It took Asim Ramzy five months to secure his first rent-to-serviced accommodation deal. Now Asim, who trained on the Property Investors Academy, controls £6m worth of properties turning over around £60,000 a month. That was Asim’s annual salary previously as a manager overseeing 60 staff. His patch covers East London, where he lives, and Essex.
‘Half of the turnover is profit’
When Asim attended his first Samuel Leeds Crash Course, he was sceptical, to say the least, about the strategies he was hearing about.
“I doubted the whole process. I thought it’s too good to be true. I didn’t have enough time to go into it and start putting things into practice. So, I came a second time. After that, I thought let’s just do this.”
He joined the Samuel Leeds Academy in November 2023 and now has 12 rent-to-rent properties which he rents from the landlords and then lets out through sites like Airbnb.
“We charge super rent,” explains Asim. “For example, one of my studios, which was my first one, I pay the landlord £1,000 a month and charge £100 a night. It’s bringing back a profit of £2,000 to £3,000 once you take out the bills. That’s just on one studio.”
It’s a simple business model. He gives the owner an agreed rent, and they give him permission to rent it out and make money from it. The landlord also benefits from having a long-term lease and someone keeping the property well maintained.
“The monthly turnover is around £60,000 from the 12 properties. Half of that is clean profit – just under £30,000,” he says.
Looking at the figures, he still thinks ‘wow.’ And yet when he listened to founder Samuel Leeds describing the strategy, he thought it was impossible.
“I didn’t believe it. I thought this can’t be done. But now I’m doing it myself. We have to keep it to a good standard otherwise our business model wouldn’t work. I wouldn’t be getting reviews and we put those on the platforms. So, it works.”
There are some landlords who dislike the concept, either because a tenant has wrecked their property or because they don’t like people coming in and out of it, he concedes. The onus is on him to make them see the value in it.
“You’ve got to make them understand what the business is about. We have check-ins and check-outs. We keep the property up to a very high standard and they get their guaranteed rent on the day.
“With the current market, we’ve actually been giving them more than the rental value, about £100 to £200 over, because we can afford to do that. It’s a couple of nights for us.”
Asim’s company guarantees the rent with a contract. As it is a commercial lease agreement, failure to pay the rent means the landlord can get him out in 21 days. If he were a normal tenant, this would be far more difficult.
“When they think about that and we give them the contract, nine times out of 10 I’ve had a success rate.”
The fact Asim already has a large portfolio means he can show his prospective customers photographs of his other properties and reviews of them.
Another advantage is that each time one guest leaves, the accommodation is inspected and cleaned.
All the contracts required to formalise a rent-to-rent agreement with a landlord are available through the academy.
“Samuel has made it so easy for us. I’ve got all the contracts in place. I’ve got them on my phone. I could send a contract there and then.”
Initially, Asim trawled Gumtree, OpenRent and Rightmove for properties to take on as rent-to-SAs. He also called agents. Now the landlords and agents come to him, he says.
It’s a good position to be in, acknowledges the entrepreneur, especially as he struggled at first to get a deal.
‘After my first deal I secured three apartments’
It has taken Asim less than a year to amass his sizeable portfolio, but when he finally got his first property, he quickly went on to exceed his targets.
“When I started, I wrote my goals down – 10 SAs by the end of the year. I got that in six months.”
He blames over thinking and procrastination for the length of time it took him to establish his serviced accommodation business.
“I took a few months off work for other reasons which helped me study and learn the whole process and get the compliances in order. But it still took months of thinking and finding.”
Choosing a location took a chunk of that time. He adopted London’s Canary Wharf as his patch as it is only ten minutes away from his home, and then cast his net further afield.
Aware that in Greater London, a property can only be rented out short-term for a maximum of 90 days in a calendar year, Asim began looking beyond the capital. His first units were just outside the M25 in an ‘unproven area’.
One of the properties was in the middle of the High Street and a five-minute walk away from a station with a direct rail link into central London.
“I thought, how wrong can I get? I just took a chance.”
Asim admits he was scared at having invested in the academy and then being liable for rent on a property. However, once the first booking came through for £3,000 it was like a ‘snowball effect.’
“You’ve got to be fast. Since I got my first break on April 2, I’ve just been relentless, non-stop, just take it on.
“After my first deal I secured three apartments straight away. Samuel said when it rains let it pour. So, I’m just letting it happen. We make £8,000 profit on those three deals.”
