#163 One of the most frequently asked questions I get when listeners reach out is around expat mortgages. Do you need a broker? Does it matter where you live or who you work for? What kind of bank account do you need? Can you get a limited company mortgage, or should you buy in your personal name? What are the rules around portfolio landlords? Toda…

#162 Did you know that commercial property usually cost less per square foot to buy than residential? This can make commercial property a very attractive option if you’re looking to develop HMOs. And often the location of commercial stock is ideal for this strategy. But commercial HMO conversions come with their own unique sets of risks and concern…

#161 Starting with the end in mind is a familiar theme in UK property investing, but it’s not as easy as it sounds when it comes to tax planning. For this episode, we’re going back into the archives to remind new listeners and refresh the memories of the rest of you about the importance and detail behind one of the most frequently asked questions o…

#160 Do you know what Sideways Loss Relief is? How about the Annual Investment allowance mechanism? And what do they have to do with Capital Allowances? Are you familiar with the deadlines for making a Capital Allowances claim and how to find out if they’ve been claimed before without alerting a vendor to the fact that they could make a claim. This…

#159 You’ve probably heard about Capital allowances. You might even know something about this generally little known area of tax relief. But I’m sure you’d like to know more, right? If you have Commercial property, Serviced Accommodation or even HMOs, then it’s definitely worth your while listening to this two-part special on Capital Allowances bec…

#158 Is social housing a business model that interests you? Do you understand how it works? Would you like to know how to go about building a portfolio based on providing housing for vulnerable people in all their shapes and sizes? Have you thought about the advantages and disadvantages? Are you wondering if this might be the way forward for you? S…

#157 You may have heard people talking about sustainability, Net Zero, future proofing, institutional funding, socially conscious investing, Environmental and Social Governance or ESG and thought what’s it all got to do with me as an expat property investor. Well hopefully, after listening to this week’s show, you’ll be a little closer to finding o…

#156 Building a UK property portfolio as an expat is not easy. Firstly there’s the distance… And the further you are from the UK the harder it is. Not only does it take a lot longer to get back to the UK, but there’s the added complication of time differences. And then there’s the lack of time available to work on building a portfolio. And finding …

#155 Did you know that there are 3 billion Google Searches every day? And have you heard of a website called Answer the Public? Answer the Public is a website which listens into data from search engines like Google then quickly cranks out every useful phrase and question people are asking around a keyword. I typed in UK property and by far the most…

#154 Have you considered using a home stager to market a property? Is it worth paying for a stager? What’s the difference between a home stager and an interior designer? Do you know if there’s a difference is between staging a property to rent versus staging to sell? If you’ve spent time thinking about any of these questions, then this episode is f…

#153 Adopting a new UK property strategy is no walk in the park because you need to understand and control as many of the variables you can identify as possible. This is even more important if you’re using investor finance, because you need to have a plan A, Plan B and Plan C for giving your investors the return OF their money and ON their money. I…

#152 How do you go about carrying out due diligence on a new UK Property business model? How can you make sure you’re not believing the hype? Do you presume that something must work because it’s what everyone else seems to be doing? This episode (the 3rd of 4) will hopefully get you thinking about some of these things as we continue our story of wh…

#151 How do you keep on top of your UK Credit Rating? Do you even know what your credit rating is? Do you know what factors affect your score? This episode serves as a warning as to what can go wrong if you’re not very careful, even if you’re the kind of person like me that likes to pay their credit card debt at the end of each and every month. Kee…

#150 Some of the most useful content according to people who get in touch with us is when we tell the parts of our story that don’t go well, And let’s face it, we learn more from what goes wrong than what goes right. So over the next few episodes we’ll be covering the reasons why we didn’t buy any property in 2023. This episode discusses: · Naivety…

#149 Do you invest in stocks and shares? Do you invest in property? Maybe you invest in both? If you take two suitcases to the check in counter at the airport, one marked property and one stocks and shares and they tell you that you can only put one on the plane, which one do you choose? Have you ever wondered, like I have why people choose stocks …

#148 How do you deal with setbacks in your property story? Lots of people talk about how to win, but maybe the real lessons to be found in life and property are about how to deal with, and come back from disappointment. And since we all have setbacks in our property stories from time to time, it often helps to be inspired by those who get up again …

#147 How long does it take you to analyse a deal on Right Move? Do you find yourself looking at rubbish bins to try and work out the number of a property so that you can then go and check out the EPC and do other due diligence to work out if a deal really is a deal? If your plan is to turn it into an HMO, have you found it as frustrating as I have,…

