The First House
As soon as I finished university, I got a job with a multi-national blue-chip organisation. Even
though I had a computing degree, I went into their finance department. I didn’t like the job, it
was a means to an end. My parents were living in Switzerland, but they had a house just outside
Portsmouth, and I would live there all the time. Every now and again, they would come back, but
I always yearned to have my own foot on the property ladder. I started looking around even
though there wasn’t any urgency. They weren’t kicking me out or anything like that, it was just
more of a desire. Even as a kid, one of my favourite games was Monopoly, and I used to build
Lego houses.
4
So, I started looking around two-bedroom apartments in nice areas just outside Portsmouth, and
very quickly realised that with a flat’s leasehold, I had to pay management and service charges.
However, if I went a bit further into town, I could buy a three-bedroom house that was freehold.
It would be a bigger house, and I wouldn’t have all these monthly bills to pay: brilliant.
I ended up making an offer on a house, and it got accepted. You could say that I started off as an
accidental landlord, because the first house I bought was a three-bedroom townhouse in
Portsmouth. Before I moved in, I completely ripped the whole house apart. I ripped out the
kitchen, I ripped out the bathroom, I moved walls, I put in rooms, I converted the garage. At the
end of it, I had a very high spec’ four-bedroom house. We had ceiling-mounted speakers
everywhere, filtered water on tap, an 11-foot-wide projection TV, and so on. It was my first
house, and I wanted to make it as good as it could be, so that’s what I did. The next week or so, I
was walking around thinking, “Wow, this is amazing.” Then, as the weeks went on, I thought,
“Actually, I’m quite lonely.” When I was at university, I was living with other people in a house
share. Now, I was clattering around in this big house on my own. I didn’t have a girlfriend, kids,
or anybody to look after, so it was just me.
As it was a three-storey townhouse, I decided to have the master bedroom upstairs with its own
en suite, and then the rest of the top floor would be my office as well. The whole middle floor,
with a bathroom and two bedrooms, was completely empty. I had bills and they were actually
quite expensive. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could replicate a sort of house share, but
with only people I like in it?” That was my goal: to put people that I liked into the house to help
with paying the mortgage.
There were no courses on HMOs – people weren’t doing it as a strategy. I started to rent out two
of the rooms to lodgers. As soon as the first rent payment came in, I thought, “Wow, I’ve just
earned the equivalent of 50% of monthly wages after tax from working full-time with my
employer. This is really good.” A few months later, the house next door but one came up for sale
on Rightmove. It was a re-possession. On the first viewing, I thought, “Great, I’ll have this,
thank you very much.” I bought it. I thought, “I’m going to do what I’ve already done as that
seemed to work. But instead of only renting out two rooms, I’ll be able to rent four because I’m
not going to be there. This is going to be even better.” So, I did that.
Then I thought, “Wow, hang on, this is turning into a career. You never intended being a
landlord or a developer. Your plan was to go to college, get a job and work up the corporate
ladder. If you continue with that plan, you will get a tiny little pay raise each year, maybe a
couple of per cent if you’re lucky. If you kiss some real big butts in the company, you might
move up a bit quicker. But you’re not going to be able to double your salary every year or
anything like that.” It was this revelation that made me think, “I can do this again and replicate
the results I got on the first property. In fact, I can probably even do it better because the first
house was such a high spec that I spent loads of money on extra tech and gear that was
unnecessary for a rented property.”
though I had a computing degree, I went into their finance department. I didn’t like the job, it
was a means to an end. My parents were living in Switzerland, but they had a house just outside
Portsmouth, and I would live there all the time. Every now and again, they would come back, but
I always yearned to have my own foot on the property ladder. I started looking around even
though there wasn’t any urgency. They weren’t kicking me out or anything like that, it was just
more of a desire. Even as a kid, one of my favourite games was Monopoly, and I used to build
Lego houses.
4
So, I started looking around two-bedroom apartments in nice areas just outside Portsmouth, and
very quickly realised that with a flat’s leasehold, I had to pay management and service charges.
However, if I went a bit further into town, I could buy a three-bedroom house that was freehold.
It would be a bigger house, and I wouldn’t have all these monthly bills to pay: brilliant.
I ended up making an offer on a house, and it got accepted. You could say that I started off as an
accidental landlord, because the first house I bought was a three-bedroom townhouse in
Portsmouth. Before I moved in, I completely ripped the whole house apart. I ripped out the
kitchen, I ripped out the bathroom, I moved walls, I put in rooms, I converted the garage. At the
end of it, I had a very high spec’ four-bedroom house. We had ceiling-mounted speakers
everywhere, filtered water on tap, an 11-foot-wide projection TV, and so on. It was my first
house, and I wanted to make it as good as it could be, so that’s what I did. The next week or so, I
was walking around thinking, “Wow, this is amazing.” Then, as the weeks went on, I thought,
“Actually, I’m quite lonely.” When I was at university, I was living with other people in a house
share. Now, I was clattering around in this big house on my own. I didn’t have a girlfriend, kids,
or anybody to look after, so it was just me.
As it was a three-storey townhouse, I decided to have the master bedroom upstairs with its own
en suite, and then the rest of the top floor would be my office as well. The whole middle floor,
with a bathroom and two bedrooms, was completely empty. I had bills and they were actually
quite expensive. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could replicate a sort of house share, but
with only people I like in it?” That was my goal: to put people that I liked into the house to help
with paying the mortgage.
There were no courses on HMOs – people weren’t doing it as a strategy. I started to rent out two
of the rooms to lodgers. As soon as the first rent payment came in, I thought, “Wow, I’ve just
earned the equivalent of 50% of monthly wages after tax from working full-time with my
employer. This is really good.” A few months later, the house next door but one came up for sale
on Rightmove. It was a re-possession. On the first viewing, I thought, “Great, I’ll have this,
thank you very much.” I bought it. I thought, “I’m going to do what I’ve already done as that
seemed to work. But instead of only renting out two rooms, I’ll be able to rent four because I’m
not going to be there. This is going to be even better.” So, I did that.
Then I thought, “Wow, hang on, this is turning into a career. You never intended being a
landlord or a developer. Your plan was to go to college, get a job and work up the corporate
ladder. If you continue with that plan, you will get a tiny little pay raise each year, maybe a
couple of per cent if you’re lucky. If you kiss some real big butts in the company, you might
move up a bit quicker. But you’re not going to be able to double your salary every year or
anything like that.” It was this revelation that made me think, “I can do this again and replicate
the results I got on the first property. In fact, I can probably even do it better because the first
house was such a high spec that I spent loads of money on extra tech and gear that was
unnecessary for a rented property.”