Soundbite: A Day in the Life of an Active Investor

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In today’s show, I thought I would share with you some of the activities that I get up to in a day as an active investor. Today may not exactly be a typical day as such…for a start, it’s based on today with today being a Monday…and I don’t particularly like Mondays as you will hear in a minute.

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Transcription of the show

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Property Voice podcast. My name is Richard Brown and as always, it’s a pleasure to have you join me on the show again today.

In today’s show, I thought I would share with you some of the activities that I get up to in a day. Today may not exactly be a typical day as such…for a start, it’s based on today with today being a Monday…and I don’t particularly like Mondays as you will hear in a minute.

OK, so here we go with a day in the life of this property investor…

Property Chatter

If you are as old as me, or perhaps just really cool, then you will have heard of the song ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by The Boomtown Rats. The band are fronted by Bob Geldoff, now a successful businessman and political activist, who also owns a few properties I believe.

The song has a macabre edge to it, so we won’t dwell on that too much. Most of us remember the title a trot it out occasionally, and especially on a Monday! Today is Monday and so I decided to jot down what I got up to today as a kind of fly on look into the world of an active property investor.

Now, I am probably not your typical or average property investor, so some of what I get up to will resonate, whilst other elements might not. Essentially, though it is probably just more of the same sort of stuff, done in my unique way. So, let’s get going.

Date log: Monday 23^rd July 2018

I usually wake before my 7am alarm, but today I relied upon it and probably precisely because it is Monday and the start of the business week.

I travel a lot and so I am often working remotely sometimes on different time zones, so that also means dealing with issues at apparently odd times of the day. Today I am in Rio De Janeiro, which is currently 4 hours behind the UK and is where we have a second home and some other property interests. At present, I am 4 hours behind the UK and around 3 hours ahead of large parts of the USA, both of which we have a lot of property interests.

As a by the way, over the weekend, I had been on a shopping expedition…not for new clothes or fast cars, but for floor and wall tiles in the most part! We are mid-way through another renovation project here having completed on one late last year. We were out with our architect and project manager, called Freddie along with his business partner Dani over the weekend. Every property investor needs a Freddie I think! As Freddie takes care of all my Brazilian property renovations, which means my role is mostly a commercial and executive one, rather than an operational one. Well, besides going tile shopping that is! I don’t usually go tile shopping to be fair, but the design on this property is something I am keen to retain a close eye on. And besides the tile shopping, which took about an hour or so, we did have a leisurely lunch and just the odd cold beer or two to wash it down with just to celebrate the tile buying the milestone! Anyway, that might explain my slumberous start to the day come to think of it!

So, back to Monday morning then. Well as I said, I don’t like Mondays and there is an obvious reason for that…it’s a catch-up day from anything that happened late on Friday and over the weekend, as well as what needs doing today and starting off for the week ahead. In addition, it is also my podcast recording submission deadline day, which in reality also means my podcast scripting and recording day as well…more on that later too.

This morning, I was straight onto the phone and then soon after the laptop, as we had a minor emergency over the weekend with one of our properties. I was aware of it as I had slyly spotted an email report come in over the weekend, however, I knew that it was being dealt with so decided not to sweat too much. The problem was a water leak in one of our HMOs, which had also resulted in water leaking into the room below and some cosmetic damage to the ceiling.

The tenant followed the procedure in what is now a self-managed property and called the out of hours number we provided, which is directed to an out of hours emergency fault repair service. They in turn have the emergency insurance and breakdown contact numbers, so they walked the tenant through the issue in conjunction with my property manager…making sure that the leak secured by isolating the supply and then starting to log an ‘important repair issue’ rather than an ‘emergency call out’.

Whilst this was an unplanned and a rather urgent event, my role in all this was to make a payment essentially, which is a recurring theme and simply by preparing for today’s episode I have identified that I really do need to make some changes to how we sort out some payment issues. we have properties in 4 different countries and also 4 different currencies along multiple ownership structures too; meaning a complex arrangement of banking and international transfers to administer.

Before breakfast, I also:

1. Responded to a couple of inquires for my Earn & Learn property project shadowing programme.
2. Ordered an additional credit card for my property manager.
3. Approved a guest blog post for our website
4. Reviewed and approved an insurance renewal on one of our USA properties
5. Requested some additional due diligence to be undertaken on a new USA project
6. Chased up a statement reconciliation from the property manager of some other USA properties we have
7. Advised a mentored investor on the best way to deal with a willing, yet sitting tenant during a property refurb, whether to retain the incumbent letting agent and some details around the refurb specification we have been working on
8. Responded to a YPN magazine reader who wanted to know more about the background behind my current Property Horror Stories mini series and separately to a podcast listener that had written in about the forthcoming PropTech book
9. Replied to a couple of Forum posters on The Property Hub
10. Exchanged a message with an investment partner on a newly completing project as well as a newly starting one
11. Followed up my ‘UK Freddie’, actually called Phil, who is running several of my UK projects at present to keep the plates spinning on these projects that are in the middle of works.

Time for a quick breakfast now I reckon! But my mornings are not usually that busy before breakfast. Today was a little more hectic than usual I think.

