Samuel Leeds’ tips help investor to bag 12 properties with other people’s money

Samuel Leeds’ tips help investor to bag 12 properties with other people’s money….

Tomraus gave up a £65,000 job as a store manager to become a property entrepreneur after studying Samuel Leeds’ YouTube videos. After making his first investment, he attended a Property Investors Crash Course which opened his eyes to the world of joint ventures. Now the father-of-four has added a further 12 properties to his portfolio, all accumulated through using other people’s money. Alongside his rental income, he has also profited from buying and selling houses, freeing him up to spend more quality time with his family.

Huge gamble pays off

When Tomraus attended the Property Investors Crash Course in June 2019, he had just finished working for DIY chain B&Q after a retail career spanning 20 years.

He admits it was a big risk but one that he was willing to take to give himself, his wife and children a better future.

“I’d just had enough. I wanted to do something different. I was thinking about property for a couple of years before I actually went ahead with it.”

With a lot of responsibility resting on his shoulders, Tomraus wondered how he could take that leap into self-employment. That was when he started doing some research, early on in 2019, and came across Samuel Leeds’ YouTube property channel.

From watching the multi-millionaire founder of Property Investors’ many videos, Tomraus gleaned invaluable tips which gave him the confidence to make his first investment.

By the time he arrived at the crash course he had bought a flat at auction for £36,000, breaking into his savings of £70,000 to pay for it. He rented out the apartment in Walsall for £475 a month for a year and a half before selling it for £57,000. It left him with a small profit after paying stamp duty.

It was a promising start, but it was the crash course which showed him a different way to achieve success in the housing market.

“Over the years I saved quite a bit of money. I was getting a good salary and bonuses. Then when I went to the crash course Samuel talked about joint ventures. I’m thinking my money is going to run out. Then how am I going to grow my portfolio and my business?

“That’s when it clicked, joint ventures. Use other people’s money.”

After the event, Tomraus applied for a job with Property Investors which was relocating its Midlands headquarters to London where he lives. His energy impressed the managing director who offered him the position. However, he turned it down after realising his ambitions lay elsewhere.

“I just wanted to be around Samuel’s team because he’s full of enthusiasm. For me it was amazing, but at that point I wanted to buy properties and build a portfolio. I thought if I take the job, I’m not going to be giving 100 per cent and that’s not fair.”

His wife becoming pregnant with their fourth child, hastened his decision to become self-employed.

“I was 40 at the time. I’d worked really hard and earned a lot of money, but I missed my children growing up. I’ve got three daughters. I didn’t go to their school plays because I was focused on my career, doing a great job and moving up to a big salary.

“It came to a point where I wanted more. I wanted quality time. That’s how it started and then my wife got pregnant again and I thought I’ve got to leave now. I don’t want to do the same thing I’ve done with my daughters to my baby.”

Tomraus acts on Samuel’s property prediction

The Property Investors Crash Course made a lasting impression on Tomraus as he watched property deals being done live in front of him and picked up more expert advice

“It was like a bomb, I’ll never forget it – two, long days from eight in the morning till 10 o’clock at night. I wondered how I was going to manage before I went on the course but in fact it went fairly quickly. I was taking in all this information and then afterwards processing it. It was really enjoyable.

“During the crash course Samuel started phoning estate agents and put us in groups. It made us a little bit uncomfortable. That brings you out of your shell and makes you comfortable in a weird way. It does 100 per cent help you.”

Having learnt that he could raise money to buy a property and split the profit 50-50 with the investor by putting his time into a project, Tomraus was ready for his next move. He acquired his second property, with funding from an investor, in Wolverhampton. Samuel’s YouTube videos, he acknowledges, gave him the knowledge to negotiate a good deal.

The purchase price was £85,000. After refurbishing it, he sold it for £132,000, making a profit of just over £30,000.

Tomraus initially chose the Midlands as his patch as his brother lived in Birmingham and could help him out if any issues cropped up with his properties. He switched to Liverpool after Samuel predicted that the city would experience a boom, despite newspaper articles reporting the opposite forecasts.

