Long-time friend of The Property Voice, Damien Fogg joins us again today.
From MOD to financially free before age thirty-three! Damien adopted a few principles that we have not seen too much of in this series so far. For example, he literally immersed himself in the property industry. He became a chartered surveyor and worked as an asset / portfolio manager and also a letting agent too. So, he got both an academic foundation and a professional grounding in the property industry, from the inside out.
He also studied personal finance and economics and I guess being somewhat a geeky contrarian, also practised a debt pay down deleveraged model across his portfolio. Or in plain English, he paid off his mortgages in double quick time!
It’s always fun to listen to Damien speak and he did his utmost not to swear, which was a minor miracle I’m sure. I think you will enjoy listening to a man that started young with designer watches and flashy cars but whose biggest vice these days is a collection of backpacks.
The bottom line is that as a result of property, Damien has the choice to live his life just as he wants to and that’s pretty cool don’t you think?
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Transcription of the show
Long-time friend of The Property Voice, Damien Fogg joins us again today.
From MOD to financially free before age thirty-three! Damien adopted a few principles that we have not seen too much of in this series so far. For example, he literally immersed himself in the property industry. He became a chartered surveyor and worked as an asset / portfolio manager and also a letting agent too. So, he got both an academic foundation and a professional grounding in the property industry, from the inside out.
He also studied personal finance and economics and I guess being somewhat a geeky contrarian, also practised a debt pay down deleveraged model across his portfolio. Or in plain English, he paid off his mortgages in double quick time!
It’s always fun to listen to Damien speak and he did his utmost not to swear, which was a minor miracle I’m sure. I think you will enjoy listening to a man that started young with designer watches and flashy cars but whose biggest vice these days is a collection of backpacks.
The bottom line is that as a result of property, Damien has the choice to live his life just as he wants to and that’s pretty cool don’t you think?
Property Chatter
Welcome to the Property Voice Podcast, helping you to navigate safely through the world of property investing. Get the lowdown and updates, insights and outcomes on all matters property with a splash of entertainment along the way. The Property Voice, a voice to trust among the crowd. Now, let's get started with your host, Richard Brown.
Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Property Voice Podcast. My name is Richard Brown and always, it's a pleasure to have you join me again on the show today. I don't know how many more of these we're going to do in this series of going full time in property, a couple more weeks, yeah? Who knows? Today I'm very pleased to invite back to the show Damien Fogg. Many of you will remember Damien if you've listened to the podcast for a while. He's joined me on more than one occasion. Of course, we know each other pretty well. I really miss him and it's good to have him back. We're still buddies, so it's always good to catch up and have a bit of a share. So we did that, obviously via video link, a lot of fun. I think you're going to enjoy what he's going to say about his particular journey about going full time in property right now.
Hi, Damien, how're you doing?
Not too bad, how are you?
Very well, thank you, very well. Seen a lot of you lately. Obviously.
A bit hard to get away from, aren't I?
Indeed, indeed. It's great to see you again actually, because obviously we've spent a lot of time together over the last few years or so.
We did.
Not so much in very recent times, which I'm sure we'll find out about what you've been doing.
Have you missed me?
Of course, yeah. Of course, I've missed you.
Good answer.
Yeah, I remember for example, writing with crayons on some random table mats in Canada. I was in Toronto or something.
Toronto, yeah.
Yeah.
Basically mapping out a business with crayons.
Yeah. Maybe that's why it didn't work out quite what we hoped. But that was a lot of fun. We've done other good fun times. Anyways, good to catch up with you, even though it's not in person. Those listening and don't know what on earth we're talking about and who you are, Damien Fog. Thanks a lot for joining us today on the Property Voice Podcast. You've been on it before, so if you're a regular listener, you've probably heard Damien once or twice over the years, come and talk and offer his wisdom. Today we're talking about going full time in properties, part of the series that we're in the middle of right now. I've got a sneaky feeling you might have something to say about that.
I've done it, so I guess I'm at least qualified to be here.
Exactly, and that's why I've invited you. So what I normally do at this point, is I'm going to shut up a bit and just say why don't you just take us back to some time before full time in property or before property. You don't have to go to birth unless you really want to.
I don't think anybody wants that.
What was life like for you before getting into property and then what caused you to get into it, what were your motives, and what did you do?
Okay. So I got into property quite early when I was a grown up, but initially my first degree was in business and finance. I spent quite a lot of time trading. Initially it was day trading stuff but more in the equities and currency side of things. I did quite well at that mostly through luck, if I'm being honest. Because of the volatility involved with these sorts of things, it did lead me towards, "Well, I'd like a more stable asset base." As I said my degree was in finance so I understood the investing options out there. I was a qualified financial advisor as well. I knew all of my different asset options. I was quite heavily leveraged and quite overweight in one specific type so I knew property was something I wanted to get into for all of the longterm stable benefits of it. That was something I started to drift across towards and initially, yeah, did all of the mistakes that you can possibly make, watched Sarah Beeny program and was like, "I could definitely do that and become full time in property." Then bought off plan new builds in the worst possible locations and all of the great stuff.
So yeah, managed to make a complete pig's ear of it, but liked it, got into it and because the type of personality and person I am, I wanted to make sure if I was going to do it, I was going to be good at it. Then went and became chartered as a building surveyor and that led into a whole development side of my career and then did that for a bunch of different companies, agencies, the government for quite a lot. I got a lot of experience doing that. The whole time, still doing some trading, still doing equities, but focusing more and more on property. Then after however many years, about 11 years maybe, 12 years something like that, of when I first started, I was able to retire effectively at 32 and live off the money I've made from my investments, the majority of which were property at that point. From there I don't know how far I'm supposed to keep on going at this point. Should I shut up now or?
Yes, let's pause for breath.
Okay.
So that's great, thanks. Obviously I know a lot of that.
Yeah, try to look less bored when I'm talking, Richard.
It's my natural face, I'm sorry. I've got a natural bored looking face. That's not very good is it, for video?
You should work on that one.
Okay. What really struck me was you talked about a, your personality and b, the fact that you got qualified. That seems to be consistent. You did your degree, you've got the IFA qualification you talk about. I've written down charted BS for some reason, but I think that means...
Accurate.
Building surveyor. So you make a point about you wanted to really know what you're doing and also getting academically or professionally qualified seems to be a big deal. What made you decide to do that and what difference did it make actually? I know you said that you stepped into property and made some mistakes, but you're being a bit humble I think, certainly beyond the first few investments from what I know of you.
Yeah, I think, as I said, my first degree was in finance and that lead me towards investing so I was like, "If I'm going to do this, I want to know more." So the easiest to do it is who are the professionals in this industry that tell people what to do? Well, I'll go and learn what they know. The same with property, I started to get into property. I'd been doing it for probably four or five years at that point. Nothing spectacular, buying as I said off plan stuff then started to go more towards the Victorian, two up, two down terraces. So I was starting to learn a little bit and I decided to go into full time, not full time property, well I guess so. I decided property was going to be my thing. So I started working for a leasing agency and a state agency. All of the transactions I was involved in, it was always vendors, people buying it, solicitors, blah, blah, blah. Then at some point the surveyor would come along and everyone would come along and everyone would be like, "Oh, the surveyor said this." So that must be that.
