Mark Shaw - 40 lease options in 2022 far and his strategies to find and analyse those deals.

Hi and welcome to the rags to Richard Shaw with myself Terry Blackburn so today's guest is a return and guest Mr Mark Shaw good friend of mine one of the most active property investors that I know really good guy really knowledgeable and I thought we'll get him on the show again for a second time to share what he's currently doing in the current economic climate Um strategies he's using opportunities that he sees now and in the future and just his advice on what people should be doing and she maybe shouldn't be doing as well um

in November 2022 and going forward so welcome to the show again Mark all right sorry good to be back again thank you very much for inviting me no problem is I've only asked a few people to come back um and I think that says how much I Think of you and the others have asked to come back I really enjoyed your first episode all about lease options if anybody hasn't listened to it yet please go back fantastic episode one of the most listened to I've done so far um where Mark explains lease options so I've

seen online mark that I think up to how many of these options this year is it I think I've just touched 40 now just under 40 yeah three weeks 40 separate deals that's not 40 units That's 40 separate lease options right yeah that's right yeah yeah yeah fair play and just for the listeners um is there any particular strategy obviously and all these options but is there any particular type of lease option is it on a certain type of property is it on a certain type of landlord that you're buying off a certain type of

vendor just a bit of an overview of the strategies that you're Using now to find that many deals in quite a tough Market um well to be honest it's always been my go-to strategy since since 2012 so the way that it really works is you find the property then you assume you can do a lease option so it's nothing to do with I'm looking for properties to do lease options on it I found a property now I'll I'll do a lease option if a lease option doesn't work then you you look for some sort of

you know different Approach whether you're going to sort of go for blue market value purchase or a joint venture but really every property you should be looking at doing a lease option and whether it's for longer term or more of an assisted sale States for 12 months to give you time to refurbish your property so um it's really any any property so I'm doing exactly what I'm doing now that I've been doing for the last few years nothing's really changed for you no all I'm noticing now are the the agents and vendors are a lot

more flexible in their approach so um I mean one example when there was that previous mini budget and everybody panicked I didn't watch the news and the only reason I found out what we've gone on was I was contacted by three estate agents asking if I was still buying properties so you know it's it's more the agents are looking to work with you now and the vendors are really open to To this strategy foreign yeah yeah I'm finding that as well whereas maybe the past two years they didn't really need investors like us as much

and now the tables have turned a little bit in the in the Mulkey to work with us because there's less demand certainly first time buyers who move as I think there's certainly less of those floating around because of the rates Um but it's interesting just one of the things you said there like nothing's changed for you really has it I mean apart from you remember he's actually got access to more deals potentially in the past couple of years and I think that's the first lesson for anybody listening is the experienced guys who've done this a

long time everyone that I've supported who's done this a long time recently They're very much the same view as well like maybe there's a slight change in strategy but they're just it's business as usual they're just cracking on doing the thing not getting caught up not panicking not worrying not watching the news is a good strategy in itself um because it's never as bad as it as it as they say or it's never as good as I say either and depend on the subject we talked about um I think that's the first lesson just Calm

down just business as usual might need a slight change in strategy what we're just cracking on and you're proven that doing 50 or 40 odd deals yeah to date you're gonna do 50 will you get a 52 one year and get one a week up to be honest I don't look for the deals they get brought to me now so um I don't have a goal for any specific number it's just as on when they they come to me okay I think yeah Mommy mentioned that in the first one didn't you yeah it's Very much

you don't even view properties it they're all brought to you from investors landlords as well as estate agents right yeah yeah and the property Source well more investors the the only thing about below market value so when they can't get it at that price sometimes they'll just pass the lead on to me and then obviously I've got a different approach so sometimes I can actually end up with the property without paying blue market value yeah One point I would just jump on though Terry about the media um as property investors we do need to um

think more of what the media is actually saying but there's specifically to do with we know that it's going to be creative panic and that's the opportunity for you as an investor so for a long time I've been sort of mentioning inflation cost of living just to sow the seed in some of the vendors or the agents in mind so when they start Hearing it on the news it looks like yeah he knows what he's talking about this is what's starting to happen now um yeah definitely and looking at the news not actually absorbing what

they're talking about and too much in terms of paying attention to it it's more like how can this benefit me and how can I use this information because that's what most people are focusing on how can I use it to then benefit me and get me More investors more deals more whatever exactly that's a good point some people just say don't watch the news but probably a smarter approach is watching it and use that information to how how can you apply it to benefit you and your business um I think that's a good point and