“Samuel said during the training Liverpool had lagged behind and was going to catch up. I did my own research and found out millions of pounds had gone into rejuvenating the area.”

After driving up from London to view houses, Tomraus took the plunge and added another property to his growing portfolio for £51,250. His courage and faith in Samuel were rewarded. Not only has the value increased by almost 50 per cent, his rental income from his acquisition has also soared.

“On the same street now, you can’t get any houses cheaper than £75,000. On top of that, when I bought it, I rented it out for £425 a month. Now I’m getting £495 a month.”

He made sure that he examined which areas of the city were best to invest in before making his decision. The knowledge to do that again came from the crash course, he says.

Tomraus first calculates his return on investment before buying a house, working on a margin of at least 15 per cent. Most of his properties in Liverpool are rented out. He also looks for where he can add value.

“Currently I’ve got quite a few two-bedroom properties. Potentially you can move the bathroom downstairs and make a three-bedroom property. I’ve also got an HMO in Liverpool which is going well. I’ve leased it to a company. They’re giving me a flat rate of £1,100 a month. They pay all the bills. I bought it for £115,000. That’s returning 19 per cent.”

Along with learning how to find and stack deals and identify an investment patch, Tomraus picked up another golden nugget from Samuel at the crash course.

“He said, tell everyone what you do, whether they invest or not. That’s how I started. I talked to everyone about what I’m doing. I opened up my Instagram page and put up properties I was viewing, in addition to the one I owned. I told friends on my Facebook page as well and people reached out to me.

“Not every deal is the same. It depends on the person, how much money they’re putting in and whether they want a short or long-term investment. You go into more detail about what they want to do with their money.”

Now aged 42, Tomraus is reinvesting his share of the profits from his schemes in other joint ventures after setting up a company which owns the properties in his portfolio. If he was starting from scratch again with no money, he would educate himself first and then seek joint venture partners.

“It’s absolutely possible to get as many houses as I have without money, but you need the foundations which is the knowledge. I know a lot of people who’ve started in property and burnt themselves because they didn’t really know what they were doing.”

At the start of his property journey, his wife questioned why he was quitting a well-paid job.

“I said you’ve got to trust me. I’m doing this because of us. But she saw a massive change in me once I came out of the crash course and I had full support from her. I probably went from 60-70 per cent in terms of drive to 150 per cent.”

Friends and family also cast doubt on whether he was doing the right thing, especially when the pandemic came along and there were fears the property market was going to collapse. However, he remained steadfast in his determination to change his lifestyle.

“I was working 50 to 60 hours a week. During my days off I was taking calls. In my holidays I’ve gone into my store to see how it’s running. It wasn’t a great life. Looking back at how I moved up the ladder I regret it in terms of losing a lot of quality time with my family.

“The biggest change is the amount of time I can spend with my three-year-old son. When I was working it was a very stressful job. These days I’m stressing about how I fund my next deal to make money, whereas the stress I had previously was: I’m going to get a store visit. I need to make sure my store gets going. It’s a different kind of stress but it’s a lot better stress now.”

He adds: “I think there are a lot of people out there who want to invest in property, but they don’t know how to do it. They’re a bit scared. That’s why I wanted to share my story.

“I remember Samuel said at the crash course, and in some of his videos, in property you can never fail. if you’re looking at the long term it’s so true. People have to live somewhere.”

Tomraus’ tips

If you want to get into property, definitely go on the crash course. The two days I had were so beneficial.

There are good and bad postcodes in a city. You need to research that. To do that you need to get the knowledge.

Samuel Leeds’ verdict

“Everybody aspires to progress but when you’re in a job often the higher you go up the more work you have to do. Tomraus was getting paid well for retail management but then his work was taking over his life and he couldn’t see his kids. If you’re going to work hard anyway you may as well get rich.

“I’ve got to hand it to Tomraus. What he’s achieved in the past two years has been remarkable!”

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