and putting your money, time (which is money) and efforts there. If you don’t know how to work out your return on investment (ROI) here’s one of my previous articles on the subject, which tells you how to work it out, and how to compare different opportunities, and make chalk like cheese for the purpose of comparing different opportunities.
Aye, but, here’s the rub.
We all have our personalities and emotions to deal with and that can muddy the waters.
have distinct preferences about which one or two Lanes of the Wealth Highway they want to work with first.
Analytical people like the idea of the Stockmarket, women are always keen on property and often have a business idea (or existing business / self employed venture going already) while techie and marketing types are drawn towards the internet Lane.
The skill in the early days, as their coach, is in finding out if that is, indeed, their fastest route to the money, as Judith would say.
Because our main goal in The Money Gym is that we want them to recoup their investment as quickly as possible, then go on to create oodles of cash so that they can re-invest it and create more cash, and re-invest it………..you get the idea.
And here is where I get back to the point - hurrah!
We want them to do it as quickly and easily, and effortlessly as possible.
Because why would you want to flog your guts out creating something new, and trying to bring it to market, when you can make pots of cash from following a tried and tested system, a step by step process, one that is proven to work, with colleagues alongside you, and mentors who have gone before, to hold your hand and stop you making painful and costly mistakes?
Why would you go it alone?
I suspect the article was written by a “Creator” in Roger Hamilton’s “Wealth Dynamics” and as one myself (Creator / Star profile moi!) I can almost sympathise.
Almost, because I wasted 38 painful, poor years, trying to create a new business, and bring it to market.
I now harness my creativity into making money out of thin air, created great win/win deals, helping others to create wealth, and finding new ways to make our marketing better.
Who said wealth creation had to be hard work?
And unless your business can create a better return than the property market, why would you go there? Current blips notwithstanding, the property market appreciates at an average of 10% per annum and the more sophisticated investors create an infinity return on their investment.
Most businesses don’t even break even.
Now, I can hear howls of protest from Judith in the distance (takes a while for sound to travel from Streatham to Shoreham) so I will finish up by saying that we are not anti-business in The Money Gym.
But we are anti-hard work.
So bring us your business idea and we will help you shape it into something that will run happily alongside your property empire building. We will help you harness the power of the internet to market your business automatically, and then, only when you have nothing to do, will we let you look at the stockmarket.
Unless you want to start there, of course!
Client led coaching, with laser like focus, with a right old boot up the bum, that’s The Money Gym.
Talking of whom, one of the supermodels of the property investing world, Greg Ballard, will be joining us tomorrow to tell us how to get an infinity return on your investment.
Then I will be sharing how to make money from property without buying any.
Then Maria Davies, another star of the property world, will be showing us what she’s buying, and sharing how to buy a luxury holiday home in the Caribbean AND create a monthly income, for just £1000.
Over at The Business In General Blog there is an interesting article about property booms stifling business start ups.
“The negative relationship between property investment and entrepreneurship is not immediately obvious. However, the recent property booms in Ireland and the U.K. (amongst others) helps to demonstrate this relationship. In recent years, both countries have experienced phenomenal growth in house prices. That is, until everything came grinding to a halt at the end of last year. [1]
The net effect of this boom has been one where the incentive to become truly entrepreneurial was significantly reduced – why try and create a new product or service if there was a guaranteed high return from property development? Similarly, from an investment point of view, why consider any other investment opportunity if there was a perceived guaranteed high return from property development?
In Ireland, the short-term results of the boom were a huge increase in people ‘getting into property’ and in the U.K. every second TV show on Channel 4 seemed to focus on property, e.g. Location Location Location, Property Ladder, A Place in the Sun and Grand Designs. Now all manner of problems are coming home to roost as the market collapses and the scale of consumer debt is becoming obvious. [2]
The Irish Government was happy to continue to fuel the boom, rezoning land for development, and cosying up to property developers [3], given how the huge property related taxes were contributing to their coffers. As David McWilliams, a leading Irish economist points out, a national focus on property is damaging as a ‘country which experiences a property boom turns in on itself. The reason for this is very simple, property cannot be traded. Bricks and mortar are tied to the land and the land is fixed and can’t be exported. Therefore, the discipline of international competition is lost.’
I would go further than this, it also destroys enterprise – there have been countless examples of successful businesses in Ireland shutting down because there is a greater return to be had from selling the property for redevelopment than continuing the business as a going concern. [4]
As someone passionate about entrepreneurship however, I take the view that every cloud has a silver lining, and that the property collapse could prove to be an excellent stimulus for entrepreneurship.
As Michael O’Leary, M.D of low cost European airline Ryanair recently claimed, “I love recessions,” he says. “Recessions are much more fun. Good times are a pain in the bum. Good times, any idiot can make money. In recessions, the good get up off their backsides and start doing the kind of sensible things that they should do all of the time. It’s good for business”. [5]
Now that ‘property development’ is no longer a safe bet, and the Irish and U.K Governments realise that the boom is over, it is likely that entrepreneurship, in its purist form, should take off once again. Those who stretched themselves with high mortgages will face stark options: sell up at a loss, or try to make ends meet. For some, second jobbing will be their only option and this will also help to fuel the passions of entrepreneurship in people. It is also hoped that the respective Governments will play their role, after all their taxation policies and planning policies have helped to fuel the boom in the first place.
