Expat Property Story

#158 Is social housing a business model that interests you? Do you understand how it works? Would you like to know how to go about building a portfolio based on providing housing for vulnerable people in all their shapes and sizes? Have you thought about the advantages and disadvantages? Are you wondering if this might be the way forward for you? Scott Grayson is a property veteran with more than...

#157 You may have heard people talking about sustainability, Net Zero, future proofing, institutional funding, socially conscious investing, Environmental and Social Governance or ESG and thought what’s it all got to do with me as an expat property investor.  Well hopefully, after listening to this week’s show, you’ll be a little closer to finding out. Anna Clare Harper is an expert in sustainable...

#156 Building a UK property portfolio as an expat is not easy.  Firstly there’s the distance… And the further you are from the UK the harder it is.  Not only does it take a lot longer to get back to the UK, but there’s the added complication of time differences.  And then there’s the lack of time available to work on building a portfolio.  And finding trustworthy UK property partners to work with...

#155 Did you know that there are 3 billion Google Searches every day? And have you heard of a website called Answer the Public?  Answer the Public is a website which listens into data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around a keyword. I typed in UK property and by far the most common question or variation of a question it re...

#154 Have you considered using a home stager to market a property? Is it worth paying for a stager?  What’s the difference between a home stager and an interior designer?   Do you know if there’s a difference is between staging a property to rent versus staging to sell? If you’ve spent time thinking about any of these questions, then this episode is for you. Emma Cook helps people to  market their...

#153 Adopting a new UK property strategy is no walk in the park because you need to understand and control as many of the variables you can identify as possible. This is even more important if you’re using investor finance, because you need to have a plan A, Plan B and Plan C for giving your investors the return OF their money and ON their money.  In this episode, we talk you through the due dilig...

#152 How do you go about carrying out due diligence on a new UK Property business model?  How can you make sure you’re not believing the hype?  Do you presume that something must work because it’s what everyone else seems to be doing?  This episode (the 3rd of 4) will hopefully get you thinking about some of these things as we continue our story of why we didn’t add any properties to our portfolio...

#151 How do you keep on top of your UK Credit Rating? Do you even know what your credit rating is?  Do you know what factors affect your score?  This episode serves as a warning as to what can go wrong if you’re not very careful, even if you’re the kind of person like me that likes to pay their credit card debt at the end of each and every month. Keep listening to the end to pick up tips and trick...

#150 Some of the most useful content according to people who get in touch with us is when we tell the parts of our story that don’t go well,   And let’s face it, we learn more from what goes wrong than what goes right.  So over the next few episodes we’ll be covering the reasons why we didn’t buy any property in 2023. This episode discusses: ·      Naivety in financial decisions ·      Initial exp...

#149 Do you invest in stocks and shares? Do you invest in property? Maybe you invest in both? If you take two suitcases to the check in counter at the airport, one marked property and one stocks and shares and they tell you that you can only put one on the plane, which one do you choose? Have you ever wondered, like I have why people choose stocks and shares over property? In this episode, Grant W...

#148 How do you deal with setbacks in your property story?  Lots of people talk about how to win, but maybe the real lessons to be found in life and property are about how to deal with, and come back from disappointment.  And since we all have setbacks in our property stories from time to time, it often helps to be inspired by those who get up again after getting knocked down.  So if you’re lookin...

#147 How long does it take you to analyse a deal on Right Move?  Do you find yourself looking at rubbish bins to try and work out the number of a property so that you can then go and check out the EPC and do other due diligence to work out if a deal really is a deal?  If your plan is to turn it into an HMO, have you found it as frustrating as I have, squinting at a map trying to work out if the ho...

#146 Is now a good time to buy UK property? Do you wish you had a crystal ball to see six months into the future? How will the housing market look in the second half of 2024?  When analysts comment on the state of the market, they look to house price indexes from the The UK House Price or Nationwide or Halifax as they try to predict future trends. But these indexes have a time lag given that the t...

