From NHS Physio To Serial Entrepreneur - Andy Gets Questioned On His Property Success

In this episode, we're doing something a bit different. I'm not the interviewer today; I'm the interviewee. 

Neil Gibb, a fellow HMO investor based in Australia, wanted to find out what it has taken for me to build my property businesses. I'll be sharing the ups, the downs, and everything in between with Neil and, of course, with you. 

If you want to know what it took to go from being a full-time physio in 2010 to running several multi-million-pound property businesses now, make sure you stick around.

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If you want to join my 1-2-1 mentoring program, you can enquire here. 

New to HMOs? Join The HMO Roadmap on a premium plan and unlock our award-winning library of 400+ resources to help you start, scale and systemise your HMO business. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Andy Graham: Hey, I'm Andy and you're listening to the HMO podcast. Over 10 years ago, I set myself the challenge of building my own property portfolio. And what began as a short term investment plan soon became a long term commitment to change the way young people live together. I've now built several successful businesses.

[00:00:20] Andy Graham: I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants. Join me and some very special guests to discover their tips, tricks, and hacks. The ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to star, scale and systemise your very own HMO portfolio now.

[00:00:40] Andy Graham: In today's episode, we're doing something a little bit different. You see, today I'm not the interviewer. Today, I'm actually the interviewed. I'm on the other side of the mic, so to speak. Neil Gibbs, a fellow HMO investor, wanted to find out what it has taken of me to build the property businesses that it has.

[00:00:56] Andy Graham: So today I'm going to share the ups, the downs, and everything in between with Neil and of course with you. So if you want to know what it has taken to get me from where I was in 2010 as a physio in a full time job to where I am now running several multi million pound property businesses. Make sure you stick around. Please sit back, relax, and enjoy today's episode of the HMO podcast.

[00:01:21] Andy Graham: Hey guys, it's Andy here. We're going to be getting back to the podcast in just a moment, but before we do, I want to tell you very quickly about the HMO Roadmap. Now, if you're serious about replacing your income, or perhaps you've already got a HMO portfolio that you want to scale up, then the HMO Roadmap really is your one stop shop.

[00:01:37] Andy Graham: Inside the Roadmap, you'll find a 60 lesson course delivered by me, teaching you how to find more deals, how to fund more deals and raise private finance, how to refurbish great properties, how to fill them with great tenants that stay for longer and how to manage your properties and tenants for the future.

[00:01:52] Andy Graham: We've also got guest workshops added every single month. We've got new videos added every single week about all sorts of topics. We've got downloadable resources, cheat sheets, and swipe files to help you. We've got case studies from guests and community members who are doing incredible projects that you can learn from.

[00:02:07] Andy Graham: And we've also built an application just for you that allows you to appraise and evaluate your deals, stack them side by side, and track the key metrics that are most important to you. To find out more, head to thehmoroadmap.co.uk now, and come and join our incredible community of HMO property investors.

[00:02:28] Neil Gibb: Welcome back to the HMO Property Show. Today, I'm going back to the UK to speak to another HMO expert from over there. We're talking to Andy Graham from the HMO Roadmap. Andy, welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:42] Andy Graham: Hi, Neil, for having me. It feels a bit unusual being on the other side of the mic, so to speak.

[00:02:47] Neil Gibb: I was about to say that before we hit record, it's going to be like reverse model, isn't it, for you?

[00:02:52] Andy Graham: Yeah, well, hopefully we'll get it right and we can do it in one take.

[00:02:55] Neil Gibb: Yeah, thank you. Between us, we should be able to get it right. How many, how many episodes have you done back in the UK there?

[00:03:00] Andy Graham: Oh, we are about to, this week's will be our 262nd episode. So yeah, we've recorded a lot of podcast episodes talking about my HMOs.

[00:03:11] Neil Gibb: So we've done 90. So between us, mate, I think we should be able to get it right, eh? Let's see. So Andy, tell us about the HMO roadmap. I've spoken to lots of people in the UK about HMOs, but I want to know about the roadmap in particular so that we can kind of unpack how you're helping people invest in HMOs.

[00:03:29] Andy Graham: Yeah, well, the roadmap was a bit of a lockdown project for me, if I'm honest. So pre COVID I had my portfolio, which was pretty established and running very well. I had my investment management group, again, very similar. My staff were taking care of it. I'd got to that position in that business where I, you know, I was kind of removed from it.

[00:03:48] Andy Graham: So I was really just overseeing the forms of the business. And obviously I had sort of various plans with my own portfolio and business and other interests. When the pandemic happened, everything went into lockdown, didn't it? I had so little to do at that point. I was quite bored. So I turned my attention to a different type of project.

[00:04:06] Andy Graham: And actually it was my non exec, who's JP, and he was my advisor for many years. And he sort of gave me a bit of a nudge, bit of a kick to do the podcast. He's like, mate, you know, you'd be really good at this. And you've got loads to talk about. And we've talked about maybe some sort of educational based business.

[00:04:23] Andy Graham: You know, why I'm thinking about it. So I did. And then simultaneously thought about how I could perhaps package Not just all of my experience, but the experience of all of my network as well, which by this point was quite substantial. I mean, a community of many thousands of people that had happened to all very organically and really had never been intending to build that to sell educational books or anything like that.

[00:04:46] Andy Graham: It was more so to find good people to network with and opportunities, deals, private finance, but actually this, this period of time, which was really, really unique for me, gave me the scope to design. What I wanted to be quite a different product out there for people, typically education based products, quite expensive.

[00:05:05] Andy Graham: They often required you to go to some sort of low cost event, pretty low value, then get put into some sort of a funnel and so on and so forth. And actually I didn't feel like it needed to be done like that at all. I wanted to make something that was the most affordable, low cost, but at highest value, so contain an incredible amount of information to help people at different stages in their, their investment journey.

