Before plunging into the property world and joining Samuel Leeds’ academy Dwight Faulkner built swimming pools for a living. Now he makes around £6,000 a month from selling investment deals just a year into his new career. The Manchester-based entrepreneur also rents out serviced accommodation. He has two rent-to-rents which top up his monthly income by about £2,500.
Samuel’s Range Rover gift to his wife inspires Dwight
Dwight owned a swimming pool business which sustained him for 22 years, but it was back-breaking, lonely work.
“I was dressed in dirty clothes all the time. My knees and my back were aching. It wasn't a life,” recalls Dwight who also maintained pools.
He came across Samuel Leeds when the developer built six houses in Lincoln and posted a video about the scheme on his YouTube channel. Then, in Dwight’s words, he ‘dropped off’ and went back to working hard on his pool enterprise – until Samuel bought his wife Amanda a black, luxury Range Rover for Christmas and again filmed it for his social media.
In fact, he had purchased a gold one too and then gave her a choice between the two, telling her he would take the other one.
“That really inspired me. I thought I want to be able to do that,” says Dwight.
Afterwards he attended the £1 crash course and then joined the academy in 2023. “It was epic. I loved it. At the end of it, I was fully signed up.”
It took him four months to secure his first deal – a rent-to-serviced accommodation property in Bolton which he lets through his company Manchester Premier Accommodation.
Looking back the 35-year-old says he was an introvert and wasn’t using the resources of the academy. He earned nothing during this period through real estate. Then again, he came from an entirely different background, and was new to property.
Instead, Dwight immersed himself in his studies and reading personal development books. He now describes himself as an extrovert.
Dwight lines up investors to buy 289 apartments in Manchester
Dwight regarded what he was earning before as good, but says these days he makes ‘massively’ more just from packaging and deal selling. And he gets to wear decent clothes.
“I had this drive in me to do something way better and I found it. I didn't know before that I was a people's person. I was working in dingy plant rooms on my own. Now I come to networking events and it's amazing.”
After his first rent-to-serviced accommodation deal, the young businessman added another one to his portfolio and is hoping to take on more such properties.
“One is a seven-bed and one a three-bed. I’ve got meetings next week with one of the landlords who we work closely with. He's got numerous high standard properties in Manchester.”
Dwight is concentrating his efforts initially on Manchester, which he wants to ‘dominate,’ and then his plan is to expand nationwide.
The rent-to-rents give him a passive income while he goes on the hunt for deals which he can sell. His monthly earnings are already impressive.
“I would say from deal sourcing alone it's conservatively about £6,000, and then from the properties it's about £2,500.”
The entrepreneur has flourished in the academy, finding investors amongst the students, as well as through promoting his services on LinkedIn and Instagram. He sources deals mainly through estate agents, viewing them as a metaphorical revolving door. They have a high turnaround of properties and are constantly passing on opportunities to him. Six of his deals, which he has sold, have come through one estate agent.
Three separate estate agents have tried to go into business with him, with one hoping to collaborate on a deal coming up in the autumn involving 289 apartments in Manchester. Dwight would prefer to sell off the flats individually as he already has investors lined up to buy them.
“He's got another 50 properties coming up as well, all houses in the Manchester area. But he wants to get in it now. I pay him £500 per deal and he absolutely loves that. He actively rings me per week. He was on the phone last night at half nine discussing all of this. It was unbelievable.”
Dwight has also started approaching vendors directly. A key part of his job is networking and building relationships with people. He has a list of investors who buy deals from him. If he comes across a potential client at an academy dinner, for example, or on social media, he will sound them out.
“It’s better building a relationship with them first and then seeing what they're looking for. Then I say if I was to bring up a deal next week would it be worth me showing it to you? Would you be able to move on it?”
If the reply is yes and an investor hires him to find a specific investment, such as an HMO, a buy, refurbish, refinance or a rent-to-rent opportunity, he will ask for a deposit.
“I'd normally take a £1,000 deposit so I know that they're serious and they're not going to waste my time. Then after that I'll go out there and find the property.’
This applies to his bespoke customers only. He also has a general stock of deals which he sends out to his list of investors.
Some of his buyers keep coming back to him for deals, Dwight says. He provides an after-care service and is on hand throughout the process to give advice.
“I'm there all the way through it regardless. I used to be a builder, so I can do numerous things. I'd be more than happy to help anyone out in any journey.”
In the past his investors have turned to him for rent-to-rent deals, but increasingly they are looking for buy, refurbish, refinance, rent projects.
