Inside the World of Assisted Sales

The average UK house price is £272,000 as this episode is released in late November 2025. And if you're an overseas investor, this means that your stamp duty would be a staggering £22,640. But what if you could legitimately avoid this charge by selling a property you don't legally own? Welcome to the world of assisted sales. Hello there, this is episode 245 of 'Expat Property Story' and whether you're an expat, foreign national, nomad or even a remote investor in the UK, this is the podcast for you. Let's start with some recent history. During Covid, more and more people got interested in UK property. With time on their hands and funds in the bank due to lockdown, more and more people got the property bug. And while the news is full of landlords leaving the sector, many of these are so-called legacy landlords who bought their properties individually rather than through a limited company and have since been hit by section 24 and higher interest rates. But there are just as many if not more landlords, not to mention institutional investors, entering the market, which makes finding a good deal harder than ever. The property professionals are therefore looking for more creative strategies. Assisted sales is one of them, and that's what this week's show is all about. Paul Stapleton is an expert in this area, so I asked him to share his knowledge with the rest of us. And because it's always a good idea, we started with the end in mind. It's all about understanding what the end product needs to look like and what's most in demand. So I'll typically work with localised agents to find out, is the end product a investor purchase or is it a homeowner-occupier purchase? With my assisted sales, I preferred for it to be a homeowner-occupier purchase purely because of the way valuations are happening right now on mortgages. So we are getting higher valuations on a residential mortgage for a homeowner-occupier, then we are based on affordability through a buy-to-let mortgage. So there can be some 10% down valuation on a buy-to-let. Why do you think that is? It's the affordability of the rent over the mortgage cost. There are different multipliers that different lenders use. So if we had a semi-detached block of two houses and they were identical and one was homeowner-occupied, one was rented out at market value, the assumption previously would be that they're both worth £100,000. But in reality now, the way that the value is a value in it, they're not always on the line of bricks and mortar, it's more on the line of, well, the mortgage is X every month and the rent collected is X. So there's some form of multiplier that they use and they will say, well, we're willing to lend based on £90,000, not a hundred. And then it would be for us then to negotiate either with the seller or the buyer to breach the difference or meet in the middle. I would say that that's been in play for the last two years and that's made tenancy properties more difficult. When you've got a homeowner-occupied area, so I always use where I live as a prime example. So I live in Bromley, three-bedroom semi-on average is about $7.58 and it's most certainly a homeowner-occupied area. You've got 12 to 15 minute fast trains straight to London Victoria. So it's great for people commuting. It's got exceptional schools in the area, whether that's private or grammar. As an investor, you want to be obtaining properties 10%, 15%, 20% below market value, but because there is such a high demand in the area, people are actually moving there for lifestyle rather than investment and they're willing to pay 10%, 15%, 20% above asking price because you've got one property for 20 potential buyers. So if I look at an area like that, I'm looking at that as being a homeowner-occupied market and not just an area that people are willing to pay market value and actually value at market value, but people are willing to pay over and above just to move in the catchment area of a school or shave time off of their commute. Does that not increase your buying costs by 10% percent? It depends on the motivation. So for me, I'm focused on deals that have been around for a minimum of three months. Again, it's kind of like the reverse engineering that you've said. Instead of just thinking everyone is motivated on price, so that property's been around for three months, I'm going to offer a good price to take it off the market. Price might not be the winning factor here. The winning factor might be it's fallen through three times. So it's establishing why is it fallen through? Is it just bad quality buyers or is it that something keeps coming up on the survey and we can use that as a negotiation tool to get that bigger discount? I would say most people in property are led by price, thinking that's the main driver for everyone, but speed could be the driving factor here. Maybe the chain's broken down and they don't want to lose the forward sale, for instance, the forward purchase, sorry. So it could be if I can transact quicker, that person is going to be more inclined to go with me regardless of if I'm 10 grand below the price of a competing person who's in a chain, for instance. So yeah, we've established that it's good to go for owner occupiers as your reverse engineering tactic, but perhaps we should go back to the beginning now and just explain what an assisted sale is. I would say the traditional way of looking at an assisted sale is finding a property like a probate, for instance, and you're effectively offering a service where you're assisting the children in disposing of that asset at the biggest value that it