Obviously it was residential evaluation surveying at the time, but it was like, "Whatever they say is just law." If there was a big problem with the property if it was being sold, it was like, "Oh, this one's going to fall down. We need a surveyor to do a report." It was like there was this big ethos myth around the surveyors just knowing everything to do with property. I'm like, "Well, I want to be one of them then." Obviously, my timing was immaculate so I went and did my master's degree. Finished my master's degree just as the property market collapsed. So no one was taking anybody on. So I'm like, "Ah, crap." They had changed all the rules around evaluation surveyors. I'd done my training to become a building surveyor on the basis of they're the ones that know how buildings are built and you can also valuation at the same time. I wanted to become a valuation surveyor because I wanted to be able to walk around properties and be like, "This is how much this one is. I'll offer less."
I had a whole five year plan set up, completely went to pot when they said, "Nah, unless you've done specifically training for residential valuation, you can't do that." So I'm like, "Ah, bollocks." So, ended up doing more of the building surveyor side of stuff, still included residential but it meant I couldn't go the route I wanted to. At that point, I ended up working for the Ministry of Defense of all random people because they're one of the biggest landholders and building owners in the country. I worked for Defense Estates at the time and then turned into Defense Infrastructure Organization, but because it's the government they were still employing which was novel. I think I was the only person in my graduating person to get a job at the end of it, so that was helpful. They give you an awful lot of responsibility so at one point they just gave me the German estate to manage.
I'm like, "I don't know what I'm doing yet." But they're like, "Meh, just look after all of these residential properties for us." I was like, "All right." So it was very much throwing into the deep end, but there was an awful lot of support there for you, so it was a great place to learn. I think that mentality of who the people or who the group of people that know the most about this particular industry, now who teaches them? What do they learn to be able to do that? I'll go and do that then, because I figure I'm heading in the same position of if I ever go to a survey and a building surveyor's there wandering around, if he says, "Oh, this crack means that." I'm like, "No, it doesn't. It means this because of that. I've been outside and looked at this and you've forgotten to look at this." So I can argue with them, which is often something I like to do. The same with financial advisors. If they're like, "You should split your assets across this and this." I'm like, "No, I shouldn't because of that." If I can use their own information against them, it makes me laugh if nothing else.
Yeah. And presumably it provides opportunities as well.
That was the biggest thing that accelerated my career as it were in property for myself. It was being able to buy stuff that was undervalued, buy stuff that needed work done to it, buy stuff that other people didn't want to touch because surveyors would go in and hide problems and that would put the vast majority of people off. Yeah, I picked up some really weird and wonderful stuff for a while, but it kind of worked in my favor and it allowed me to grow in my portfolio quite quickly. Sorry, go on.
No, I was just going to say, give us an example of a weird and wonderful.
So I got one place in Cambridge and it was basically un-mortgageable because there was no internal bathroom. They had an outhouse, but it wasn't connected... Well, it was connected to the property in a weird sort of way. Initial said, look there's no bathroom, and the borderline not really a kitchen. So it was un-mortgageable and because of general house prices in Cambridge it was quite expensive. I think it was about 300-ish K, something like that. I managed to effectively do a purchase and agreed to lay completion on it. Kicked a giant hole in the wall outside so the bathroom was like, "There you go. It's got a bathroom now and it's connected to the house, so it's internal." And the mortgage companies were still like, "Yeah, this place is still a dump, but it's mortgageable now, so yeah, we'll lend you money on it." The valuation with it being mortgageable was like 360 or something. For literally a sledgehammer and afternoon knocking a hole in something, it was like, "I've been able to identify something perhaps much structural as in physically but a structural issue with that property and the financial structural issue, solve it in a relatively painless way and then buy it as a normal place." I didn't do anything else to the property. I sold it on after that.
Oh, yeah.
I think I sold it for 355, for a quick sale and completion. It was like I got 50 odd grand for knocking a hole in a wall.
Not bad.
Be better than a slap in the face.
It certainly was, it certainly was. By the way, just going back to the MoD days, does that mean you signed the Official Secrets Act?
I've signed the Official Secrets Act. I've been delved, vetted, and...
Yeah?
The things I know that I can't tell you, I've probably forgotten about anyway.
Exactly, so. I thought we had a James Bond amongst us for a minute there, but...
[inaudible 00:12:26], yeah.Very interesting what you say about Germany. Did you notice any sort of differences with the German market for example?
The German market was a bit weird so I was based in JHQ Rheindahlen, if anybody is military that's listening to it. It was a giant tank base I think back in the day and I can't remember the number. There was about 4000 residential units on there, all built by the British, but they were built pre-fab to last ten, 15 years. They all had basements that were turning into swimming pools slowly, but because they were pulling out of Germany, there weren't that many people living on base anyway. One of the things I'd do is wander around, people would say, "Oh, I've got this issue with the house." You'd walk around and be like, "Yeah, okay, just move next door." Because you'd live on a street with ten houses, there's only two people living there, so you'd just give them a whole new house and be like, "There you go. You can keep the keys to both if you'd like."
It was a weird situation, but I looked after Cypress for a little bit and Gibraltar for a bit, did a refurbishment project in Gibraltar. That was an odd one. It's the sort of thing I never would've been given access to in any other company I don't think and not such a diverse range. It was a case of, "If you put your hand up and ask, they'll let you do it." I worked quite a lot for the US Air Force, the USAF bases, and developing defensive structures for different things and building air hangars for planes. That's probably not going to come up if you get a graduate job at Sathal's or something like that. It was interesting if nothing else. Not all of it was entirely useful but...
Well, I'm sure it was useful because one of the merits surely was you're getting paid.
That helps.
Yeah, yeah, you're getting paid and presumably, you're learning on the job some of it useful, some of it maybe not so, getting some diverse experience, getting paid, and so maybe leading you down the golden path a little bit. What did you do with the money you got paid because I don't think you're the sort of person who's necessarily went down to the casino and blew it all. I think you might have different approach.
I think at the time I started the graduate scheme. I was driving a 911, so I spent most of my salary on gas.
You were driving a 911 and working on a graduate scheme.
Yeah, it did confuse a lot of people. I was obviously a lot older than most of the other graduates so like, "Yeah, I've already done some stuff." That was a bit stupid, but most of the money I was recycling into buying more property and I always tried to split my assets across different asset classes anyway, though it was very much just piling it back into property. At the time you could still do the buy, refurbish, refinance and pull out most if not all of your money, and so this same kind of pot of money, it was about probably 150 K, I just kept on recycling that and buying more and more properties. As time went on, you had to leave a little bit more in each time, so you might leave five, ten, 15 grand in a property and then move on to the next one. So the salary was mostly living expenses, but was also part of topping up that pot again, so every time I'd leave money into a property, it would be like, "Well, yeah okay that's ten grand worth of savings now just tied there. I'll top it up with the salary."