Dwight agrees with his mentor-in-chief Samuel Leeds that both strategies are attractive for different reasons. There are low set-up costs with a rent-to-rent, while a BRRR investment, if executed correctly, offers an infinite return.
By buying a rundown property and then doing it up and renting it out, the investor benefits from the income and the fact it is now worth more. He or she can obtain a mortgage based on the new value and pull out the money they put into the venture initially to reinvest.
It takes skill, time and effort to source and negotiate a lucrative business proposition which is why Dwight receives a handsome commission. He sells about two deals a month, sometimes sharing the finder’s fee with co-sourcers, including renowned academy members.
The entrepreneur pre-qualifies his clients, making sure they are ready to proceed with a transaction. In the case of a rent-to-rent, he will check that the buyer has set up a company to let the property from the landlord. He will also ask the investor how much they know about the strategy.
“Some investors who come to you haven't got the knowledge. So that's where it's handholding them through the situation.”
As Dwight has taken on rent-to-rents himself, he can help an inexperienced investor.
“Obviously, I've got a couple that I have done myself. I’ve done all the staging, listing, and putting it on the OTAs (online travel agencies).”
He had to turn down one person because he felt the deal would not have worked for them. His training has taught him to get ‘comfortable being uncomfortable.’
“You just speak to them in the nicest possible way and say I don't think this deal would work for you. If there's anything else that comes up, I'll be more than happy to send it over because now I have got the criteria of what you are looking for.”
‘I realised I needed the training’
Dwight spends relatively little time on managing his rent-to-rents. He and his joint venture partner manage the first one which he took on in Bolton. The other one is in the hands of a management company run by two academy trained entrepreneurs from Jersey.
This rental property is in the M14 postcode area of Manchester. He likens the city to a mini-London with lots of buildings springing up all the time and rents going up.
“It's up and coming. In the past 10 years, if you look at a picture from what it used to be to now it's expanded unbelievably.”
At first Dwight tried to teach himself about property investing through Samuel Leeds’ YouTube videos, but then realised he needed the training. He found that having mentors was extremely useful.
“I used to have a mentor call in the morning. This was when nothing was going on and it used to inspire me for the day to crack on.”
Even so, Dwight admits it was ‘scary’ signing up for the year-long academy programme. “I had all my family saying you’re joining a cult. The only person who really believed in me was me mam. She was proper like go on, do it.”
However, now that his doubters have seen the money he is making, they want to find out where he got his training.
“My uncle said to me you can be the hamster. You go on the wheel and see what happens and I said to him, well the hamster survived.”
‘I was making up to 136 calls a day to agents’
At the outset of his journey Dwight was making up to 136 calls in a day to estate agents while sitting in a café, following up leads found on Rightmove and OpenRent.
“There are people obsessed. Then there’s me I like to say. There’s a lot that don't answer.”
Some agents refuse to handle company lets. But when he picks up the phone nowadays it makes it easier being able to say he has two rent-to-rents and that he can supply recommendations.
His biggest learning curve has been to avoid procrastination. “I'm not going to say that it’s been all sunshine and rainbows.
“Procrastination is when you do a full day on the calls. You get a whole lot of nothing. No leads have been brought in. That's where procrastination comes in. It's like, I can't do it.
“And then you read books, or you go on Instagram and watch a reel of Jim Rohn or something like that and it picks you back up.”
His collection of audio books includes Robert Kiyosaki’s bestseller, Rich Dad Poor Dad, as well as titles like Midas Touch and Why We Want You To Be Rich by Kiyosaki and Donald Trump. They altered his mindset and encouraged him to be positive.
His mind was ‘broken’ in the swimming pool industry, he says. “I thought is this really what we were meant to do, just work?
“I was in Scotland all the time, staying up there at the weekends. It was just like this is not it. Then I come into this. I work seven days a week now, but I love it.”
He adds: “All the stuff that we got taught is amazing. If we didn't have that I would never have got my rent-to-rents and doing what I'm doing today.”
Dwight’s tips
- If you want to go into property, get the training and read the books.
- To get people to trust you be a likeable person and dress well.
- Bet on yourself and you will be successful with the right mindset.
- My motto in the morning is today's going to be a good day. Why? Because I said so.
Samuel Leeds verdict
“Dwight is relentless. He’s a deal sourcing machine and I’m really pleased to see him killing it with his rent-to-rents as well.
“If you've got a house plant, and it's not blossoming, you don't blame the plant. You just change the environment. In his previous line of work, Dwight was in the wrong environment. Now that he is around successful investors, he is thriving.”