can. So maybe that property still got the avocado bathroom and it's still got a chipboard kitchen and stuff like that. It's not been done up since the '60s. So you're going in there and saying we will agree a price review today, that price is $200,000 in its current condition, but we effectively want to go in there and bring it up to today's living standards to sell it for the highest possible price. And there will be a profit share after all expenses come out. So let's say the anticipation is it's going to cost £50,000 to bring it up to today's spec and the value is £300,000. Then there's a £50,000 profit there. So we've got 100% ROI on that deal and you may say that I'm willing to split that 80/20 with you. So you get 20% for allowing us to do that, but we'll deal with everything. And there would be certain contracts in place and you would have maybe a second charge, power of attorney, stuff like that to secure that deal. That for me is too long-winded. It's too much money involved, too much work, too long a period. I like the quick, in-and-out, low-risk, tiny jobs, more like remedial work. So I'll focus on the deals that maybe have a 20, 30-round margin, but only need five grand put in. So they need a light refurb. They need some decoration. They don't need a kitchen. They don't need a bathroom. They just need a bit of sprucing up. I'll focus on ones where the EPC ratings are a D or an E, and to get them into the favourable interest rate areas with the mortgage companies, I'll do the bare minimum to just take it over the fence of a D to a C. And that might involve just changing the thermostat and heating system. We've done some where it's been as little as some loft insulation and LED light bulbs. That was enough to get the points down into the C bracket. And we're talking hundreds and thousands rather than tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds. And because we're spending low and we're making higher profit margins, my average ROI is typically 250 to 300 percent, and there's no associated purchasing costs or anything like that. I also don't profit share with the vendors. I think if I'm taking on the risk, then I take all the profit. So I agree your price today, and the agreement is whatever is over and above that price on completion is paid to me from the solicitor. So what is your risk then? You say you're taking on a lot of risk. It doesn't sound like it if you're only putting in 5,000 pounds to the deal. Well, the risk is that your contract expires. So your contract isn't an indefinite contract. Some people look for a 12-month contract. I want to be in and out on my deals. So I typically work on about a six-week contract. That six-week is to go and do the works and secure a buyer into legals. So there's a couple of bits of risk here. The risk is that you do not find a buyer within those six weeks. The other part of the risk is that that buyer actually drops out during campaigning, and then your contract expires to find another buyer. So what's really important for me is just ensuring that I have a really good relationship with the vendors that in any instance, if anything happens outside of that contract term, that we still have a good enough understanding that we can replace a buyer, stuff like that. I also think for me, it's a massive barrier to entry. It's throwing about words like power of attorney and second charge. For your Joe Average person wanting to sell a house, that will scare them enough that they won't pick up the phone to you again. So the risk that I take is that I have a much more, what should we say, like a flimsy agreement than an agreement that goes through a solicitor with a second charge and a power of attorney. So for me, it's all about building a solid foundation of a relationship with them, building trust up front, and me just rolling the dice that that deal is going to work. The touch would, I haven't had one that doesn't work, but I am prepared that at some stage a deal will not work. And I'm fine with that because I look at it from a point of view, kind of like if you invest in the stock market, right? You invest in 10 different stocks, and eight of those stocks do well, two of those plummet, but you're still 120% up at the end of the year. Yeah, I mean, it does sound attractive because a lot of property investing is very slow, but a few things I'm not quite sure on, you're saying you're taking the risk. So you have it in the contract that basically you'll be in and out within 12 weeks. That will secure a buyer within that time. So it doesn't mean we're complete yet. So our contract is for the time of carrying out the works and securing a buyer into Legals. So that's my contract. If outside of that period, the buyer drops out, then the risk for me is that they might not give me the opportunity to go and replace that buyer. And they've got five brands worth of money spent on their house, they take the house back. What are the what ifs involved with this? Because I guess if you're going to kind of look at risk, then you're thinking about all the what ifs. What are the sort of negative what ifs with this? And how do you mitigate for them? So as I said, the traditional way of doing it is that you have second charge and power of attorney. So the what ifs in my case, because I don't have that is, well, what if they die? Then the contract isn't with them. What if they decide that they want to sell? What if they decide that they don't want to pay you the fee? So there are things that we do to mitigate that. I get a undertaking of fee with the solicitor. So once I know what the sale price is, I'll go to the solicitor when