The other good thing about, I suppose, the MoD, is they do, I think purposefully, move you every three to six months so you don't get too comfortable anywhere, don't set down any roots. So I'd very much been from a place the Wirral up in the northwest, near Liverpool and Chester. I'd always very much been, "Well, I'll stay here." If I go away for work or something, I'll go do a little bit but then I'll come back here because the Wirral's brilliant. It's better than everywhere else. It was the only place I'd really invested at that point. I'd done some in Manchester, some in Chester, but mostly it'd been sort of Wirral based. The MoD moving me around every five minutes did open my eyes up to the rest of the country. I could then get a feel for, "Okay, this is what investing's like in Cambridge." I'd never been to Cambridge before. The USAF bases are down that way so I ended up moving down there. It was good from that point of view as well. Just getting a bit more exposure to the world, Europe, but specifically the UK as well.
I think you've got a very particular approach to certainly that phase when you're doing the BRR type of model. Walk us through that and some of the financial assumptions or some of the way you view financing. That was interesting, mortgages for example to refresh your memory. Just walk us through that. What did you do? How did you approach it, generally speaking? I guess that was a fair chunk of your earlier years, was it? This we're about to talk...
I started off doing it wrong. I basically got penthouse apartments in Manchester. Quite quickly realized that probably wasn't the best strategy in the world and so went to two up, two down terraces that were anything from probably... I'd buy them for anything from 40,000 up to about 100. I did quite a lot of auction properties as well at the time, but the whole BMV thing was starting to become a thing. I've never liked that, I never believed in it anyway. My thing was always just stick to estate agents. They're everywhere and there's loads of properties around. It was a numbers game but I'd go and walk on all the estate agents, find stuff I liked, knew what the money was going to be at the back end, because I had tenants in the area so I could reverse engineer my numbers and say, "I can't have more than this much money invested in it at the end, so what can I afford to pay for it?"
Then with the experience of being a building surveyor, I could look at the properties and say, "This is how much work is needed." And, because I grew up there, I had quite a lot of contacts in different trades and stuff like that. I could quite accurately price up a job on a property so within about 15 minutes I'd know exactly what my bottom line number was going to be for that property. I've always been into finance and a bit of geek from that point of view so the financing side of it, I kind of knew, "All right, this is going to bridging finance, this is what I'm going to end up paying for it." At the start the whole six month rule wasn't a thing but then by the end of it, it become one. Just even being able to plan in for that and say, "It's going to be six months at this rate, then I'll refinance up to this rate. These are the deals available, this is the upfront fee, blah, blah, blah." So it was very much cookie cutter.
That's a hard thing to say when you're a bit drunk. It was very much a cookie cutter approach to these development things and it was buy a bit of a dump, two up, two down terrace, a Victorian stock majority that needed some work. As I say a lot of them were auction wons but otherwise they just properties that had been left in disrepair. Do the work to a pretty good standard on the basis I was going to keep them long term anyway. Then refinance it, let them out. Because you'd be waiting, probably realistically nine months per property to refinance once all the work had been done, it gave you long enough for the MoD salary to top up what I was going to end up leaving into the property and that then meant I could just go again.
I got to the point, because some of the deals were literally 40 grand for a place at auction, I could have two or three on the go at once anyway. A couple of times I did just do it purely cash. If it was either quicker that way or it was so little it was too much of a pain in the ass. 25 grand tends to be the minimum mortgage you can get, so if you're buying something for 40 K, you might as well get a personal loan for 25 K, easier and quicker. Quite often, I'd just buy it myself with cash, do it quicker. The six month rule still applied, but you could if you wanted to, you could refinance it at least with purchase price plus invoiced expenses and sometimes I'd do that if there was no ERC's on it, knowing that in a year's time I could refinance again, maybe get a year's worth of growth out of it, and then potentially pull even more money out.
I've always been a little bit flexible with how I finance things, but I've always known going into them, here are my different exit strategies and what it'll end up costing me and I think as you know, I'm very much a cash flow investor. Probably different from you, or maybe it's just a northern thing, my minimum requirements for cash flow, whether it's flipping or a buy to let and hold, are quite low compared to yours. I used to flip things for a five grand profit, because once I'd been up and running for awhile, I could do it. It'd take about eight hours worth of work for me, because it would just be bring in a couple of estate agents, getting my builder to go around and build it. He'd say, "Yeah, we're going to do the same as we did on Tudor." I'd be like, "Okay, cool." So negotiate it, buy it, run this list of stuff, put the money through, he'd do the work. I'd then put it back on the market, sell it. It was very easy, very hands off. So for five grand, doesn't necessarily seem worth it for a lot of things, but when you actually work out your hourly rates at eight hours, better than a smack in the face. Yeah, it's not huge still.
Well, five grand for eight hours of work, that's pretty decent. I'm trying to work out the hourly rate, but it's not bad. There's a couple of things you said there and there's one or two you didn't. So when you put them on mortgages, what type of mortgage did you take typically?
What for? Refinancing them to keep for long term?
Yeah.
A bit of a mix. I quite like longer terms, sort of five year fixers. Which, yeah to an extent, back fired a little bit when interest rates collapsed shortly afterwards, but I always liked security. Despite all the things that I do, I'm quite risk adverse and so I look at how I can minimize risk at every opportunity. If I can make a property stack up at a relatively high comparatively fixed rate for five years or ten years or something like that, it's still cash flows and makes sense to me. I'll take that risk off the table of interest rates moving around and do it that way. I tended to go for maximum loan will always be 75 percent, but I'd try and get it as low as possible. I'd try and... It's just clocked with me what you're trying to get me to say now, so mostly I'd try and do capital repayment mortgages.
Sorry, mate, a little bit slow today.
I would've got you there eventually don't worry.
Yeah, eventually, in about three hours time when I went, "I don't know what mortgages you want me to say. Do you want me to get their product number or something?"
I remember you were telling me your whole model is around repayment mortgages and why, so I'm really just...
I forget things, whatever.
Yes.
Generally speaking, my goal, because I'm not overly greedy, my goal is to have an unencumbered asset portfolio, because I'd rather have less properties with no debt and therefore no worries in my eyes, than a property portfolio four times the size but with 75 percent LTV, because you're just exposed to a lot of other risks there. When I first started off, I worked out how many properties do I need unencumbered to give me the income I want and then I tried to race as quick as I could to get to that number. Then once I was there, it's like, "Okay, cool, now just pay down the debts on them all." That's obviously been a process that's been in place now for ten, 12 years for some of them. I've got a handful of unencumbered at this point. There's still some that I've got decent amounts of leverage on them, but as a general portfolio, it's under 50 percent LTV by a decent chunk.
