It’s what most of our new Partners look forward to most – their two day purchase mentoring! After a whirlwind couple of months, Liam’s journey has really started now, with sale agreed on not one, but two properties.
"I spent the day before Andrew’s arrival preparing for the viewings, two of which were cancelled and others needed to be juggled around to achieve a semi-logical viewing order. All that said, we got to see 10 properties on Wednesday.
It was a very intense day of almost back-to-back viewings. With each appointment, we were learning more about the key aspects and details that we truly needed to understand to establish what would make a good HMOproperty. At the end of day one, we were left with five potential properties to ponder over. That night, we fairly quickly and unanimously dismissed two and realised that there were only three properties to consider.
We started day two with second viewings on the three shortlisted properties and they helped us to quickly understand that, actually, we knew the two that we wanted.
At this point, we grabbed a sandwich, discussed and agreed offer strategy with Andrew and got on the phone. With Andrew’s expert guidance we were able to get our offers accepted in just 45 minutes on not one, but the two properties! The initial plan was to purchase at least one property, but we knew that we had the funds for two if we found the right properties, and we certainly did.
Interestingly, one of the properties is an existing 10-bed HMO - nothing like a PPP HMO I hastened to add. It’s an exceptional property, as it was purpose-built 100 years ago as the builder’s family house. Since then it’s become a hotel and a B&B and now a HMO.
In fact, we came across the property very early on in our search and it never went too far away from our thoughts. We just thought it was too good to be true. As you might imagine, there are no building extensions required and not too much reorganisation. However, there is a significant amount of refurbishment required in terms of stripping it back to the bare walls and floor-boards and then bringing it up to the PPP standard!
Having Andrew with us was great. He’s been there, seen it and done it and having that guiding hand, counsel and knowledge was just invaluable. He was great at showing us the upsides and, equally, identifying any areas of concern with each property visited. He enabled us to see and consider the whole picture, rather than just looking at the positives and dismissing the negatives, only to have to pay the price later on.
I’ve said before that the pre-mentoring felt like something of race. Well, whilst we’ve crossed that finish line, we now have a whole new set of different (but somewhat linked) races about to start – complete the purchase processes, identify and agree works with our refurbishment mentor, get both necessary planning and licensing arrangements in place, appoint and schedule necessary trades people, and no doubt a few others besides!
We are feeling overwhelmingly excited, but still with a slight tinge of nervousness. Every step is a new experience and ‘you don’t know what you don’t know,’ seems to have become one of my favourite sayings. That said, it’s great to have people on-hand, whether it be our mentors, other Partners or the team at Head Office to call upon."
Read the next Partner diary from Liam -