we when we get into legal and I'll say, this is our fee, can you undertake the fee with your client that basically guarantees they'll pay us out of the completion funds. So that emits against the risk of not getting paid the difference. Because sometimes it's all well and good, them agreeing that they're happy to accept 200 grand. But when they're realizing you're making 50, then they can be like, well, actually, you're making a lot of money out. I mean, maybe we should renegotiate this and you've already done the works and you're in Legals. So getting that undertaking of fees called an irrevocable undertaking from the solicitor at the start is super, super important. Sometimes you may have to readjust that irrevocable undertaking because if you get it based on the sale price, the sale price can always change, right? The mortgage value goes out and says it's not worth 200, it's worth 195. Well, then that means I'm making five grand less profit. So we have to get the undertaking adjusted. But outside of that, that's how I protect myself in making sure that I get my money out of the deal. You're not using the same solicitor. They have a solicitor and you have a solicitor, right? Yeah. So I'll always have two to three solicitors that have capacity that are my recommended solicitors that understand the setup. And the reason that I like them to use my solicitors is because I have a relationship with them, which allows me to easily progress that deal. So I think one thing that people fail to understand in property is that they think deals organically will complete. But when you break down, convening, there's actually 13 on average, 13 third parties involved in getting that deal across the line. There's got the estate agent, two sets of solicitors, maybe independent legal advice, valuers, the local council, a letting agent, maybe insurers, like there's all these people. For them all to work together collectively and all come together at the same time at the end to complete, it needs that conductor in the middle orchestrating it. It's very difficult when you don't have a good relationship with both sets of solicitors for them to even pick up the phone and allow you to get updates and allow you to help them. So having people that not only you can work with, but are used to working together as well. So my solicitors may communicate and they're communicating because they have 10 cases that they're working on on the buyer and seller side. So they have a good relationship. There's no egos or anything like that. I don't know if you've ever been copied into solicit correspondence, but it's always a bit of a... I've asked. Yeah, it's always a bit of a measure up who's the best and when you're ready to exchange, tell them I'm ready to exchange and call me. And the other one's like, well, if they're ready, why don't they call me? And in the end, you're having to do the call and then patch them both in because nobody wants to be that person. So having people that genuinely get on, enjoy working together, smoothens the operation. And sometimes it's a case of offering in the deal to cover their legal fees, to make sure that that's a smooth process as well and that you have full control over that deal. So I'm quite conscious that this is quite complicated for people who've never done this. So perhaps it would be a good idea or easy if we presented a case study? So I am a deal source. So that's what I've done for the last nine years. And I typically source tenanted turnkey properties for my investors. And a state agent brought me a deal that hadn't shifted on the market. And he said, I think this would be a great deal for your investors. And we could fill it with a tenant really easily. But it's just been left in a bit of a bad state and probably needs like four or five grand spent on it. I looked at the deal. If you can secure it for this price, then I think I would be happy to commit the money, pay for that refurb, get you to put a tenant in there, and then we could sell it to one of our investors. And we did that. We made over 500% ROI on that deal. And that worked really well. And that was the start of this strategy for me, which was finding deals that would be a great potential tenanted property for our clients. And then doing that light refurb and giving them the end product. And I almost looked at it as almost like an off plan deal telling them, you can secure this deal now. And this will be what the end product is. And then that would de-risk it for me because I'd already found the buyer before I started doing the works. So who was the owner? Was it a landlord? This one was a landlord. So the tenants have moved out and he decided that he was going to sell it in the state that the tenants moved out in. There were stickers on the wall, the bath panel was hanging off. I mean, it's very, very minor things. However, people were just walking in there and just not really being too enthused with the current condition of the property. So he was selling it with vacant possession though, right? He was selling it with vacant possession, hoping that that product would work well for a homeowner occupier, but they just weren't buying it. So I guess because he was a landlord, he's more amenable to these creative strategies, right? Yes. And I would say that the ones that we've done it with homeowner occupiers have been people relocating overseas. So they've wanted to give the responsibility to someone else. So they had a deadline date that they needed to move. And if the sale hadn't progressed to where it needed to go, the assisted sale route of someone basically taking over that and making sure the