He adds: “I took on three units in one. It’s a whole block in Essex. That was through an agent. He was very sceptical at first but now he’s got a list of properties to give to me. He’s like a sourcer. I give him a fee, and he just keeps coming back.”
Asim makes sure he has a break clause in the contract so that if one of his SAs is not turning out to be profitable, he can walk away after six months.
However, by doing his market research, he hopes to avoid such a situation. “You check the nightly rates in the area. In London, you can’t go far wrong, especially right now. There’s so much demand.
“We get the money beforehand, and you’ve got to keep a good relationship with everyone, not only landlords and agents but guests. I’m still talking to the first guest that came in to this day. They’re the ones going to leave you a good review.”
Two deal sourcing fees earn Asim £6,000
Systemisation and organisation are the key to scaling up a business quickly, he points out.
“We have a cleaning and staging team, and a maintenance manager. I’ve also just hired admin staff because I need all my finances and the rest of it sorted out.”
It frees him to go in search of new properties, and to go on viewings and network.
The support of the mentors on the academy and its community have been pivotal in his journey. He has made a lot of good friends who were following the same path.
“I couldn’t have done it without them, and the education and support of Samuel Leeds and the academy. I wouldn’t have known about any of the strategies.
Having inherited a property, and completed a couple of projects in Pakistan, all he knew about was a ‘straight, single let.’
Past and present students help each other out. Asim called Billy Kooner, an investor with 25 years’ experience in the industry, for advice about pitching a lease option. Billy, who is known as the ‘king of lease options,’ recently won the academy’s Associate Member of the Year Award and his tips proved invaluable.
Now Asim is in the throes of securing two lease option agreements for himself. This will enable him to buy the properties, which he is renting out, after an agreed number of years.
He also rings identical twins Gavin and Mitch Vaughan for advice. Like Billy, they too were honoured at the 2023 Samuel Leeds Dinner and Awards Night. They were named Deal Sellers of the Year and make the bulk of their income from sourcing and negotiating deals on properties for investors to buy.
Asim has so far sourced two deals, earning himself £6,000 in commissions, equivalent to half of what he paid to sign up for the academy.
One of the properties was for one of his landlords. “It was easy to sell. I put it on the academy chat group and called up a few people. I sold it in a day. It was such a good deal in Watford. It’s a five-bed house nicely done up. It was out of my patch, and they’ve just had a £6,000 booking.”
He has been doing some mentoring himself, advising new members on how to systemise a property business. He also helped another student to clinch a property deal.
“He was finding it hard to close the deal. So, I just went in there and closed it. When he gets that up and running, I’ll be helping him through the process as well. It’s about giving back.”
Meanwhile, the businessman is still trading off the contacts he made at the outset, and continually looking for new opportunities to grow his empire.
He takes a percentage of the profits of the business as a wage. The rest is being reinvested, with £10,000 set aside for bigger projects, using strategies such as buy, refurbish, refinance.
Asim has learnt from his mistakes. One of his first rental properties, which he obtained through a deal sourcer, was just outside his patch in Hertfordshire.
“I spent so much money in there. I bought a sofa for £400 which I could have picked up for £35 later on, I realised, on Facebook Marketplace. Now we pick what we want – beds, furniture, TVs – from one company and they just come and deliver it on the day or the next day.”
There have been challenges to overcome too. A guest in one of his SAs ‘broke everything’ during their stay. That was when having a maintenance team in place to repair the damage proved to be particularly important.
His motivation for being in property is to build generational wealth for his family. When his father passed away two years ago, Asim felt he had to step into his shoes as the eldest child.
“That gives me a lot more responsibility taking care of my mum and the rest of the family. I needed time to do that. Me being at work just didn’t cut it any more.”
He also wants to free his time for his charity work raising money for wells in Africa and the Far East where there is a shortage of water.
“For me this was about making my income passive. Once it’s passive, I can do the things I want to do. Like Samuel says, I want to be able to wake up when I finish sleeping, not when my alarm wakes me up.”
Asim’s tips
- You’ve got to be persistent and then that breakthrough will come.
- You’re always going to get problems. It’s how you deal with them. You’ve got to be a problem solver.
- If the numbers add up and your risk is low just go for it.
Samuel Leeds’ verdict
“It’s crazy to think when Asim first came to the crash course, he was the one at the back of the room thinking I’m not sure about this. Now he’s got a huge business and is helping others. I’m excited about seeing his progress over the coming months and years.”