[00:05:28] Andy Graham: And that's exactly what the HMO roadmap was. And we designed it with that in mind and it's turned into a vault of sort of well over 400 resources, hundreds of hours of content videos. And the cool thing is it's not just me, which I think would be quite biased because like anybody, I've got my preferences and it actually, we draw that information and experience and the resources that we've got from our entire community of sort of 10,000 members.

[00:05:55] Andy Graham: So you can listen to me, but you can also listen to other people in different parts of the country and other people do different types of projects and other people who've got small businesses and people who've got large businesses. So we've got this real sort of eclectic mix of experience in there, which I think makes it incredibly unique.

[00:06:11] Andy Graham: So I think with the low cost and the huge expansive content that we have in there, plus the different experiences, it makes it a really, really unique product. People can come and they can. They can use it and then they quit the same day, they quit the next day or that, you know, they can quit the following month or they can quit after two or three years, whatever we make it so easy.

[00:06:31] Andy Graham: The objective isn't to tie people in at all. The objective is to come. If you enjoy it and you find it valuable, use it. We make it really, really easy for people. And the, you know, we've helped sort of over 400, we've got about 400 members to date. So it's been an incredible resource. And I think it's helped bind the community even more.

[00:06:48] Andy Graham: So it's helped give people platform to showcase some of their work. We've nurtured relationships, we've helped business happen. We've brought partners in that make some of the decision making really easy for our community members, because it can be tricky knowing who to go to and what prices you should be looking at.

[00:07:06] Andy Graham: So I'm really proud of what we've done, but in many ways. I still feel like we're just getting started because there's so much that we want to do yet, and we're three years in, so.

[00:07:15] Neil Gibb: Three years in and nearly 300 podcast episodes in as well.

[00:07:18] Andy Graham: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I've built it like any of my other businesses and it's a pretty well-oiled machine, got a great team.

[00:07:24] Andy Graham: And we're pretty good at what we do now, building a tech product. For me was obviously alien. It took me a year just to build the platform. We've been live three years now, but it took me a year to build it, just figuring out how it all works and making sure we got it right. And it was, it wasn't the cheapest thing in the world to do, but yeah, now we're really proud of it, really pleased with it.

[00:07:42] Andy Graham: And it's a great platform. We're finding to build things on and to bolt all the sort of services and products and ways of helping our community on. So I don't quite know what the future looks like for it yet, but I'm pretty excited about it.

[00:07:54] Neil Gibb: That's good. Good. Very good. You mentioned that it runs like some of your other businesses or businesses that you've had previously. What are the businesses that you had that kind of led you to where you are now?

[00:08:05] Andy Graham: Last year, I exited what was my investment and management business. And that was a business I started in 2016. When I first started investing in HMOs, the first property I bought was a HMO. I'm not sure how familiar you are with my story, but that was in 2009, 10.

[00:08:21] Andy Graham: I was in my early twenties and I bought a few properties and it had been going well, but like most people, it became increasingly difficult as the capital requirements started to creep up after the financial crisis. And I didn't have the experience for even anyone to tell me about these different solutions and methods of maybe raising private finance.

[00:08:42] Andy Graham: And so over time, it became clear to me that I needed to do more than just try and buy properties to build my long term sort of business objective out and starting a business that maybe fed into what I was already doing. So utilise my skills and experience and contacts in the HMO industry, but generated cash in a slightly different way was for me, quite an obvious solution.

[00:09:05] Andy Graham: And by this point, I'd already been asked by some people to help with their management and find them properties. And so it's really pulling together of all that stuff. And out of that grew the management investment agency. We ended up buying and building and developing stuff across several cities, all very much so specialising in HMOs.

[00:09:24] Andy Graham: And, um, and it was a course of six or seven years optimized it and systemise that business so that I could sell it and exit it. And that's exactly what I did. But. There's got to be a real intention to doing that, I think, and that was something that I got much better at as I got a bit older and developed a bit more experience that I really needed to learn that, but with the right systems, processes, and people, you can build a good business that you can sell.

[00:09:48] Andy Graham: And along the way, it just really helps me continue to build my own portfolio as well. So it was a good decision. I'm glad I did it. And it was the right time for me to exit that business last year as I moved on to other things. But I do think it's really important to, and not just. That type of trading business also with the property business.

[00:10:06] Andy Graham: Most people want to build and engineer scenario where they got time and freedom of choice, the purpose of building a portfolio for many people, but it's quite easy to get sucked in and build yourself another job. And so for me, like starting with that end in mind and designing it out with that mind of being quite intentional about it is really, really important.

[00:10:26] Neil Gibb: Yeah. Interesting. What you say there, the very same thing happened to me as I kind of built my own portfolio and became financially free, I stepped away from my job with the oil and gas industry and then. People started asking me to help them and that's how my business was born. And yeah, it kind of pulls you along, doesn't it? And do you learn along the way? Where did you learn to build out systems and processes and hire the right people for the team and stuff like that?

[00:10:48] Andy Graham: I think I learned a lot of the hard way, often finding that we were doing it a little bit too late or we'd spent money on the right thing. But I think that that's okay.

[00:10:56] Andy Graham: And I think actually that's kind of part of the journey and the fun of business building that, that I really enjoy. I do like building businesses. My mentor, JP, I mentioned him briefly, uh, John had already built a very established multi branch agency, managing thousands of homes, and John was a real sort of guiding light for me and helped kind of me see this sort of stuff and helped make sure that we were building this in the right way and keeping me on the straight and narrow.

[00:11:22] Andy Graham: And that was actually quite an important part of the process for me. So. I think I learned from other people, I learned from my own mistakes, and then eventually I started to learn from the good results that we were getting. And then I would take that and I would sort of try and replicate it in another area of the business and, and now it's something I do across all of my businesses.