property was in a condition that could get the highest level of money was the right service for them, not just an estate agency service. So are you looking for a hands-free, low-risk way to build a UK property portfolio with someone you can genuinely trust? Then look no further than today's sponsor, the Finnegan McNeil Property Group. FMP specialised in simple, straightforward bitolettes under £125,000, operating across the Northwest and Greater Manchester. FMP have sourced nearly 300 properties for clients, including several listeners of this podcast. Now, I've always declined potential sponsors in the past, but I can wholeheartedly recommend FMP. Founder and ex-guest Darren McNeil will find, renovate and fully manage your property, giving you a completely hands-off investment while you get on with your life. So if you understand the power of property but don't have the time, contact or local knowledge to do it yourself, FMP can do it all for you, safely and transparently. To learn more, visit www.fmp.group or go back and listen to episode 240 where Darren explains his full hands-free service. Now, back to expat property story. You're offering this landlord more than he would probably get on the open market. Did you say they'd had it on the open market, hadn't sold for a while or the deal had fallen out of bed a couple of times? So this deal, it was mainly based around the condition not being good. So I'm looking at the pictures now. So you've got walls that were painted pink with black permanent marker with patterns drawn on it. The entrance hall and the landing was a dark terracotta colour on the walls, which made it very, very dark with just your pendant light hanging down. I'm looking, we've got lime green, we've got yellow, we've got sticker tiles in the bathroom. So very, very cheaply done. We offered less than market value because it has to be in my favour. So I'm looking at a list of works. So typically I would provide a floor plan of the property and just outline what I propose to do in every room. And most of this is paint, paint, paint for this particular property. I think we went through 50 litres of white emulsion for this property. We cleaned the carpets, we painted the tiles. It was predominantly just handyman work in there. And I'm looking at what we spent. So we secured it for £132,500. That was the price that the vendor agreed to net out the deal. We spent £4,120 and that did actually include two months of his interest only mortgage payments whilst we did the works and got someone in. We sold the property for £160,000, which was market value. Sorry, does that £4,000 include your 50 litres of paint? That did, yeah. What year was this? This was 2022. And where was it? So this is in a place called Boston, which is in Lincolnshire. It's a market town, predominantly Eastern European. It's coming over to work on the farm, so fruit and veg picking, packaging, that kind of thing. And very cheap labour when it comes to painting and decorating. So we had two guys in there for five days, just absolutely smashing out the house. So we sold the property for £160,000. So purchase price, £132,500. Your costs were about £4,120 and you sold it for £160,000. Yeah. So that was £23,380 profit, which was 567% ROI. And of course, the best part about this strategy is that there's no stamp duty to pay, right? There's no stamp duty. There's no legal fees because we're not engaging a solicitor. So if you are doing a big job, then you would engage a solicitor to do the second charge and the power of attorney. There's no mortgage arrangement fees, estate agency fees. Any of the associated purchasing costs with a property purchase are eradicated from this. So the only expense is the £4,120 and then everything is a net profit. There's no gross. It's all net. The thing I like about this is sometimes from a flip perspective, the difference between a deal working and a deal not working is the associated purchasing costs because that effectively is the profit being eaten up. So there are deals that I can go into with the assisted sale model and we can execute assisted sale and make profit at the same price that the vendor wants because to purchase it just wouldn't work. But if we save those purchasing costs, that's our profit margin in there. So I actually don't call this assisted sales. I've actually rebranded it when I do my training. I call it flipping other people's properties and that's because we're flipping it whilst under someone else's ownership still. You were talking before about irrevocable undertakings and that to prevent the person whose property you're flipping from coming back and saying, well, you're making all this money, let's renegotiate. How many times have people come back to you suggesting to renegotiate? I would say in the early days, a handful of times, I think that's all down to sort of naivety, thinking people would just be okay with it. And I think the biggest thing that I've learned in sales and business is that communication is key at every stage. We don't just communicate the agreement at the very start, they sign it, we move on. I'm always in communication with the vendors, mainly because I want them to understand what I'm doing in the property. Even though they don't really care, I like to give them updates on the condition of the property, what we've done to it, the end product, everything like that. I'll also be upfront straight away and say, you know what, it was a better deal than we thought and we were able to secure 160 for it. So we've got a significant margin. And to eradicate them coming back and thinking they've been hard done by, if I