Samuel365 unlocks the door to trebling a property investor’s profits!

Since becoming a member of Property Investors’ Samuel365 online training platform, seasoned investor Peter Turner has tripled his income from property. It was a ‘game-changer’ that opened his mind to creative ways of making money in the housing market. Peter learnt the formulas for maximising the return on buy, refurbish, refinance projects, as well as how to profit from renting out accommodation owned by other people. Now he enjoys a healthy side living alongside his job in IT and construction.

‘It was as if blinds had come off my eyes’

Peter describes himself as a career man but in 2008 he got into property after his church ran some courses on entrepreneurship. As a result of the training, he bought two flats in the north of England for £5,000 each off plan. The builder put 10 per cent into the project and they obtained a mortgage to cover the rest of the cost.

The properties turned out to be good investments, making Peter about £300 per month after they were rented out as single lets. As he puts it: “It was £10,000 in and £300 forever.”

The years rolled by and Peter was content to just see the money come in without attempting to expand his portfolio. But then in 2019 he became disenchanted with his work and decided he wanted to go into property full-time.

His New Year’s resolution was to buy a house and so he took out a personal loan of £50,000 from Tesco and Sainsbury’s at a rate of three per cent.

“Over the whole term of the loan I was paying £2,000 each on them which was hardly anything in terms of interest. The fact I had a great credit score enabled me to do it.”

He bought a three-bedroom semi-detached house, which was part of a deceased estate, in Sheffield for £140,000, spending a further £25,000 on financing the purchase and doing up the property.

“I got ripped off on the fees and no one wanted to buy it because everyone was waiting to see what happened with Brexit, but then I revalued it at £195,000 and rented it out. The cashflow on that one is £350 a month, so at this point my total income from property was £650.”

Then in March 2020, Peter came across Samuel Leeds’ YouTube channel. It was a pivotal moment in his journey towards becoming a successful entrepreneur.

“It was as if blinds had come off my eyes. I’d been doing things enthusiastically but didn’t have a clue how to do it.”

He also read Samuel’s best-selling book, Buy Low Rent High. Three months later he implemented the strategy by buying a three-bedroom house in nearby Barnsley for £66,000.

A new internal wall was constructed at the front of the property to create a fourth bedroom and a new kitchen fitted, along with fire doors to make it suitable for renting out as a house share.

The cost of the refurbishment, including work to the roof, replastering and redecoration of the bathroom, came to £12,000. A further £3,000 went on furniture and appliances, bringing his total bill to £81,000.

The house has recently been revalued at between £110,000 and £120,000 and is expected to achieve a gross monthly rent of £1,500. A building company was due to confirm the rental of the whole house on a corporate let, at the time of writing.

“I think that one will cashflow £800 a month, including ten per cent management fees, after the Council Tax, wi-fi and mortgage payments have come out. It’s with a mortgage broker at the moment to refinance the house. He’s thinking it will get at least £110,000 on the revaluation which will mean I can pull out £40,000 to reinvest.”

There is the added bonus that Barnsley doesn’t move into an Article 4 area until May 2021 which means Peter needs no licence to run the house as an HMO. That was a key selling-point for him.

In hindsight, Peter says he wishes he had bought two houses at £66,000 each instead of one at £140,000.

“I would have been able to make the same profit on this one, or even more profit than I did on the one I bought for £140,000.”

‘I began looking for houses in cheaper areas’

His training with Samuel365 and the videos were crucial in showing him how he could get the best possible return on his investment by adopting new methods and strategies.

“I began looking for an area where I could buy cheap houses which were near the town centre and would rent out for good money. I also wanted a place that I could make into an HMO or a really good cashflowing buy-to-let, and that didn’t need a lot of work doing to it.

“In Sheffield now you can’t buy a terraced house for less than £100,000, so I had to find somewhere else that would get me the money. I was cleverer about what I was looking for. The house in Barnsley was ideal because it was only 250 yards from the town and had big-sized bedrooms.”

In November 2020, Peter spotted a Facebook post from a managing agent in Nottingham, advertising two-bed apartments just 50 yards from the castle. He secured a rent-to-rent deal on one of the flats. The agent charges him 15 per cent to manage it as serviced accommodation and it brings in £500 to £1,000 per month.

The concept of rent-to-rent was new to Peter until he came across Samuel Leeds’ free YouTube content and then enrolled on Samuel365.

‘Insane’ is the word that keeps springing to Peter’s mind every time he explains the remarkable upturn in his fortunes.

