Stacking bricks

For the last 30 odd years, I have been creating tech solutions for small 'mom and pop' businesses up to very large multinationals, in many different industries.

So it will come as no surprise that in the background I have been developing a system for running my slowly expanding activity in residential property. Why?

It forms a perfect inflation-beating pension pot with a significantly higher return than savings accounts yet with a far more appealing risk/reward profile than shares due to the magic mortgage leverage.

I especially talk about residential property. After all, as shelter it is part of Physical Survival, the most important level in Maslow's Hierarchy of basic needs. There is and always be a natural demand for housing.

Of course, as with anything, one has to choose wisely. Properties are far from equal, even in the same street or block. One may be only a perfect 'flip' and another can be perfect to hold on to for years.

Therefore I devised a framework that allows me to pursue different strategies in parallel, based on a combination of lots of number-crunching, hard work and highly systemised repeatable processes. After all, execution is key to success.

A little insight into the front end:

1. Start with at least fifty opportunities meeting 1st level criteria,
2. drill down into 20 core components (e.g. location, demographics, infrastructure, supply/demand, yield post uplift, margins, exits, ...),
3. negotiate only on the very best, stay respectable of the seller's situation yet aim to mitigate risk close to zero while maximising rewards,
4. .. resulting in one, maybe two great deals. Could be none!

A super highly simplified view of the back end:

1. Bricks meet secret sauce

2. refurb if required,

3. sell (=trade) or refinance (=hold).

While in progress, each deal is extensively monitored to ensure we can squeeze all the possible learnings out of them to improve both active as well as future deals.

The fact deals are picked for their ability to be very low on resources -even if they are taking longer than planned- is a key ingredient.

Some deals spend several years in the back end, so we ensure we can run tens of them in parallel. Actually, one is in the back end since 2017, yet still going strong!

I'll share more in my next posts. In the meantime, feel free to message me if you have any questions.