Ashley Road, Parkstone, Poole
At the time of writing this is an ongoing project and we’re currently back to bare brickwork everywhere. The house was purchased at fairly close to market value – perhaps 10% below – and in truth I would normally want a bigger discount. However the property is smack bang in the middle of a busy secondary shopping area, with well over a hundred shops extending in both directions and will make a perfect HMO. Originally a large detached house, we’re gutting it, and have planning to convert to an 8 bedroom HMO, with every room having its own on-suite. The cash flow should be excellent, but there’s an awful lot to do before we get to the point of being able to rent out rooms. In addition to massively refurbishing everything, we’re also building on at the rear to create a large kitchen dinner with an equally large social space. I much prefer a larger combined kitchen/social area, as in my experience tenants prefer to socialise in this way as opposed to under-using a separate lounge, which could have become another bedroom. Sadly the original builder took lots of shortcuts, a good example of which can be seen in the following video. One of the big advantages of cutting back to the brickwork however is you can resolve these issues relatively quickly and cheaply....
read moreFisherton Street, Salisbury
Originally built in 1862, this was by far the oldest property I’ve ever refurbished. To be honest, it was a complete wreck when I bought it and believe it or not contained over 12 ton of rubbish (according to commercial recycling receipts) before we cleared it out! The guy that lived here was a hoarder and had rubbish everywhere, but you would never know it to look at him, he was actually a really lovely guy. In the end I paid him a year’s rent up front to make sure he had somewhere safe to go to. After some too’ing and fro’ing with the council, I managed to get a shop, two studio flats and a one bedroom maisonette on the top floor. Once again we had to gut the building, but this time we even had to remove ceiling and floors! It’s pretty eerie when you stand on the ground floor and can see up all three flights to the roof! Once work started things progressed well, then I happened upon another deal and so paused this job whilst I took care of a very keenly priced flat in Portsmouth that I managed to acquire for 30% below market value. I guess the highlight for me was having eleven plasterers on site at the same time! As the below video shows, it was a bit of a mad house, but they cracked it out in two weeks and did a first class job....
read moreKimmeridge Avenue
For £50, I bought a lead from a property lead supplier, contacted the owner and arranged a visit. When the lady opened the door, I was greeted by a “not too pleasant smell” (to put it politely) as she had an entire menagerie of animals living there, together with her disabled husband and grandson. One of the abilities I’ve tried to develop over the years is to look beyond the mess and just take in the basic fabric of the building… but I’m going to have to say this wasn’t easy here – there was clutter everywhere. The lady explained that all they wanted was to move back to Wales and so I constructed a deal that would help them. I agreed a year long delayed completion, so they could walk into agents in South Wales and show they had a buyer (essential in 2010 when I bought the property). I arranged their move, cleared the house and disposed of everything – so they didn’t have to and there was a LOT of stuff to get rid of! At £110k, this turned out to be a 25% below market value deal and one that still gives me a healthy cash flow to this...
read moreGladys Avenue
A purchase price of only £57,000 for a two bedroom flat in Portsmouth, meant I really couldn’t walk away from this one, even though it meant putting one of my other projects temporarily on the back burner. The seller had had lots of problems with the tenants and when I called to see it, there was even an 800cc motorbike upside down in the middle of the lounge! Keep in mind this is a top floor flat and there’s no lift. He was also tied into a long lease and since he’d moved away to Plymouth, just wanted to get rid of it. I made it clear to him the best way to ensure he got the most money for the flat was to take it to a local agent, but by this time, he’d simply had enough and so we agreed I’d buy the place, wait out the long lease and ultimately evict the tenant. As it happened when the tenant ultimately left, he had completely cleaned the flat and even repainted the lounge! At approximately 35% below market value this was a great little buy. Sure, I had a bit of work to do, but compared to some of the projects we’ve taken on, it really wasn’t a big...
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