[00:11:41] Neil Gibb: Do you think working with a mentor like JP has helped you become a better coach and mentor for your students?

[00:11:50] Andy Graham: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I can't remember off the top of my head, which podcast episode on the HL podcast, our show it is, but there is an episode where I talk about what I think was the most valuable, the best decision that I've made today in business, and it was for sure working with a mentor because that person, that Gave me the encouragement and the motivation and the inspiration and kind of the confidence to do it.

[00:12:15] Andy Graham: Do stuff that before that, just not only would I not have done and tried to do, but would I have even possibly thought about and maybe knew were possible. I'll give you an example. When I started the investment and management agency got off to a pretty good start, but very quickly, like most businesses, we started to run out of cash and we needed more cash to feed the growth of the business.

[00:12:36] Andy Graham: So the question was, well, Where do we get this cash from? We either wait and we sort of start to accumulate the revenue that we're making that will sort of dictate the pace. Or we look at this a bit more aggressively and find solutions to raise capital. And obviously raising private finance in a debt basis was an option.

[00:12:53] Andy Graham: Raising through an equity basis was an option. And actually what we decided was to sell some equity in the business. And quite early on in that business's life, we took the business onto what was Europe's biggest, and still is Europe's biggest crowdfunding platform. This is quite unique and never really been done in the property space before.

[00:13:10] Andy Graham: And we rent raised about 300, 000 pounds and got a post money valuation. The business is about 1.3 million. And in fact, maybe even at this time, I was still working as a physio. I can't quite remember, which was what I was doing professionally before I went full time in property. And that was just not a natural way of thinking to me.

[00:13:26] Andy Graham: I didn't know that this sort of stuff existed, that you could do this kind of thing, that there were people interested in this kind of business and like methods of investment. So as just a good example, yeah, having a good mentor helps me see things that I didn't even know were there as well.

[00:13:40] Neil Gibb: That's the idea of a good mentor, right?

[00:13:42] Andy Graham: I think so. And just someone to keep you then accountable, someone to keep you focused and I was growing my business. I definitely did need that. I did need someone. I was always prepared. And in fact, often would work more than I needed to, because I really want all, you know, always wanted to make it work, but it was still easy to be distracted by the things that I thought would be the solution to making it work and different types of properties, expanding to different locations, doing quickly, trying to get the office, get a high street office sets up to you quickly.

[00:14:10] Andy Graham: Spending too much money on brand and making things look good. And there's just, there's so many decisions, big and small, but yeah, a good mentor. Somebody who's had that experience and just help keep you focused. And I think a lot of people, and I mentor a lot of people myself now, and I think the people who are able to focus, um, for sure are able to achieve so much more and in much shorter spaces of time.

[00:14:33] Andy Graham: You see it, and I think the clues quite early on when some people are looking at maybe HMOs and service accommodation and rent to rent, and they're trying to do that, you know, the first development and so often, you know, it's really difficult to do all that because property is pretty tough and there's a lot of stuff that we don't know and that can go wrong or can just drag you in and inevitably you end up spreading yourself quite thinly and not getting any of the results in any of the areas.

[00:15:00] Andy Graham: That you may have done, had you just sort of focused on one thing first and got it up and running, systemised, put the process and put the people in, then moved on to the next thing. And for me, that again, a good example of that was probably, would probably be a lot of my attention now, not all of it, but a big chunk of my attention's turned towards larger developments.

[00:15:17] Andy Graham: And that speaks more to my longer term objective of, of wealth creation as opposed to just sort of cash flow. Which has been primarily the HMOs, yes, they have a lot of wealth, but development is, is much less about cashflow and much more about long term health. And that's the very new thing for me. And before the last sort of few years, it was never the right time for me to do it and spend that time and energy looking into it and trying to figure it out.

[00:15:43] Andy Graham: But, you know, as I've moved through my own journey, that time has come and it was something I always wanted to do. And I've been able to completely focus on it. And the last call I've had this morning is we'd just been in a design meeting about one of the schemes we're working on at the minute, and I'm still learning lots about that and I'm quite involved in that at the minute.

[00:16:00] Andy Graham: And I'm sure at some point in the future, you know, I'll be able to step back a little bit more so from that. But yeah, I think it's, that's kind of a good way of looking at. A mentor and how they can maybe help you along the process towards your targets and goals and objectives at some point in the future.

[00:16:15] Neil Gibb: Absolutely. There was a few things you said that made me giggle. Cause it reminded me of when I was in my early stages and I just had this silver object syndrome where everything you start to see opportunities everywhere. Right. And like you said, you're going to do rent to rent. You're going to do service accommodation.

[00:16:30] Neil Gibb: You're going to do HMO developments. That was me. I was trying to do too much. And again, it was a mentor that helped me focus on the HMO and it got us to where we are now. So the next best thing about the next mentor that I got was my business partner, who had sort of built a business a lot bigger than what we'd had now.

[00:16:49] Neil Gibb: And when we bring problems to him, when I raise problems to him, he just kills the cucumber and just like, Oh yeah, when this happened to me previously, this is what I did, or this is the person that you need to speak to. And whilst it helps you focus, I think it also helps you remain calm when the shit's going all over the place.

[00:17:05] Andy Graham: Good business, right. He's all about what you do when things are not going to plan like business is easy things going to plan like everybody gets that, you know, it's great when the money's coming in and the tenants paying the rent and planning comes through and the builder finishes on time, but actually being good at business is managing everything where it's not going the way that you want and need it to.

[00:17:29] Andy Graham: And actually property. That happens more often than not, I would say. And I think without the experience, without working with people who've got the experience, it's difficult to understand just how often that can happen and just how substantial some of the problems can be. Good example would be the disappointment that the people, I'm sure a lot of people listening today will feel if.