in terms of just going back to strategies because I want the listeners to get something from this episode and thing right I could maybe start doing this So when you view property it's normally a lease option first and maybe you said that in the first episode it's not right how can I negotiate below market value or how can I finance this or whatever it's it's a different approach it's almost got the opposite to most but what kind of you said how are you finding them what's your sort of strategy when you look at it it's

looking at it how can I exchange or Delay completion straight away or how I'm just trying to get to the bottom of how your mind works and how you analyze these deals because you're not viewing them audio actually if you've got a bit of a process or what's your sort of um methods no I mean the first thing that happens is you see the property and once you see the property you know which of your strategies that's going to fall in so whether it's going to be cash flow Profit or whether it's going to be

a longer term asset so if it was a say a four bedroom Bungalow for instance I'd be thinking right I want to hold on to this for the long term so I've now got a long-term perspective so I I know at that point that I'm going to go for a longer term delay completion I'm happy to pay a higher price if need be um but if I'm just going for cash flow it's all going to be based on um how much I'm going to be paying them A month so the first thing you do is

you look at the property and work out what you're going to do with it and the second thing you do is you find what I call an anchor figure so this is the figure that you're going to focus all your negotiations on so if it's on the market for instance that becomes the first and configure so um with assisted sales I'm doing a few of at the moment assistant sale is where you flip a property without owning it The first anchor figure would be the price it's on the market the second figure that you need

is how much would the vendor actually accept now once I know that figure then I can just reverse engineer um to find out um whether I can afford to pay her that figure so say she wants 150 000. can I spend a certain amount on the refurbishment and get a profit by selling it a certain amount does that Make sense so I know straight away from looking at the figures and looking at photographs online roughly how much profit there would be if she agrees to accept that that figure she's happy with if she is then

it's an assisted sale down well that's down to how long it's been on the market more often than not that's what they'll they'll they'll do the um the deal on based on the fact that I can actually pay them that price And in do you feel that assisted sales is is there a lot of those kicking around at the moment or is it or is it the same as usual or do you see do you foresee more common on the common available or okay I've got a smile I foresee so much more coming on the

market um and I'll give you an example um four or five weeks ago um 395 000 it fell through it's broken Her change she can't buy on um she reduced it to 375 but it's but basically told the agent she would accept 330. nothing wrong with the property at all but even if she gets 330 000 pounds a cash purchase is unlikely to actually get her the new property Before Christmas because there's only three or four weeks left before she can actually move into the property but with an insisted sale I can say okay how

much do you need to save the chain I'll pay that on Exchange that will allow you to move comes off the purchase price and then I can remarket that at the 395 000. I've not paid any stamp Duty so my margin's a lot higher all I need to do is really find that cash to give her on Exchange to allow her to move through and you're going to get a lot of chain breaks happening on that basis so if you can find out how much they need to actually move on and it fits in with

your strategy then It's worth doing and the only reason I would pay a lump sum on that is because I'm getting such a huge discount otherwise you don't try to pay too much upon Exchange um there's a is there a general guide on how much you pee Onyx well on that scenario was how much she needed to see if the chain wasn't it yeah option consideration which is the amount you pay on deposit it's sort of that's your Main negotiating tool you what you do is um you find out what problem a cash sum can

can um resolve so for somebody that needs to move after the property that cash flow might represent six months Advanced rent on a rental property um if they need um five thousand pounds for a new kitchen five thousand pounds as much as you pay um this uh the easiest way to work out Is how much Equity they've got in the property so if you're looking at some apartments now that are just starting to come out of negative equity they've probably only got five or six thousand pounds in so if I actually said okay when you

sell this property at this price you're going to be left with six thousand pounds what if I give you six thousand pounds on Exchange and take over your mortgage payments you might as well sell it to me I sell it on the open market where you don't you know with me you know our viewings surveyors you don't risk losing tenants so it's it's identifying the if you need to put any cash down on Exchange I think that's maybe where some people get confused around this this point is every deal is there's not like a one-size-fits

all is it it's not a percentage of the value it's not this is not that and I Think when when we did some sort of coaching together you taught us like every single deal is different and it's the way you look at it and it's it's almost forgetting the conventional and looking at the creative things first and working out what what problem there is that you can solve for the vendors that's exactly it yeah and on a portfolio there's quite that's what's happening in the Market at the moment there's a lot of portfolios so if

