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Dr James:
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Denison Invest podcast. I have sat with me returning face, dr Jassy Sidhu, and we’re here to talk about insider tips when it comes to success in the property market, which I’m really looking forward to, because the last podcast got a hell of a lot of PR and publicity. A lot of people liked that podcast, so looking forward to have you back, jassy, I’m glad to have you here. How are you, my friends?
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, good man, thanks for calling me back. I had a great time last time and I’m sure we’re going to have a great time this time again.
Dr James:
My absolute pleasure. How have you been since we last spoke? What’s fresh your brother got married right.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, been on a few holidays. My cousin got married. It’s been a bit hectic. Had a lot of fun. Now it’s time to get back into the graft.
Dr James:
Back to the real world.
Dr Jassy:
How’s the?
Dr James:
property portfolio going.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, it’s good. Acquired another one since I last saw you, so that’s good. Hoping to acquire another one before the end of the year as well, which would be nice.
Dr James:
So that impending exit from Dentistry drawing ever closer then by the signs yeah, definitely, yeah, 100%. Count on the days or just enjoying the ride.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, I’m just enjoying it, Not counting down the days. I still do enjoy bits of dentistry. I’m not doing any NHS now, just doing private and I find it’s a lot more enjoyable. And it’s nice to break the week up a bit of pubs, a bit of dentistry, otherwise everything’s a bit repetitive, love it, my man Cool.
Dr James:
So the aim of the game today, what we will talk about today, is insider stuff whenever it comes to building a successful property portfolio. And the reason we call it insider stuff is because these are the things that you don’t necessarily realize until you’re in the game, so to speak, or you learn through experience, and what that will mean is that these are going to be some incredible pearls of wisdom that will really accelerate any potential property modules who are listening to the podcast, or even people who are in the property game already, because all of this stuff there’s a name for this knowledge is called specific knowledge, which is a really cool concept, and it’s knowledge that you can only get through experience, direct experience of the thing, whatever the thing is, and in this case, the thing is property, of course. That’s what makes this wisdom extra, super duper valuable. So if we were to go really, really, really high level, if you look back on your property journey, actually, so to speak, what are the biggest revelations or the biggest things that you wish you could go back and tell yourself as that would be potential upstart in the property market things that would have helped them a lot, things that you wouldn’t necessarily have expected.
Dr Jassy:
Okay, If I’m honest with you, when I first got into property, I thought it would be easier than it is. Everyone always thinks that making money is easy. Especially when you look at social media I think we touched on that last time Everyone’s a millionaire overnight. It doesn’t work like that. It takes time, persistent hard work, blood, sweat and tears, but property is a great avenue to be able to accumulate wealth. So, yeah, the most important lesson it’s not as easy as you think it’s going to be, but it will be worth it in the end. Another one which I think is important as well is I used to get quotes and I used to always go with the cheapest, and that’s the wrong thing to do. It’s quite natural to want to get the cheapest price because it’s your end margin. You’re like, yeah, that’s going to give me the biggest profit. It’s cheap for a reason Don’t go for the most expensive. But I think it’s important to go for the most value for money and that’s really important. So I’ll get multiple quotes. I’ll meet the bill. I’ve got my own team now, but when I started, Meet the Builders. I would probably go for the middle prices and do background checks. Go in company’s house, look at their company, make sure they’re not sole trader, make sure they’ve got all the public liability and all the insurances, because that’s going to weed out all the cowboys. And it’s really, really important to do that, because there are some people out there that are doing building projects that do not understand building regulations and do not understand how to do things properly, and when they mess up, it’s going to be on you to talk to that. So I think that’s a massive lesson and that’s a really important one. What else would I go back and tell myself?
Dr James:
By the way, for the listeners who can hear bird noises in the background, jassy is sad outside of a shadow. I can only presume because the garden is massive.
Dr Jassy:
God, god, god. Enjoy the summer while we still got some left. Respect it.
