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Property investing brothers Ben & Tom Thorns have made an impressive transition into the property industry from their previous life running a digital marketing agency.
In this interview we catch up with them half way through a 12 month period where we track their property investing goals and progress throughout 2017.
Their focus is on land sourcing and property development, and they have some amazing systems in place to scale this process and grow their development pipeline, but a large chunk of their success so far this year has come from rent to rent deals as well.
These guys have already had some great success, but have got even more exciting things lined up for their future as property investors.
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Goals at the Start of 2017
Ben & Tom (Tom & Ben?!) started the year with ambitious plans focussed around rent to rent deals and commercial to residential conversions. Ultimately they wanted to add an additional £12,000 per month to their combined revenue by the end of the year.
Progress So Far
They are pretty much right on track to hit their financial goals, with roughly £6,000 per month generated since the start of the year from rent to rent deals, and a few apartment purchases.
The rent to rent has been going really well with 5 deals signed up and more in the pipeline, but the time investment has been higher than expected so whilst they will proceed with those additional properties that existing landlords bring to them, it won’t be a major focus for them going forward.
The land sourcing process has a much longer lead time but should also lead to much bigger rewards down the line. Ben & Tom have a number of sites at various stages of negotiation but the real interesting takeaway from their interview was the detailed breakdown of what their land and deal sourcing system/process looks like.
Plans for Next 6 Months
There are at least 3 more rent to rent deals that they expect existing landlords to bring forward as current tenants move out, with more on the horizon looking into 2018.
The big focus though is obviously on the land sourcing and future development projects though. Breaking that down into actions and results, Ben & Tom intend to identify 100 sites per month and send letters to each of them. From this, they expect a 10% response rate of which a couple will be worth following up on.
This volume should result in 6-7 land owners genuinely interested in the offers put to them, and it seems to be working with 1 site under offer already.
Ben & Tom’s Links & Resources
LivingSmart.co.uk – Homepage for the Living Smart brand with details of past deals and how you can work with them
Living Smart on Facebook – Keep up to date with the guys on their Facebook page