Ant Lyons’ talk at our March PIM was a revealing and engaging presentation that had the audience buzzing.
Ant is a property investor with a portfolio of properties here in the West Country. He is also founder and editor of Your Property network magazine, a specialist magazine aimed at investors seeking to grow and improve their portfolios.
YPN is an excellent property magazine read by over 10,000 investors across the UK and features the latest strategies and techniques that investors use to make more money from property – it’s a highly recommended resource for any current or would-be property investor.
As both an investor himself and as YPN editor, Ant is uniquely positioned to give an insight into how successful property investors are taking their businesses forwards in the current market.
Ant’s no nonsense approach to property is widely respected across the industry – and he demonstrated exactly why in his presentation. He highlighted a whole series of case studies, including his own deals, to show how deals are REALLY put together and what the figures behind them really are. He showed exactly how he approaches and analyses deals to see if they are worthwhile and to make sure the real returns “stack up”.
Ant successfully “Myth Busted” a whole series of myths that will be familiar to all of us in and around property, including:
1 – The Credit Crunch is a “Bad Thing”.
As Ant pointed out, some of the pre-credit crunch loans available were inherently risky – as the banks have discovered to their cost! But the upside today is that if your Buy To Let lender is prepared to lend – then the deal will be sound.
2 – Large Numbers Of Properties Equals Success
Of course, we’re all impressed by those who have really profitable large portfolios – but there are investors out there who have built large portfolios, without looking at the returns carefully enough – so they may have a lot of properties to their name, but they are losing money. While their are others who do extremely well from just a few, carefully chosen properties.
3 – Always Buy BMV
Of course, we all want to buy below market value, if we can – and today’s wisdom tends to be that it’s necessary to add value to show capital appreciation. But Ant pointed out that some properties may be a great deal at the asking price. If you can pay the full price and still get a great rental return, there’s no reason to get hung up on whether or not you got a huge discount off the asking price. In some areas – and Bristol is one of them – prices are still competitive, so it’s not always easy to get a bargain – but it all comes back to assessing the fundamentals of the deal in the context of your objectives.
We’ll be telling you more about the myths Ant busted in our next article.
Meanwhile, we are busy getting ready for Landlord Expo in Bristol on 18 April – so our next PIM is in May.
We’ll be confirming the speaker details shortly.
To your Property Success
Del Brown, Property Options
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