Dr James:
So yeah, that’s just for everybody. Listening to explain the bird noises was all. I think, Jassy, you were in full flow there.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah. Another one is I probably and this is probably for people who are getting more deep into poverty and not doing it more as a sideline thing I would start raising. I would have started raising money from people sooner than I did, because that would have increased my trajectory. Once I knew what I was doing, I should have done that sooner. So at the moment we go out, we do raise investment from investors and often like a percentage return, like 8 to 10% a year. Had I done that sooner, my portfolio would have been a lot bigger because since I started doing that, it’s really supercharged it. When I first started I had aimed to buy half a million pounds every year and I’ve stuck to that and this year I’ve already done 750 and I’ll probably hit a million by the end of the year, and that’s simply because I can raise finance. So I think that’s important and leverage as well leverage in terms of your mortgages, leverage your time, get project managers in as soon as possible, because when I first started I was doing a lot of the stuff myself. I was actually in the business Once you understand it and the Internet is a good idea to then start moving out of it and delegating those tasks To other people so you can actually then focus on expansion, getting more deals, raising more finance, that kind of thing. So I think that’s probably the thing that one of my biggest regrets is I didn’t do that sooner.
Dr James:
Got you, got you, got you Any tips whenever it comes to those negotiations on finance.
Dr Jassy:
Raise finance when you don’t need it. When you need it and you’re desperate, you will end up giving more away than you should be comfortable with. Yeah, because you don’t want to lose the deal. So you’re like I’ll just give them an extra percent. You know what I mean. But you shouldn’t do that when it comes to poverty. Money is everywhere. Money is actually not that difficult to raise. Getting the deals, understanding how it works, having a relationship with the banks, having a power team that’s the difficult stuff that no one else has. So that’s actually where the value comes in. Money is that’s one thing I realize as well. Money is everywhere. You’ll be surprised at how many people have got, you know, 30, 40, 50, 100, 200 grand sitting in the bank, and the banks are giving next to nothing interest rates. So you can actually help people if you can offer more interest, like that’s what we do. We offer between eight to 10%, which is much better than the banks. So we’re helping people get more for their money be inflation and obviously we’re helping with expanding our portfolio as well.
Dr James:
Interest rates, even at the moment, are low relative to what you can make.
Dr Jassy:
Interest rates in terms of savings or mortgages.
Dr James:
Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, so that’s because I thought you meant the mortgage, the mortgage interest rate is crazy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she said interest rates and I was like, wait what? But yeah, of course, no, no, no, you know, all right, fair enough. Okay, cool. So, reading between the lines, let’s go back to the Cowboys thing that you were talking about earlier. The trades people. Yeah, have you ever been on the wrong end? Yeah, or anything like that. Yeah, and you know what? What a valuable experience. Right, just about pre-fame everything you’re about to say. Right, because somebody somewhere listening to this podcast has yet to be on the wrong end of this stuff, so this would be valuable as heck for them.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, yeah, okay. So let me explain. Okay, I learned that the hard way. So when we were doing the 32 bedroom HMO which we did on last time, me and my business partner we used someone that came recommended and he did a really bad job and in the end we had to get someone out to rectify his work and then do it. So it pretty much cost us one and a half times, or maybe even double, what it would have cost if we went with the right person. Plus, on top of that, it prolongs the development as well, so it takes more time, which means you’ve got, you’re paying more in your council tax or your business rates, your holding costs, which is your mortgage, or your bridging finance. So it adds a lot more when you actually step back and look at the actual cost of things and it’s just a headache and you don’t want that headache, yeah. What would you have done differently? Well, guide us our erriger to fairs. I would have hired someone. I would have paid someone over the cheapest.
Dr James:
Oh, okay, fair enough.
Dr Jassy:
And I think at the moment, because labour prices are so high, material costs are so high, it’s probably even more tempting now to go with the cheaper ones, but honestly, it’s not worth it. It’s not worth it. Just pay it once, get it done properly. You’re not going to have to worry about it.
Dr James:
Right, so look for mid-tier quotes. Yeah, yeah, new diligence.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, look for mid-tier quotes. Ask the builder, ask the electrician. Have you gotten any recommendations? Have you got people that you’ve worked on in the past? If you know anyone, even like, sometimes I’ll go around and look at their current build projects and I’ll go around and look at the quality of the work that they’re doing, because that gives you a good idea. And also a little tip as well is how clean do they keep their site? If it’s messy, that should be a bit of a red flag. So look for that. The real professionals out there. They make sure that the site that they’re working on is clean. They clean everything away because you’ve got health and safety regulations and stuff like that. So that’s one thing to look out for. Really important as well is companies have. People do not do this enough, whether it’s builders, whether it’s a company you’re looking at, whether it’s one of these gurus like property or financial. Go on company’s house, all the data’s there. You can look at the accounts, their turnover for the years before, all that kind of stuff. It’s all there. How long have they been incorporated for? And from that you’ll get an idea of is this a successful business or is it not. I always do that, especially if I’m tendering out a big contract to a builder, really, really important to do that. Get an idea. Make sure they’ve been around for a long time to know what they’re doing.