When I first started the Money Gym, and wrote the “Financial Intelligence 101″ tips, that grew into The Money Gym ebook, one of the most popular sections was the Property Investing Section. Everyone wanted to know about investing in, and making money from property.
In the early days, when we used to host the Money Gym workshops at The Acacia, my much loved boutique hotel and my latest venture into property investing, we used to cover “The Top 10 Ways To Make Money In Property” and we used to simply tell people about them, they used to go off and investigate the one they liked the sound of, then we would coach them from there.
However, one day, a couple of guys came along who blew most of our “Top 10″ out of the water.
Out of “Top 10 Ways To Make Money In Property” only three of them remain. Which ones? Aha, you will have to wait for the next few days to find out that!
After we heard about how these guys invested in property, we simply couldn’t, in all good conscience, just tell folks how they COULD invest in property, but we felt we then had to share how we felt people SHOULD invest in property.
Now this went right against all accepted coaching law and wisdom, I can tell you!
But hey ho! Wealth coaching has always been different - a mix of training, mentoring and coaching, rather than pure coaching itself.
At The Money Gym, we aim to save you time, money, and stop you making expensive mistakes.
Mistakes like I made with buying that hotel in the first place. If these two guys, my mates Greg and Andy, had been around in 2003, there is NO WAY they would have let me buy it. They would have stopped me making THAT half million pound mistake.
Side note: You will see in this week’s ezine, I talk about the difference between “failure” and a “mistake” and it’s an important distinction to make if you are an entrepreneur. Essentially, a failure is something that can bury you but you can learn from your mistakes.
That hotel was a mistake - some would definately see it as a failure - but I choose now to see it as a mistake. A very large one true…..
One that taught me a VERY LARGE LESSON! In fact, SEVERAL very large lessons.
I will never forget the moment in the garden of The Acacia, when Greg or Andy uttered the immortal words that made me realise that buying it had been a mistake and told me why.
1. This hotel will never make you the amount of profit that would make all the work you put into it, worth it.
2. You have a lot of your own money in this business and you will struggle to ever get it out.
3. When you have had enough and you do want to sell it, nobody will buy it, unless you find someone as daft as you were, to buy it in the first place.
Hmmmmm…..
They like straight talking, those two. And that is one of the things I most value about Greg & Andy. So many people won’t tell you what you need to hear. Nobody around me in those days did, that’s for sure. Hence the mistakes.
So, five years on, here we are, still making mistakes but not so many, and certainly not failing, and together with Steve and Judith, two more straight talkers, they are still two of my closest friends and mentors. Whenever I want some advice about business and life, I go straight to Greg, and to Andy for property market / business marketing / creative / internet input.
So you can imagine how thrilled I am that Greg still comes to London, to present for The Money Gym on property investing.
I can’t imagine how much longer he will do that, as we are pretty much the only presenting he does outside their own Open Days.
He’s coming to the Southwark Rose on 14th June and really, you should be there.
* If you have questions about the current property market, you should be there.
* If you have questions about your business proposition, you should be there.
* If you just want to see a down to earth, authentic, funny, FANTASTIC speaker, you should be there.
* If you want to recharge your wealth creation batteries, and hang out with some like minded people, you should be there.
That’s five “shoulds” in five lines, I’m about to get struck off the Eurocoach List!
Book your place here - still some Early Birds left as I’m late promoting this due to half term.
The rather interesting headline in todays Worthing Property Weekly was…”A Return To A More Steady Market”
Damn, damn, damn! We all wanted another year of doom and gloom about house prices - never have there been so many empty houses with motivated sellers and prices being slashed.
The article goes on to say “The property market is correcting itself rather than heading for a spectacular crash, according to the National Association of Estate Agents. It based it’s claims on information contained in the latest report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors…….The house price falls are modest and the picture is still patchy with some areas of the country finding it tougher than others….credit crunch affected confidence….underlying factors that support property market remain: low unemployment, historically low interest rates and a pent up demand for houses.”
As I say, Damn, Damn, Damn! I was rather hoping for those 15-30% drops my friends (non-property investing) boyfriend is confidently predicting and I told you about last week. On her usual entertaining note, Judith has written about her personal rather up and down property investing story here.
“My history with property investing is somewhat checkered to say the least. In 1979 my Dad lent me £500 towards buying my first home which cost £9,000 and on which Ken Livingstone, then Leader of the GLC, gave me a 100% mortgage. I sold the flat in 1983 for £21,000 and bought a house costing £43,000. I sold that in a sealed bid in 1987 for about £85,000 and bought a house for £125,000 and then rented it out in 1990 as an HMO (house of multiple occupancy) even before we knew what such a thing was, and bought a flat to live in costing another £125,000. So at that point I owned two properties worth a quarter of a million, following nothing better than instinct, naivete and native cunning.