#145 Do you regularly visit your investment area?  How well do you know your location?  Who are your eyes and ears in those places?  How do you know if you can trust them?  How often do you or could you visit your patch?  Or are you confident enough to build a portfolio from the other side of the world with no friends or family to help you in the part of the UK you’ve identified as the one to get...

#144 I’m in Derby.  It’s the final day of my UK Property Tour.  Today, I have to take the hire car back to Nottingham and then the train south to London.  I also have two final meetings I’ve arranged. One with a second sourcer, who we’ll call Sourcer 2 and another with an HMO interior design team. But that’s not what’s at the front of my mind on this mid-February morning in 2024 as I wake up in th...

#143 13 has always been mine and my wife's lucky number. On our one and only visit to a casino in Macau we once won two consecutive games of roulette picking, you guessed it the number 13. So will this deal that we’ve been offered in Derby be our lucky 13th addition to our portfolio on this, the 13th consecutive daily episode in our mini-season documenting my UK Property Tour? Download and li...

 #142 Day 11... My UK property tour and this mini-season of diary style podcasts is drawing to a close now. I'm in Derby meeting anyone and everyone who can help us find a 3 bed house to convert to a 6 bed all ensuite HMO It doesn’t look like I’m going to return to Hong Kong with an HMO in my back pocket. But the aim is to get as close as I can.  To do that I have a few meetings lined up over...

#141 In preparation for my UK Property Tour, I used the filters on Spare Room to build up an XL database of HMO rooms that were achieving the highest rates.  I excluded everything except rooms with en-suites and bills.   My spreadsheet included columns for:   ·      location ·      rents ·      amenities, ·      the dates the adverts were listed ·      how long the adverts had been up for  ·     ...

#140 This is Day 9 of our mini-season of daily pods documenting my UK Property Tour. If you trust someone just because they’re in the public domain and they seem nice, you’re putting yourself at risk. On the other hand, if your default position is to trust no one, you won’t get anywhere.   So what’s the answer… Well there’s no magic formula, so I would suggest that you start small.  Don’t go all i...

#139     Day 8 of my UK Property Tour.  Today is Saturday and  I find myself on the M6 heading north to Blackpool at 9 o’clock in the morning to talk to a bungalow fliiper! Yesterday, I coined a new Property Term, called Some Money In.   It’s the opposite of All Money Out and it refers to the idea that most of us can expect to have to leave some money in a deal when buying 3 bed houses to convert...

#138 Have you heard people talking about all money out deals? Or money in money out deals? Others call them unicorn deals.  In my experience, the people who talk most about them are usually selling a course.  Or a deal.  I’m not saying they don’t happen and maybe you’ve achieved it yourself.  But  personally, I think you’d be better off saving your energy for working out how to mitigate for the mo...

#137 This is the seventh diary entry for my first ever UK property Tour. I'm in the UK for two weeks, checking up on our two SA houses and researching our new investment area. In this episode, I meet the designer and managing agent of our new SA in Leyland ahead of its launch the following week. i also take a walk around the neighbourhood to try to understand the property from a guest's...

#136 My UK Property Tour continues! Today’s diary entry starts in Nottingham, continues in Derby, returns to Nottingham to pick up a hire car. I then head up the M1 and M6 to a networking meeting in Manchester before finally getting to bed well after midnight in our second SA property in Leyland, Lancashire just hours after the refurb / staging  has finished. This is the 6th episode of 14 daily ep...

#135 Everyone loves a story and that's one of the reasons we called this podcast Expat Property Story. Today's episode is a short story about Day 4 of my UK Property Tour. I'm reluctant to say any more as I don't want to spoil the story. But the moral of the story relates to the importance of having a good managing agency, particularly in Serviced Accommodation. Listen now! You...

#134 What factors made you choose your investment area? Was it because it’s within a certain radius of friends and family or UK property partners? Was it because of the three pillars of population, employment opportunities and infrastructure. Was it because of yield or capital growth?  Well we’ve chosen Derby as our next property hotspot for many if not all of the above reasons.  In today’s diary...