How do you manage a property portfolio from overseas? Julie Talbot reveals the tools she uses

We often hear stories of successful property investors managing dynamic portfolios of properties from overseas. Rarer is it to hear about how exactly they do this. Julie Talbot is a self-described property investor cum portfolio builder cum landlord. She has five properties of her own plus manages six for clients, whilst living between UAE and the UK. Why does she manage her property portfolio from a different continent? And more importantly what are the tools which allow her to do this? Julie explains her approach to managing remotely below.

Moving to the UAE

I had a corporate career in process management and improvement, before quitting my full-time job in 2006 to try out something different. I eventually settled on property.

In 2009, me and my husband took on some mentoring work and bought three houses in quick succession. My husband’s work meant that we also had to relocate to the UAE, where I planned to continue growing our portfolio.

However, it soon became apparent I’d made two big mistakes: neither carrying on with mentoring, nor finding a new mentor who could help me get funding overseas. After significant effort, we managed to secure two further properties. Then we hit a brick wall, unable to obtain funding (in retrospect I realise we weren’t looking in the right places).

First time working remotely

Having put the brakes on growing our property portfolio, I started what seemed like the dream job, working virtually for a company in the UK. I was able to work from home, choose when I completed my work and reduce my hours when needed. During this period, I learnt about cloud systems and apps to help enable remote working. We also started our family and work slotted in perfectly in between looking after twins.

However, thoughts about property were never far away. I knew from speaking to other expats that many people wanted to buy houses in the UK. Yet no one seemed to have the time or contacts, being so far away.

Returning to the UK

In 2017, I unexpectedly found myself back in the UK for my father-in-law’s funeral. After a couple of weeks my husband returned to the UAE, but I and my daughters stayed on for 7 months to support his family.

As my daughters weren’t in school, I could no longer maintain my hours for the virtual job. Suddenly, I had a lot of free time on my hands. It was the perfect opportunity to reignite my interest in property. I was approached by someone who had heard about our property portfolio and wanted us to help them build something similar. All of a sudden we had our first client. I signed up to a sourcing course and started getting involved in property communities.

Setting priorities

To maintain the lifestyle you want, you need to make clear the principles by which your business needs to function. We listed 5 key rules for our business, they are that it should be:

– paperless

– have systems (not superheroes)

– be scaleable

– have no single point of failure

– allow me to be a present parent

We’re still not 100% there, but I use these rules to guide how we set things up. These guidelines ensure that day-by-day, decision-by-decision we’re moving towards the type of business and lifestyle we want.

Tools for managing remotely:

Partners and suppliers for managing remotely:

Allocate a superhero (but don’t rely on them)

A superhero is someone who steps in during an emergency and no matter what the problem sorts it out. Normally that’s the business owner. However, when you manage from far away you’ve got to allocate someone else to do that job. Our superhero is my mother in law Margaret.

Design your business so that it can run using systems and processes, rather than relying on superheroes. Not only are they difficult to recruit, but efficient systems and processes allow your business to cope with increasing volume as it grows. If you rely on superheroes, you’ll come stuck at some point.

However, even with airtight systems and processes, there are always going to be times when something goes wrong and a superhero is needed. The important thing to remember is that every time your superhero has to come to the rescue, it reveals a shortcoming in your systems and processes.

After they’ve saved the day, you should debrief and figure out if you can adapt your systems and processes to avoid having to rely on them next time.

Contact Julie

Julie@brickbybrickpropertygroup.com – get in touch with Julie via email.

facebook.com/groups/brickbybrickpropertygroup – keep up to date with Julie’s latest projects on Facebook.

linkedin.com/in/julietalbot – connect with Julie via Linkedin.