[00:17:48] Andy Graham: And when evaluation might come in that, that isn't actually where the expectation was, you know, it's gut wrenching and we've all been there, but actually when you've been through it a few times and you kind of, you understand it and you get it, you can plan a bit better for it, you understand that, okay, well, we could try this as an alternative.

[00:18:04] Andy Graham: So, yeah, there's different, I think there's different things that you learn along the way. For sure, embracing the toxic stuff and realising that that is actually where good business ship, I'm not sure if that's a word, is created is really, really important

[00:18:17] Neil Gibb: and managing your emotions during them rocky times as well. Right. Very difficult. I mean,

[00:18:25] Andy Graham: and I think his property is so slow. It is quite emotionally taxing. Like we can't help, but get involved and get quite emotional about stuff, but it is important to be able to step away from, from, from that and, and actually look at things logically and find a logical conclusion to a problem.

[00:18:43] Neil Gibb: Absolutely. Let's talk about the journey, Andy, cause you mentioned there, did you say you started investing in HMOs in 2010 and a HMO is your first investment as well.

[00:18:52] Andy Graham: Yeah, that's right. It was a residential property. I'm, I was actually going to see something down the street. Went in, immediately could tell the floor plan wasn't quite right.

[00:19:00] Andy Graham: The agent said, well, actually I've got something that might be coming on the market just up the road. Do you want to see if I could get you in? I'd traveled all the way from Cornwall to sort of the Midlands to see this property. So like, this is the second. A 10 hour round trip for me. So I was really grateful.

[00:19:14] Andy Graham: Yes, please. And went in and the floor plan and this other one was just perfect but I really didn't know anything else, Neil. I was just looking for a good floor plan and I thought I'd get a certain number of bedrooms in. And that was honestly the extent of the research and due diligence I'd done. I wanted to rent to students because.

[00:19:32] Andy Graham: I'd been a student not long before that, and I understood the simplicity of the model. In fact, I didn't know there was a way of doing it differently. I didn't know at the time you could do it to maybe professionals or maybe social sort of a demographic of tenant. But yeah, sort of quite naive really just sort of wandered into that, wanted into this.

[00:19:50] Andy Graham: It was a little bit easier then than it is now. The banks didn't ask as many questions. I managed to borrow a very small amount of money, 30,000, which I paid back as soon as I could once it was up and running. And yeah, I just went on MyBuilder or MyHammer or whatever it was, got some people around, got some quotes, picked one, did the work, and to be honest, and I think this is a good lesson for a lot of people, there is stuff that could have gone wrong, and there was stuff that went wrong for sure.

[00:20:15] Andy Graham: But actually, because I got the fundamentals right, which were the location and the optimisation of the floor plan, it's worked for some nearly 20 years now. And actually those problems, whatever they were, are long, long, long forgotten and properties are quite forgiving. So I think if you do stick to the fundamentals and you don't overexpose yourself and put too much at risk, actually you can make mistakes in property, you can make mistakes in HMO space as well.

[00:20:43] Andy Graham: And over time, the market will forgive you. And I've done so incredibly well out of that very first property since I bought it. And, and I got a bit better at doing my due diligence and planning and preparing because I went on and bought the second and third and the fourth and so on. But yeah, that, I guess that's kind of how the first one started.

[00:21:00] Neil Gibb: What were you doing back in 2010 and what made you choose the HMO as your first investment, why not a standard investment property like everybody else does?

[00:21:09] Andy Graham: Well, I graduated from university in 2009. It was probably the, we were probably at the bottom of the market in terms of the financial crisis. We didn't really know that at the time, but the job market was quite tough actually.

[00:21:23] Andy Graham: And I graduated as a physio in Sheffield and there were not that many jobs available for juniors. And also, you know, there was Nottingham University and Wakefield and Leeds and Manchester, who were all churning out one to two hundred. Physios a year as well, all looking for jobs. So I thought, well, rather than stick around here and look for a job, I'm going to go down to the Southwest.

[00:21:44] Andy Graham: I'm going to go and surf and at least, you know, at least wait to find a job by the beach. And that's exactly what I did. But I've had a little bit of sort of a experience on building sites. My uncle was a builder. I've done a bit of laboring work and I always enjoyed it. And as I said, I'd been a student myself and my sister, who's a few years younger than me, as I was finishing university, she was just sort of in a second year at university.

[00:22:07] Andy Graham: And so I decided that actually buying a property and doing it where she's a student, you know, and just using this model that I sort of understood, probably more than standard buy to let, if I'm honest, all seemed to make the most sense to me. So actually. It was probably for lack of a better idea. It wasn't actually that I was comparing it to anything else.

[00:22:28] Andy Graham: I really didn't know much about anything else. I only really had experienced the HMOs, you know, cause you lived in ones. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, and I could say, Oh, my, my landlord wasn't doing a huge amount. Didn't look that difficult. So I didn't feel like it was. There were that many reasons why it wouldn't be possible at the time.

[00:22:47] Andy Graham: So, yeah, again, probably quite naively just went straight for the jugular on it. But it turned out okay in the end.

[00:22:53] Neil Gibb: Is that where you got your floor plan idea from? From the one that you used to live in when you were looking at the floor plans to purchase?

[00:23:00] Andy Graham: No, probably not. I think really, I was just looking at how could I, I had enough sort of common sense to know that if the existing floor plan kind of lent itself to having a certain number of bedrooms, that would keep the costs down.

[00:23:15] Andy Graham: And obviously I didn't know too much about building and structure. And so it was just, for me, it would have been a bit easier as well. So if there was an easy way to divide the property or rooms. Turn certain rooms into bedrooms, that was always going to help. And this particular property just so happened to have that really. It's quite easy from that point of view.