earn more than 300%, I will always offer to pay their legal fees. And it almost feels like that's the sweetener that then doesn't warrant them coming back and complaining if that makes sense, because we voluntarily given them something. But it's just a case of explaining the contract upfront and making them understand that I could make 10 grand, I could make 20, I could make 30. I don't know until I do the works, I don't know until someone buys it, but that's the risk that I take on this deal. And I just need them to be okay and happy with that. And I do that on a Zoom because it's then recorded. I have it signed in a contract and I try and have three different areas where they confirm that they understand and they're happy with the agreement. So that if that does come down the line further and I have to go legal on them, there's three different instances that they've confirmed at the start that they're happy with the contract. They're happy with the agreed price. They fully understand that I could make a significant amount of money, but I could also not make a significant amount of money. And that's the dice that I roll and the risk that I take. Yeah. So it looks to me like the risk you're taking is that you can't get your sale completed or go into Legals within the 12 weeks. So then you're at danger of losing the money that you spent on the refurb. Is that the biggest risk then? That's the biggest risk, yeah. There is another risk, isn't there? Of course, this is all very well in a market that's moving up. But what about a market that's moving down? For me, I have this rule that there has to be three solid sold comparables within the last six months for me to have confidence in the estimated GDP. And I guess you're also mitigated by the fact that you're in and out quickly. So it would take a market about six months to fully crash, right? Yeah, exactly. There are certain areas that I wouldn't do this in. So if I look at somewhere like Sunderland, for instance, where on the same street, the same house could sell for 30 grand in auction or it could go at market value at 80 grand, that's too risky for me because dependent on the value we're on the day and who turns up, you just don't know what comparables they're going to use to justify their valuation to de-risk it for the lender. Because I think even though we pay for the valuation on the mortgage, people are confused to think that the value is employed by you. The value is employed by the lender. You're just paying for that. So the lender is their client and they de-risk this for their client because for the next two years, it's on their head. If the market dips and all of a sudden they're in position where the property is worth less than they've lent, that's when they go after the value of not predicting the market condition. So if it's going to get downvalued, I need to know that if I can test this, I've got three solid comparables that can't be looked at and said, well, actually, we can't justify your 200 grand estimation. So I am very selective where I do it. And it's always like you said, the reverse engineering, what could go wrong? What could go wrong is the down value. Okay, can we contest the down valuation if that happens? Well, actually, not much is sold in the last year. So there's not really a comparable. Okay, well, then that presents a high level of risk. Because if a value can't say, well, actually, this sold for that price, so we can use that, they're going to have to just pick a figure out the year that they think and it's always going to be lower than you probably guessed. So how many of these have you done? I would say I've done, some of them have been like very minimal, like maybe 2, 300 pounds. And some of them that I've done have involved no money on my side. So I've actually identified what needs to be done. I've got the seller to pay for all the works and I've taken all the profit. So if I'm looking at not just the ones that I've put my money in, but the ones that we've got other people, we've probably done about 13 of those. They're not as readily available as maybe flips are, and it does take more negotiation skills to pull someone from a traditional sale to something that's a bit more creative. Everyone thinks if it's not a traditional sale, then it's a bit dodgy. And not every estate agent is going to want to work on that basis as well. And what I have come to learn is that the ones that will work with you are typically independent agents that have their own mind, the nationals, you're never speaking to a decision maker, they're all just puppets from head office. So anything outside of the box ticking, they're not willing to work on that. So these deals work best with off-market direct vendor deals or building a good solid foundation and relationship with an independent estate agency, maybe proving yourself on some very straightforward transactions first, and then approaching them with something weird and wonderful after. And if you can incentivize them as well, like they're getting paid 1% for selling the property, well, if you can help me, I'll be happy to up your fee to 2%, for instance. Or if they've agreed £100,000 with the vendor, the vendor's only going to want to pay their selling fee for the 100 grand that they're getting. So we would say we're paying 2% on the 50 grand difference. So you're doubling your fee, that kind of thing. But if I don't have to do an assisted sale, I won't. So the assisted sales that I do typically are the same sort of stock that I need in my sourcing business. My average fee in my sourcing business is £11,200. So if I can make a clean £11,200 without putting any money into a deal, that's always going to be my preference. If I have to put £2,000, £3,000 into a deal to make 2%, 300%, then we'll do that. If the deal is a clean deal that's almost like a slam dunk, there's no comparables that are going to go against us. We'll do that. But my preference over an assisted sale is always to do a straightforward property sourcing transaction, because then I haven't committed any money into the deal, and there's no risk attached to it for me. So 13 in total? 