Inside the Empire: Hayley Andrews on Growth, Strategy & the Business of Property

In today’s episode, I sit down with Hayley Andrews, the award-winning investor, “dragon” on Sky TV’s Property Elevator, and the force behind Hard Hats to Heels and the Women in Property Awards, to unpack how she’s built a diverse, multi-strategy portfolio over two decades, from vanilla buy-to-lets and HMOs through to hotels, listed buildings and complex commercial schemes.

Hayley shares the real story behind her growth: starting out on a council estate, using property as a pension, then scaling into bigger and more complex projects by buying well, managing risk ruthlessly and building serious relationships with councils, heritage bodies and regeneration boards. We dig into her transformation of a derelict museum into “Fun City”, a new entertainment quarter that’s now set to roll out across market towns in the UK.

If you’re serious about playing the long game in property - building wealth, not just collecting units and you want a candid look at what it really takes to operate at the top level, this is an episode you don’t want to miss.

🎯 What You’ll Learn

• How Hayley grew from single lets to large HMOs, commercial conversions and hotels
• The negotiation principles she uses to always buy right (and walk away when she has to)
• Why a solid, cash-flowing base is essential before you take on complex “trophy” projects
• How she engineered the museum-to-entertainment-quarter deal and secured all three buildings from the council
• Why understanding demand, data and end users comes before any offer or design
• How and why she’s championing women in the industry through Hard Hats to Heels and the Women in Property Awards

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💻Resources & Mentions

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• Social: Follow me on Instagram for daily HMO tips, advice, and behind-the-scenes updates here.

Transcript

Andy Graham (00:02.67)

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. I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants. Join me and some very special guests to discover the tips, tricks and hacks, the ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to start, scale and systemise your very own HMO portfolio now.

Andy Graham (00:40.59)

Today's guest is one of the most accomplished and widely respected figures in UK property and she brings a huge amount of experience and practical advice to today's episode. Hayley Andrews has been investing in property since 2002 and has built a genuinely impressive multi-strategy portfolio of buy-to-lets, serviced accommodation, listed buildings, commercial conversions, HMOs, commercial projects, big stuff, small stuff and everything else. Hayley is an award winning entrepreneur. She's a mentor. She's a speaker. She's a dragon on Sky TV's property elevator and she sits on the board of several trusts including historic building organisations which I think tells you about the breadth and depth of her knowledge. 

Today Hayley is sharing her insights from more than two decades in this game. The decisions behind her growth, the strategies she's used, the lessons she's learned and what she thinks investors should be focusing on right now. Strap yourselves in, let's get into it.

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. Inside the roadmap, you'll find a full 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. 

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. 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.

Andy Graham (02:44.344) Hayley, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. 

Hayley Andrews: Thank you for having me.

Andy Graham: What an absolute pleasure. Now I'm very excited about today's episode, Haley. I have met you a handful of times. It's very difficult to kind of miss you in, I think in the property space per se, because you are pretty much everywhere, but for all of the right reasons. And there are so many reasons which we're going to try and touch on a few today, but I think it would be fair to say that your reach into the industry is significant and

Andy Graham (03:13.358)

what you have achieved and what you have done is incredible. It's so impressive. And I'm going to try and pick it a few bits today to try and help our listeners understand what it really takes to build a property business. You are a unique example. I think of that. There are so many examples, and this is going to be a difficult question for you to answer, Hayley, but to start with, can you just try and give us a bit of a broad summary of what your empire currently looks like? I know it spans everything from HMOs to buy to let to really kind of mad and crazy stuff that a lot of people probably wouldn't want to touch. So just give us an idea of what things look like today. Hayley.

Hayley Andrews: So I started off with vanilla, buy to let, just your standard residential homes. I got bored there very quickly. I very much variety is the spice of life and I like to learn and do new things. And so I moved very quickly into more of your creative strategies. So I've done everything from lease options, rent to rent, sourcing, flipping distressed properties. I moved into small HMOs right up to large 21, 22 bedrooms, clusterflex commercial, commercial to residential, listed buildings, car parks, bars, schools, restaurants, pay and display car parks, pretty much everything else in between hotels as well as something that I've been focusing on over the last few years. So I'm very much a variety is the spice of life. My portfolio is very, very diverse.

Lots of people think that I'm one of those shiny penny syndrome people that look at everything. But when people ask me what strategies do you focus on with my background being data analyst, it's very much whatever's going to make me money and what's missing within that area. It's very intentional, the strategies that I do work on, the projects that I choose in the areas that I choose. And my portfolio has just grown organically over the last 23 years.