[00:23:34] Neil Gibb: What stage were you at in your life when you could actually start working as a physio and just go full time to the HMO space? Thought, well, not that you knew you were going to at the time, but.

[00:23:43] Andy Graham: No, I mean, it took me a few years before I actually paid enough attention to what I was doing in the property space to realise that I probably wasting my own time pursuing a professional career.

[00:23:57] Andy Graham: And over the, the three or four years after I graduated, I started to enjoy my professional work less and less. I actually continued to work as a physio for about six years and I became a clinical specialist and did work with a lot of great people and I enjoyed that part of the role. But after the first couple of properties, I was probably on par with my earnings from a professional salary and as a physio and then, and then on my third and fourth, obviously started to supersede that.

[00:24:22] Andy Graham: And I think I stuck with it longer than I needed to, because I just didn't have anyone to tell me that it was okay. I didn't have that self-belief even at that point that that was a kind of a future for me. And actually it took a bit of a life sort of changing moment for me to kind of really make me sit up and realise it.

[00:24:43] Andy Graham: It was, it's probably around, I can't remember the year, but I was 26 at the time, probably bought the first one when I was 21. So five years in, when I remember. Um, I hadn't been feeling too well, I was living in Cornwall at the time, I hadn't been feeling too well, I was having a lot of neck pain, struggling to swallow, lost some weight and things like that, and I'd been sort of trying to speak to the doctor about this, who happened to be one of my colleagues, because I ran the clinic in the GP surgery, so I was talking to not just a GP, but actually a colleague of mine as well, it was a tough conversation to have, and The symptoms kept going on.

[00:25:15] Andy Graham: I wasn't feeling great, continue to not feel particularly well, but, you know, they just put it down to a bit of stress and general anxiety. And for sure, I was feeling a bit stressed and a bit anxious because I was having these symptoms. And in the end, the only thing that I could put it down to was feeling stressed and anxious was working.

[00:25:33] Andy Graham: And by this point, I wasn't just wasn't enjoying it as much. And I was starting to. Get a bit frustrated that I wanted to be doing a bit more of the property stuff, but I was to be here and do these clinics and stuff. So actually I decided to take a break from the physio and I have, the plan was just to go away, do another season out in the mountains and take a break.

[00:25:51] Andy Graham: And surely that would be enough to just to relax me and, you know, and these symptoms of sort of stress and anxiety, whatever it would be, would, would go away. As it happened, my symptoms got a bit worse. Just before I was meant to go, I booked my tickets and everything, yeah, I'd left my house, left my job.

[00:26:08] Andy Graham: Really handed noticing on everything and about two weeks before I was meant to go, I happened to go back into the GP for another appointment and saw somebody else, a locum doctor. And he actually sort of checked my neck and he said, there's something that I'm not totally happy with and actually sent me up for a scan that day.

[00:26:24] Andy Graham: And I could tell when I was getting the scan that, that something wasn't quite right. And on the way home from my scan, I got a call from my GP, who sort of said, like, Andy, they're not happy. Yeah, there is something on your scan there. And it looks like something that we, you know, we might need to look at more closely.

[00:26:40] Andy Graham: He knew about my trip at this point. It's like, I think you're gonna have to put your trip on hold. Anyway, fast forward a few days. Ended up having surgery and actually de confirmed and I remember where I was when I got, well, I'd actually gone back up to one of my properties I was doing work on at the time, got up for the weekend and I was sitting in, in, you know, in this building site and I got a call from a consultant who said, you know, this is a, it's a cancer, it's a thyroid cancer.

[00:27:04] Andy Graham: And that was sort of lousy at that point, that turned everything upside down. And I had honestly, literally left my job work. I had this trip booked and all of a sudden everything came to a bit of a grinding halt. Uh, the good news is everything's fine now and it's all, it was okay in the end, but it took that to make me realise that even I, at that age, and I was fit, I was surfing all the time.

[00:27:26] Andy Graham: You just can't take anything for granted. You know, potentially these things in life can be taken away very, very quickly. And in a strange way, it was one of the best things that happened to me because it gave me the confidence and the ability to justify what Just thinking differently and saying, you know, what's the worst that can happen.

[00:27:43] Andy Graham: I'm going to take the risk. I'm going to do it. And that's what I started to do. And in the end, I managed to get out and do my trip a bit later than planned, but I came back and went sort of headstrong into the business and really started to focus on building this business that I wanted to build a life that I wanted in case it ever got taken away from me too quickly, I want to enjoy the process as well.

[00:28:03] Andy Graham: So that's, that's what I did. And I really focused on it. And I continue to just. Locum a little bit as a physio just allowed me to pull pretty good wage and supplement by property income and just help some mortgaging and things like that. And I did it for another 18 months, I think. And then, and then I was in, I left it completely and never, never looked back.

[00:28:22] Andy Graham: And I don't know whether that was maybe eight years ago, something like that. Now I can't, can't quite remember, but again, it was one of the really good decisions that I made. And in retrospect, maybe I should have made it earlier, but actually it's kind of worked out okay in the end. But yeah, maybe it. Now it took me being pushed, I think, to basically kind of force it and making the decision.

[00:28:43] Andy Graham: And interestingly, a lot of people I've worked with, some have been incredibly successful and some not as successful. One of the things that I've noticed and observed myself is the people who have been pushed, maybe they were made redundant or, or whatever, they've actually, there's a higher proportion of people there who've gone on to do better.

[00:29:01] Andy Graham: And I think it's because the most dangerous place to be is in the comfortable zone, that comfort zone where. There's nothing to pull you, you know, there's not enough of a draw because it's not like you're suddenly going to be replacing your income from property and it's suddenly going to give you the life that you want.