You've got a portfolio of five properties Terry you know and you've got mortgages on all of them but you you want a cash element well what I would probably do is I can either pay you a little bit of option consideration on all of them or I could buy one off your cash on on the basis that I get all the other on lease options without me having to put a cash element down so the way that the vendor looks at it is I've got a chunk of money out of the properties Now and I've

got no further responsibility or mortgage payments so again you just identify what works for them but the only way you find out what works them is that you question them you find that information then you work with them yeah yeah definitely and that's something that you do really well um if you do a lot of it on email don't you um Another another thing that I learned from Mark was and I've been getting this over the years if you try it in negotiate something there's normally quite a few questions that you need answers to and

things that you need to ask to get to the outcome but instead asking them all at once which is what loads of people do and I certainly have done accidents what about this what about this what and he said These big chunky emails it's actually far better to just send one or two questions get a reply another one or two get a reply because then you droop them into a conversation almost a little bit invested in the conversation invested in the process the feel like the progressing with it like sharing information and then you can

go for a close later on and that's something that you you do really well Um yeah I mean if I could just sort of highlight the reason that you're doing this is that most people now have emails through to their phone so what you're doing is you're asking one or two questions and getting short answers and then replying straight back and before they know it you built momentum um and they're answered from their phone you've also got a whole thread that they can look back on but more often not Because the momentum's there you'll get

the deal done in one evening or one Saturday morning rather than protracting negotiations so it's just a lot quicker like that and then again it gives you control because you don't get caught out with questions you can't answer you get to think about what you put in and then you control the negotiations controlled conversation yeah definitely opposed to a conversation that can put you on the Spot you can say something wrong and it can take you to on a voice the wrong way and all sorts in likewise with face to face it's the same same

issue um okay um so so you mentioned assisted sales is there anything that you are seeing a lot of at the moment because it's not just lease options you do you do all sorts of weird and wonderful things is anything that you see in a lot of at the moment Or you can see coming alongside assistance sales um no I can um as you know I used to own an estate agency so I've got a lot of contacts in there that the sales markets are just really really slow now agents and vendors aren't really appreciating

at the moment because the this the valuations are still there but what's not happening is it's the buyers you know these aren't getting through to completion Um and you know we know at a later date the buyers are going to pull out so um I see a lot of chain breaks come in already started seeing that happen now especially after the first announcement everybody started to panic there's a lot of um people that um have used bridging with a view to you know once they're refurbished when it's done and put it onto a buy to

that mortgage and refinance a lot of them getting caught out now because they don't actually cash Flow so I call it like a cerebini thing where I used to watch the program and people used to make so many mistakes but the market used to bail them out that's what it's been like for the past few years and I think what's going to happen now is people gonna uh if they don't get the figures right they're going to be caught out shall we say um portfolio is going to be a lot of landlords selling portfolios Part

of it is because they're selling at the top of the market they've been through this before and they're really just cashing out but with portfolios when I tend to do delayed completions I'm not after um paying them huge amount on Exchange it's more to do with paying them a little bit of rent each month so they get that guaranteed rent but I've got a lease option at the end of it because with portfolio and analyst you're Looking at replacing the income which is part of their solution rather than just putting piles of cash into their

Bank um so yeah there's a lot of that um where I'm kind of I think the struggle is going to be and I've disposed of all my properties I've sold them Atop The Market but I've got a few pieces of land where I've got planning gain on them that's just slowing down at the moment because some of the buyers are now Waiting to see what what happens but um yeah agents definitely going to be open to more conversations with you and actually promoting your offers rather than just passing them on um and so if I

can give you an example it's an apartment block that um I've just agreed to buy we're building it and the vendor phoning the agent up and said that do you have any builders on your books um that would buy this and the first Thing you said is we've got lots of Builders but you need somebody like Mark who's already selling me because he's very creative in what he can actually offer you whereas the builders you know you're going to be getting a large cash on he might be ripped off your creative solution so he'd actually

sold me before I even heard about the deal and that's the relationship you've got to start building with the agents yeah Definitely I've said this to a few people who I've spoke to recently for saying like you know what can I do right now you know uh either the deal didn't stack that they had got gone going about left for example like you mentioned because of rates or this has happened that's happened but some people can all control straight away is getting to know letting agents and estate agents better we can control our Network who