#146 Is now a good time to buy UK property? Do you wish you had a crystal ball to see six months into the future? How will the housing market look in the second half of 2024? When analysts comment on the state of the market, they look to house price indexes from the The UK House Price or Nationwide or Halifax as they try to predict future trends. B…

#145 Do you regularly visit your investment area? How well do you know your location? Who are your eyes and ears in those places? How do you know if you can trust them? How often do you or could you visit your patch? Or are you confident enough to build a portfolio from the other side of the world with no friends or family to help you in the part o…

#144 I’m in Derby. It’s the final day of my UK Property Tour. Today, I have to take the hire car back to Nottingham and then the train south to London. I also have two final meetings I’ve arranged. One with a second sourcer, who we’ll call Sourcer 2 and another with an HMO interior design team. But that’s not what’s at the front of my mind on this …

#143 13 has always been mine and my wife's lucky number. On our one and only visit to a casino in Macau we once won two consecutive games of roulette picking, you guessed it the number 13. So will this deal that we’ve been offered in Derby be our lucky 13th addition to our portfolio on this, the 13th consecutive daily episode in our mini-season doc…

#142 Day 11... My UK property tour and this mini-season of diary style podcasts is drawing to a close now. I'm in Derby meeting anyone and everyone who can help us find a 3 bed house to convert to a 6 bed all ensuite HMO It doesn’t look like I’m going to return to Hong Kong with an HMO in my back pocket. But the aim is to get as close as I can. To …

#141 In preparation for my UK Property Tour, I used the filters on Spare Room to build up an XL database of HMO rooms that were achieving the highest rates. I excluded everything except rooms with en-suites and bills. My spreadsheet included columns for: · location · rents · amenities, · the dates the adverts were listed · how long the adverts had …

#140 This is Day 9 of our mini-season of daily pods documenting my UK Property Tour. If you trust someone just because they’re in the public domain and they seem nice, you’re putting yourself at risk. On the other hand, if your default position is to trust no one, you won’t get anywhere. So what’s the answer… Well there’s no magic formula, so I wou…

#139 Day 8 of my UK Property Tour. Today is Saturday and I find myself on the M6 heading north to Blackpool at 9 o’clock in the morning to talk to a bungalow fliiper! Yesterday, I coined a new Property Term, called Some Money In. It’s the opposite of All Money Out and it refers to the idea that most of us can expect to have to leave some money in a…

#138 Have you heard people talking about all money out deals? Or money in money out deals? Others call them unicorn deals. In my experience, the people who talk most about them are usually selling a course. Or a deal. I’m not saying they don’t happen and maybe you’ve achieved it yourself. But personally, I think you’d be better off saving your ener…

#137 This is the seventh diary entry for my first ever UK property Tour. I'm in the UK for two weeks, checking up on our two SA houses and researching our new investment area. In this episode, I meet the designer and managing agent of our new SA in Leyland ahead of its launch the following week. i also take a walk around the neighbourhood to try to…

#136 My UK Property Tour continues! Today’s diary entry starts in Nottingham, continues in Derby, returns to Nottingham to pick up a hire car. I then head up the M1 and M6 to a networking meeting in Manchester before finally getting to bed well after midnight in our second SA property in Leyland, Lancashire just hours after the refurb / staging has…

#135 Everyone loves a story and that's one of the reasons we called this podcast Expat Property Story. Today's episode is a short story about Day 4 of my UK Property Tour. I'm reluctant to say any more as I don't want to spoil the story. But the moral of the story relates to the importance of having a good managing agency, particularly in Serviced …

#134 What factors made you choose your investment area? Was it because it’s within a certain radius of friends and family or UK property partners? Was it because of the three pillars of population, employment opportunities and infrastructure. Was it because of yield or capital growth? Well we’ve chosen Derby as our next property hotspot for many if…

#133 Do you have short-term lets in you portfolio? Are you thinking of getting your hands on one before the new rules come in requiring planning and signing up to the registration scheme? If you already have a short term let, have you stayed in it to understand your guests’ experience? Are you aware of the importance of cutting out the online trave…

#132 I’m in the UK for 14 days to check up on mine and my wife’s 3 million pound property portfolio. This mini-season of daily pocket-sized podcasts documenting my UK Property Tour is sure to have something that can help you with your property story. During my UK Property Tour, I'll be speaking to potential investors, staying in our two Serviced Ac…

#131 Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend nearly two weeks travelling around the UK purely for property? Wonder no more! For the next fourteen days or so, we're releasing a daily pocket-sized episode in the style of a diary. This mini-season documents my first ever self-styled solo UK Property Tour as I criss-cross the country chec…

