Your 2026 property success - Pt 4: The final pieces of the puzzle

0:01Hi, this is Rob B with Rob D and you're listening to The Property Podcast and this is part four of a four-part series where we've been helping you set up for you to have the most amazing year in property. In today's episode, we're going to wrap this all up and give you some key things to get started. We're going to be talking about the location, where should you be investing and your team, who do you need to be investing with. We're going to cover all that off in this final part.

0:33thank you for joining us and congratulations for making it through to part four the final part of this series if you haven't yet listened to parts one to three you'll find them in your podcast feed if you haven't subscribed yet put that right because even though this is the last part of this mini series every single week we've got two brand new episodes for you that you can use to build on this knowledge so so far we've talked about where you're starting where you're going and how you're going to get there in terms of your strategy. So the next piece to think about is location. So you've probably got some idea of what investment approach appeals to you.

1:07You don't have to have it set in stone yet, but location is such a key piece. It's worth starting to think about because not all the strategies we've mentioned will work everywhere. Obviously, there are certain places that just wouldn't work for holiday lets, for example. The first thing you need to think about is, are you going to be constrained by your own location? In other words, are you going to buy within, say, half an hour of where you live? Or are you open to investing anywhere? And this is going to be tied into your strategy as well. Because if you're going to be getting really hands-on and flipping properties, you probably want to do that close to home.

1:41But if you're going to be getting involved in buy-to-let and owning a property where once you've set it up, there's not really a lot to do, then you could invest anywhere. People tend to default to buying near where they live. and all else being equal yeah you would do that because you know the area best and it's the most convenient but don't get trapped by your local area because a lot of people start trying to make their local area work and find out it just doesn't for one reason or another it's not suitable for the strategy or the numbers just don't add up this is particularly common if you're based in the southeast you can find that property prices are so expensive it's either out of your budget or you're just not making any return from the property.

2:20And of course, you could be overseas, in which case you're going to be investing away from home by default. If that sounds scary to you, that's normal. Everyone's nervous doing this at first, but Rob and I invest all over the country. We help our clients to do the same and it really can work. But it does give you more research to because you've got more options. And that's where you need some kind of framework for assessing a potential location. So let's start that assessment. Now the good news is you can do most of this from the comforts of your home. Eventually you will want to visit these areas but to make the short list you don't need to go anywhere.

2:55So let's start by looking at the region as a whole. So look at regions. Okay that's a good starting place. We're going to go top down. So as Rob said if you live in the southeast or have considered the southeast for most strategies, not all, London and the surrounding areas are not going to work. So look at the rest of the country and start to weigh up what is attractive to you. Look for investment and we're talking major investment, not that high street that's going to get painted. We're talking like meaningful money, millions if not billions of pounds being pumped into an area. Employment, what type of employment is in the area?

3:31Most areas currently have strong employment levels but what sort of employment? Is the area made up mainly of call centres or are there more finance jobs in a particular area? You need to look at the type of jobs. So while there may be low unemployment, not all jobs are created equal, at least when it comes to pay. So look at average incomes. Look at the infrastructure. If it's in the middle of nowhere, it's hard to get to a place and it's hard to get out of that place. Then that's going to really hurt it for future investments. So look at infrastructure, look at the transport links, look at the local airports look at what is around that particular area the more of it the better so if you see good train links you see good motorway networks you see an airport not too far away you're starting to pick areas that have good signs that probably will have investments into them already and will attract more in the future once you've got an area or areas you go down and you dig a bit deeper and you start to focus on cities or the surrounding commuter areas into those city.

4:33So not everybody likes to invest in a city centre and that's absolutely fine but you want to be near one because that's where all these fundamentals are, the investment, the employment, the infrastructure. So you want to be near one. So make sure it's commutable to a major city. So pick your city or the surrounding areas of a city and push on from there because what you need to then do is look at what type of properties will appeal to the area you're looking at. If you want to do HMOs for example and if you don't know what HMO is go back and listen to the The third part of this four-part series will give you some information.

5:05It's not going to work in every single area. A HMO on the outskirts of a city is probably not going to work, whereas in a city centre, it's got a decent chance it will. So make sure that the area you're looking for matches the strategy you want to use. So that gives you a real top-level idea of how to start thinking about location. But of course, if you're going to be investing tens of thousands of pounds, you want to be digging a little bit deeper than that. And the good news is that there is so much research that you can do without even having to leave home. So yes, ultimately, you'll want to go there and walk the streets and get a real feel for the place and build up that real street by street knowledge.

5:45You can get a very long way towards that by doing research online. So Google Street View, for example, I know it sounds basic, but it's incredible what you can learn by just going and having a virtual wander around. you can get a real feel for the area and the type of people who want to live there and what it has going for it and what it doesn't and when a good road turns into a not so good road you can really pick all this up on street view and there are other tools that you can use as well to get a more data-driven view of an area we've got a youtube video about that which we'll make sure we link to in the show notes so you can go and check that out because there are dedicated websites where you can put in a postcode and it'll spit out all kinds of information about the area something else you can do without leaving home is get on the phone.