can control self-development even if you're Not finding deals you can do all of those things straight away Christmas is coming up take the letting agents and estate agents who you know bottles of wine chocolate flowers that goes a long way there but therefore you then become one of those people who comes to the Forefront of their mind when a deal comes up like you've clearly got armies of estate agent to let the agents do a big Mark first Mark before anybody else which is which is amazing and That's partly part of the reason why you're

doing so many deals because they keep bringing them to you and they believe in you they know the trust you you're credible you do what you see you're complete and stuff quickly when you say you've got new and stuff so I think that's that's it that's one point definitely that everybody can do even if you're not in the market to buy right now you can start doing that you Can start doing it as soon as possible yeah and you've not always got to have that relationship you've just got to know what you're talking about um

and one of the things I sort of like focus on um or assisted sales because they're very easy to explain to an agent look your client needs this amount of money you know the property is not worth that at the moment but once it's refurbished it will be so what I'm going to do is I'm going to guarantee to pay Your client that price so you're getting at the price that she wants I'm going to pay and do the refurbishment and then I'm going to put it on the market with you and you're going to

sell it at the higher price so you're getting two fees one of her one of me they understand that completely because there's valuers they know that when they go to a property and they're taking a property on they'll know it's not going to sell at this price but I've got to put it on Otherwise she's going to go with the competitor and an example of this was a few weeks ago an assistant sale on two properties I phoned up an agent and asked you know I'm looking for refurbs in a particular area phoned up and

said that he'd just taken two on the night before and he was going to go out and take the photographs the next day do I want to meet him at the property when he's taking photographs and that afternoon use an email we got Two assisted sales agreed because he was shown exactly how to explain it to the client but I also gave him the email that he could forward on to the client so it made his job really really easy and that's one of the things you've got to do is think that if you try

to explain an assistant sell a lease option to an agent they're going to mess it up so you've got to put it in a format that they can just forward on and make their Life easier um yeah I love that and you know of interest if you've done any of these or you know because everyone's in the Market's going to go down and it's certainly less demand um are you concerned in any way about some of the lease options you've done maybe it's two years ago that'll come into an end now where you have to

either complete or sell any of those gonna go Slightly wrong I think or if you're building enough into the deal or can you restructure it maybe to to avoid that yeah I mean to be honest when when you first do um a lease option you agree with the transaction you've always made sure the figures start yeah so even if the rents um even if the interest rates go up you kind of coverage because you've got at the discount but it's down to what your strategy is if you agree with that Transaction just for cash flow

um sort of like a rent to rent then you know you've got to be very very careful with your figures but I don't do lease options on that basis um I always look at the profit in because I'm after the property going up in value over the years like you know five years worth of rent any kind of additional benefits such as like the rent increases that you get over the five years so when you take all the Multiple income streams coming from it you're more than covered so even if the interest rates did go

up it doesn't really matter because rents have gone up anyway but you've already balanced your portfolio and you've got other properties um coming in at the same time and you you're always able to sort of like complete early or um what I have started to do with them I've done it for a while actually but on Some of the existing options is that I've got back to the landlord and I've asked would they contact their existing provider to see whether they can actually agree a fixed rate but only their their existing provider and some of

them now have actually agreed a five-year fix um or or if they're just going into an option just before exchange I ask can you just contact your existing provider because often as you know so it'll be an Online application and you get your mortgage offer straight through and I'll do that just before exchange so that I've fixed it for the three five years whatever I've agreed the option period for so you can always like go back and and try to fix it if you want to but I you know you need a balanced portfolio everybody

needs a balanced portfolio so you're not really in trouble at any point yeah yeah I think that again that's a good point it's it's being Creative up front but it's also being creative throughout the whole negotiation process if you need to and once you've got the lease option there might be some creative things that you have to do Midway through that period or towards the end extending it reselling it remark and all of these different things I think again I think that's a lesson in itself there is it's it's important to be creative and look

at property from different viewpoints But it's not just the negotiation point that happens it's all the way through um I think you don't know a deal where I think you've done a lease option on a hotel or something and then you rent it rented it out or something that was a really creative example of that it was creative up front how you purchased but it was then created afterwards as well and you've always got a term that allows you to assign it so that basically just means you can sell it so you know if the