Andy Graham (05:10.286)

Wow. I mean I did warn our listeners that there was going to be and that's not all. Let's not forget your freedom empire, hard hats to heels, property elevator. You're on the Sky TV show. You are basically an angel investor as well. So there are many more strings to your bow. And actually I've heard you speak a few times at various events where we've crossed paths. And I think it was very clear to see how broad your sort of interests in property were, but also like you said, how very clear you were on the piece about making deals work, making money from deals. I think it was really obvious to me that you kind of led business first. And I think that the examples of the projects that hopefully we can talk about today really demonstrated that. 

So, Hayley, how do you build an empire like this? You've been doing this for how long now? And how have you gone from where you were when you started to where we are now? It sounds overwhelming, I think, for most. So it gives a bit of an idea how this even happens.

Hayley Andrews: It's overwhelming for me to tell you all of the stuff I've done sometimes. No, so like I said, I started out in 2002 and I got hooked on property then and really just loved the industry and wanted to continue to grow. It started off just as a pension pot forming alongside my job and I was, I'm unemployable, which I think most of us in property are to be honest.

I've always been entrepreneurial. Yeah, absolutely. Way too stubborn to be employed by anyone else or to be told what to do. I always kind of wanted to be my own boss and I've always had side hustles and things like that. And even from a young child, I've been entrepreneurial and had businesses on the go and always been making money. It's just how I am. So, property for me originally was a pension plan and the idea was that

Hayley Andrews (07:03.17)

I would just build a portfolio up over a period of 25 years and in 25 years time have an unencumbered portfolio that we paid down or the tenant had and I could live off the income and leverage that. But then we had changes in our life where health and all things like that, which kind of whacked us around the head and said, you're asset rich and cash poor. And that's when we started really getting educated, looking at HMOs, rent to rent, lease options, angel investors as well. 

So we brought on angel investors in the beginning and we moved really from your standard residential to your smaller four to nine bed HMOs and then just organically grew from there. And I think you become a victim of your own success and there's a period of catch up. So although business was really where I was at and what I was focusing on, I'd never done property business before and I didn't really understand all of the back end of it.

I was really just buying properties, financing them, getting them fit for purpose, renting them out, refinancing or getting contracts in place with rent to rent and all things like that. So I was just organically growing. In my first year of getting properly educated, I did 15 HMOs. So I went from 15 standard buy-to-lets to now 30 properties, but 15 of them HMOs. And that was a massive wake-up call actually because I'd never really managed a HMO before. I didn't really know what it was. And 20 odd years ago, there wasn't all of the podcasts and things like that about it really, unless you paid an awful lot of money for training, there wasn't free education around either.

Andy Graham: Hayley, not wishing to cut you off at all, but there's this big question just ringing for me that I know everybody wants me to ask right now. And that is, how do you make this possible? There are so many steps and such a leap to go from 15 to 30 properties and from buy-to-lets to listed buildings and other types of business. How do you actually make this happen? And how currently do you even manage to juggle all of these different things?

Hayley Andrews (09:08.472)

We all have 24 hours in a day and people always say to me, what does wealth mean to you? And really what wealth means to me is having freedom of choice and to choose what I want to do. So where I'm at within my career, let's say now, is I get to choose projects that challenge me. I get to choose projects like listed buildings that I'm turning into Fun City or plots of land that I'm doing pay and display on or bars, restaurants, schools and things like that. And the reason I focus on those types of properties really is because they're problems. There is no real method in what I do. I find a problem and I know that I will solve that problem. And that's why I make money. I buy well. I'm a very good project manager. I'm very strict. I know I come across as as lovely and nice and I am, but I'm not on site. I very much run this as a business. I absolutely love the industry we are in. We all have 24 hours in a day and I just use my time very well.

Andy Graham: Do you have a team, Hayley, that you manage to help deliver all this stuff and what sort of roles do they do for you? Who's actually turning the different parts? You are very much kind of conducting the orchestra here. Who is in the orchestra in your team?

Hayley Andrews: Yeah, so we have a full team. So we have everything from legal, construction, estate and lettings, marketing, management, cleaning, absolutely everything, full suite. Of course we take on independent contractors as well and we do outsource and actually bring in other teams to do certain projects and depending on the complexity, but we do have a full suite of the entire turnkey service. Down from sourcing agents through to the backend.

Andy Graham:  Let's talk about complexity for a second then, because this really strikes me with your business model. There's a lot of projects that you do and you're interested that you make work that most people would just, it would scare them to death and they would just walk away. And I say this as someone who has developed listed buildings as well. Your latest scheme is incredible, but just, is this about passion as much as anything else for you? Because I think you do have to have a certain hardness and a real desire to want to do these sorts of problems to overcome and be able to manage the sorts of challenges that I know that they can throw at you. So is this a passion for you as well as everything else? Cause some of these projects really are pretty crazy on the face of it.