And then interest rates went to 18% and I struggled manfully with the cashflow of my business in difficult market conditions and to pay both mortgages for about three years until I finally caved in and in 1992 both my homes were re-possessed and I found myself in debt to the tune of about £300,000 and facing bankruptcy. Snakes and Ladders. Back to Zero. Er, make that £300k below zero.
So, if I suffered so badly in the last “crash”, how are things different now? Why am I buying, buying, buying and more to the point, how am I doing it?”
(Nicola’s note: Our next Money Gym Presents day is on Property, and not only will the best thing since vienetta Ice Cream be presenting there - Greg Ballard - but Judith and myself will be sharing the “Top Five All Time Ways To Make Money From Property” - find out more here.)
Judith says: One of those ways is something we only came across this year, but has blown us - and many of our Money Gym clients - away. Dave & Rick’s Cashflow Investor plan means you don’t acquire more assets - or “slumbering giants” as I call them - and don’t get me wrong… you do need some slumbering giants.
But what if you have no equity to leverage, no inheritance to invest, no savings deposits and no good credit rating? How are YOU going to make large lumps of cash in the property lane of the Wealth Highway?
Every so often a wealth creation concept or different way of doing things comes along, that just blows my mind.
A few years ago, when I came across the way my genius property mogul mates Greg & Andy invest in property, my head nearly exploded with excitement, and I couldn’t wait to share their ideas with my readers.
However, Greg & Andy’s way of doing things does depend on three things
1. A good credit rating
2. A pot of cash to use over and over again for deposits / refurb
3. Ability to get a mortgage (lots of “buy to let” mortgages still ask for proof of earnings)
Now this is great for a large majority of our Money Gym members and hundreds of them have availed themselves of Greg & Andy’s services, via Passive Investments (next Open Day http://tinyurl.com/5pmtf8) or learned how to do it themselves, via Andy’s book.
I knew there was about 30% of our subscribers who couldn’t “do property” the Passive way, or even buy their own home, due to
1. No pot of cash
2. No credit rating
3. No proof of earnings
Now, I know that there are several other ways to make money from property, without having to buy any yourself, but sadly people just seem to give up at that point, and don’t go on learning about what makes a good property deal, if they haven’t got even one of the above three things in place.
So you can imagine how delighted I was when I met David Lee, via Tamkin Riaz, at the last World Internet Summit. I really think that the heavens were conspiring that night, because I had met David several times before, but never really fully grasped what he did.
On this occasion, I ended up sitting next to him, his wife and son, in the pub, and out of politeness really, asked him again to tell me what he does…..an hour or so later, I still didn’t really get it, but dimly grasped enough to realise that it was a totally different way of making money from property, and to tell Judith we should invite David to speak for The Money Gym.
In January David did a VERY powerful presentation - and he would be the first to admit he’s quite new to public speaking - and his concept and content blew us away.
Can you imagine being able to make money from property without needing a deposit, a mortgage or a good credit rating? Where you are not competing with all the “below market value” boys, and where you are not only making big chunks of cash, but helping two sets of people?
Let me repeat that……where you are making what we in the Money Gym call “life changing sums of money” while helping two sets of people.
A geniune win/win/win situation. It takes a bit of a mind-shift, a bit of a leap of faith, and access to some minor cojones to get started, but if you are open-minded and determined…….
I tell you now, this is dynamite stuff. Judith and I both love it!
Several Money Gym clients signed up on the spot and we have all been working our way through the materials - the detailed “how to” workbook, the many hours of audio with real people, case studies, and student stories. I have rarely seen a better put together home study course and the backup support from David is superb.
David is doing a presentation soon, and there will be a very special guest there - Rick Otton.
Rick is the guy who learned how to utilise this way of making money from property, firstly in the USA, then Australia, and he mentored David to make it work here.
I have no idea where Maidenhead is, but, if you have despaired of every becoming a property investor, but you want to be, I suggest you get your map out and make your way there pronto!
"The Money Gym"
book
includes a Foreword
by
Gill Fielding
C4's Secret
Millionaire
"This book is a
template for
anyone who wants
to create
wealth... it
will tell you
the path to take
and what to
do...There is
no better
teacher and
mentor than
Nicola"
Then I met Andy Shaw and Greg Ballard, no strangers to business or property themselves. They started to come to a lot of our Money Gym events at The Acacia and we used to spend time in the breaks in the back garden, because some of their team smoked in those days, and we could talk to Steve (the Manager / Chef at the time) through the kitchen window while he prepared his latest sumptuious feast for the clients.
The article goes on to say “The property market is correcting itself rather than heading for a spectacular crash, according to the National Association of Estate Agents. It based it’s claims on information contained in the latest report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors…….The house price falls are modest and the picture is still patchy with some areas of the country finding it tougher than others….credit crunch affected confidence….underlying factors that support property market remain: low unemployment, historically low interest rates and a pent up demand for houses.”