It's not maximizing from a financial point of view, it's not maximizing the returns I could get, I've worked with people in property for years now. I've no doubt that a lot of them will become much more wealthy than me because they're willing to take on more risks, but I don't care. Some of them I've bought, done up, refinanced and then I'll maybe refinance once again, if they've gone up by a decent chunk of money, but if I've said, refinance to 75 percent initially and it's dropped down to 50 percent, I might refinance probably back up to 60 or something like that. I don't want to go back up to mortgage up to the eyeballs just to be able to add another property on. I'd rather sell something, flip something to generate the cash to buy another property and stick more money down. That's my peculiarity, I suppose.
The people that say refinance and live off that money, they need shooting.
Yeah, yeah.
I hope you don't mind me saying that.
I don't mind you saying it. I tend to agree with you. It's such a high risk strategy and it can make you a hostage basically or a mortgage prisoner, tax hostage, whatever language you want to use, if you follow that strategy. It'd probably work once or twice but around about the third, fourth, fifth iteration, you suddenly become trapped.
Yeah. And the whole expand as quick as you possibly can, it worked for... I can never remember those two teachers down in Kent that bought like 400. What were they called?
Yeah...
Those two, anyway. And yet, it worked perfectly for them because they were building the portfolio basically of off plan new build stuff in a really good high tenant demand area that had a low to capital appreciation and then they stopped, through luck I think more than judgment, at the right time so when the mortgage market collapsed they could still service all their debts and then they could ride that out and make a profit and ended up selling it. I think they sold it to a Saudi or Chinese investor at some point, something like that. The number of people that did exactly the same thing but maybe kept on going for an extra six months or they didn't buy properties in such a high tenant demand area that ended up going bankrupt. There's probably a lot more of them than there are of the one or two success stories. That's why you know exactly who I'm talking about when I say those two teachers. They're the exceptions that break the rule.
Survivor bias, isn't it? Survivor bias. I was going to say the Waltons, but isn't the Wilsons or something like that?
Yeah, I think it was the Wilsons, wasn't it?
Yeah, I think so. But yeah, I mean they're all over the news. He's quite outspoken, isn't it? Very outspoken, he probably wouldn't appreciate us suggesting the strategy being flawed and lucky, but there we go. But who knows?
The other thing though, so talk about the... I just want to dwell a little bit on the loan to value side of it, because I know you've got your personal view about wanting to have an unencumbered portfolio for your personal reasons, but what about just from an economic point of view, property cycles point of view, what about that as far as loan to values are concerned? Have you got any views on that?
Yeah, I think if you follow the 18 year property cycle and you buy into that whole thing, then yet there are times to leverage up and also to leverage down. If you're in a particularly strong growth phase, then maximizing the amount of exposure you've got to the property sector if it's going to go up and especially if ideally your rental yield is higher than the cost of finance, then you are just benefiting from other people's money. If you can buy something at six percent and you only paid four percent for the money, you made two percent on someone else's money. It's ideal. As you say, from a pure mathematical point of view, it's the best thing to do. You should get the hundred percent mortgages if you can swing them. It is a personal risk preference and risk profile that I've got, but back in the day I probably was more comfortable taking on high levels of risk. Certainly when I did developments, I have done things at a hundred percent develop finance. I think it depends very much on where you are and almost on what point you reached the stage where you've got too much to lose at that point. So, do you need to be taking on risk?
Sometimes it does just purely come down to greed, of people like, "Oh, no I want more because I want a x million pound portfolio." You're like, "All right, why? What difference does that make?" I think that harks back to my financial advisor days of, "Work out what you're doing it all for in the first place and actually stick to that goal." Don't just ace a number for a number's sake, because no number's ever big enough. If you want a million pound equity, once you get there, you'll probably want a million and a half then two million. There's no end to it. Whereas if you say, "I want this type of car, this type of property, this type of lifestyle." When you get there, cool. You're done.
Yeah. Well, it's interesting is the flip side to the leveraging up side of it, is if there's a downturn in the property market, that 75 percent loan to value is not 75 percent loan to value anymore is it? It's usually a little bit more.
And there's a reason 75 percent is generally industry standard for the most they'll go up to. Even in the big property crashes, we don't have drops more than 25 percent generally speaking. I have a whole random theory on British psychology about that, but whatever. I think it's securing for the financing people rather than you. It all just comes down to whether or not you can service that debt. If you can, then yeah, take as much debt as you want and grow as fast as you want, provided you've got the ability to finance the debt. So if you're in full time employment at the moment and having to pay the mortgage on your investment portfolio isn't going to cause you any issues. Then yeah, cool. Take loads of risk with it. If you rely on the money, so when I chose to retire however long, six years ago, whatever, I was kind of, at the time, reliant on my red roll and my profit from the property. So I'm like, "Well, I don't really want to take too much of my risks with this, so if interest rates double, I end up having to refinance and all of my profit disappears, I have to go get a job again."
I didn't like the sound of that. So I wanted at that stage to be reducing my risk, reducing my reliance on money. So if interest rates do double now, yeah, it'll have an impact, but it won't cripple me and it won't stop me from being able to live my life the way I want it.
Yeah, some might say you're not employable anymore anyway, Damien, I don't know.
Don't say that [inaudible 00:30:51], mate.
But on a serious note, you took a bit of time. Did you say 11 years before you were able to retire as you call it, at 32?
Yeah, it's one of those dodgy things, isn't it? When do you count as having started? So I started investing when I was 18, but I didn't really know what the hell I was doing, so I probably really started when I finished the last year of university. So I was like 21 and then I retired when I was 32. So 11, 12, 13 years, something like that. I don't know. Pick a random number.
But it wasn't one year.
Oh, God, no. Retire in 12 months, 24 months, all that sort of stuff, yes, you can, but you're working in property. I was a property investor, so I was using my money to provide an income as opposed to using my time, effort, and all of that, to make it. Because otherwise, you could say, well as soon I got employed as a surveyor, I'd retired at the property.
You're full time in property, yeah.
But it's a bit of a... you could spit in it if you really wanted to but yeah, no. You could just rent to rent because then you're full time in property. You're an investor, you can retire. But no you can't, you're now working as a rent to rent person. It's a job.
And you don't actually have any assets.
Yeah, which is a bit of a downer.
Obviously there's ways to protect that but with options and things like that and then reinvesting profits to buy assets, but one of the great...
Whether you're rent to rent or if you're working in software in the city, it's the same thing. You still use your profits, whether it's from self employed or PAYE, to invest in assets.
Yeah.
It makes no difference, you've just got a job.
Yeah, and that's kind of what I want to go over a little bit with you as well. You kind of over, about just a decade or so, you were quietly building up a portfolio. Have you got an order of magnitude you could share with us in terms of your numbers of properties or whatever you feel comfortable sharing?
More than most, not as much as some.