[00:29:17] Andy Graham: There's also nothing pushing you. You've not left your job. You've still got your salary coming in and you can still go and get your avocado and toast on a Saturday morning. And actually I think I was probably guilty of that myself. And I've seen that pattern with other people and I'm not one for saying that you should just go, you want to build a property business, you should just quit your job tomorrow.

[00:29:37] Andy Graham: I say, I don't think that's the way to do it. But I think understanding that one of the most limiting factors is, is that the belief around what a job is actually providing for you whilst you do that. And for most people it's comfort more than anything else. A lot of people are just not prepared to make sacrifices and compromises.

[00:29:55] Andy Graham: The most valuable thing you can give your business is actually your time and attention. It's not the money that you earn or the additional savings that you can pull over. There's actually solutions to finding that alternatively raising private finance, whatever it is. So, uh, yeah, that's something that I learned myself and I've seen myself, but I think it's an interesting one.

[00:30:12] Neil Gibb: Definitely. Let's talk about student accommodation because we had a little discussion off air before we hit record and I've purposely avoided student accommodation over in Western Australia, but it's something that you've delved into quite a lot, isn't it? Where do you see the difference in student accommodation compared to a lot of the other UK HMO investors I've spoke to when their focus is on professional accommodation?

[00:30:35] Andy Graham: Well, the most wealthy people I know in our industry, from my network, are unquestionably my friends who own very substantial student HMO portfolios. There are very few people that own substantial. And when I say substantial, I'm talking about upwards of 50, 50 homes, certainly upwards of a hundred properties in the professional space, and there are some in the social space, but the student model is very, very scalable.

[00:31:04] Andy Graham: It's a really condensed radius that you tend to be operating in, and it's very predictable. Certainly if you pick the right university towns, very predictable in terms of the numbers of people at university, the rates that people will pay, the cyclical nature of it. And that just lends itself to building a really good business off of the back of.

[00:31:25] Andy Graham: Professionals accommodation is a bit trickier because same predictability and the same regularity just doesn't exist. It's For those reasons that it's not quite as mainstream with the banks. There's a lot of banks that will lend, but it will always be more expensive than it will be on student HMOs. And a lot of people are surprised when I tell them this, but I was getting rates of, uh, when rates were quite peaky of, of sort of 5.

[00:31:47] Andy Graham: 4 percent of my student HMOs at 75 percent loan to value, people in the professional market were getting six and a half to seven and a half percent interest, and a lot of that is just the difference in opinions of people's confidence in the market. But valuers, banks and so on and so forth. So for me, the student market, it's reliable, it's very robust.

[00:32:09] Andy Graham: There's a huge amount of data there that we can look back on to then predict where our business will go or the performance of our properties will go. And I like that in business. It means that I can invest sensibly. It means that I can invest in infrastructure resource, like systems and processes and team members, maybe offices and whatever it might be.

[00:32:29] Andy Graham: It's trickier to do that with the professional model, but there are definitely some, some caveats and some downsides, you know, the barrier to entry is a little bit higher in the student market. Now, if you're just getting started, that's really tough. And I, and I get it investing in professional accommodation or maybe social accommodation can be a bit easier if you're not as restricted about where you can do it.

[00:32:48] Andy Graham: So if you step outside of the Article 4 directions, it can be a little bit cheaper, but easy to get into the market. Then of course you lose some of that rental confidence that the student market gives you. So there's pros and cons. But for me, those pros. Really outweighed the cons. And whilst I think I probably could have bought more properties, had I pursued other strategies, it worked really, really well for me long, long term.

[00:33:10] Andy Graham: And it's made it quite a, quite an easy business to then operate into the future. So for me, I kind of like that balance of things.

[00:33:18] Neil Gibb: What about vacancies and boys during off season when the students aren't at universities? Do we, do you have to factor vacancies in there?

[00:33:29] Andy Graham: I've not had a void in a student HMO in 20 years. Yes, ever. So again, I think it boils down to understanding your location in the university town. But if we take the city I'm in now, that's probably a couple thousand student HMOs. Even as a landlord with a sort of small five to 10 units or portfolio of properties, that's a fraction of that market. And actually you don't have to be.

[00:33:53] Andy Graham: Doing anything exceptional to put yourself towards the top end of that market where tenants want to live in your house over living in somebody else's house. And I really like that about the student market. One of the great things, you know, article four is really frustrating for a lot of people, but actually when you're in the market, article four is great because it's the council's local authority saying we are going to limit the competition.

[00:34:17] Andy Graham: We're not going to allow many more people to come and do this. So actually, if you're in and you've already got your property, We're going to kind of help make sure that you've always got tenants for it. So as long as the university has good supply of tenants, good university town, that rental confidence, this is what I mean is it's so robust and gives you that predictability.

[00:34:36] Andy Graham: And my students typically maybe move home for the summer, but actually the trend typically now is that actually they want to leave all their stuff here over the summer anyway. So I actually do 51 week lets where we take the price for a year. We prorate it over 51 weeks. The tenants move out. In that week, we have free, we get in, we clean the property, we do any maintenance we need, and then we get it ready for the new tenants.

[00:35:04] Andy Graham: And actually, as it happens this week that we are recording is literally the week that that happens. So that week's void, so to speak. It's built, it, it's all built into the price that they pay for the, the rest of the year anyway. So effectively there is no void cost to it at all. And a lot of people do run 52 week contracts as well.

[00:35:22] Andy Graham: That for me is just a bit. Too challenging in terms of getting the properties turned over. We did used to do it and some people do run it over 48 weeks, but generally speaking, the REM will be sort of prorated and come out where it needs to be. So actually it's not a cost avoid as such. It's more just about an actual practical void in the house, which is another great thing about student houses.

[00:35:43] Andy Graham: If you've got a period of time that you can get into one of the houses to do some works. It's brilliant. It's really hard to do that in a professional HMO or a social HMO where people are on different tenancies, you know, and you can't just get everyone to vacate the house for a week while you go in and pay to redecorate it.

