Nurse Lesley Thacker took her NHS pension and used it to acquire two buy-to-lets. Now she and her partner Chris Booth, who took up training with Samuel Leeds, are property millionaires after buying three more houses. They have also taken on three rent-to-rents and are making thousands of pounds a month from providing serviced accommodation. In one case, their takings have trebled after they turned one of the two tenanted properties into a guest house.
‘We didn’t think it was possible to earn that much’
It was a friend at work who told Lesley about Samuel Leeds. “She said. ‘You’ve got to meet this guy. He’s on YouTube.’ After watching his videos, Lesley couldn’t wait to see him and immediately signed up for the £1 crash course in Birmingham, taking Chris along too.
Afterwards they enrolled on the academy. As Lesley puts it, she wanted to learn ‘how to do property better.’
The crash course introduced them to the various strategies used by property investors to make money in the housing market.
“We'd seen some of it with having properties but then we didn't know all the strategies and we thought, it sounds brilliant. Let's have a go and it just went from there. But we didn't think what we're earning now was possible. It's just blown our minds,” she says.
All of Lesley and Chris’ properties are in Greater Manchester, within an hour’s drive of where they live.
The house which they tripled their monthly turnover on is a three-bed semi. The tenant was paying £950 a month on an Assured Shorthold Tenancy which can be renewed periodically. Now it is being rented out as serviced accommodation, the revenue has shot up.
“We were thinking that's great at the time but then we've turned it around and now it's making £3,000 a month. Because I own it, the mortgage is very low on it, so the outgoings are very low. It's £600 outgoings and then the rest of it is profit, so £2,400 profit a month which is amazing,” Lesley reveals.
It is the equivalent of a salary from just one house, with the rent-to-rents also proving profitable.
“Even after paying the monthly rent and all the outgoings you're still making minimum £1,000.” says Chris, adding: “These properties are running at 50 per cent occupancy, so we know there's much more potential.
“I'd say that's on all of them, apart from the one in Knutsford. That's just blown us [away] and showing the potential even more.”
In the last few months, they have bought three houses which are being renovated in readiness for renting out. The work is at the rip out stage, but once it is finished, the couple expect to make a profit of up to £15,000 a month across their whole portfolio.
As an ex-hotelier who made lots of money for his employers, Chris wishes he had gone into property years ago.
“I managed hotels for 27 years. I was happy with my £50,000 salary or whatever. But then I was making on my own a half-a-million-pound profit and it's like, why didn't it kick in a lot sooner than now.
“But at the time I was doing that I'd never met Lesley and I think now that the both of us are together and a team we bounce off each other.”
Guests are workers and weekenders
Lesley and Chris set up their serviced accommodation business, La Family Property Ltd, in 2022 and run it alongside their jobs.
Their guests are mainly workers in need of temporary accommodation, although their properties also attract weekenders.
“It does vary but it just depends on the location of the house,” says Chris who works in the wedding supplies sector.
In a booming market, they can rent out a property for £100 a night which is why they are making so much more money from a short stay let compared to a traditional tenancy.
For a property to work as a short let, it needs to be near a train station and attractions, and easy to get to in their opinion.
“That's what we've based everything on, so every time we look at property we go: what's in the area? Is it accessible to everybody? Can people get to it? Are there things for people to do? Especially if families are going there, is there something for children to do?” says Lesley.
To prove the point, one of the houses, which they have recently taken on, is ‘five steps’ from a station in the Peak District.
In terms of assessing whether a property is a good investment, the entrepreneurs trust their gut feeling.
“We stand there when we see a house and you just get a feeling for it. If it is something that you're going to purchase yourself, you’ve got to think would I live here and can I see myself living here in five, 10, 15 years,” Chris says.
If the figures also stack up, Chris and Lesley will go ahead and buy it. However, they have walked away from a few properties when their instinct told them they weren’t right.
Out of the eight properties in their portfolio one is still a single let – but only because it suits that property.
“We've tried other strategies on it but that seems to be working best,” explains Chris.
Otherwise, the entrepreneurs prefer renting out furnished accommodation for short stays as opposed to having tenants. They experienced a few ‘mishaps’ with their AST contracts when they felt unhappy with the way their properties were being looked after.
