Ever since joining Samuel Leeds’ property investing academy the cash tills have been ringing for Akshay Ohari. He learnt about creative strategies to make money from real estate and now earns around £10,000 a month from renting out serviced accommodation. The 28-year-old ex-YouTuber spends just an hour a week managing his portfolio after also being taught how to systemise it and make his income not only massive but passive too.
From making football YouTube videos to investing in property
Everything Akshay Ohari does in business seems to turn to gold. He was 15 when he first started creating YouTube content and carried that on while doing his A-levels.
“I used to bunk off sixth form classes and run home to make YouTube videos because I was just in love with it. This was 2012,” he recalls.
By the second year of sixth form, after just turning 18, he had 10,000 subscribers. At that point he got his first brand deal.
“I was making over £1,000 a month on my YouTube videos. At that age that’s a bit crazy because you’re a kid making that not from a job but from making videos.”
In fact, Akshay, who was making football YouTube videos has never had a job. He simply turned his hobby into earning money. After passing his A-levels, and amassing 30,000 subscribers to his YouTube channel, the teenager spotted a gap in the market in the FIFA gaming scene.
It led to him producing another version of Ultimate Team, a popular online game mode, which again proved a hit. He launched it just after going to university and was quickly in the money again.
“In the first month of the business I made £27,000 profit. This was on top of the YouTube earnings. It was surreal.”
Akshay was studying animation and visual effects with a lecturer who worked for Disney and was enjoying the course. However, he was finding it hard to juggle his business with his classes. So, he quit university with his father’s blessing.
“I sat him down one day when I went back home, [and said] these are the figures. As soon as he saw that he was like son, go chase your dreams.”
Akshay left after the first term and went full time into running his YouTube channel and website business. “Within about four months it shot up to 100,000 subscribers,” he says. At the same time his business was consistently bringing in £15,000 to £20,000 a month.
After teaming up with another FIFA YouTuber, Harry ‘Wroetoshaw’ Lewis, the company hit the big time, thanks to a ten-minute video which his business partner made for the website.
“It got 10 million views. That then completely exploded the company. There were points where we were making £15,000 a day as soon as that video went live.”
Akshay invested some of the money in cryptocurrency and later sold it which paid for the deposit on a house for himself and his fiancée.
‘In ten months, the turnover was just over £110,000’
It was always Akshay’s end goal to invest in property. “Owning assets is a different feeling rather than working a job or investing in stocks. You own the properties. You can do what you want to them. They’re like your babies,” he declares.
When he had his businesses, which are no longer operating, he was saving a lot of his money to buy properties, but it never transpired.
“Things happen in life and at the time I couldn’t buy as early as I wanted to,” he explains.
The young businessman finally became a landlord in 2018 after his mother and grandmother passed away and he inherited a property. He also entered into a joint venture with his dad.
Then in the summer of 2023 Akshay and his fiancée came to one of Samuel Leeds’ £1 crash courses and ‘absolutely loved it.’
Akshay was impressed by the energy at the event and so booked himself on two advanced courses. The training was amazing, he says, and the energy in the room was again high.
“I learnt so much because at the time I’d only known buy-to-let.”
There were students doing deals on the phone and everyone was there to make money.
“What I loved so much about it as well was that it wasn’t traditional, like going to uni or school where you sit down and just write or they play some random video. Samuel made us do stuff on the spot.”
By carrying out practical exercises Akshay learnt, and it built his confidence. He set up a SA company which provides luxury accommodation to corporate clientele. In ten months, the turnover reached just over £110,000. About £70,000 of that was profit from four rent-to-SAs.
Originally, Akshay had five – three houses in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and two apartments in Morpeth – but got rid of one even though the margin on it was £1,000 to £2,000 a month.
Storm damage in the northeast in the winter caused one of the apartments to have a leak which led to damp problems. The landlady tried her best to fix them, but then he received negative comments from guests staying there.
“That’s one thing I pride myself on. Getting any kind of bad review is a no-go because I know the properties are in really good condition. Thankfully I didn’t get any bad reviews. Because I feel like I’m a good host they would message me saying, I don’t want to leave a bad review but I’m just telling you privately. I was getting this nearly with every single guest staying at the property in one month in March.”
Eventually he decided he cared way more about his reputation than a couple of thousand pounds and so handed it back.
About 90 per cent of his business comes from people booking his accommodation directly through him. The incentive for them is that they receive a discount.