I hear you.
I'm probably a mid seven figure sort of ball park, which is more than I ever need to live off. I think I worked out the other day, I live off about two grand, two and a bit grand a month. I'm fairly cheap, but I've got no kids, no wife. I'm unlovable. I don't need to worry too much about massive expenses. My biggest expense nowadays is collecting backpacks.
Yeah, I do notice you've got a fetish, no a collection of backpacks.
I do like a backpack.
You do like a backpack, you do. Absolutely. But equally, I think, so there's the relatively steady way of doing it, which is kind of what you did, over about a decade. I looked at some stats the other day, apparently even the world's top billionaires, top, top billionaires, the ones that we all know, how long it took them to make their first million. The average, you might know already, but the average was eight years. So these are billionaires now, worth a few billion, and they took eight years to make their million. I thought that was really interesting. This idea of overnight success, get rich quick, certainly wasn't the model you followed, let's say that.
No. I went to some of the, I think inside track, they were called back in the day, weren't they? They were the first scammy property marketers, I hope you haven't interviewed any of them.
Not anymore.
But yes, so they were the whole get rich quick thing. I'm not going to lie, I was tempted. I was like, "This sounds great." Because I didn't know any better. At least I had a bit of financial training from the IFA side of things and my family are quite nerdy about money and investing so I'd kind of grown up around it. I always knew the whole if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. So looking into it in a bit more detail, I'm like, "Yeah, okay. I can see how on paper this might work, but the reality of it isn't going to work." But as I said, I made pretty big mistakes initially buying off plan penthouse apartments in south Manchester. For a yield point of view, didn't really work. I was paying all the developer profit for it. I remember negotiating because we bought two in one block. I can't remember the numbers. They were like 280 or something like that. It was 250 at the time was the stamp duty threshold. But it was the whole lump ones, rather than the stage. I sort of was trying to be sweet and nice and negotiate them down, but it was 250,000 and 800 pounds and so for the sake of 800 more pounds they couldn't just knock off that to save me the stamp duty.
At the time, I was like, "I'm a genius. I've just saved myself 30 grand." And didn't hold out for, "Behave yourself. Give me another 800 quid off so I can save even more on stamp duty." It just didn't even occur to me at the time. I mean, the opportunities to be ripped off are rife in property. It's the whole fear of missing out, the greed element of it, of people want things quicker. Yeah, it's possible there's a handful of people who've done everything. You've got billionaires, I'm sure. The average is eight years for your million. I'm sure there's some people like, "Yeah, I did it in two months." There's always those stories that are brought out to make it seem doable for everyone else, but they are the exception rather than the rule. I think the slow, steady, boring approach is almost guaranteed to work whereas the taking the massive risk, it might pan out for you, probably won't though.
Well, I think to be honest, anyone listening to this who might be in their 20's, you were 21 when you said you started proper. 18, actually when you started messing about. By 30, early 30's, you're done. So what's wrong with that?
As you say, I reckon you could do it quicker. I could certainly do it quicker now if I knew what I knew now back then and just not being as distracted, not spending all my money on cars at the time, just being a bit more focused and picking the right skills and utilizing them properly. You can do it quicker. I'm not lazy, fundamentally energy efficient, so I don't like to go faster than I have to. I very quickly realized at 32, I retired. I think I was retired for about four months or so, like, "This is rubbish. There is nobody to play with. Everyone's in work. I am bored out of my tiny little mind." So I started going back to work almost straight away, but at least it was on my own terms then, so that was nice.
Yeah, that's good. So we talked a bit about the starter home model that you had. We got you effectively to retire pretty much. Have you done other things in property? You kind of alluded to it, certainly in your own right, and if so what sort of things have you done? Kind of knowing already some of the answer.
Yes, the fact that you know the answer, I feel like you should just answer for me, but that would probably be a one sided interview then wouldn't it? What have I done? I've done pretty much everything. I've tried most things just to see if it works or how much of a lie it is. So developments was a big one that I've done. I think including my time with other agencies and stuff like that, I've done about 2.3 billion pounds worth of property development now, so a decent chunk of it. I've done quite a lot of plan and gain and more paper based value outs, which I quite like because it's easy and straight forward. I've done some HMO's sort of in London and Cambridge way. I've done JV developments with people. I've done JV long term ownership. I wouldn't do that again. Pain in the ass. So I'm trying to get out of all those ones that I'm still tied up in there. So yeah, pretty much every every one, so what have I missed. I've invested in different countries. There we go. What else have I done that I'm supposed to be mentioning?
Am I supposed to know your story better than you know your story?
I think so, yeah.
No, I think you've covered most of it. I think the longterm JV thing, I wanted to come back to, but the US thing... I think it's probably worth just a quick segue into that because my understanding of what your motives behind the US thing, were kind of... Is it fair to say it was like the UK starter home on steroids?
I think that was a phrase we came up with when we were in Toronto. Yes, it's exactly the same thing. Very simple, single let property. Buy it, get finance on it, rent it out, use the profit from the property to pay down the debt. Get it as unencumbered as quickly as possible. It's exactly what I do in the UK. It probably, if you go full tilt at it, you could maybe do 12 to 15 years for that time frame. With the American property, because of the yields that they give you, you can achieve that in four to six years, something like that. Depending on obviously interest rates, how much loan to value you get, all that good stuff. But yeah, for me, the strategy in America is identical to what I've already done over here. It's just a lot quicker, so it is four years, five years, that kind of ball park. Then your tenants, instead of giving you an income, because they've paid down your debt for you, they've given you effectively a capital appreciation there. You can basically guarantee it doubling a hundred percent increase in your initial investment within five years. Yes, without an income, but it's still a pretty good almost foolproof way of doing it.
Big caveat and pause there, but unless the property market collapses which I think is a little bit more likely in America than it is in the UK, but because the sort of properties I'm buying, they're already quite low end anyway, not that much further for them to drop. If they drop by 20 percent, it's like, "Oh, they've dropped ten grand." It's not a huge sum of money. That gives you some downside protection, but also the type of tenants I'm letting out to, they're effectively the US version of DSS tenants, so section eight, I think they call them. DSS, I'm showing my age LHA now, sorry. So there's a lot of downside protection with those types of properties. Your biggest risk is probably the structural side of it and yeah, that's always a risk, but if you get enough of them, they'll cover each other then.
One thing we both couldn't get our head around, is just the relatively low land value and relatively high gross yields for the equivalent to a single let in some parts of the States.
Yeah, we bought sort of properties for 170, 180,000 dollars and then you'd see a plot of land a couple of doors down on the market for 5,000 dollars. You think, if this was in the UK, the vast majority of value of our property is in the land. I guess it kind of makes sense, an island versus a massive country like America, especially the areas we were sniffing around. They weren't highly densely populated areas anyway. I guess there's a logic there, but it was very unusual for us, wasn't it?
