If someone asked me if there was one moment in your business career which you were glad you did I would have to say when I visited Corby in Northamptonshire.

I had a few properties in Essex and I earned roughly £700 positive cashflow from these which I lived on while I tried to break it in to the music world as a top music producer. 

Living on £700 per month was hard!  I needed some cashflow positive properties to fund my music producer lifestyle!  I do not know whether it was out of need or greed but I got to work on building me a £5,000 profit per month property portfolio.

So armed with my yield calculation I went on Rightmove and it was not long until I discovered that all roads led to Corby!  There were 3 estate agents there and they all had a load of properties that yielded in excess of 10%, some even 25%.

Now I had very little money.  I was surviving on Tesco blue stripe bread and blue stripe chicken slices.   There were more properties available than I could buy and the great thing was no one else wanted them.  Now I did not think well no one wants them so I should back off.  Quite the opposite.

At the time all you could get was 70% loan to value mortgages for buy to let.  Especially at the prices I was buying these properties at.  So I could see all these properties and I wanted them as I wanted my music producer lifestyle.

I needed to raise 30% deposits fast and in abundance.  So I simply borrowed it.  I borrowed so heavily that my portfolio went from 8 in quantity to 40 in a space of 1 year. 

Now what I learnt from this moment in my career is:

1. I did what I thought was right.  The properties yielded so it did not matter whether anyone else was buying or not.
2. I was not scared of putting money in to a deal (even though it was borrowed!).  Back in the day there were no No Money Down strategies so I had to put my hand in my pocket and buy.

My Corby portfolio has pretty much funded my expansion as the capital growth in these properties was so astronomical (400% in 8 years) that I was able to buy 3 properties for every one Corby property.  And the new purchases also rose in value so I could buy more and more.

Anyway I thought I would share that moment with you as I am very grateful to myself that I did it.

We are now in a similar situation.  I put out a 15.9% yielding property and a 24% HMO which I thought I would never ever see again.  It really is the time to buy and I do not know how long this mega buying opportunity is going to last.  Corby lasted around 9 months.  I reckon this time round it will be shorter.

So if you are out there thinking now is the time to change your life I have to say it really looks likely as property has never been so cheap. 

Gordon brown has thrown money at the banks and ORDERED them to lend. 

So, lets all borrow.

See you on the other side.   If you want one of my team members to call you back request a callback.

Ajay

 

 

Posted on: 15th Oct 2008