Dr James:
Right, awesome, so valuable that. Have you ever had a mentor when it comes to property?
Dr Jassy:
So I’ve got my mate who got me into it. He’s always been a bit of a mentor, like if I’m ever stuck with anything I’ll always give him a call. But yeah, I’d say he’s probably my mentor if anything. Yeah, good property.
Dr James:
Yeah, absolutely, and he’s helped progression your journey and he will be.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, 100%, yeah, yeah. Plus we’ve got similar interests as well, so it’s always fun moving me up.
Dr James:
Absolutely. Cool cool, cool, cool, cool cool.
Dr Jassy:
Do you think it’s?
Dr James:
worth everybody getting a mentor Also, or let me reframe that question yeah, Is it possible to go to do it on your own and figure it out? It’s probably possible, but is it smart yeah?
Dr Jassy:
it’s possible, I would say definitely educate yourself first. There’s so much information for free on YouTube and on the internet it’s like there’s loads available. So I would certainly start doing a bit of research yourself and educating yourself in that respect rather than jumping straight into it. I think a mental is a good idea. If you can find someone that’s in poverty, or what I normally do when it comes to like any kind of advice that I want, I’ll always look at my network, my social circle, and I’ll ask myself who is where I want to be Whether it’s poverty or you know relationships or whatever and then I’ll go to that person because they’re there. One thing I realized as well in business and life in general is be a little bit careful who you take advice from, because there’s a lot of people that will give you advice but they haven’t done it. It’s all theory. I prefer to take advice from someone that’s been there, done it and actually I would say, knows what they’re talking about. So, for example, with my friend, he’s got a huge, huge portfolio, so I know that the advice that he’s given me is coming from a place where he’s actually got those expertise and he knows what he’s talking about. But, yeah, educate yourself. If you can find a mentor, definitely worthwhile. And just be careful on social media. When you go on YouTube, you’re going to see all these puppeteer gurus that are like I made this, I did that, blah, blah, blah, and a lot of them just saw this. So, with them as well, good idea go in companies house and have a look at their companies and see what kind of turnover they’re, what kind of assets they’ve got, that kind of thing. Because if they’re running around saying they’re worth millions, then when you look on the asset liability sheet, you should see a couple of mill worth of puppeteer and if you don’t see that, you know that they’re a fake guru, basically. So just be careful, because a lot of them are very well trained in NLP and stuff like that, so they’ll convince you to pay for courses and stuff like that, and I don’t think that’s necessary. I think there’s enough information on the internet that you can just get it all for free. To be honest with you.
Dr James:
That’s cool. So you’ve never had a formal mentor as such.
Dr Jassy:
Not like that. Nothing paid for anything like that.
Dr James:
Top stuff, cool. So we went down those rabbit holes, didn’t we? Builders and mentors and all of that, anything else that you can think off of the top of your head? That is neat to know. Knowledge, insider knowledge, whenever it comes to being successful and properly.
