Birmingham PINS – Sally Lawson and John Davis

I went to an interesting PINs (PRoperty Investors Network) meeting last night, in Birmingham. As well as being a great networking opportunity where I once again met lots of like minded individuals we heard from 2 informed speakers. The content of their talks is worth sharing with you.

Sally Lawson, of Sally Lawson (www.sallylawson.co.uk) lettings, gave an interesting insight into the current lettings situation giving tips on how to manage your portfolio rather than your portfolio managing you. Key tips she referred to included:

Get your paperwork and systems in place from the start.
Do full credit checks on all tenants.
Make sure you carry out inventories, even on empty properties.
Carry out maintenance work as soon as it is needed (from little acorns big Oak trees grow).
Have a process for rent arrears that you follow in every instance, don’t make it personal.
Apparently 80% of her tenants are sourced via internet marketing, 2 years ago this would have been from newspapers.
Location is the key – buy the right property in the right area from the start which will always make letting easier.

John Davis gave an oversight into the Buy to Let Mortgage Market. As we all appreciate it is incredibly difficult to obtain BTL mortgages at the moment. His main message was a call to action, if you want to make money from property then buy property and make sure it earns money for you! Take action!

John also spent time discussing the lease options route to buying property advertising his course on protected lease options. Watch out we will write a page on this soon.