As a result, they had to carry out a lot of work to get the houses back to the way they were.
After having single lets for about two years and then having to foot the bill to refurbish them, Chris and Lesley concluded it would be less hassle offering short-term lets.
‘Afterwards you balance it monetary wise, and you think wow, it wasn't even worth it, whereas we get great ADR (average daily rate) on the properties now,” Chris says.
Lesley cuts back her hours
Having seen the money rolling in, Lesley cut back her hours and now works just two days a week as a nurse. Nevertheless, she and Chris find their biggest challenge still is having to juggle their jobs and family commitments with their property activities.
They took on their three rent-to-rent deals within 10 days of each other which gave them a busy schedule, says Chris, with also having to take ‘girls to school.’
The properties all needed furnishing and decorating. “I don't know how we did it. It was full on,” Lesley admits.
The couple chose paints which would make the accommodation stand out and sourced the furniture themselves, upcycling some pieces rather than just buying everything new.
However, it is not all hard work and no play. It is fun too, Lesley finds, especially when they are out shopping in a DIY store.
Chris is given a budget for materials but has learned to take his partner with him so that she can see the difference in quality between products.
“She'll say, let's just put this on a trolley and then suddenly it's like hmm, that was never on the list was it.”
They learnt about the importance of making properties ‘pop’ on their training and it has paid off.
One of their friends was impressed with what they were achieving with serviced accommodation and straight away offered them his property to run.
“We had approached him about four months beforehand because he was trying to sell the property but then I think it fell through for the third time and in the end he just got in touch,” Chris explains.
Lesley and Chris pay him a guaranteed monthly rent. Then they rent it out on a nightly basis and keep the profit.
“He loves it now. He thinks we're brilliant. He's getting a regular income and we're getting our income,” Lesley says, adding: “And then he had his family stay at that property and paid us.”
When their rent-to-rent arrangement expires, they are going to suggest a lease option agreement to him which would allow them to buy it at the end of an agreed number of years. The price would be fixed and in the meantime, they would continue to rent it out.
The friend is also about to buy another property and has already said he will rent it to them, and they can ‘do their stuff’ with it.
Their other rent-to-rents came from deal sourcers as Chris and Lesley were too busy to find their own deals because of their jobs and refurbishing the houses they purchased.
‘Our goal is to have a hotel’
Lesley and Chris are planning on using a lease option to attain their ultimate goal which is to have a hotel by the end of 2024 or early 2025 at the latest.
The pair spent two days with Samuel Leeds at his house, where he helped them to thrash out their business plan and encouraged them to be ambitious in their thinking.
Chris is excited by the prospect of being a hotel owner and making profits for himself and his partner. “It will combine a lot of what we do each day anyway. We want to get a hotel with function space so we can incorporate all the wedding business and help promote the hotel as well,” says Chris.
The plan is for Lesley, who loves her job as a nurse, to also have an aesthetics clinic within the building.
They have commissioned Dwight Faulkner, a successful young deal sourcer, who also trained on the academy, to help them find the right hotel for them.
Like Dwight, they benefited greatly from enrolling on the year-long academy programme, despite friends and family thinking they were ‘mad’ to spend so much on their education.
“At the end of the day it’s like, hang on a minute. Have you not bought your own property? Well, it's the same thing but we're just doing it on a bigger scale,” Chris points out.
Lesley’s mother, however, is on board, having seen the results she and Chris are getting. And they too are in no doubt that the academy has been key to their success.
“It's amazing. It’s changed our lives totally. We learned so much. The mentors, including Samuel, are brilliant and we’ve done lots of networking with investors.”
Lesley and Chris’ tips
- Rent-to-rents give you the cash flow to buy your own properties.
- You can save the money you make from a rent-to-rent for a deposit on a house.
- When you’re purchasing a property, look at your figures and do your due diligence. Go there at night and walk around the area to see if it is safe.
Samuel Leeds verdict
“Lesley and Chris have done so well. They had a couple of properties they were renting out, making a few hundred pounds a month. Now they’re making thousands of pounds just because they learned how to switch over the strategy.
“It makes sense now for them to work their way up to owning a hotel. Even without Chris’ background in hotel management, they’ve got the experience of providing serviced accommodation and they’ve got the money and network behind them.”