Hayley Andrews: Yeah, absolutely. And I have asked myself those questions and I do rock in a corner very often actually. And so sometimes I do think to myself, you know, why do I take that out? Why am I doing this? I don't need to do this anymore. And some of the projects I do take on a very complex problem properties that require patience, hard work, dedication, time, perseverance and skill to deliver. But the reason I take these projects on is because I'm buying them at the right price and I know that I will make money out of them. I know that I'll be able to do that. I know that I can solve the problem. And actually, because I'm prepared to do that, that's where the money is actually being made. If it was just clear projects that everybody else was looking at, and it really just came to that.

Hayley Andrews (12:33.77)

It came down to, I love negotiation. It's my favorite thing to do. One of the things I've done successfully throughout my entire career is buy well, always. My husband hates going anywhere with me because not only in property, I don't pay full price for anything at all. He gets embarrassed extremely and just walks out of the room. But I love playing that game. So I've always purchased really well and I really enjoy that chase. I love that game. So I think the projects that I'm choosing, that really what happened was everybody started doing training and everybody was focusing on the same two, three bedroom terraced houses, turning them into five, six bed HMOs and residential became very difficult to really buy right. And that ultimately just then came down to relationships, time and market, credibility and reputation to deliver. And I didn't have that at the time.

So it was like, okay, what can I do to take myself out of that arena and compete into a different level? And that was get educated, understand listed buildings, understand obviously supply demand on a real granular level and understand what's missing. Then go in finding it, bringing on regeneration, looking at grant funding, tapping into the Towns fund and saying, do you know what? This is what they want. This is what I can deliver.

This is what's missing and this is where my margin is going to be. And so it all started from just really taking myself into a niche kind of arena where there was a lot less competition and only crazy people that were really negotiated, which meant I could drive the price down even further, which meant I protected my downside. I understood who I was going to be renting that out to. I quite often would purchase properties with a view or a tenant in place ready, so pre-let as well. 

And it was really, that's when I started really going into the commercial realm and not really just focusing on commercial to residential, commercial to commercial, alongside commercial to residential and hotels and all things like that. That's where I really started to see growth because instead of three, 400,000 hiring properties, we were now looking at, we were adding five, six million at a time because the projects were bigger and there were less people looking at them. And we were able to split them up, identify what that market needed, tenant them or pre-let them do a renovation and refinance, pull our capital out and go again. So we were able to grow wealth quicker with less competition, buying right, which just all ticked the boxes, but doing good as well, creating employment, creating footfall and community led projects that were all in line with the local plans.

Andy Graham: 

There are so many facets to these projects and your approach here. And one thing you've said a few times already today, which I find really interesting because for some reason I don't feel like it is being said enough, but that is to you buy right. And it's so fundamental. And I often have similar conversations with people that will come to me and tell me that they're struggling to find deals or make deals work. It feels like sometimes that they've got to have the asking price and fundamentally it does often boil down to taking a huge chunk of your risk out by just buying. Right. And sometimes you have to be patient. Sometimes you've got to negotiate really well. Sometimes you've got to be willing. In fact, I think you've always got to be willing to walk away from a deal to secure yourself a good deal. 

And it's difficult, isn't it? Because I think some of us are perhaps a little more pre-programmed to this, but I think certainly, and I've found from my own experience, I don't know whether you share this, Hayley, having done it a few times, you kind of harden to the negotiation process and actually that emotional piece becomes much easier to detach yourself from. It becomes very much a deal. It is a business transaction and it's so much easier to say, look, that's my offer. Take it or leave it. Have you found that over time that has become easier? Was there always an element of that pre-programmed into you?

Hayley Andrews (16:49.486)

I think I was born a negotiator. So I think it's just a skill that I've honed over the years. It is something that I enjoy doing as well. I'm great at poker, never play me at poker. I'm very much like playing that game. And I think if you enjoy that and you're prepared to hear no, and actually you want to hear no, and you want to keep driving that price, I do kind of like red table, blue table negotiation. Have you ever heard of that?

Andy Graham: No, no I'm interested though. 

Hayley Andrews:

So it's kind of like blue table. It means that there's a relationship on the cards at the end of it. And you bear that in mind as you're going into negotiation. So you and I, for example, if you were selling me a property, there's a relationship there. There's a level of respect and I wouldn't cut your throat as such.

Andy Graham: Cool, nice to know Hayley

Hayley Andrews:

There's a red table negotiation where you go for the best possible price and there is no relationship at the end of that negotiation. And I think it's just been okay with being either of those people. It's very English to want to do well by everyone, but buying at the right price is doing right by your business. We're a business, not a charity, and we're here to make money. And I'm not ashamed to say that. And I don't think people expect to hear that from me, nice.