Well, yeah, it's a bit of an eyeopener and the yields as well. How people would pay 15 percent plus gross yield in certain sections of the market.
Yeah, I think my yields in the UK are pretty good, it's sort of the eight percent. It was always a benchmark. I think the one we've got in the US is more like 17 percent. So, as you say, it's twice as quick as it would be in the UK to do exactly the same strategy.
Yeah.
It's an absolute minefield from a legislation and finance point of view though. They make you work for it.
Yeah, there's a lot of complexity. Simplistically, economically, it makes sense, but legals and tax and stuff like that needs to be considered.
It seems like we're taxed for everything that you can possibly think of.
Yeah, they have at least three levels, don't they?
Thieves.
The other thing you mentioned briefly, I was just wanting to come back to. You talked about longterm JVs and potentially not being such a great idea. Why was that?
I think that's probably just me being antisocial to be honest. I don't play well with others on a long term basis.
What's long term in your book?
If you ask some of my girlfriends, not that long. I think probably longer than a development cycle. So, two years is ideally the maximum I want to be in bed with someone financially speaking. Whereas when you start doing the longterm stuff, I think it's just hard to match up two people's longterm financial goals that don't change that much over a two year period. So what seems like a good idea at the time, after a few years, it's like, "Oh, I want to go on and do this sort of investment now or I want to do this with the property." Even if it's just, "I want to sell it, I want to keep it." It's things like that I'm not used to having to negotiate and come up with an agreeable solution for two people instead of just me looking at it and thinking, I think this is the best solution so I'm going to do that. And rightly or wrongly, sometimes I get it wrong, but at least it's all on me then, as opposed to well, now I've got to consider what somebody else wants and what they think and what they think is the best idea and do that with them.
It's definitely a personal preference. I think it's a very good way to access finance if you've got no finance but you've got lots of skill and time, so it's a great way to do that and JV on that basis. Also I think it's a good way to enter markets that you couldn't necessarily afford on your own with somebody else, so I do see there's lots of pros to it. It's just for me, I'm not looking to always be pushing the envelope of, "Well, I want to go for a bigger deal now so I can make even more profit." It's, "Yeah, I'm happy in my own little bubble, just bumbling around aimlessly and doing all right at it."
Yeah, that makes sense. I agree with you. Short term basis, one, two, three years, max probably. You said two. Yeah, something in that vicinity would probably be about right or have a way, this is probably the alternative, isn't it? Have a way that you could carve it out easily. So if you've got two properties, it's quite easy to do a separation at least. One for you, one for me type of thing.
At a development like that, you can't say, "Well, okay, we're going to develop four units. After x period of time, we'll just split it 50/50 or something like that." I think it works quite well from the development side of it. It's yeah. I've got a couple of HMO's that I've got with other people and it's just... I pay no attention to it, because I kind of leave it for someone else to do, on the basis I've almost written it off now, so it's like, "Yeah, whatever." At some point somebody will tell me something has happened. I've probably loads of money on it and I don't even [inaudible 00:45:38] know but whatever.
I doubt it somehow and I doubt you don't really know what's going on as well. I kind of know you, so I'm sure you've got a closer eye on it than you're suggesting. And talking about having a closer eye on financial matters, so what else have you been doing to keep yourself busy, because you said you went full time in property. You got bored, you went and did something else but what else did you do or are you doing besides pure property?
I went full 360 and started going back towards more of the IFA days. Knowing when I looked at my situation it was like, "Yeah, cool. I'm able to retire and live off my income from property, got bored want to do something else." I realized I was massively overweight in one asset class. It was fine at the time because it was 2012, 14? Yeah, those sort of ballpark areas. So property had already had a big crash but it was still kind of fresh in the mind of well it can do this again. So although my model isn't that risky, it was still, "Well, I don't really want to be overweight in this so much." So it was all about trying to get back towards a better diversified portfolio with the asset classes, commodities, gold, all the different equities, and funds and all that good stuff. I started to go back towards that. Obviously you and I worked together for a wee while and that was all about how can we share what we've learned along the way. I think that kind of got me on to I quite like working with people. Not many people to be honest, but with some people.
I think your people will know me from previous days and they'll know I'm not very social able. I like working with a small group of decent people. Our benchmark was always, "Would you go for a beer with them, whether or not they were a customer?" I think I very much took that one to heart. Working with people in property I think was one thing and I guess for me, I was being pulled back towards, "Well, I don't just want to be in property. I want a more diversified portfolio." So I went went back to effectively now, helping people out investing across the board, so they've got a bit more of a diverse portfolio. They know about all of the different investment options and the different asset classes and all that good stuff. It's up to them to make the decision of what they want to do. I'm not a financial advisor. I don't know what the actual term is. I think someone said financial personal trainer and I guess that kind of fits, because let's face it a personal trainer, you could watch all of the stuff they teach on YouTube and not pay anybody any money, but there's so much stuff on YouTube or the internet or whatever, that you don't really know what the best thing is for you.
You need someone to educate you and say, "Here are all your options and here's the pros and cons of different asset types or different work outs, whatever it might be. These are the ones that are probably best for you." They just teach you what you need to know to make your own informed decisions. That's kind of where I'm at at the moment, doing more of a financial education piece, which so far is proving entertaining.
Yeah, well entertaining is a word actually, because if anyone's not read it then your book for example, The Money Shot. I particularly recommend the audible version. It's a different version.
I mean, it's basically the same version, but after the first chapter, I got a bit bored of reading my own stuff, so I go rogue a little bit and go off tack, but it's generally the same information. I think I give people an insight into like, "Oh yeah, this example, the guy's name isn't this. His name is actually this. I used to do Tae boxing with him." And give a little bit more insight into the book.
Yeah, and on a serious note, there's some really good stuff in it. I don't think I've ever read a personal finance book where I literally laughed out loud. I did. It was hilarious. You've just added such a sense of humor to writing about what can be a really dry topic.
Oh, it's dead boring what I talk about. It's one of those things where every so often I'm like, "Yeah, I should try and help people learn this aspect of finance." The number of times I've recorded something whether it's like a video course or some training and you listen back to it, you think, "God, I want to just off myself listening to this. It's so dull." Even I have to go back and edit myself and be like, "Come on, there must be a way to make this a little bit more interesting." But the topic is fundamentally really boring. The way I invest in property, just buy stuff that's relatively cheap that people want to live in and will pay you money for it and then just do that for like a decade or two. That's basically my entire strategy in a sentence. It doesn't take much more than that. To try and jazz it up a little bit, it takes some work sometimes.
You know, there's a lot to be said. I think in personal finance generally speaking, property specifically, boring is good. It's just how do you stay with it? How do you stick with it? That's where people sometimes come unstuck, because the strategy of earning the money should be kind of sensible and pretty boring and then once you've got it, you can do all sorts of interesting things with your life then, can't you?