Rents are all going up and your mortgage payments are high then what you would do is provided the figure stack which they would do generally is that you you would put it on with an estate agent or put it on with a sourcer and you would have a third-party buyer come in and buy it um and then what happens is you know I've never owned the property the buyers buying off the vendor so I don't worry about the mortgage payments and I take my profit at that point rather than Waiting until the end of the

option period because that that property would work for somebody else whether it's to live in themselves or whether they're quite you know these are the only interest rates they can get now as an investor so you know you've got to take the long-term perspective but be proactive as you go along yeah I love that I I really fair play the way you do things I think it's a real It's real intelligent and it's a real difference and it's a real quite entrepreneurial way I think you look at things of course to some people who are

just in property because they think they get a passive income I think they can leave the job I think there's a lot more to it than that um it is more complicated but if you get good at the complicated stuff stuff that others aren't good at typically going to get results that others cannot get Um yeah somebody somebody asked me the other day do I if I can't get um at least optional property would I buy it as a standard sale and I went through my um records and the last time I bought a property

was 2016 the normal way it's kind of in lease options or a joint venture or some sort of creative strategy since then unless it's been a plot of land or something and do you think that'll ever change you Think that'll be the weird you stay no because um the only way that would work is if you get a really below market value property but again you still tying up a significant amount of money but people have got to it's not a lot of investors in my opinion think it's all about the leads but you know

I've seen people getting lots and lots of leads coming through they don't want the Facebook ads in different ways but the problem is when The leads come in all they know is below market value but if a lead comes through and you you know how to give them the price that they want on terms that work for you then you're doing deals when nobody else can so why would you focus on trying to buy one property with cash when you know that you've got deals coming from everywhere and all you've got to do is to

sit down and fly off an email and see whether they're open to a creative Strategy you know you don't really need to be putting money in unless it works for you yeah again I just love the way that you look at things um it's exciting isn't it yeah it is it is exciting yeah yeah I love it man I just love speaking to people who are doing things differently I don't like following the green me I don't like doing stuff in the conventional way it's Just the way I am as a person that's why I

think I gelled so much with you because yeah you just look at like just look at things completely different to everybody else which is which is why you're doing 40 deals a year and 50 deals a year and things um it's a fair play Man fair play is there any particular things that you foresee really taken off I know we've mentioned assisted sales mentioned obviously you Do loads of lease options but is there anything that you see maybe it's not there now that is coming or or do you not see anything like that um I

don't I don't really Network and I don't keep an eye on the bigger picture because I just do my own thing but um you know I've started to come across and some some people have been telling me about um Assisted Living I understand yeah that can work um Uh service accommodation I don't know it's not I tried it once um I quite like um I've seen a couple of Danny's posts about his boutique hotels I'm I'm setting one up at the moment only because it was agreed on a lease option and title split and things

said I thought yeah I'll try that but um no because you know I've been around long enough to see everybody went after hmos when hmos were in and then it was uh commercial to Rezzy and then it was service accommodation Trends come and go you know they work for some people but they don't work with somebody I've just always stuck to the same thing you know you get a property with as little money down as possible and you decide whether it's cash flow profit or a longer term asset and then you just kind of milk

it for the period that you've got it for and you just acquire absolutely everything you can so You know I've had letters agencies as well so I understand a short short of tenances in that kind of area I don't do HMO so I'm in business with people that do do hmos and the same I'm in business with people that do new builds if I found something that was really good at service accommodation I would probably go into business with them but it's not going to be something I get involved with so I mean what I

would always say stick with what you know and what you Enjoy um and for me it's all about simplicity that want to be involved in anything I just want to do the deal and then then move on and so you know I'm probably not the best person to ask um there's a lot out there but I just stick to the basics because you just if you're making money why why change my change yeah yeah and I think something that it Springs to mind when you said that there's I think a lot of people have this

view of you start a Battle let's you go to hmos you can go to essay then you gradually go to these big huge developments where you carving up office blocks that's not necessarily the path that you have to follow just because certain people do on social media I think that's what they think it has to be but you don't you haven't went you just do loads and loads of deals obviously some big some small but if that's what you enjoy and that's what you're good at Then you can just do loads and loads of volume

of those and be very successful in your right you don't have to follow anybody else's path or going from small to large projects it doesn't have to be that way does it no so um so you know a couple of things that I've got on the go at the moment um I'm I'm building with my business partner that does new bills um nine apartment blocks we've just done a lease option to acquire the land and we're building them but that would be a Long-term asset for me so as soon as they're built they'll be refinanced

and we're building three starter homes which is outside of not again but what I'm doing is we'll put tenant buyers in there so again you can still do the deals you just have a different exit so one I'll refinance and hold you know for a long long time you know that I'm buying and putting 10 tenant Buys in there so I can make my money up front so again it's just how do you think and see The bigger picture but it's the same property you just do the deal a different way and um before the