Dr Jassy:
Yeah, I think if you’re looking to get into property and your dentist because obviously this podcast is mainly get to with dentists or any kind of working professional, anyone with a 95 job you want to ask yourself you’re either going to be two kinds of investors you are going to be invested, that’s going to be more involved within the business, or you’re going to be more passive. If you’re going to be more involved in the business, then you will need to take time out of your job to start getting out there, starting the agent, start building relationships, and then you’re going to be trying to get the kind of the good deals of property where you get it like below market value from like motivated sellers, and those are the kind of deals where you can buy and do them up, refinance it. You’re not going to pull all your money out, but you’ll pull most of your money out. But in order to be able to get access to those kind of deals, it takes time and effort and you’re going to need to pull yourself out of your job to be able to do that. So cut your days down or whatnot. I think most people will probably fall into the second category, so we’ll focus more on that which is going to be more passive. I’m doing my nine to five. I’ve saved up you know lump sum of money and I want to put it into property For those people. Then I think it’s more important to firstly decide where you’re going to invest. I personally like to invest within about 45, 50 minute driver, where I am, so I can keep an eye on things. The reason being is, when you get a marketing company involved even the good ones sometimes you know you’ll get a bill for a repair and you’re like it’s a bit high. Is that real? Is that made up? It’s not something I’m really comfortable with. I’ve got one property which is quite far away from me up in Stoke, and that property probably causing me more trouble than any of us, and it’s because it’s far. And in the end what I’ve had to do is I’ve had to convince one of my property agents that does most of locally to manage that and I was like I’ll just pay you a bit extra. But I know you are, trust you, you manage a lot of my other stock. So me personally, I like to invest closer to where I live so I can keep an eye on it, but I do know of people that invest further out. They say it works for them. It hasn’t worked for me, so I’m not as comfortable with it. But if you do that, I would say to your property agent send me pictures Everyone’s got WhatsApp so many pictures before and after the work and then pay the money Because because then you’re less likely to get you know some. Some people are a bit Unethical. It’s gonna make up repairs and charge you money for no reason. So yeah, so I like. So. So decide where you’re gonna invest. I would probably spend a lot of time on right move in your evenings Looking at the area. Decided just to get a rough idea. We’ve you know what’s coming to the market, what’s selling for, so you get a rough idea of the market. That’s the only way you’re gonna start to understand Whether something’s a good investment or a bad investment. Get a spreadsheet. Make sure every deal you look at you put in the spreadsheet. Be honest with your figures. It’s very, very easy when you go and look at poverty and you’re like, ah, this could be my first one, I can make a lot of money, you get emotionally attached to it and then, when you do the figures, you’ll you’ll be a bit but bit bias in the figures to make it, make it, make it stack up. You, as as I’m sure you know, when you invest you got to get emotion out. It’s gonna be purely based on on the numbers and and I think that’s probably One of the hardest things to do as an investor, but so so crucial. So, yeah, so Get a guest spreadsheet. Know what your minimum return on investment is or in poverty, we normally do it your return on capital employed, because you’re gonna leave a bit of money in there. Know your range and be very, very strict with that. So, for example, when we, when we look at deals, I’ll typically Only do something if my return on the capital ploid is above 30%. Otherwise it’s, it’s not, it’s not good enough and I won’t do it. And then and then also you will need to create some kind of a relationship with agents and stuff. So what I normally do when I go see my, when I go see agencies, just take a box of donuts or take some chocolate. So take something so they remember you yeah. Yeah, it’s so simple, hardly cost you anything, but it just separates you from everyone else, because not many people do it Obviously. Go in, be friendly, chat nicely. Don’t give it 10, because agents hate that. The amount of people that come in. Yeah, I’ve got this much money. I’m looking. I want to buy X and mat. They hear people say that all the time and most people are lying about it. They’re just gonna get your number and just just check it away. They’re not gonna call you like, just be honest with them. No, I’m new to this, I’m starting off and this is what I want to do. Blah, blah, blah. Can you help me? And I’ll find that’s. That’s usually the best approach, especially when you’re talking to new agents and Then, and then, yeah, as a passive investor, you’re probably gonna be putting larger deposits in and then and then just just looking at the cash flow really and looking at depreciation. But, yeah, yeah, I think those are probably the the main points in the little insider things. Yeah, probably the people’s game, just like dentistry. Use your communication skills and you’ll be fine.
Dr James:
Very cool. You know what, when you were talking about being overly optimistic with the figures, this guy right here, me hopeless optimist. Yeah, all the time I’m always like, yeah, we can probably, and maybe if we just nudge this up here, I think we’ll probably get that, you know. But with time, with experience, I’m like now, why don’t we just bake in like a low average estimate Are you really? You’re always and then, if the numbers still work, at that point, what you’re laughing on to you know.
Dr Jassy:
Exactly. Yeah, what I always normally do is what is on my build cost. I’ll put in a contingency of about 10 to 15 percent and then, when you do your figures, always put an occupancy of 90 percent. If it’s like in a city center, it’s fantastic location, otherwise 85 percent, or if it’s a bit out, put it 80 percent. So that’s another thing, because people don’t think about occupancy levels, but it’s not going to be rented a hundred percent of the time. Yeah, but yeah, dude, when I first started my optimism with my figures, 105%.