Yeah, and that's it. I think having the different pots are most... "Well, this is my boring fund and this is going to be..." Even if it's just like, "This is my retirement fund. This is my retire early, so I don't wait to be 50, 60. I want it to be 30, 40." Depending on how old you are. Then, "This is my complete punk money." Then yeah. I think having those but understanding why you've got them at different percentages and where you're investing them and what your genuine risk profile is. The whole, "Oh, you've got a long time to invest so you should just invest in the stock market." It's like, "Yeah, but that's just flawed fundamentally of how volatility works." Again, coming from a mathematical perspective and just being able to explain things like that, which, I don't think many financial advisors explain. I hope you haven't got any financial advisor listeners, but most of them haven't done anything for themselves, so they haven't got any money and they're relatively young. I've literally done the exams that they need to do. Most of it's about how to sell someone a pension. If they're really lucky, they've spent ages on actuarial tables and can tell you when you'll be dead. So that's always a good laugh.
But they will get fed from head office or whatever subscription service they've got that say, "These are the funds that we're pushing people towards for x, y, and z reason." So when you go to a proper advisor that says, "I think you should put your money here and here." It's like, "Okay, why?" And they're like, "Well, because..." And they can let me know. "Oh, cool. Why is that important or why is that going to happen that means that's going to be a good thing." They're like, "Because it said so?" They've got no experience and they can't then talk to you generally. They can talk about equities, maybe bonds. They won't know anything about commodities. They certainly won't talk to you about crypto. They'll probably be reluctant to talk to you about property, because they don't get any commission for selling you any of those things. Even within the property sector, people tell you, "Oh, property's the greatest thing in the world." They've still got a horse in the race. So they're like, "Yeah, properties perform better than the equity market for the past blah, blah, blah." I'm like, "All right."
I guess that's my paranoia kicking in, but I always think if anyone tells me anything, "Well, what's in for you for me to believe you." If I can figure that out, I've got no issue with people selling me stuff to make a profit. That's how the whole world works, but I just want to know where their interests are. From my point of view, I charge people for knowledge. They can do what the hell they like with it. I'm not selling anybody a product. So it's like, "Yeah, pay me, listen to me, ignore me. Go nuts. I don't care. You've paid me, so whatever."
Talking about paying for your knowledge, you've got the books, so people can buy that. I think you have a podcast or a podcast series of the same name, The Money Shot?
The Money Shot, yeah. I can't decide if I want to carry on doing that. This might not be the best opportunity to have this personal breakdown, but I've done like two seasons of it now and I've not been tracking if anybody listens, but you know when you just think, "I can't be bothered. I'm sure nobody listens or cares, so I just won't bother."
Well, I think people do listen and care but I think equally...
Well, that's why we're doing this.
It says a lot about you, because I think you are... Let's talk about your interests and variety. I think you like to do different things, don't you? So you might have got bored of it and you think, "I want to do something else, but actually..." You know I've spoken to you a bit over the last couple of years as we've kind of... We're still friends but we're doing different things. You've been all over the world. You've been different places, so just talk a little bit about where you've been and what you've been doing the last couple of years for example.
Yeah.
Apart from now. Nobody can go anywhere or do anything but that's besides the point.
Now the past three months I've been in my office, the lounge and the bedroom. It would be a short series this past three months, but yeah. I think I am quite... I was going to say shallow but I don't think that's the right word. I'm like a small child, I need someone to pat me on the head and say, "Well done," every so often otherwise I'll stop doing it. So if I don't feel appreciated by it, I'm like, "Yeah, well nobody cares. Nobody told me I was a good boy today, so I'm not doing this anymore."
I know you've been to Bali and I think you've been to the States and you've been to different places, but you can. That's my point. You can.
Yeah, no. I think the property and the investing and the education I do now gives me the opportunity to, as long as I've got one of my many, many backpacks and a laptop, I can work anywhere in the world and it doesn't impact at all on my income. So we were talking sort of before the call, the lockdown the UK, literally didn't really notice the difference for the first few months because the people I work with, they're still okay. If they've been working with me for a while, they could see the potential opportunities of what's happening and they will look at it, "Well, how can I position myself to make the most of this particular situation." Yeah, fortunately the way I sort of said, "Well, this is how it could play out, it has done." They've been able to make pretty good returns for the past few months, that ordinarily they'd be expecting, "Yeah, this might take me three years and they've done it in a few months." I like that. I like the interaction more with people now. I think I've, over the past few years, figured out what is a good way for me to work.
Having a bit more, "I'm never going to be mass appeal I know that because I call people rude names too much." You notice how well behaved I'm being on this episode so far. But no, I'd rather work with a small group of people that I get on with really well and can genuinely see the impact of my sharing of knowledge and having the impact on them and their financial situation, so that's the bit I quite like. The stuff I'm doing now, there are elements of it that are digital courses and things like that where it's just, "Here's the bare minimum of information you need. Get that stuff in order and then we can come and talk about the interesting cool stuff afterwards." I suppose that's where I put most of my energy and effort now.
Yeah. I've started doing that and I've started sharing what you do with a wider community. I'm very heavily weighted in property and I'm trying not to be so much so, but you're helping me to broaden my outlook if you like, into different asset classes as you talked about. Some good stuff there if people want to find out more. I think you'll probably tell us towards the end, but that's that. That's good. I guess just maybe thinking about starting to wrap up, are there lessons or what advice might you give perhaps your younger self or someone listening to this who might be a mini Damien, forbid the fall? Yeah, maybe let's go there. So your 18 to 25 or 18 to 30, and you think, "Well, maybe I'd like to go full time in property, what sort of advice would you give from your perspective?"
It's almost specific to me and my personality type, so if it was telling younger me what to do, it would be kind of the route I took, but just a bit quicker and a bit more structured. You don't need to become a chartered surveyor to be able to be successful in property, but I do think working in an estate agency or a letting agency gives you a much better in depth knowledge of an area more importantly because you will know that street's good, that street's bad. Everyone wants to live there, nobody wants to live there. If you're focusing on a small patch, I think that's probably an important thing. Having one strategy, one property type, whatever it might be. Focus on that, get good at it, learn it, the ins and outs of it because that then gives you the opportunity to either sell your skills onto somebody else and find a financial backer but you've genuinely got the skill to bring to the table to warrant taking some equity in the deal and doing some sort of JV with them. I think that would probably be a good starting point.
There's too many people that just want to JV with property people. Oh, ask all of your family members for money. Like, "Okay, fine. But do you know anything about property? You've got zero track record, you've got no experience, no professional qualifications." You're just asking people for money to go and do your hobby. So I think, fine as a strategy use other people's money to grow, but make sure you're actually bringing something to the table, whatever that might be. I think developments are getting harder, I'd say probably for the last few years. The money available on developments is a lot less because there's so many people that think they can do it. I think that's a problem that even I was facing ten years ago. Everybody had seen Sarah Beeny programs and Location, Location, Location, all that stuff. Everyone fancied themself as a developer. In property nobody ever talks about the failures, people only ever talk about the successes. All of the gurus out there and the property trainers will say, "Oh yeah, we did this great deal and we made blah, blah, blah." But they don't mention that a, that was the only deal they've ever done and b, the other three deals that they've done, none of them worked out and we made a loss so it didn't pan out the way we wanted it.