“I was on £650 cashflow before Samuel365 and I’ve pulled in £1,300 of extra passive income since I joined. So, I’ve tripled my earnings. It’s been revolutionary for me and completely changed my life.”

Once he has paid off the loan taken out in 2019, giving up his job may well be on the cards, he says. In the meantime, another house acquisition is looming.

“I’ve just had an offer accepted on a house exactly the same as this one, two streets away. It’s a three-bed terrace with a two-storey extension on the back.

“I didn’t even think I was going to be able to buy it because I didn’t have the money. My wife and I had probably got about £15,000 but we needed £23,000 to complete the purchase which included stamp duty.

“I’d given up on it but whenever I was looking on Rightmove for any other deals I kept coming back to that one. It was the best deal.”

His solution was to post an appeal on the Samuel365 forum for a joint venture partner to invest £10,000 into the project with him. In half an hour, three people had offered him the money.

“They’re going to give me the money on completion, then for six months until we’ve refinanced the house. I wouldn’t have been able to afford it until another eight weeks when my money came in from the refinance of the other property. It’s unreal.”

Co-sourcing fee helped cover Peter’s training

Samuel365 is a monthly programme which gives students access to Samuel’s mentors and Samuel himself.

“If you’ve got any problems which you’re facing in your journey through property you can speak to a mentor. We also have 365 Mastermind calls on a Wednesday where we get together to celebrate successes and help people with their struggles.

“Another thing I find really helpful is to be able to just chat to people in the network about deals we’ve found and whether they’re really a goer. You just need people to bounce off sometimes to work out whether something’s got legs.”

Peter also co-sourced a deal through Samuel365 which paid for his membership for six months. The other person had already found the deal and an investor but turned to him for help because he was a compliant sourcer.

It was a welcome boost, but on the whole he prefers to find the deals rather than having to package and sell them. For him the definition of a good deal is if he can add enough value to the property to be able to pull all of his money out and not to have to spend a lot in the first place.

He looks for areas like Barnsley, Rotherham and Burnley where property prices are low and there is a high demand for rental accommodation.

“There is a lot of investment here and property that you can add value to, then refinance and pull your money out. You only need £20,000 to do it, whereas if you were in Exeter, or somewhere like that, you’re going to need £50,000 to do it.”

He believes the area gets overlooked in favour of more popular places like Liverpool.

“Some people might say, yes but don’t those cheap areas have bad tenants everywhere and housing benefit streets? It could be a rough area, so they want to invest in places like Exeter because they think the tenants are going to be of a better quality.

“Every city area is like Monopoly – you’ve got bad and good areas, the Old Kent Road and the Mayfairs, just like in London.

“This particular area in Barnsley, where I’ve invested, is on a main artery out of the city, so it’s well looked after. The council care for it well and the tenants. You might have two or three streets nearby where you could drop litter, and nobody would be bothered about it. You have to do your due diligence to check where the good and bad areas area.”

Peter is from Sheffield and points out that there are some streets in the city where the houses cost £2m apiece.

He says his faith is a strong reason for wanting to succeed in property.

“Like Samuel, I want to be able to give to people who are suffering and struggling and to help them. My wife is from the Philippines and there’s a lot of need over there, especially at moment with the weather and everything else they’re having to deal with.

“For ourselves obviously we want to work less hard and to enjoy our life and go abroad on holiday. It’s about improving the standard of our life but then also about blessing other people.”

Peter’s tips

Make sure you know an area well before you buy there. Estate agents are helpful. I’ll ask them what a property will revalue for. If say it costs £60,000 and is going to be revalued at £70,000, I am not going to touch that because it’s going to cost me £10,000 to refurbish it. I also speak to the person showing me around a property, whether that’s the owner or the tenant, to find out if an area has gone downhill or uphill.

if I can make the same profit on a house which cost me £66,000 as the one I bought at £140,000, then I can get two or three of the cheaper ones. That is leveraging your finances in a better way.

Samuel Leeds’ verdict

“Peter was investing in property previously with no training. He used his common sense and background in construction and went for it. He did well, getting £650 a month in rent, but it took him over ten years to do that. Then, when he started watching the YouTube videos, he thought he could do it in a more sophisticated way and really ramp this up. He learnt the formulas behind the buy, refurbish, refinance strategy and discovered rent-to-rents. Suddenly, in the space of 12 months he’s got £2,000 a month coming in.

“My online training platform has accelerated Peter’s progress even further to the point that in a couple of years he plans to be full time into property and moving towards his goal of having a portfolio of 20 houses. Massive respect to him.”

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