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Alex is a 26 year old property entrepreneur living and working in Sheffield, who spends his time focussing on the 3 main elements of his business – his own buy to let portfolio, his development projects, and his property management company.
He started investing at 19, but over the past 3 years he has bought 14 properties, bringing his total portfolio value up to £1.4 million, and his next goal is to create sufficient income so that his partner Zoe can leave her job and join the growing business.
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Investing Strategies
Over the next 3-5 years (ideally no more than 4 as he’d love to achieve this by the time he’s 30), Alex is aiming to add another 20 buy-to-let properties to his portfolio through limited companies.
He’s also looking to ramp up his flipping business to the stage where it’s doing 3-4 deals per year, and increase the size of the portfolio that his property management company is looking after as well.
Biggest Success
The first property Alex bought in Sheffield was a repossession in the city centre – a 2 bedroom flat he purchased for £80,000. Despite not knowing a huge amount about the area, he decided to proceed anyway and admits to this day that it was a bit of a gamble buying in an area he didn’t fully understand.
Whilst his decision to purchase this specific property was perhaps a little impulsive, he believes it proved to the agent he bought it from that he was a serious investor who would stick to his word and complete quickly. Since then, the same agent has brought several other deals to Alex before anyone else, enabling him to quickly scale his portfolio with great value properties.
I firmly believe it is better to start making progress as quickly as possible and make tweaks to your direction once you have momentum, rather than never taking action through fear of making a mistake. I think this story from Alex is a great example of that working well in the real world.
Biggest Difficulty
Alex bought an ex-local authority house for a good price and decided to do a lot of the work himself to save even more money. He quickly realised he was in over his head, and although he was able to complete the project on budget, the additional time it took and the stress it caused were not worth the small cost savings.
He realised the hands-on work is best left to the professionals who may cost a little more but will get the job done much quicker and to a higher standard, and allow Alex to focus on growing his business.
It wasn’t a complete failure though, as that hands on experience taught Alex a lot about costing jobs and understanding the work that went into a renovation project, making him much more knowledgeable when discussing these things with his trades teams in future.
What’s Your Favourite Book?
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The Wolf of Wall Street – Jordan Belfort
Alex Roley’s Links & Resources
Alex Roley on Facebook – Connect with Alex and find out more about what he’s up to
AR Property Management – Find out more about Alex’s property management company
The Property Youth – One of many great facebook groups for property professionals – this one is specifically aimed at investors under 30 years old
One Response
Alex is a cunt.
“Alex Roley Why doesn’t every LL in country serve a section 21 at same time? That will “shake”things up abit. Fire with fire and all that jazz.”
https://www.facebook.com/clause24/posts/1724917280884602?comment_id=1725094287533568&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R0%22%7D