Andy Graham (18:08.766)

I completely agree, Hayley. And I think there are probably a few reasons. One is you don't look ruthless. You're polite, you're very friendly. You're a lovely person to be around. I think perhaps as well, you're obviously a woman. And I think that people tend to expect that women are easiest to negotiate with, perhaps push over a little easier. And that, certainly from my own experience, is not always the case by any means. So this is a fascinating conversation, I think, Hayley. And I don't think I've had before to talk about the essence of deal negotiation and making money from deals in such a candid fashion, I think is really interesting. 

I think you are so correct and we are too polite. And I think often for so many of us, we are so worried about offending people when we put our offer in or try and negotiate or push back or raise an issue. And actually you have to be able to buy so well in this game. And you can, again, just take so much risk out of the deal by getting that piece just right, but it is hard to teach and it is hard to train yourself to do.

Hayley Andrews: It is. And I'm not a nasty person. The way I negotiate is not, it may be ruthless in delivering what I won't buy it at, but I'm not rude. I'm not aggressive for anything like that. I'm very much about relationships and I'll always try and find a win-win situation. But ultimately I do need to buy at a certain price. And what the thing you have to remember is that person at the end of the negotiation line or the phone, doesn't have to accept and you have to do right by your business, your employees, your own wealth plan and your family. And at the end of the day, I come from a counselor state, I come from absolutely nothing, I'm self-made and that has come down to being savvy with money, understanding how to grow it and understanding how to make it, but understanding how to protect and keep it as well. And that's all fundamentals of business.

Andy Graham (20:10.158)

Do you think Hailey, that now you're doing larger projects, many sort of seven figures to these projects. Do you think that having that base of your cash flowing assets and that element and your trading businesses, because a lot of people, we like the idea of trophy buildings and doing bigger projects because they're bigger, but they are tougher. You and I talked about this before we hit record. Some of the challenges can seem insurmountable. Do you think that having that cash flowing base was and has been paramount to your ability to do that or not. And I ask from a genuine place of interest, because for me, it is definitely the case. And I will say quite openly, I wouldn't want to develop if I didn't have my cash flowing, my trading businesses behind me, but I'm interested to know what your sort of position on this is.

Hayley Andrews:

100%. So I completely agree with you. Without my cashflow in assets and that security in the background of regular income from my assets, I wouldn't be in a position to take on the risks that I take on and to inject the capital that I do in not only my projects, but other people's projects as well. Cashflow is king. I know that your audience and you are probably tired of hearing that, but it is true. actually again, fundamentals of businesses, good solid cashflow. Without it, it doesn't matter how many years you've got behind you or how many projects you've got under your belt. If you suffer six months or more with poor cashflow, your projects are going under and you're bankrupt. And so it is key to any business. 

There's a slow progression. So we're talking about the bigger projects that I'm doing now but actually they come off the back of years of doing cash flowing assets, buy-to-lets, HMOs, commercial into residential, cluster flats and all things like that. They all sit in the background and feed me my income on a monthly basis and naturally I'm not one of those people that keeps refinancing either. And so the cash flow just grows, my wealth obviously within the portfolio grows as well and they're not constantly refinancing and pulling capital out.

Hayley Andrews (22:18.114)

But I do leverage them occasionally to put temporary charges so that I don't have to put as much capital into other deals that I am doing. And so I do do that and still leverage them in a way that not really affecting that overall loan to value as such once we've completed each project. But the reason I can do these projects now is because I'm in a position where I have choice and I only have choice because I have good cash flow.

Andy Graham:

Yeah. Because you've done the fundamentals, you've done it well, you've done it to a certain level and it's given you almost that permission to be able to, like you say, go and take these extra risks, and be able to sort of fund your projects. I think it's such a good reminder. It does, your wealth base changes your risk and your perception of risk, having a family and starting a family does as you get older and other things in life, like health that we've already touched on today. And yeah, it's certainly been a part of my own business journey, all of these things start to sort of come into play. And actually, now I will say this to people regularly, the goalposts move as well. 

Actually your objectives in life changed a little bit. I think more now about retiring and genuine retirement and actually having an ability to retire than I did in my twenties. I actually realize now that I probably don't want to do all of this for the next 40, 50 years. There is a point at which I definitely want to be able to take a step back or maybe need to take a proper step back. But how do I do that? Well, I need my business to look and function and form in a particular way, because if it's like it is now, it's going to quite difficult to take that complete step back. So yeah, absolutely. Things do do change. Tell us a little bit about a current project then Haley. There's one in particular, which is really just unbelievable. And just for inspiration, perhaps more than anything at the minute to say, tell us a little bit about that project, how it's happened and what it all looks like.

Hayley Andrews: 

Okay. So a really interesting project that I've just completed is a museum. So it had a covenant on there to state it could only be used as museum. And I managed to get planning permission and the covenant removed to turn it into an entertainment quarter. Now this building is a building that I used to go to as a child, because it was free and we were quite poor. So anywhere we could go for free, we always did. And I absolutely love history. History in day to go hand in hand. So I was one of those kids that went round reading all of the plaques and everything like that. And I used to go there all the time as a child. And I took my son to that museum right up to the day that it closed down over 10 years ago. And I always used to say to my husband that I would love to own that property in my portfolio. 