After breakfast and before lunch, this is what I got up to…

1. Critiqued a deal destined for our Property Deal Tips service, but this one is too good not to take a closer look at for one of my Property Consulting clients. I asked my Development Manager to undertake a few more checks on a couple of elements that I had spotted and we will take it from there
2. Reviewed and approved a remortgage illustration provided by my mortgage broker for a holiday let using a rather attractive new mortgage product in this sector
3. Reviewed the new HMO licence that I received for an HMO that does not currently require a licence today but will do so from 1^st October
4. Sent in some additional tenant info for that same HMO to the local council, who are being extremely officious over the details and level of information supply in order to provide the tenants with enough waste and recycling bins. I do so hate it when other people give me work that is just not necessary!
5. Checked in with another Mentored Investor client who I sensed was lacking a little bit of motivation, then made some suggestion of an alternative approach that could re-energise them once this was concerned

Lunch

After lunch things started to settle down a little more and so I also managed to add in some personal actions and admin into the mix. I won’t bore you too much about confirming our holiday plans and a bit of fun with my start-up investment portfolio, but these might have caught my attention as I suffered from the after lunch lull 😉

Back on it…

1. I reviewed social media accounts and shared some news stories across our Scoop.it platform and other media
2. Next up was a new tenancy agreement for a renewing tenant in one of my self-managed HMOs. Thank goodness for my NLA membership & Signable account is all I can say here…a pro-forma AST, checklist of what needs to be supplied to the tenant in order to be legally compliant and an easy and remote signature process, which was actually returned within minutes by the tenant meant this was a lot less torturous procedure than I expected it could have been. I also refunded this tenant’s deposit as a thank you for being a loyal and reliable tenant after 3 years with me
3. More payments – this time to fund some additional works on a USA project, pay for some additional legal work, settle a company formation bill on a new SPV and a a regular marketing arrangement with a property partner. Also inquired with one of the new app-based banks called Tide if I can hold multiple accounts with them, as considering switching banks for some of our accounts
4. Did a little more due diligence on another proposed investment project
5. Put in a check in call to my solicitor to follow up with a property going through the conveyancing stage
6. Sought advice from a US attorney on how best to protect my interests with a couple of lease purchase contracts that I have there
7. Booked a property viewing trip for later in the week
8. Updated an investor presentation
9. Passed a few tasks across to my virtual assistant

Then, I had a bit of a siesta…is that bad? I don't think so.

Dinner

1. Then, my Monday is often elongated as I prepare and record the podcast ready to send across to the editorial team. This is the case today too…but the glass of Malbec in hand as I speak to you certainly makes it a more chilled out affair!

So, there we have it…lots of admin today, also plenty of client, investment partner, project manager and internal staff engagement…maybe not as many payments as I thought on reflection and a fair sprinkling of supporting the property community too. I am expecting a quieter day tomorrow and indeed for the rest of the week, but I hope this gives you a little insight into a day in the life of an active property investor. Some other days I will go to site or visit people (clients, partners or suppliers), but a lot of my time is spent in front of the laptop analysing and organising, tapping out messages or speaking on the phone to chase and communicate too.

I am fortunate enough to have on the ground support from Freddie in Brazil, Phil in the UK, James in the USA and a Susan in Portugal, who along with Rod, Nina, Helen and Karen and the many letting agents, my mortgage broker, solicitor and accountant that I also rely upon, really do help to lighten the workload no end and perhaps missing some too. My wife also plays a big part, mostly as chief supporter and encourager, but at times really bails me out of certain situations as well, especially when I need to find a notary to authenticate some documents at short notice in a country where I don’t speak the language lol. Yep, that happened too!

Managing an existing double-digit portfolio, which is still growing at around 6-8 new refurbishment and conversion projects a year currently is not a one-man job I can tell you. So, I am extremely grateful to have all these good people around me to take the strain, although we are all ‘virtual’ or remote and nobody works full-time either, so it’s not exactly a massive business operation at the same time. I could probably beef up some of my systems to cater for the next level of growth, but as I operate what is largely a ‘lifestyle business’, it is not nearly as busy as perhaps that sounded earlier.

For example, tomorrow afternoon I am not working, Thursday I am going on a viewing day along with some nice food and wine afterwards, then taking a leisurely drive back on Friday. In between, I shall be spinning some more plates, then delegating and directing traffic as much as possible. This leaves me free to drop into the property forums, respond to listener and reader emails, proof read and add to the PropTech book…(I promise I will Helen) and support some mentoring or consulting clients along the way, which gives me such a boost when I see a transformation in them I can tell you.

So, whilst I perhaps don’t like Mondays that much, I also don’t often have that ‘Thank God Its Friday’ feeling come the end of the week it is fair to say. It is hard work at times, but with the right support and some correct time management, it ain’t a bad old life really. I did have a 'go big or go home' mantra a couple of years ago, but these days it more like going steady over the summer with Sandra Dee than it is playing chicken in Grease Lightening for yet another timestamp as to my age and cultural influences to end on…

I hope that was interesting, insightful or perhaps even slightly inspirational in some way, for at least some of you. However, to warp up, the show notes can be found over at www.thepropertyvoice.net or if you want to talk about anything from today’s show or just talk property investing, email me at podcast@thepropertyvoice.net, I would be happy to hear from you!

Once again, all I want to say is thank you very much for listening once again this week and until next time on The Property Voice Podcast…it’s ciao-ciao.