13 in total, yeah. Right. Over how many years? Over three years. So you're basically approaching estate agents, independent estate agents, or going direct to vendor. That's the way that you do this, right? Yeah. I've built and forged the relationships with not only estate agents, but letting agents are a great source for stock, because letting agents work with landlords, and landlords will look to exit the market, and those letting agents will want to retain that business and not lose it. So we work with letting agents to say, look, any of your landlords are looking to sell their property. We have landlords looking to take over existing portfolios. It could be a very seamless transaction, and you'll get to retain that business as well. You won't lose that from your books. We'll also give you a referral. I was going to say that wouldn't work with an assisted sale because you're selling the property, so the letting agent isn't getting that business. Exactly. But if, like you say, you're lining up a buyer who is a landlord, but I guess it could be tricky to ensure that they stay with that letting agent. It could be, but we could always recommend that they've got a great relationship with the tenant, and they know the property, and they've managed it well enough that if we provide, I don't know, two years worth of rental statements that there's never been a void, that kind of thing. The other way that we work with the letting agents is, as well as getting stock from them, we also take stock to them. So we also say, like, you've got a database of thousand active landlords in the area. Do you think any of your landlords might be interested in a ready-tenanted property to add to their portfolio? And again, we'll pay them a fee, and they will just do a mail shot out to their database. They don't always sell them for us, but it's just another avenue of not selling on the market as well and selling to the right client pool. Instead of putting it out online and going out to the masses, you've got a thousand active landlords in that target area. Surely one of them would be interested in the property if it was well priced with the tenant already in. But sometimes it pays to look in less obvious places. My biggest source of investors has actually come through a financial advisor. So we've worked for a long time together. Most people are out there trying to find that needle in a haystack on social media and networking events. If you think about it, you don't need to find the individual, you just need to find the company or the person that houses multiple of that person you're looking for and just work out a mutual beneficial relationship where you both can eat off of that same client. And that's what I've done. You can't wherever you're at in a business. You can't be client facing and find the stock and do everything. So I focused on what I enjoyed, which is to create a part of finding deals and creating good deals. Someone else can sell it. Do you have a tip on how people would find independent letting agents or independent estate agents? I would say that estate agents and letting agents aren't the best at networking. I think most of their time is spent prospecting, door knocking, posting leaflets. It is quite hard to catch them in a standardized networking event, but I would say industry events like the NRLA events and that, that's probably a good place to start or just walk in there. But pull most of us like 6,000 miles away. Well, yeah, there is that. And maybe you just need to put one weekend that you come over and you just dedicate that to just knocking on every estate agent's door. I'm just wondering if, because I mean, I use property engine. I don't know if you know property engine. Yeah, I don't. I just wonder whether there's a way to kind of get in there and establish which ones are the independents and which ones are the nationals. Well, you can do that on RightMove. So if you go on to RightMove and you go to find an agent and you put your location in, all of the agents listed on RightMove will come up. And if you look at the, there'll be like a short bio on each. If they're an independent, they usually shout that they're an independent. And then I will just shortlist all of those. And you can usually tell if it's not a national name that I recognize, then I will click on their website and see if they're an independent agency. What I am seeing though is you've got that hybrid, haven't you, of people that trade under like EXP or Keller Williams and stuff like that. So they're effectively like self-employed agents under the umbrella of, I suppose you can say a national company, but they're working like remotely. They're not office based and they're a bit more flexible to work with on a self-employed basis rather than like a branch of hunters or something like that. This is a podcast obviously for expats, remote investors mostly. How possible is this assisted sales for people potentially 6,000 miles away like I am? I don't think it matters if you're 6,000 miles away or 100. So I'm about 110 miles away from where the closest assisted sale is that I've done. I haven't been to the