So this was a passion project, but make no mistake that it is business and I was prepared to walk away and I negotiated extremely hard on this property. So I don't let that emotion dictate or conflict with the business decision in any shape or form. But it was one of those properties where I was really thinking, for God's sake, please accept the offer because I actually put, this is the offer. You take it or leave it and I'm walking away. It actually came with three. And so it was a one property. It was three properties.

Hayley Andrews (25:33.112)

So there was five station across the road, which had been converted into a bar and restaurant. And then adjacent to that was office buildings of which I wanted to convert into a hotel. So my offer to the council was for all three or none at all. They wanted to sell me the one problem property because they'd got buyers for the other properties. And I was like, no, this is the proposal. This is in line with your town's plan. This is the number of jobs that I'm bringing to the area. This is the amount of money I'm going to be spending and this is why I need all three. It is all three or none at all. And they called my bluff. So I got up to walk out and they stopped me just before I left the room. But that was a moment where I was like, I really should have just took it because it was a great price that they were offering it me at anyway. But this is where you have to say, it's a bit like with auction. You have to know exactly what price you're going to be buying it at and if you're not getting it at that price, then you walk away.

There is no an extra 500 here or 5,000 there or whatever, because that can get out of hand. So with this project, I'd actually put a proposal together to create what was a destination hub. So this is in a market town regeneration. I sit on the town's fund. I sit on three historical preservation trusts as well. It was a listed building in a conservation area. And also the other two buildings, although not listed, were actually buildings of interest and still sitting within that conservation area. 

So I was well known for delivering listed buildings and restoring listed buildings within this council. I've worked with this council and planning and regeneration for over 10 years. And I knew that my plan would tick all of their boxes, but it's getting past the other people in your way, isn't it? And so I put this together. They accepted in the end, I ended up buying all three at the price I wanted.

And it is now a destination hub. But the idea around Fun City was there's lots of market towns throughout the UK, which of course is suffering. High streets are suffering and how people use them is changing or needs to change. And there's a lot of people, money, time and effort going into how do we repurpose our high streets and how do we repurpose these derelict rundown buildings, bring back footfall to the high street.

Hayley Andrews (27:54.252)

And everybody's solution was commercial to residential. And that to me is not a solution. It will work in some areas, but there has to be a destination. And that's what most of these places miss, a destination hub. So I did research, feasibility, I looked at what was missing and all of that ticked the boxes for what then became Fun City. So we converted the museum into a funky bar and restaurant, laser tag-arena, cricket cages, sports simulator, karaoke rooms, shuffleboards, digital darts, 80s arcade games, and it is, let's say, fun now. We relaunched that and it's been a huge success. And that now is a cookie cutter, let's say, a copy and paste, which we are going to take throughout market towns throughout the UK as a franchise.

Andy Graham: 

Wow. I mean, from so many different angles, that is such a unique and interesting project, Hayley. And I can only assume that you have spent millions of pounds doing this as well. So as well as all of the having, let's say the balls to just kind of put this idea on the table and actually see it through to fruition, actually putting the money down as well to deliver something like this and developing commercial schemes and all the legislation involved, all the health and safety stuff. Kudos to you, Hayley. That sounds like an incredible project. So, there are going to be more of these sorts of schemes. That's the plan, right? 

Hayley Andrews: Yeah. Absolutely. So this was the first of many, it was always going to be the first of many. And it was really just making sure that we got everything right with the first one so that we then could copy and paste throughout different locations through the UK, working with regeneration and of course, grant funding and things like that as well.

Andy Graham (29:39.246)

And Hayley, do you think that you could have engineered a deal like this without the experience you have? Would you have been able to convince a party, a selling party like you did to actually sell you this deal without all these elements? Because obviously this is an infrastructure project, really important part of the kind of local authority and the town's merit and things like that. Yeah. Do you think that your experience and what you had done to date was an important part of being able to strike that deal?

Hayley Andrews:

I think it was the main part of being able to put that deal together confidently and be able to pitch it to a room that knows I practice what I preach and what I stand for. It comes with reputation and that confidence comes with knowing they knew that I would deliver. I've delivered many times before. They know of me, have worked with me before. So lots of people say, why do you sit on this board and that board and volunteer as a governor here or a trustee there? And the reason I do that is because this business as any other is all about relationships. Yes, I enjoy sitting on the town's fund. I understand everything that's going on. I understand what money's been put into that particular town, where they're going to be spending it, what the feasibility reports are saying. I understand everything about what's going on. 