6:29You can speak to estate agents and letting agents. Not all of them will be willing to give you a lot of time, but a surprising number of them will. So if you're just calling up and starting by inquiring about a certain property that they're marketing, then with a bit of rapport building, you can broaden out the conversation and it's incredible what you can learn. These are people who spend literally every day on a very small patch looking at the exact assets that you're interested in. So say what you like about estate agents, but they do have a wealth of knowledge that you can tap into. And remember, you don't have to get there overnight.

6:59If you've got a short list of areas that you're interested in, perhaps because of some of the top level factors that Rob was talking about, then you can pick two or three of them and learn more about them over time. Definitely set yourself a deadline because you'll never know everything and you can procrastinate forever, but it's perfectly okay to build this knowledge up over a course of months. So don't feel overwhelmed by this because it is a big decision and you can take some time. Property Hub Invest is our business that sits behind the podcast and it's not for everyone. But if you're short of time and you want someone to help you build your portfolio using the same strategy that we talk about on this podcast, then it could just be for you.

7:35And it's how I've acquired all my properties for years now. The great news is you can find out if it's right for you by sitting down for a completely free one-on-one strategy meeting with a member of our team. So at the very least, you'll go away with way more knowledge and it would have cost you nothing at all. You can find out more and book that in by going to propertyhub.net slash invest. Now we've given out a lot of information over this series so far and even though we've tried to break it down it could still feel very daunting. But Rob the good news is the property journey isn't one that anyone needs to go on alone.

8:08No and actually they probably shouldn't go on it alone because you need some people around you. There are some people that you'll need in your team and some are optional. Let's quickly run through who you should have in your team. Hopefully you've got some of these lined up already but if not it's not hard to find them. So first of all one that we believe is absolutely essential, someone that Rob and I both have in our team to help us with our own personal investments is a mortgage broker. Mortgages are complex, far more complex than just looking at a best buy table. You need to know which products are best for you and your particular strategy.

8:43For paying the few hundred pounds that you'll need to for a mortgage broker will almost certainly save you time, but also possibly money as well. Because if you go for a product that you can't actually get, you might not find out until quite a way down the process. You've wasted time, but you may have also spent a bit of money as well. So a mortgage broker is a must. One that used to be optional, but these days seems more essential as an accountant. A lot of people will invest through a limited company now. We've put together a great YouTube video on this subject. We'll link to it in the show notes so you can understand whether a limited company is right for you.

9:17But if it is, then an accountant is really going to help with that process. If you're very good with that side of things, maybe you trained as an accountant, maybe you work in finance, wherever, maybe you can do it yourself. But for most people, they'll want the help and support of an accountant. You'll also need a solicitor. Unfortunately, with property, there seems to be more bad solicitors than good. Maybe that's just my experience, and I've been very unlucky over the years. So put time and effort into finding a good solicitor. They are worth their weight in gold. A bad solicitor can not only hold up a transaction, it can collapse a deal if they take too long or they get into arguments with the other side.

9:54It happens more frequently than you would imagine. Two solicitors get their egos in the way, start arguing over minor points that just don't really impact you, but it holds a deal up or sometimes collapses it altogether. so spend the time to find yourself a good solicitor. Estate agents as Rob's already touched on can absolutely be your friend. Don't ignore them. They can help you find properties but they can also help you understand the local area and same goes for letting agents. Speak to them about the areas that you want to invest in if you're going to let the property out in that area and get that local knowledge from them.

10:28They will know far more than you so take advantage of that knowledge. One that's optional but maybe useful if you are investing in an area that you don't know is a property sourcer. That's somebody who helps find deals for you. You can absolutely go and find deals yourself. You do not have to use a property sourcer but a lot of people, particularly those who are time poor, find that using a property sourcer can be very useful. But do your research. There are some fantastic sources out there and there are some not so fantastic sources out there. look into them do your research tread carefully property of invest does part of this as its service it helps source property but of course research them as well after researching if you're happy go to propertyhub.net forward slash invest if you want to chat to our team there to understand whether it's a good fit for you but as I said the sourcer is absolutely optional and finally make Rob and I part of your team your education team make sure you take full advantage of all the things that we put out there.

11:29The podcast, this is free. The YouTube videos, they're free as well. We don't even turn ads on the YouTube videos. It's just all there for you. Take advantage of it. We have some businesses behind it, but you don't have to use them. We just put all this out there for you to take advantage of. Rob's books as well. Yes, okay, you can't get them for free, but they're low cost. Check out on Amazon. Search Rob Dix, D-I-X, and you will find his books there. they are best sellers for a reason they are absolutely brilliant no he doesn't retire off the proceeds of the books they deserve the wonderful reviews that they have if you've not read those yet go and take advantage of them so we hopefully will be part of your team on what is going to be a brilliant year for you i hope so because everyone's got the same 12 months some people will end the year exactly where they started but some will make the kind of progress where they look back and see it as a real turning point for them and it really is astonishing what you can achieve in a year with the right plan, even if you've got all the same excuses about being busy and all the rest of it as everyone else does.

12:31So thank you for letting us help you get your year off to the best possible start. If you found this useful, tell a friend, point someone else towards this podcast, tell them to search Property Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else, because we're going to be here twice a week, every week for the rest of this year, building up your knowledge and keeping you on track. So we hope you'll join us again soon. Thanks for listening. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. You