property. There are so many ways that you can do it remotely. The main thing here is just making sure that you've got the right people in place. So to view the property, I use a company called Vuber. They're an independent viewing company. Yeah, we've had the founder of Vuber on here before. Yeah. So I'll use Vuber and I'll pay £30 for them to go and view the property and give me some feedback. Now that £30 is cheaper than me jumping in my car and driving there and driving back in the same day. It also means I'm buying back my time as well. If they give me the thumbs up that the property is in good condition, I then instruct them to go and take 12 pictures for me, do a video walkthrough and do what they call property inspection. So it's a bit like an inventory, gives me a full outline. They're super, super anal when it comes to the property inspection form. They will say the carpet's a little bit frayed on the stairs. There's scuffs up the walls on the stairs. There's a light bulb missing in the kitchen. So it's more information than you'll need and that's great because you don't want the person that glosses over everything and just gives you best case. When it comes to finding contractors for the work, I tend to contact letting agencies because letting agencies will have preferred contractors that they use for all of their landlords and I will use their recommended contractors to get the work done for me and I'll usually pay a fee to the letting agent to just project manage that for me. And so ideally, of course, talk to a lot about reverse engineering and if you're lining up a buyer that is going to take this property on and give it to the letting agent, you're dangling the carer and you're hopefully getting a reliable tradesperson and also the letting agent wants the business so he's not going to rip you off. Exactly that. So yeah, for me, I think property is all about relationships. I think the more relationships you have, the more you can collaborate, the more business you can do. You've got people that want every deal and they want it all themselves and they want to earn the maximum money. I would say 90% of the deals that I've done over the last nine years have been in collaboration with another party that we've shared the commission on. Only 10% of the deals have I done independently where I've taken the full commission, but that's meant that I could do more deals. So you're not negotiating with the vendor necessarily? I mean, not initially anywhere. You're probably starting with the letting agent or the estate agent and trying to get them to sell it to the vendor. Is that right? Is that fair? I get them to sell the concept to the vendor, but essentially for me to feel comfortable, I still want to have that call with them. It's almost like Chinese whispers, isn't it? They give their account and their translation of what I've told them. And then when it comes to them paying me the money, they're like, "Why are we paying them a 1% fee and then you're getting 10 grand?" And it's like, "Was this not explained to you?" No. So in order to prevent that from happening, I always say that mistake is only a mistake if you make it more than once. It's happened once to us. We've learned from it. Now, it's essential that we speak to every single investor. If you need me to sign a non-circumvention agreement to say, "I'm just going to speak to them once," and after that, it's yours. "I'm not going around you. I'm not trying to take the deal from you." That's cool. We can do that. But for my peace of mind, I have to have spoken to the vendor once to make sure they understand how this is going to work. And talking of understanding, just in case someone doesn't understand, I know you don't do this, but you talked about power of attorney and second charge, which is what some other people do with assisted sales. Can you just explain who gets the second charge, the person flipping the property for other people? Yeah, exactly. So it would be myself that would have the second charge, and the second charge would basically be for the cost of the works. So what the money is that we have tied into that property so that if they passed or if they tried to pull out of the deal, that £5,000 that I've put into the property would be secured, and they would be able to sell that property without releasing that money to us. And the purpose of the power of attorney? Power of attorney is on the basis that that person either passes away or maybe they're hospitalised. You still have control to execute that contract. These are really difficult, scary terms that you've gone from signing an estate agency agreement, which is very simple. So all of a sudden, someone saying power of attorney and second charge, it's such a barrier for me unless they're an educated investor or an educated landlord. I think your Joe Average, Nan and Granddad, Mum and Dad would just think it's easier to say no than understand it. You source properties, you do a lot of different things. So I'm guessing that you're not specifically going out looking for assisted sales. You're kind of like looking at opportunities and saying unassisted sale would work here. Assisted sales is a problem solvers dream. Every deal that I look at is problematic, because the good properties aren't being discounted. There has to be something wrong with a property or with the circumstances surrounding the seller for you to get that discount. So an assisted sale is basically born out of someone's problems. And the solution could be an assisted sale. That could be one way to solve that solution. But it's quite difficult to say, let me know if you've got any