The reason I do this is A, to create relationships, B, yes, I'm giving my time freely. I don't get paid to do any of that stuff. It's all voluntary, but I'm in the right rooms with the right people showing up. They know my face, they know my name and they know I'll deliver. And that has come from years of working in that space. And as I said, confidence comes with knowing. So absolutely not. If anybody else had walked in without my track record. I mean, if someone walked in with the same track record and all things like that, I'm sure they would have got it as well. But if anybody had just walked in with that, there's no way they'd have solved them all three or had the confidence that I could pull off that entertainment quarter, which was a huge part of regeneration and part of the plans for that particular location.

Andy Graham (31:47.118)

And I think that that is such a powerful takeaway and one that is perhaps not sort of mentioned enough and perhaps overlooked a little bit more than it should be. Sometimes understanding where your experience and almost kind of what your clout looks like in a room in negotiation versus perhaps other parties. It is an important part of the process and having an awareness of those sorts of limitations I think is also a really important part of the deal making process. It sounds like everybody should sort of get ready for one of these coming to a town near them soon, Hayley.

Hayley Andrews: I think you make a really important point there. I think a lot of people think it comes down to the price and things like that. Often it doesn't. It's actually the plan and their confidence in the plan. You don't always have to be the highest bidder. So although I moved myself from an area that I felt that was not saturated, but harder for me to make my money in the buy, which was key for me to take the box for my investment purposes. I moved into an arena which was much more professional, so there was less of us, but the level that you had to deliver at was much higher. And so then you have to make sure that you rise to that level. So it's just about putting yourself in rooms where you become better.

Andy Graham:

I think we've all become a little bit like this. We've all become a little bit on demand. We want things quick. We expect to see a fast result. And I think that these sorts of deals, and I know from doing large deals myself, not necessarily the same as this, but I know how difficult it really is to figure out what something can be work. And there can be many iterations, many conversations. There can be a certain amount of money and time that you need to expend until you can really figure it out.

Andy Graham (33:30.924)

And I think that people often forget just how much of a commitment getting into these sorts of deals requires as well. It's easy to say it and recall it like this on a podcast, but the reality is you probably poured hours and weeks into figuring out how this could work in the best possible way before you were then able to even piece it together and strike the deal. Do you think that that is also fair to say, Hayley?

Hayley Andrews:

100%. I mean, the work that goes in before you even have the conversation is immense. For me to put a proposal like that together, I had to understand what was missing. To understand what was missing, I had to understand what was there. I've done it so many different times and in so many different locations. And the key to my success is always understanding that what am I buying? What am I buying it for? And who am I buying it for?

As in who is going to be occupying that, using it, renting it out or we're selling buying it. So it's not rocket science, but a lot of people don't want to do that legwork upfront. It's much easier to just say, do you know what? We'll buy an office block or we'll buy a terraced house and we'll convert it into a five bed HMO or we'll turn it into a block of four flats under PD. You hear it all the time. And it makes me smile because it just isn't that easy at all. Why is there a rule?

Both different size projects, but both equally as complex and understand in different rules and regulations for each project that you're delivering. And people just assume or would rather just go down that route because an office can be converted into a residence or a terraced house can be converted into a HMO. But they don't understand that actually, yes, HMOs may work in that area, but actually it might be saturated or the property in that particular location doesn't suit the demographic of tenants that you want to actually rent your property out to or they don't look at all of that stuff in the background. And if I was to say the key to my success is not only negotiation, it is doing the legwork upfront. I know exactly who I'm renting it out to, what I'm buying it for, who's going to be using it before I even make an offer or pick up that phone.

Andy Graham (35:42.54)

The way that I like to describe this is there is a spreadsheet piece that we all know and is kind of recognized across the industry. We put our numbers together, we do an appraisal. There is also an off the spreadsheet piece that is about relationships. It is about being an expert on the ground, understanding your market, understanding your local authority, understanding the rules and the regulations, understanding the timings in the market. And I think you just perfectly crafted how that piece is so crucial to the whole deal making process, Hayley. 

You mentioned earlier about your position on some of their boards and I had an interest and I had some questions about this because I knew about this. And I also know how much value you place on things like awards. You are doing incredible things in the property space in the industry, particularly for women at the moment with the women in property awards. You've won a number of awards and we certainly don't have time to recall them all, Hayley, but lots of really incredible achievements, but what I want to pull out is how valuable you think this part of process is. 

And you mentioned also sitting on boards, clearly, strategically, this is an important part of your business. And for anybody listening today, Hayley, what advice would you share? Because you have obviously invested so much time in these relationships and in these positions and in earning yourself awards. What advice would you share with people who are perhaps at the beginning or earlier stages of their property career that perhaps want to go on and emulate similar successes or even just build really good businesses and portfolios. What advice would you share given some of the things that you've learned and some of the things that you still continue to do now?