#130 What’s more important in property, cashflow or capital growth? Which one do you invest for. Which one should you invest for? What are the advantages and disadvantages of cashflow? Or the pros and cons of capital growth? And how about cashflow versus profit? Today we’re delving into these questions to get you thinking about your approach to bui…

#129 Are you looking for inspiration about how you might be able to transition out of your well-paid professional career into a more independent lifestyle which is equally lucrative if not more so? Do you think you don’t have time to build a property portfolio alongside a full-time job and a full time family? Are you perhaps a foreign national look…

#128 How would you like to know more about floorplans and how to reconfigure them to squeeze the maximum cashflow out of a property? Or to understand more about the role and value of an architect in UK property investing? Do you know what makes a good architect or a good planning consultant? Or are you looking to create an all ensuite 6 bed or more…

#127 In the first 126 episodes, one theme has cropped up time and time again. And it's the concept of starting with the end in mind. So if you're struggling with how to get your UK property story past page one, or you're just looking for inspiration about how to move forwards… Or or you're just after some tips and tricks to help your property progr…

#126 Do you want to know about commercial valuations, down valuations, how to put a valuation pack together? Or you’re just hoping to get a better understanding of mortgages in general? Then this week’s episode is the best episode to since Part One of this two part special last week! Martin Smedley of Prospero Finance (Fairstone Financial Managemen…

#125 Have you heard people talking about commercial mortgages and wondered what they’re on about? Or maybe you have a basic grasp of what they are but don’t understand the finer details and would like to know how commercial mortgages work. You'd like to know more about getting a commercial valuation as opposed to getting your property valued on a b…

#124 If you’ve been here from the start, you’ll have heard me talk about mine and my wife’s purpose in building a UK property portfolio. In this episode, I interview my wife who talks about the importance of giving back and about her passion for helping refugees after we replace our incomes and return to the UK. In Episode 123, I suggested that in …

#123 This is the final part of our three-part New Year special acrostic mini-season, where for the second year running, we go through the letters that spell Happy New Year explaining what each letter stands for as we head into 2024. We’ve chosen: Y for Yesterday E for Entertainment A for Action R for Risk In ‘Y for Yesterday’ we suggest that, in th…

#122 This is the second part of our three-part New Year special acrostic mini-season, where for the second year running, we go through the letters that spell Happy New Year explaining what each letter stands for as we head into 2024. This episode is all about the importance of joining a community of people who invest in UK properties from all four …

#121 This is the first part of our three-part New Year special acrostic episode, where for the second year running, we go through the letters that spell Happy New Year explaining what each letter stands for as we head into 2024. H is for HMO A is for Amazing Guests P is for Please… P is for Passion & Purpose Y is for You Leave an honest review of E…

#120 Have you thought about joint ventures or JVs in property and how they might work? Perhaps you don’t have the necessary time, knowledge or contacts to devote to property alone and would rather work with someone else? Maybe you don’t have enough money to acquire property in the area where you have boots on the ground and where it might therefore…

#119 Are you an expat looking for inspiration on how to get started as a UK property investor? Would you like to build an HMO portfolio from abroad? Colchester raised Hong Kong expat Dan patient who introduced this week's show did just that. And he's now pushing the boundaries of what's achievable as an expat by buying a grade two listed mixed-use …

#118 Hello there! Are you looking to get into HMOs but don’t know where to start? You want the higher cashflow, but maybe you’re scared to spend all that money and end up with a beautifully designed HMO but struggle to fill the rooms? Or maybe you’re not sure whether to invest in Article four areas or non Article Four areas? Saj Hussain has been in…

#117 Have you heard UK property investors talking about SSAS pensions and wondered what they’re all about? Or are you on the fence about whether to set one up? Richard Parker of Chariot Developmentsis the author of SSAS Pension Legacy: Build a Wealth and Personal Legacy with a SSAS Pension. In this episode, Richard talks us through the pros and con…

#116 if you’re serious about building a UK property portfolio, then you need to be thinking about how to stand out. Brandon Burton, of Brand Voice Strategy is an online marketer and self-proclaimed digital nerd! In this week’s show you will learn about the importance of building a brand, as Brandon reveals his handy hints on how to identify and emb…

#115 Is now a good time to buy UK Property? This is one of the most frequently asked questions relating to UK property on Google and this episode will help you come to your own conclusion. Akhil Patel is one of the world’s leading experts on the 18 Year Property Cycle, and the title of his book on the subject, ‘The Secret Wealth Advantage’ gives a …

#114 This is a fascinating episode of Expat Property Story! Wealth Dynamics is a profiling tool for entrepreneurs to understand their ‘flow’, which is when you’re happiest, or in your element. By understanding your profile, it will show you which profile you should take on as your first hires when expanding your business, or how to understand and w…