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SUCCESS STORY

Ditching Unfulfilling Corporate Career For A Six Figure Income And Million-Pound Property Flip

Michael Hand forged a successful career as a Managing Director in his corporate life, but something wasn’t fitting quite right with him. He felt like his lifestyle wasn’t in true harmony with his values and wanted to do something about it.

After being inspired by Touchstone Education’s Paul Smith, Michael has now ventured into property investing and has a £1m+ portfolio to boot.

We spoke to Michael to find out more…

Michael Hand

Buying The House Next Door and Giving It The Full Treatment With None Of My Own Money

Michael continued, “As we speak I am four weeks away (hopefully!) from finishing my first development project – Mono House.

“Having spent the first four months of my 12-month mastermind travelling the county looking for deals, I ended up buying the house next door!

“We completely re-imagined this 50’s semi, giving it the full ‘Remix’ treatment to create a modern mid-century, four-bed family home.

“I financed this with none of my own money, so you could say this was a triumph of resourcefulness over resources. The property being next door and knowing the area well helped give me confidence in the numbers and I’ve been able to assemble my power team through this project. 

“From a commercial perspective, I have applied the fundamentals of how we can add value to a property in three ways:

1. Buying the property off-market and below market value.

2. What you do to the property – reworked the existing footprint to maximum effect, adding bedrooms and usable square footage, but perhaps most importantly, creating a home that matches the need of a modern family today, who want their home to be multi-functional.

3. What we do with it and the exit – right now, the plan is to flip this in order to fund future projects. This should create a good return. Had things been different with the mortgage market, this could have worked well as a high-end SA unit.

£1.1 Million Valuation and Six-Figure Profit

We asked Michael about the challenges of the project.

“Getting finance wasn’t initially straight-forward, but persistence was the key,” he told us. “Also being able to agree the purchase price was tricky as building costs were going up, therefore having already given an initial figure to the seller I had to revise this down as that number no longer worked.

“Being transparent and giving clear justification helped us reach an agreement. 

“The final thing is the development timeframe. It has taken longer than expected, but I’d already factored that into my plan – which I’d definitely recommend doing. I’m an external optimist, but better to be super conservative, particularly when structural work is involved.

“We’re not quite there yet, but based on the Savills surveyor end valuation (GDV) of £1.1m, we’re hopeful we can achieve this as a sale price.

“If we do that this would be a six-figure profit on the project.

“Even more importantly for me, this represents something significant as the first of many projects and I hope underlines that we ‘walk the talk’ and deliver on our promise of ‘inspiring spaces for better living.

“It will be fantastic to know we’ve created something that someone gets to enjoy and create many happy memories for themselves and being right next door, I might even get to see it for myself.”

What Can Touchstone Education

 Do For You?

If you want to follow in Michael's footsteps and take those all important first steps on your property investment journey, download your complimentary copy of our founder Paul Smith's best-selling book, Wealth Through Property now.

 

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