call I was thinking what can I ask more because I could probably talk to you for a while and keep asking you questions but I thought what could what would the listeners members like to hear what would I like to hear the answer to and one of them is that you're getting ready on yeah They are listening um how do you is there any tips on this or is there any methods that you do how do you juggle 40 lease options in a year how would it because you know I've done 20 deals in a

year before and that was a stretch like alongside everything I do is there a system that you use do you use notes to use Word documents where you write your notes down do you have spreadsheets just dealing and imagine There's some deals that don't go anywhere as well so you negotiate and probably 60 80 deals a year if you're closing 40 maybe it's even more there's any tips you've got on just managing your workload and that many different moving parts to your life because I know your coach and you do all this stuff as well

you're a family man so like yeah I mean first of all I would say my conversion has been very high all right so what is talking about 80 but it's only because I'm not looking at things that I don't want or that I don't think a deal can be done so if I see a property online movement so I'll get sent a link and I look at it from the photographs and I'm thinking there's no point even trying an option you know it's got somebody living in it it looks really really nice why would I

even look at go after that property so you know I I just focus on what works for me and you If you've done that kind of template before I've done a divorce you know I've I've done a portfolio and I've done a landlord that wants to save tax all you do is you just use the same template um I I have got a very short attention span so what happens is I'll have multiple stuff going on at the same time but I won't remember much of it so what I kind of built into my programming

if you like is I can literally just look at the last couple of lines and it comes Back to me so it's like playing six or seven draft games at once where you just move and then walk around like your teachers used to do at the Christmas fair so I can just pick up from that and then more often not the deals are closed very very quickly you get to the heads of terms you instruct the solicitors their sisters and your ancestors Head to Toes and at that point you've done everything because your solicitors will

now tell you when they Need something yeah or you've um explained to the vendor what the event what the benchmarks are so can you drop me an email um when you get your um your pack welcome pack from the solicitor if you've not got it by this date it's all templated um can you let me know and so everybody else is kind of controlling the timeline but they've been given the timeline to work to All I've got on my um desktop is a little folder that says 2022 and then there's another little folder in there

that says properties and then everything literally gets saved into there and then that's it and it all goes into Google Calendar and when I know what the exchange date is so that I have to know in five years time this is when I need to do something with that but yeah um I do my own accounts um because it's a bit of a memory jogger And you you learn things about the figures so it tells you when to think about selling and so and other things will happen outside events so if the tenant's moving out

and I've got that on a three year lease option I'll have a quick look at the rents look at the purchase price and then I'll just say well I'm going to test the market to sell it if it doesn't sell we'll put tenants back in in two weeks time so there's other events it just direct your Attention I'm not a long-term planner um so so there's no real process apart from the ones that you negotiate and you just read them back because I imagine it is quite hard to remember that many gold negotiations at once

you just read the past couple of lines which geography memory and then once it's closed it's passed on anyway and you don't kind of touch it until you're told what what you need um I get that Um on the negotiations as well I don't want them to sound like they're really complex negotiations normally last like a day two days maximum of the week if I'm using timing on my side because you've already you only need to know certain questions from the vendors you know you need to get your anchor figure so you know whether you're

purchasing the outstanding mortgage amount you know once they've given you that Information you know that the deal can be done all you've got to do is we give them like two or three offers to choose one which is best for them so again it sounds complicated but these are very very quick things they don't take too much time off at all yeah and then so that's an negotiating and then I get you save them in a file if I were able to get that and then like on a date you mentioned you do your own

accounts and things and you look at Testing the market when's best to say oh can I rent up and all these things do you do a little bit of that daily is that a weekly review is that a monthly review or what because I imagine when there's that many deals historic deals as well as current deals that book that's probably quite a big task so do you do that Weekly daily monthly quarterly yeah so um I keep a financial statement my own financial statement on um On Excel just because I update that every three months

because it's lots of coming in and going out I need to know when I've got money available but as soon as the tenants in a property that that's over to let nature now partnering with the letting agency which is the benefit because I sold my um but they'll just notify me when there's a you know the renewal that's come up um the only thing I've focused on is when the option ends which has Gone in the Google diary and then the rest of my time now to be honest is look at processing New Deals um