Nobody sits in the pub saying, "Yeah, I got into property and lost everything." It's only the people that made a load of money that want to talk about it. So I think taking everything with a pinch of salt, genuinely learning some sort of skill is marketable to someone else. Then don't be overly distracted by everything that's shiny that comes along and whether it is working, properly working, given your time for money in property, and accepting it's going to be a long slough before you get the finances able to invest in property yourself. That's one thing. Or developing the skills so that you can take money off of someone else and genuinely and sensibly invest that money on their behalf as well. I think that's probably the route I'd go. If you're saving up, if you want exposure to residential property before you've got enough to buy a property, look into things like the rates, the house builders, some way to get almost fractional ownership. Maybe it's the crowdfunding stuff, the payer to payer stuff, but some way if that's the area you want to go into, figure out how you can get into without, "Well, I've got 60 grand saved up in my bank account doing nothing because I'm waiting to use it as a deposit."
You can still use that money in some other way, shape, or form, if it's something you need for your own house or a wedding or something, yeah don't mess around with it. But if it's for investment purposes, start investing it, start learning. Would be my top tip.
That sounds good to me and I think you can probably talk about other ways of investing as well and not being so necessarily so weighted in property. So that kind of brings on to, if people wanted to reach out to you or connect with you, where would they go? What should they say when they connect?
Probably the easiest place is my website, theepinvestor.com and you should say hello. It's always a good starting point, what we call manners, Richard. Say whatever you want. There's a bunch of things. You can wander around the website. It's the usual stuff. Have a free lead back to here that'll email you about a bunch of stuff. If people want to skip all of that and just work with me, then I think probably the master class is the one that is my main focus right now. It's sort of everything I know about everything to do with finance and investing all in the one place. Then pulling it all together with you at the end to make sure you leave with a proper asset allocation, portfolio model, all of that good stuff. That's probably the best starting point for most people and there's a cheeky little thing inside it that if you do it properly, will cover the cost of the whole thing anyway, which is always nice.
That sounds good to me. All right.
I know.
Brilliant. Well, you've behaved yourself remarkably. You did promise me you'd get drunk for the show. You're bearing up quite well if you are.
It's hot here today. It's the sunniest day of the year so far. No idea when this is going to get released, but today, you can all look it up on the internet, today was the sunniest day of the year, so I went for a lunchtime drink. All on the balcony obviously. Can't go far.
Yeah, exactly. Well, you've done really well, mate. It was great to see you. Thanks for sharing. Next week by the way is the answer, next Wednesday, which won't mean anything to anyone watching this either, but there we go. There's a week between recording basically and it going live. So anyway, thanks, Damien. It's been great. There's loads of great insights there. I'll summarize it, probably talk to you a little bit. I won't summarize it too much because we've spoken a bit. I hope people maybe get your book, maybe reach out to you for your website.
It's remarkable. It's great to catch up with you and just listen back, because there's so many values that you have that I also share. It's just I don't call people rude names. I think besides that we're almost brothers.
You're like a polite version of me. I'm the better looking one.
Oh, oh that was nice of you to say. I need test these glasses out, mate.
Yeah, they don't work work anymore.
And it's his drink talking as well. I get you. It's cool. All right, thanks a lot, mate. It's great to see you. We'll catch up again soon.
Cheers, Richard. Tata.
Well, there you go. Damien's got a unique story as most of my guests have got a unique story and yet there's so many common elements isn't there. I think in Damien's case, I think he's probably a self confessed money geek. He grew up having conversations around the dinner table in the family home with money and business effectively being regular topics of conversation. You couldn't say that about every single home. I think he brought the FT and he studied shares and he studied investing or trading actually in the earlier years. I think even before he'd finished university, he was investing so he was able to retire at the age of 32, which not that many people can say. I think he said it took him 11 years before he went full time in property. I daresay he could have pushed himself to go a little bit faster if he really wanted to, but one of the reasons is that he was leveraging if you like, the ability to save from his salary. He would often set aside money from his earnings to be able to top up the money that he's leaving into property transactions.
The residual deposit through his bi-refurbish, refinance strategy that he was sticking to for those years. I think the other thing is just to cast your mind back is what he said about the path that he took. He took a very deliberate path to work in property and get qualified formally in the area he was really interested in. I call him a money geek but he's actually a really strong academic as well. He's multi-disciplined, is Damien. He went to do the charted surveyor. He's qualified as a mortgage broker, mortgage advisor. Of course, he's got his general academic background as well. He went to work for the MoD, he was working for a letting agency at some point as well. So he really immersed himself into bricks and mortar, I guess, from different elements of property management, portfolio management, for example. But equally, he educated himself on different asset classes, so property's not all he does. Indeed, I know that. He's got quite a lot of different interests in different asset classes. He studies these and he actually shares his knowledge as well. You can actually look him up at the theepinvestor.com. He's got some interesting programs there.
Even if not always the most politically correct in the way he speaks, but you got to love him, you got to love him. I think the other thing to take away from this conversation that I had was that his original plan which was to pay down effectively, so he would always take either a repayment mortgage or be able to throw money at his mortgages over time so that he could actually pay a 25 year mortgage off in probably half the time. That was his target, if he could clear it in about 12 and a half years. He's done something similar in the US. We touched that on similarly in the conversation that he can probably get property paid off in three to five years actually in the US because of different economic elements and factors that prevail in some parts of the US. He doesn't like to hang about basically but he was 11 years in the making, going full time and he's gone from strength to strength. Hopefully you got a lot from that. As I said, look him up on his website and feel free to connect with Damien if you haven't done so already. I guess the show notes are going to be over the website at thepropertyvoice.net. We'll get a transcription of the show as well if you'd like to read as well as listen. The video's going to be over the YouTube channel, the Property Voice YouTube channel.
Make sure you check us out in whatever media format is best for you. Meanwhile, if there's anything you'd like to talk about from today's show, you know you can always reach me personally podcast@thepropertyvoice.net. I'd be delighted to hear from you, but I guess all that's left to say right now is thank you very much for listening once again this week. Until next time on the Property Voice Podcast.
Thank you for listening today. Not head over to thepropertyvoice.net for more inspirational content and get updates through our mailing list. Join us next time on the Property Voice Podcast. And if you enjoyed the show, please don't forget to rate us on iTunes.
That's all from me this week, remember if you want to talk about anything from today’s show, or just talk property investing more generally, email me at podcast@thepropertyvoice.net, I would be happy to hear from you! The show notes can be found at our website www.thepropertyvoice.net
Thanks very much for listening again this week, so all that left to say is ciao ciao!