[00:35:59] Neil Gibb: So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Do students have a different expectation of the standard that they're going to live in compared to a professional? And does that differ in the room rates as well?

[00:36:10] Andy Graham: Yeah. I mean, one of the really cool things that's happened over the last five to 10 years is that PBSA purpose built student accommodation has increased, the supply of that has increased.

[00:36:20] Andy Graham: More importantly, the standard of that has increased. So the standards of some of the PBSA blocks now for students are almost platinum standard. They've got basketball courts and rooftop bars and cinema rooms. And the cool thing is about that, students tend to want to live there for the first year and overseas students tend to be quite comfortable living there.

[00:36:41] Andy Graham: But after that first year for most students, certainly the native students, like British students. They want to go and get that, that university experience of living in a house with their mates for the first time. And actually that's a cultural thing in our country. And a lot of these big block providers have tried to change it with incentives and providing all these swanky facilities.

[00:37:02] Andy Graham: But actually changing the mindset and changing the actual behavior of a community, which students are, is very difficult. And as you might imagine, it would be to change the behavior and way of living of any other community. And so what we've found is that these platinum sort of standards have pulled the rents up in the market.

[00:37:21] Andy Graham: They've almost served as then a feeder for higher rents in the private residential sector. So what we've learned is that students are able and willing to pay for more for their rent if the standards are better. And they're happy with the value that they're getting. So we've been able to do that in the private rental sector, not to the same level as the PBSA.

[00:37:40] Andy Graham: And I think that that's fine. We don't need to, to be able to justify our investments working and performing well. But it provided this feeder mechanism. And yes, with that has come some increased expectations about maybe the service. They're used to almost having a concierge type of service and everything.

[00:37:54] Andy Graham: I don't like, you know, there is some management of expectations we've done there, but then at the same time, We've had to get better. We've had to be more reactive. We've had to be better at communicating as well. And that's something that we've certainly as a business tried to do and really prioritise over the last five years.

[00:38:09] Andy Graham: So I think there's been a sort of a meeting of expectations to some extent as well. But I actually think that we're not competing with this. PBSA combination is platinum standard, actually, it's been quite helpful for us. And again, if there's something that a lot of people have been quite fearful of, and I've said on the podcast a number of times, and I think you're thinking about it differently and look, I can show you the evidence to, as to why.

[00:38:31] Neil Gibb: Yeah, you raise a very good point there. It's interesting that you say, What's PBSA stand for? Purpose Built Student Accommodation. Purpose Built Student Accom. Interesting how that's become your competition and not the professional HMO and lifted the standard of yours.

[00:38:46] Andy Graham: Yeah. We'd be mindful. It's not become competition. Actually, it's almost elevated what we've been able to provide and achieve in the private rental sector. So, and for most people, let's say 98 percent of people who live in private The private rental sector that it was probably never a choice between living here and living in PBS. It's probably a choice between living in my HMO and living in your HMO.

[00:39:10] Andy Graham: Yeah. Because it's a very different experience that that's actually what they're looking for. They want a garden and they, they don't want security telling them what they can and can't do, and they want to have house parties. And that's the reality. But I think actually that has been quite steadfast. It's not changed despite the efforts and not just to the developers, but also the council, the councils have really tried to push the students into PBSA because it suited them, the idea was that they could then free up our HMOs back to the PRS for families or to sell or whatever.

[00:39:40] Andy Graham: That's just not happened. They have not been able to convince students to do it. And I'm glad, you know, it's not something I think that they should be trying to convince them to do either, you know, but I think they're trying to move communities of people, which we wouldn't tolerate if it was anyone else.

[00:39:52] Andy Graham: It's almost anti student in some ways, but yeah, at the end of the day, it hasn't actually hindered us. It's actually been favorable for us, really.

[00:39:59] Neil Gibb: Yeah, nice, nice. Good stuff, mate. I think we'll finish on the investment and management business, which you did recently sold, haven't you?

[00:40:05] Andy Graham: Well, I sold that back just over a year ago.

[00:40:08] Neil Gibb: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And how did it get, how was the journey from, you know, that first client that you worked with to passing on to somebody else?

[00:40:18] Andy Graham: Oh, I mean, the days of despair running, running that business. There were days of resentment where I would resent how much it required of me. And then there were like real wins and great moments.

[00:40:28] Andy Graham: And I let, I met incredible people along the way. And for me, it was, it was definitely an important part of the foundation that I built that allowed me to go on and do different things. We talked about the roadmap. That was one. My other businesses that I've since built and continue to build, but there's a real learning curve.

[00:40:45] Andy Graham: And, uh, you know, in the end, actually selling it proved not to be that difficult because I had a great network of people that I, that I could go to with it. We had a good business with good team, with a good operating model, good revenues, and, and actually that in itself taught me a lot, but I didn't go back to what we said earlier.

[00:41:03] Andy Graham: It was all about building it with the end in mind and focusing on it. You know, while I was doing that. I wasn't mentoring and training and building other businesses. I was really just, just doing that for six or seven years and for six or seven years, I probably on paper took a huge pay cut while I did it, but that's kind of the sacrifice sometimes you need to make.

[00:41:23] Andy Graham: And I think it's important to be able to see beyond that. I think it's quite short sighted and easy to be short sighted sometimes when you're building businesses. Now, often actually the real gains come much further down the line, the real benefits. And sometimes the real benefits are much greater than you can actually imagine anyway, not just terms of finances and, you know, monetarily, but.

[00:41:43] Andy Graham: I've seen other opportunities that can come your way as, as a result of being in that space so long and so many years. Yeah. It was a great experience and yeah, I don't regret any of it at all. And it absolutely was the right time for me to kind of step back and hand it on to somebody else.