and I suppose I have no idea how long it because I don't fix my time I work until about one in the afternoon but that can be on anything personal life or whatever and then I kind of close my laptop and disappear yeah so um just a point in context it doesn't take very long to negotiate a Deal when you're asking the right questions and you're waiting for the leads to come to you anyway um once you've negotiated the deal it's really gone off to the solicitors so there's not a huge amount more for you

to actually do now until you've passed it onto the letting agent or I I pass it on to contractors to do refurbs if they're going to do a refurb so again none of my physical time is really put into things They always come across as really chilled and I'm thinking how's this guy so chilled when he's like there was this many deals I'm very cold focused don't get wrong I'm very gold focused but I don't have property goals you see so that's probably why I don't give me a health goal and then I'll be at

the gym certain time and eat certain foods but with property it's it's just a way now you know a property comes along you do a deal we make money and you just move on To the next one it's it's it's the deal that I enjoy not really everything else to do with the properties with it so so when where are you gonna stop at a certain point because there's no goal is it you're just going to continue doing what you're doing whatever is there a certain Milestone certain point or what what what is it I'll

just keep honestly I'll just keep doing it because it's there to do you know when you do something you it I can't explain it you Just you just do it I don't even kind of keep track of the financial side of things apart from right at the bottom of my financial statement these are the Acquisitions I've got going through this is how much option consideration I need or how much I'm going to need for that okay and I've got another list showing where money's going to be coming in from and that's all I look at

is am I going to have enough money at that time you do it yeah Yeah Fair Play Man Fair player um I don't sound like I'm a bit let's say fair but um I am because you know when you when you're working daily um because I used to work you know like an agents in the state when you're working in it you're always working at something but you'll find that most of that time's wasted and people talk about becoming a full-time property investor I wouldn't know how you could do that Because I don't know where

your time would go if you're a full-time property investor you would be you must be wasting a lot of time I I literally had a conversation with someone this morning about the same thing people have this in their head and it's pushed online leave quit your job go full time in property once you get a three three grand a month and all these figures abandoned around like It's not full that's not full time it's not even a part-time position if you get five or six properties that you manage that replace your income that's not like

and then what yeah what are you gonna do it's not full time in property that I completely agree and you know if you're finishing at one doing the level of stuff that you're doing that's not even full time either oh yeah just rub it in so yeah that leads on to the last Question was just around Fitness so you went through it um sorry the sun's right in my eyes if you uh if you're watching this on YouTube um you've went through a huge uh Fitness transformation um where you would tell me about where it's

all about the cause and you're being really strict with your tracking of calories and how much you've been in the Gym um what do you think that that is down to I mean gotta have a strong mindset you've got to be disciplined you've got to have your goals I know you do like sort of daily and weekly goals over this period that you've done so maybe just saw some tips advice on what you're doing and how you're doing it for anybody wanting to sort of transform the Way that the look because it was how many

storm was it it was quite a substantial yeah six six and a half Stone six I'm just gonna shut them blinds six and a half Stones so how did you do that yeah uh to be honest I don't I've kind of done Weight Loss before but it's never stopped as soon as you finish you know your routine you you you put the weight back on um and it's going to sound like a Picture inside I am kind of pitching it because I'm so impressed with the online program that I did and we haven't discussed it

so you I'm not I'm not promoting it as such but I've like negotiated a discount with them where the referral fee I don't get they will get it but what made a big difference is an online coaching program and it was something as simple as and it never occurred to me before is that every morning when you get in you go onto the Platform and you click have you done your 10 000 steps have you drank your three liters of water have you done your cardio have you done your weight so it's pre-programmed for you

and just knowing that you've got to get up in the morning or at the end of night and put a tick in the Box keeps you consistent and it is about consistency so overall the the the biggest part of it is you've got get your nutrition right but you need the education about the nutrition and then And it's the exercise as well so the biggest my takeaway was that you've got to eat less than you burn which a lot of people don't realize but what it is most people don't realize what they consume so you

know I was in a restaurant the other day and I was looking at the meals and the meal I was going to have was 1700 calories but I'm on like 2 000 calories for the day so I'm thinking you know what what can I do and and that's it so it's definitely consistency it's Definitely having a plan there but also being part part of the community as well it comes down to discipline but discipline is always a lot easier if you've got something that you can just follow rather than thinking I'm going to get up

