Drive Rental Cars, Put Your Money in PROPERTY

Drive Rental Cars, Put Your Money in PROPERTY

I met James Armstrong when he was a teenager and he's since become financially independent as he's now pretty wealthy.

He's got a very nice portfolio as he’s also got a fantastic place where he lives and when i first met James, he said to me that he wanted to do property development and he wanted to make serious money and i remember telling him that he’s going to spend his first 12 months packaging and selling deals for other investors being a sponge learning, you're going to get there.

It's now two years later and James Armstrong is killing it in property and in this article, we are going to explore his journey.

Q: When did we first meet and how old were you?

I was 19 years old when I was on the crash course when we first met.

I came on the crash course and said that I’m going to do some great things and also came on your winners Wednesday and that video had sixty thousand views and people are asking me a ton of questions as they're asking me questions about what my properties look like and also asking me questions about whether we are related yet we are not but that might change soon as I’m now dating your sister.

I did meet her after attending the crash course on the 12th of Jan.

I didn't really know anything about your family and so it was like two weeks after I'd already paid for the course is when I knew.

People sometimes assume that I got special treatment because I were in the family but that's not true.

I’m currently dating Melissa and I kind of even kept it under the radar as it's not like I did it to try and get close to you or some messed up reason like that and so I’m dating your sister and killing it in property at the same time.

Q: What made you want to live in this place because it's absolutely fantastic?

You know as a guy who finds houses for a living, you'd have thought it'd be easy to find a place to live in but wasn't.

It was really difficult as we just wanted to be somewhere close to like where my mate works and then like pretty much anywhere i wanted somewhere nice and so, it was to be modern.

There's loads of acres worth of land you can walk down and i like it as i actually think that when I first joined the academy, you were just completing on your castle and i think when you started the academy, you didn't yet own it as you were like in the process of buying it as you bought it a couple of weeks later.

Q: What is an average month for you to make in property just deal sourcing?

Probably like 30 to 40 grand a month.

The last three backwards have been around 90 grand and so, that's how i can track it and so for the last nine months, it's at least 30 grand a month.

What I’ve done though is that I've used that money to start building my own portfolio in property.

The reason as to why I rent stuff that I have myself and then buy stuff that I rent out, the philosophy around that is because this isn't an asset as it doesn't pay me since I have to pay bills here and i have to pay for the rent as I have got to pay for everything else.

When you buy a house and then rent it out, it pays you every month and as you know, a car is never going to pay you every month as it depreciates in value and for starters, it's not a real asset.

If i buy my own place, let's say i take 200 grand or 100 or 50 grand and put a deposit in my own house, I've now got a house of which I'll pay a mortgage rather than the rent, but if i took that money and invested it in a house and then got the rental income, the profit I'd make from that would be bigger than the savings I'd make on having a mortgage.

I don't have to worry about what the market's at when i want to sell my house and this is about lifestyle.

I always say that, if you're going to have a house revalued, it's got to look good as when people see it, the first thing they see is going to be the house and if it looks a bit, you know, tired and worn, then it doesn't matter how nice it is on the inside because the first impressions really matters.

So our house was in a really poor condition as well and so, we just kind of patched it up a bit and then painted it as it didn't really need a lot done to it and the house is looking a thousand times better than it was.

Q: So how much did you buy this house for?

Forty eight thousand pounds which was not a bad deal. I’ve also spend thirteen thousand two hundred including the VAT on it.

The total investment to buy this place was 64,000 pounds pretty much everything included in the budget.

I raised some finance from an investor and so, they had a reasonable amount of money as they're in a little bit of a difficult position because they can't get mortgages as they've got a complicated financial history of something along those lines and i said, okay, why don't you give the money to me and I'll give you a fixed return because they were planning on buying everything cash and making like six to eight percent.

I told them that I'll give them more than that and so over seven years, I've got 130,000 at fourteen percent which is a bit more than i wanted to pay.

The reason as to why I borrowed a hundred and thirty thousand pounds was because I'm doing another house and so I’m paying fourteen percent which is a lot I think/

I basically was able to pull their leg and get them to do this for me and they've done it at a cost which is obviously really good but we're planning on doing joint ventures with them so it's on the back of future business coming down the line and just building up great relationships with people.

Q: How do you how do you find great relationships like that?

That's networking around the same way you find investors as these are friends of our architects.

We're just networking with people, you know, asking for recommendations and half the time, we want to find builders in areas that we are new to.

I just go on Facebook groups and go, hey what builders can you recommend as there are thousands of property investors out there who have done conversions before, whether be it Hmo’s or just finance. Just ask questions as i just get out in the world and ask questions.

I find that every time i do a project whether it be big or whether it be small, there are always things that i learn through the process and now I've been pretty hands off as the team has been dealing with everything.

The best thing I've learned about the house is how the guttering works in little places like this every little area has little like quirks about how they build houses and around here it's the way the guttering works and you can see obviously it's caused issues as any guttering would but it's a lot cheaper to fix as it's only 150 quid for the flashing as opposed to maybe five to six hundred quid for full uPVC gutters and like down-pipes on the rest of it.

I'm going to build a portfolio of good deals and i don't really care where they are and if I'm being honest with you, if i have to go somewhere and I've got to get actively involved with stuff, then, either my power team is not good enough or that something about the deal hasn't been set up right and so it's not passive as i don't want to be this guy who's like super hands-on doing this and doing that which of course can cause you problems if you don't have the right people in place.

James Armstrong's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/JamesArmstr…