Dr James:
I hear you, I hear you. Life, life as a way of just put it, raining your back, doesn’t it with those?
Dr Jassy:
Like you know, when you first start off you’re so hungry for the deal you’ll do anything for it. And so your negotiation skills are a bit and the agents can read it off of you. Don’t forget, when the agent selling a house there, they’re gonna try and get there the seller the highest price possible. And when you’re going in there and you’re like hungry for that can sense it straight away, like now I’ll go in, and when I negotiate and when I put an offer in you I’ll give an offer, I’ll give a reason for my first. I think that’s another good point as well. Don’t just say I’ll offer this much money, explain why. So I’ll go in. I’ll be like, look, this is how much I’m gonna offer. The reason being is XYZ, this needs doing, that needs doing, and. And I’ll write a whole email with it. Because then when they go to their, their vendor, they can say look, this guy’s off as offered this much. And these are the reasons. Most likely the vendor’s gonna know Every single reason, your list, because they know their property better than you. So they’ll understand the reasoning behind you. You know, probably putting a lower offer in, but also it shows your service and it shows you know what you’re doing. So there’s more likelihood that when the sale progresses, it’s gonna go through to completion. So that’s another tip as well, which a lot of people don’t do otherwise. You’re just being cheeky in it.
Dr James:
So many gems. Honestly, I’m really appreciative for all these. These are really really really super valuable for anybody listening. Jassy, we’ve got about five ish minutes left and there was one thing I wanted to cover, which was tenants, because everybody’s been on the wrong end of some tenants and things aren’t quite working out. How can we use our nose to spot those instances before they happen?
Dr Jassy:
That’s down to your managing agent doing as Best of the job as they can. You can’t completely read out by tenants, but you can decrease the possibility of getting them. And the way that they do that is basically by doing good referencing. Good referencing and then if people are kind of like they normally do, like a ford ability, if people on the on the bread line, I Will normally ask for a guarantee, and a guarantee who’s a homeowner, because that then gives me protection. If they, you know, mess a place up or they don’t pay the rent, we can then go to the guarantee. And if the guarantee was a homeowner, the guarantee was likely just gonna pay you because, worse comes to worst, they’ve got an asset that you can choose. So so that’s, that’s kind of one of the criteria that me and my managing agents have. There’s lots of these insurance policies and stuff like that, but when you read into the, you know all the terms of conditions. A lot of them probably aren’t worth it. So good referencing and just a gut feeling from your agent, I think. I think having a good managing agent is absolutely key, and if you’ve got one, once again managing agent, don’t go for the cheapest one, pay, pay a bit extra and get, get, get a decent one. It’s gonna Save you a lot headache. It’s gonna make sure you’ve got less chance of having bad tenants, because when you do get a bad tenant like, it’s a nightmare we had. We had a tenant once. I’ll never forget this. They were doing crap. They were doing heroin in one of the rooms the way like Trashing the place, leaving the doors open, bringing other drugies in, and even with all that it was a nightmare to get them out. So, yeah, so like it happens, it hasn’t put me off Passable. But yeah, have a good manager who’s gonna reference your tenants properly and make sure you get a good tenant. Yeah, there was no. And have any rights these days.
Dr James:
Well, it’s well. I mean, here’s the thing. I’ve never purchased a property, but I know that that is a consistent thing, that that land you know people who own properties, they say landlords. That’s what they say is that you can’t get, you have no rights. Next to the, next to the tenants, yeah, yeah, it’s.
Dr Jassy:
It is what it is. I think landlords get villainized a lot and a lot of politicians know that to win votes, go against landlords, because you’re getting Actually there’s way more tenants and landlords.
Dr James:
Right, there we go. Another pearl jazzy. It’s been awesome to have you there. There was absolutely tons of stuff in there. I want to thank you Personally once more for coming on. The Dennis here best podcast. The last one got loads of love. I’m sure this one’s gonna be exactly the same and we’re gonna have you back on very soon. Thank you, my friend. Thanks for having me Appreciate that Cheers. I.