and go running at five in the morning or whatever but it come down to steps nutrition and I mean I went overboard as you saw yeah but that's just me I set my own goal but it wasn't the goal they sent me that was for sure Yeah yeah and I think you know things from taking away from what you said there is you know the discipline of business can be applied into Health and Fitness in any part of your life really and if you discipline the Nook and consistent enough then you can achieve whatever you

want I mean I imagine if someone said to you you know how was it about a year and a bit you've done that translation yeah 15 Minutes you're gonna look like this and a year and a half you'd probably think I don't know how on Earth I'm gonna do that but but you know you've done that with consistency and you didn't let yourself off and you were disciplined over a period and you could never achieve that overnight or in a couple of months not in a healthy way anyway um which some people look for the

look for the easy quick fix store what's Important though is that that that finished in August and I've not actually put a lot of weight on in fact I'm just going through I've just signed up for a year so I'm gonna go for a bigger goal now um so uh yeah I mean you've got to kind of build it into your lifestyle but one point that I will make is that and it's relevant to property investing is that your confidence level goes up but most important is your energy level And we had this conversation you're

feeling a bit bit tired now you just when you're tired you don't pick up on things in conversation or you don't get back to vendors quick enough or most of the deals I find are done on um Saturdays and Sunday mornings when you've got email address for the vendors yeah in fact quick quick top tip is the way that you um get the email for the vendors when the agent's showing you around is say to the vendor can I have Your email address because I want to get an offer to you tonight or Saturday or

Sunday when the agency is not open and they'll they'll give you the email address even in front of the agent and just say you're going to copy the agent in and then what you'll find is you're gonna often get the deal agreed by Sunday night but if your energy levels down you know come on Sunday night if you're going to send something it's just not going to happen Yeah no no you're completely right and that's just down having a young baby uh in the house in lack of sleep and and I've done a lot of

realization over that this four months since he was born like you your mental sharpness your efficiency and that's just at work never mind the gym like it's so much lower when you do another full night sleeping there's this hustle culture online that you need to get up at five o'clock in the morning work all day and work seven Days a week like that's not That's not healthy and you sometimes aren't as efficient if you work a little bit less and prioritize your health your Fitness sleep then you're probably going to perform better in the window

that you you need to perform in your your Testament that I mean I don't think there's many people doing 40 deals in a year plus being in the gym four or five times plus you know being there for your family finishing at One o'clock and starting at 10 30. I don't think there's many that are doing that there's obviously someone there'll be some that do more but majority are doing are doing less than that um what I would say Terry though is when I was when I was working full-time businesses before covid I wasn't hardly

doing any property deals when covert came in like last year when we had their first interview and since then it's when you start having giving yourself that Mental break and the ideas start coming to you so you might have a conversation with a vendor and if you're having an evening walk or you're just sitting chilling or even something like the garden where it's slowly repetitive that's often when you created deals come to you when you're actually working on something it just doesn't happen you're just thinking too narrow-minded you know I'm going to get it for

this price but something will click with you when You're giving your mind a little bit of a break yeah I just actually heard that recently I don't know what that was done I think I heard that on a podcast or something that someone said that you know if you're doing like some not that I like DIY but if you're doing some DIYs of God and just some mundane tasks that is sometimes when you don't really need brain power that is when things start to come to you and you know I'm Experiencing a little bit of

that by selling them to me in business that I had you know I don't have had that much on and hey I'm starting to get creativity it seems like it's coming back where there was a period I was pulled from pillar I post that much the creative stuff wasn't happening as much as it used to so completely agree with that um I think that's it it's a good way to end I think you know there's a lot that you can take from the way Mark is in the way Mark conducts himself the way he looks

at deals um but the way he lives his life as well and he's certainly not doing this hustle culture ship where you're up at five o'clock in the morning and work until 10 o'clock at night and he's still doing huge volume in in doing the type of things that a lot of people aspire to do within the Property space so um yeah thanks again Mark I really appreciate it loads there again myself and I made some notes there um yeah thank you for coming on me if anyone wants to reach out to you or follow

you or ask any questions or on lease options or anything like that is there a Best Way yeah I only do Facebook yeah nothing else just Facebook just Mark sure on Facebook yeah just not yet although I'm going to change my profile Photograph burn today I think to my before and after so yeah yeah but yeah do that well you won't miss that one but there's no other Mark sure with that before so you don't get confused but um I'll check them out it's uh it's a really it's quite a crazy transformation to be fair

um yeah so um but yeah thank you so much Mark really appreciate your time again Have a fantastic rest you do brilliant thanks Terry