Hayley Andrews:

You have to be prepared to give your time freely. So to build the relationships and actually relationships you may be building for two, three years before you actually even get anything back out of that. And visibility is key, isn't it? So it's about being there, consistently showing up. And I think what happens is, is a lot of people do it for maybe 12 months and they get disheartened because nothing's come off the back of that relationship or...

Hayley Andrews (37:46.978)

They haven't got the deals they thought they were going to get or something, whatever else it is they're focusing on. But actually it's about time and being valuable. I've given my time freely. I've worked within these different locations throughout the UK with, as I said, heritage, regeneration, planning, and built relationships up so that I can leverage those relationships. And it was maybe 10 years later that I was actually able to see those relationships and the fact that I showed up regularly and I've been around for a long time. I've stood that test of time. I've got a good solid name. They can see I can deliver. And as I said, again, confidence comes with knowing. And if you're brand new starting out, nobody has confidence in you. That's no disrespect to you at all. You don't have a proof and track record. That doesn't mean to say that you are not valuable. You are. Show us your best self today and just try and be better again tomorrow, the day after that, consistently every single day, and the opportunities will naturally just flow. But it's also about being in the right rooms, isn't it?

Andy Graham:

Absolutely. And like you said, doing it consistently. I think again, we live in this on-demand sort of world now. We want things quickly. If we're not seeing results, if we're not raising the finance, if we're not having interesting conversations, if we're not striking deals, we want to walk away. And actually the reality is it often takes much longer and requires much more of us to develop the right relationships and find our way to the right doors and find a way of even opening those doors.

And I think you are a great example of just how committed you have been to this process over so many years. And I sometimes look at my own stuff and the work that I have done, the amount of time poured into conversations where I've received nothing back. I've given freely enough advice and support and guidance, and I've asked questions myself and I've searched for that in return.

Andy Graham (39:50.456)

And for so long and so many people would think it's a little bit mad, but actually it's really easy to see when you look at the people who have achieved really incredible things, actually how important that piece is. I think property is so much about other people, far more than anybody really likes to perhaps say. There's some big egos in this industry as well, but I look at certainly the things that I've done and I've been able to achieve. And I could point out the key people that have helped that happen along the way without whom it would have been completely impossible. That's something that you have found yourself, Hayley.

Hayley Andrews:

Absolutely. And when you are volunteering your time and you're creating these relationships and you're networking or you're giving something for free, just make sure you're growing. Are you learning something? Are they good solid people? Were you inspired by them? And that way then you're feeding your soul as well. You're feeding yourself. You're growing as an individual. And the reason I do all of these different things and the complex projects that I do is just to grow me very selfishly.

If I can learn something and I do learn something new every day, and that's why these types of projects that I do and the relationships that I have and I volunteer as to go and speak at schools and all things like that. I don't get paid to do any of these things, but these are, that's our future. I want to see those people in construction, in property, in estates and lettings agency. I want to show them the art of what's available. I want to be a voice of someone that came from a council estate and didn't fit the box.

But actually, even a rebel can be successful and whether you have money, you can have money. And there's a passion inside of me to share all of that. So I'm gaining so much from it as well. I'm not just giving my time and when talking to the same mundane people. These are relationships that I value and I'm getting experience from and getting feedback from. I enjoy those relationships and that's clear.

Hayley Andrews (41:51.286)

The passion that I have around the industry that we are in and call me crazy, but I actually would choose to do this over anything.

Andy Graham:

Well, it is really clear. I mean, let's just talk briefly about the Women in Property Awards and Hard Hats to Heels, which I mean, these themselves and these ventures, Hayley, these are substantial in their own right. Tell us about Women in Property and the awards, because this is something that you have pioneered and it's been really, really incredible to see you do.

Hayley Andrews:

I have to say that this is one of the things I'm most proud of. And it's not about exclusion, it's just about inclusion. And actually I'm a massive champion of women and have been for a very long time. And of course, when I first started out, there wasn't very many women in the industry at all. And just being a woman in the industry, navigating people's perceptions.

Can you be a cutthroat negotiator or a hard-nosed business person if you are female and all things like that? And being on site and filling skits and stripping walls and sorting procurement and dealing with contractors. And the answer is yes. And I mean, with the awards, I've been a judge now for years across most of the major award ceremonies. And one of the things that really struck me was only 5% of women were ever nominated or nominees. 

And so either they wasn't nominated or didn't put themselves forward. And that really shocked me because I could see really good solid women out there delivering day in day out and really didn't have a name for themselves. And social media as we see it now is very much a fake it before you make it. And I actually don't like it at all. And I think that there's so many women that actually are out there that

Hayley Andrews (43:37.634)

don't focus on social media, but are delivering multi-million pound projects and we're leading in areas that none of us have even, we don't know their names. So I spoke to all of the major award ceremonies and said that, look, 20 odd years ago, we didn't put ourselves forward for awards. Everybody knows me now, but only the last maybe five, six years. And I've been doing it 23 years.