[00:41:57] Neil Gibb: When you say start with the end in mind, did you know that you were going to take it to a certain point and then sell it on to somebody else?

[00:42:04] Andy Graham: The plan was always to sell it. Yeah. Always.

[00:42:08] Neil Gibb: Yeah. Was it to sell it the size that you did or was it going to be bigger? Was it supposed to be smaller or was it bang on point?

[00:42:13] Andy Graham: I mean, it'd always be nice to sell something that was a bit bigger, but I think that that's. There's probably no end to that. Like how big is big enough. Right. So I think it was for me, it was just the right time. It was the right combination of timing and other opportunities for me and price. And also the person that I could hand the business to, I want to be comfortable with that as well. But management is not an easy business. So managers get a bit of a bad rap when you talk in the HMO space.

[00:42:40] Andy Graham: But actually it's very difficult and it is really, you know, and there's so many moving parts. There's a lot of expenses to it, and actually you've got to be very, very good to make good money in that, in that industry. So it was important to me that I could hand the business to someone that was going to carry the baton and look after the staff and continue to grow on it.

[00:42:59] Andy Graham: So in the end, yeah, great experience, but absolutely the right thing at the right time for me to exit that business and really proud of what we achieved over the years.

[00:43:08] Neil Gibb: Well done, what are you doing with all your spare time? Well, I mean, I think there was some spare

[00:43:11] Andy Graham: Well, I mean, I think there was some spare  time for maybe a day, uh, and then it immediately got in the way of the life, isn't it? But, and the roadmap and the training and education ecosystem has been a real passion project for me. And we've helped thousands and thousands of thousands of people now. And I think it's been great for the wider industry. So I'm really proud of that. And it still takes a certain amount of my time.

[00:43:38] Andy Graham: I'm developing a lot more, which you may have seen now. So we're right now, so developing in the region about 60, 60 homes out. We've got more to do next year. So that's certainly not going to stop over the next four or five years and plan to do a lot more there. And that takes time until we get to a position where we can maybe step away a bit more.

[00:43:55] Andy Graham: And just on a personal level, I'm actually trying to move house, Gemma and I are moving ourselves. We've got a big project there for a residential project to do and we want to do and achieve. So yeah, I mean, there's, there's not much free time. There is, I don't know where it, I don't know where it's going, but what I would say is I'm choosing how to spend the time, Neil, which I think is, and always was the most important thing to me.

[00:44:19] Andy Graham: You know, it's up to me to say, I'm going to spend my time here. I'm going to put it here. Very rarely do I feel like I'm being dragged into things that actually I don't want to be doing. It is great having a long term objective and a goal to fixate on and work towards, but actually, I think it's really, really important to enjoy the process and enjoy the journey.

[00:44:37] Andy Graham: And for me, in a, in a real nutshell, that is exactly it. It gives me the time and the freedom and the choice. To do what I want, when I want to, to a large extent how I want. And so I just love getting up every day and doing things like this and designing projects and everything. So I'm really pleased with where things are at the minute, even though I don't necessarily feel like I've got loads of time just to go and put my feet up in the gardens.

[00:45:02] Neil Gibb Yeah, that's overrated anyway, isn't it? You'd be bored by the sound of things.

[00:45:07] Andy Graham: Especially in the UK. I mean, there's not, yeah, maybe I'd feel a bit different if it was nice to sitting outside all the time like where you are. But , you know . Oh, here in the UK it's nice to have plenty to do.

[00:45:17] Neil Gibb: Yeah. You are in the middle of summer over there now, aren't you?

[00:45:20] Andy Graham: Well, apparently so, but I mean, if you looked out the window right now,

[00:45:23] Neil Gibb: Neil, just as you were seeing there about having the time and freedom, I was singing of the phrase like, do what you love and love what you do. And it sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. mate congratulations and thank you so much for your time and the podcast today. It's been good catching up.

[00:45:36] Andy Graham: Thanks, Neil. It's been a real pleasure.

[00:45:44] Andy Graham: That is it for today's episode, guys. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with myself and Neil. I really enjoyed being on the other side of the mic today. I thought Neil asked some great questions. What a top guy, doing some great stuff on the other side of the world. How interesting to find out more about that.

[00:45:57] Andy Graham: And it's really fun to take a trip down memory lane to go back in time, think back to that very first deal and the various businesses that I've built and how it's all happened. I hope there's some value in there for you. Look, I think more than anything, what I would take away from today's episode is that it doesn't necessarily get any easier.

[00:46:13] Andy Graham: but you get better at managing the ups and the downs of the businesses. And I think for me, as long as you can enjoy that process as well, you are already winning. Let's not forget to make a few quid along the way. Of course, we want to reap some of the benefits, but I hope that that was an honest account of the last 14, 15 years of business for me.

[00:46:33] Andy Graham: I'll tell you what I am really, really looking forward to the next 14, 15 years of business as But while we're on that, quick word, because Next week, I'm bringing a very special episode to the podcast. It's going to be a full deep dive on the labour manifesto and how it is going to affect you and I as HMO property investors.

[00:46:51] Andy Graham: I'm going to really break down the nitty gritty stuff that you and I need to be aware of. So make sure you don't miss that. And look, if you've enjoyed today's episode, if you're a regular listener of the show, even if today is the first episode, you've just discovered us, but you know, you're coming back for more, please, please, please do me two quick favors, leave.

[00:47:08] Andy Graham: a quick view of the show. Let us know what you think. Hopefully it's worthy of five stars. That helps more than you could possibly know and make sure you hit that subscribe button. That way you won't miss a single episode and you can make sure that you are staying at the very top of your HMO game.

[00:47:22] Andy Graham: That's it guys. Don't forget. I'll be right back here in the very same place next week. So please join me then for the next installment of the HMO podcast.