Most of his bookings are long-term, although if one of his apartments is available in any given week he will accept a reservation for two or three nights.
Akshay found his cleaners through a recommendation from another academy member, Dr Declan Murphy, an eye surgeon who also rents out serviced accommodation in the northeast.
“This is the power of the academy. I very quickly became friends with him. Pot luck he was sitting next to me at one of the trainings. When I started, I was getting advice from him because he has SAs.”
Akshay has been very happy with the service provided by his cleaners and how his accommodation is presented. “If a guest has dropped a drink on the rug, they phone me and say you might need to get a new rug. In terms of toilet tree presentation or putting a throw in a nice way, that’s where you set yourself apart from your competitors.”
On average he spends about an hour a week managing his four SAs, or two hours ‘at a push’ if he has to go in and do something quickly. This is why systemisation is so important, he points out.
The entrepreneur says his properties make an average profit of about £7,500 a month. However, for the last five months it has been around £10,000. The ‘gamechanger’ was using Uplisting and PriceLabs’ channel management software.
“I was getting random two or three bookings two months in advance clogging up my whole calendar. So, as soon as I learned about PriceLabs, I set up rules for people to book.
“If it’s from say today to one week in the future, you can book your two/three nighters just to get bookings across last minute. But if it’s anything above one week, so seven days to 14 days, the minimum night stay is 14 days. After 14 days the minimum night stay is 21 days.”
This policy transformed his company. Since then, all his houses have attracted long-term bookings. His apartment in Morpeth is in the centre of the town and tends to be booked up for short stays.
“Uplisting has been amazing in terms of managing everything, especially with the cleaners. As soon as a booking comes in, they just tick yes do that. I don’t even need to speak to them unless something goes wrong. They send me pictures but that’s pretty much it in a nutshell. You just need the right software set up.”
Newcastle promises rich pickings
The next step for Akshay is to begin buying properties which he can refurbish and rent out. He describes the strategy as BRR (buy, refurbish, refinance) to SA.
Recently, he sold the property which he took on as a joint venture with his dad for £100,000 because it was not generating enough revenue. It was a two-bed apartment in Langley, near London. By the time the service charge, ground rent, and buildings and terrorism insurance were deducted, it left him with about £4,000 a year.
He will use the funds from the sale to enact the second phase of his business.
Originally from London, Akshay moved to Newcastle, where his fiancée comes from, two years ago. He loves the city and the lifestyle. It is close to the beach, and he is perfectly placed to take advantage of property prices which are much cheaper than in the south.
The Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle United in 2021 is having a beneficial knock-on effect on a city where football culture is huge, he says.
“There’s so much development going on. Loads of new leisure and entertainment things are getting built and housing. It’s really starting to expand now.”
Akshay is actively searching for houses which need renovating. His plan is to do up the property, refinance it, pull his money out and then ‘rinse, repeat, rinse.’
“I want to retain all of them and then run them as SAs, unless the profit on the flip is insane. Then I’ll flip it.”
Being a cash buyer gives him an edge over the competition. A rundown house is likely to be unmortgeable. That rules out many first-time buyers and even buy-to-let investors.
If he buys it with cash and takes out a bridging loan to top up his funds for the refurbishment, he can increase the value. Then he obtains a mortgage, based on what the house is now worth, and gets his money back, or at least most of it, to reinvest. By renting it out as serviced accommodation he also derives an income.
For Akshay the best aspect of the academy was the education. “As soon as I came to the SA and rent-to-rent training I was open to a whole new world.”
The practical nature of the training helped him a lot, he says, as well having the right attitude.
“My mindset was a bit easier to trust and take a risk. My whole life has been taking risk.”
He agreed to appear on Winners on a Wednesday to inspire others. “I wanted to show people that after having success at a really young age and then going through a low patch in my mid-twenties you can reignite it.
“At the time I was working on a business and bang the next day it wasn’t going to launch any more, and then I was like what do I do now? You can start again. I always stand by you don’t want to be 50/60 years old and have the ‘should’ve, could’ve, would’ve’ thing going on in your head.”
Akshay’s tips
- You learn everything from doing.
- Don’t have a mindset of: I could have done this and look back with regret. Just do it. Your life can change so fast, and you can learn so much.
- It’s beneficial taking a bit of risk.
Samuel Leeds’ verdict
“It’s exciting to see where Akshay goes next with his business. It’s been a real pleasure having him on the academy.”