So it took a long time for me to be able to build a name for myself as a good, solid female or business person in this industry. And it took a hell of a lot of blood, sweat, tears, time, money, mistakes, and everything else that comes with just growing gay business. And I always felt that I had to show up better, 10 times better than any guy in the room. And I don't mean that disrespectfully, but just to get the same recognition or respect.

And sometimes that's still the case now. And the reason behind Women in Property of the Year award is because you can't be what you can't see. So I wanted to show women and the next generation that some of the phenomenal women that have been delivering over the last 10 years that practice what they preach, that are creating multi-million-power businesses, doing large regeneration, redevelopments and everything else and they've never even been nominated before. 

So I wanted to create a space where women would feel confident to put themselves forward, to say, do you know what? I meet that criteria. That award is for me. And it's about shining the spotlight on some women that are doing phenomenal things within our industry, together with the guys that support them as well. I've got a hell of a lot of guys that support me and hell of a lot of guys that have actually supported this award and my female networking group hard hats to heels throughout the UK because they recognize the power of actually inclusion and what women bring to the table and how we benefit this industry as a whole working together. So it's not about divide, it's about unity and shining spotlight on these women that are doing phenomenal things so the next generation can say, that's who I want to be.

Andy Graham (45:51.832)

Well, I mean, what an incredible thing to lead Hayley. And honestly, I can tell you, we're blessed with an incredible community ourselves and some of the projects that we collaborate with from our community are just astounding. And so many of them are from women and it is really incredible to see. And there is a pattern and we don't see that they are the ones that are being openly shared on social media. They're not necessarily where conversations or that the conference is.

But we have seen ourselves just how incredible some of the work that the women in our community doing. So to see you lead something like this, I think is really special. Hayley, it has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you today and truly inspiring to listen to you talk about your business. I love this game. I often wonder why I do it. It's so difficult and so painful and so frustrating at times, but seeing and listening to somebody like yourself talk about it and in the way that you do really resonates with me. 

And it is genuinely inspiring because this is a tough gig and actually to have achieved what you have and then to be able to talk about it and share it and support people in the way that you do as well is in itself just truly incredible. And there aren't many people like you, Hayley, which is a shame. So this has felt like a really special episode for me. And I could honestly keep talking to you about all this stuff and so many deals. I'm sure. Hayley for anyone listening today, where is the best place to go and find out more, maybe find out how they can work with you or learn from you.

Hayley Andrews:

So good old fashioned LinkedIn. Hayley Andrews. I take care of my own page. If you reach out to me on there, I will reply. If you want funding for your deals, you can pitch for Series 9 of Property Elevator. Applications will open in January. We are filming in February or March. Series 8 is out on Amazon Prime now. So you can go and watch Series 8, phenomenal series, recorded in the Dragon's Den studio as well, which was excellent. Some great projects that came through the doors and some really, really good pictures as well. Some really bad ones also, but it's all part of the fun. Yeah. And of course, if you are a female and you're wanting to see what Hard Hats to Heels is all about, you can find our website, which is hardhatstoheels.co.uk and choose a location that's nearest you and come and join us for one of our networking events.

Andy Graham (48:13.496)

Wonderful. Hayley, thank you so much. It has been an absolute pleasure to have you today.

Hayley Andrews: Thanks Andy!

Andy Graham (48:25.538)

That was such a great conversation with Hayley. I really enjoyed that. I mean, when you look at what Hayley has achieved the last two decades, multiple awards, national recognition, major projects, complicated listed buildings, HMOs, stuff that most investors would just never touch. I mean, it's so clear why Hayley has become such a respected figure in this industry. I mean, Hayley's track record just speaks for itself, right? Having the story behind those achievements only gives you that sense of drive and the ambition and capability that's gone into building everything that she's created. 

A huge thank you to Hayley for joining me today. It's not often that we get to hear directly from somebody operating at that level. And if you enjoyed today's episode, please do make sure you hit that follow button. And if you haven't already, please leave a quick review of the show. It helps us more than you could possibly know, and it helps us continue to attract great guests like Hayley to the show. 

If you're a HMO investor or you want to invest in HMOs, then head on over to theHMOroadmap.co.uk. That is where you'll find everything you need to start scale and systemise your HMO property business. If you need more deals, if you need more finance, if you want to get more from your refurbishments, then it's all there waiting for you. Plus all of my downloadable resources and templates that'll save you thousands of pounds and countless hours trying to figure it all out yourself. 

That is it guys. Thank you again for tuning in today. And don't forget that I'll be right back here in the very same place next week. So please join me then for another installment of the HMO podcast.