properties that would be a good assisted sale, because that essentially could be any flip property. And the difference is, are they willing to let you do the flip while they're still on the property, or are they fixed on you buying it and you just do what you want when you own it? What are the biggest objections that vendors have when you propose this to them? What if you don't sell it? Well, that's quite an easy one. You're in no worse a position. You're still left with the property, but in a better condition. What if it doesn't value up? Well, again, that's on us. If it doesn't value up, I've had a deal that I was set to make circa £15,000. And the down valuation was so bad that we walked away with just under two grand. So not a great deal. But really, I think the biggest barriers are going to be the gatekeepers at the start. So it's almost like a two-prong attack. I've got to sell the idea to the estate agent first before I can sell the idea to the vendor. And there are instances when you think, this is perfect for the vendor. You know they would go on it, but you've got that gatekeeper of the agent because they don't care or want to understand how it works. They just want that simple transaction of buying it. They become the problem. So you said you've done 13 of them. How many have you tried to do? Are you talking about how many have I pitched and not secured? Yes, that's what I meant. Oh, Christ. Yeah, loads. Maybe 50. So it's kind of 1 in 4. Yeah, which I think is still a good stat to be fair, because I don't think people are even securing purchases in a 1 in 4 ratio. So it's not too bad. But they're brought to us as just a standard sourcing deal. And then we're saying, well, actually, it's not good enough for us to source it on right now. It needs a bit of work. We'll be happy to pay for that work on these terms. It seems like everyone in property these days is talking about the professionalization of the sector. Paul has started a company to cater to that need. For the last year and a half, I've been building this business with my business partners to basically educate people that property is a business. And as a business, you need to know more than just property knowledge. The only way you grow is to start educating yourself on scaling it as a business. So what the Property and Entrepreneurs Summit basically is, is that one-stop event that you can come to and you can learn about property in the morning. And you can learn about business entrepreneurship, marketing, branding, AI, everything like that. It's a full, all-inclusive day of networking and learning. We've now launched quarterly masterminds that we run for 80 people. And we are launching the Property and Entrepreneurs Social events across the whole of the UK. The plan is by the end of next year, every single month, we will have at least 20 socials going on across the UK. And all that can be accessed via one website? Yeah. So the Property and Entrepreneurs Summit.co.uk or the best place is probably our Instagram page, which is Property and Entrepreneurs Summit. Here are three things to think about from episode 245. Firstly, it's the idea that there are other ways to look for deals than on the market. One of the biggest advantages of finding an off-market opportunity is that you're not competing with lots of people looking at the same deals on RightMove. Personally, I like the creative possibilities you can unlock by using the Off Market tab on Property Engine to find situations where a property was on the market and now isn't. And while not every vendor is willing to drop their price the longer their property goes unsolved, there's no harm in hunting these vendors down and making an offer that works for you. And if you'd like to give Property Engine a try, you can use the code XPAT to get a cheeky discount there too. The second thing worth mentioning this week is from the start of my conversation with Paul, when we were talking about one of my old favourite themes, reverse engineering, and Paul's revelation that he's seeing higher valuations for residential mortgages for owner occupiers than valuations based on affordability for a buy-to-let mortgage. So if you're looking to flip or trade a property or design an overall strategy, then thinking about your end-user might be something worth keeping in mind. And the final thing to think about from today's show is Paul's observation that as a professional property investor you have to be the conductor of the orchestra as he puts it, although sometimes I feel more like a babysitter than a conductor. The point is, you need to keep on top of things to move everything along, because as they say, time is money. And if conducting an orchestra is not your thing, then you might want to go down a more turnkey route, where nearly everything is done for you, in which case you might consider getting in touch with our sponsor's FMP. Links to FMP, Property Engine and this week's guest Paul Stableton are of course to be found in the description. Thank you for choosing this podcast to listen to and on that it would be really helpful to share the episode with someone you know. So please do me a favour and pass the pod to just one other person in your property network via WhatsApp, which helps build our community and attract more wisdom and expertise from experts like Paul. And while we're talking WhatsApp, if you're an overseas investor and you'd like to join our community to ask questions or share your knowledge, then get in touch via the show notes. And finally at the risk of repetition, share the show to spread the word. You've been listening to Expert Property Story.