At the age of 21, Steven Rich bought a hotel and then took on another one in a joint venture deal. Together the two hotels turn over more than £33,000 a month, with the one he owns proving to be a bargain buy. Remarkably, the Samuel Leeds academy student has not used a single penny of his own money and is still only a year into his property journey. The young entrepreneur also earns commissions from selling investment opportunities.
‘The crash course blew my mind’
Steven was born ‘rich’ but in name only. Everything he has achieved in property so far has been through his own efforts, ‘learning and earning’ on the year-long academy programme.
Before opting to make his living from bricks and mortar, Steven was destined for a very different career. He was studying mechanical engineering at university when he decided to drop out because the course was not fulfilling his expectations.
As Steven explains it, he drifted into university after doing well at school. “I wasn't necessarily that book-smart at school, but I managed to come out with three A’s at A-level. I didn't really know what to do. I thought the next step is uni, as most people do, and so I took a year out.”
During this time, he had various jobs, including working in recruitment part-time, being a bartender and completing an internship.
His goal was to convert classic cars to electric to make them sustainable for the future and thought he would learn how to do that at university. However, when he took up his place, he discovered the course was more theoretical than practical.
“I was sitting down at a desk for 10 hours a day. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Maybe an apprenticeship would have been better for me,” says Steven looking back.
Conscious of how much he was spending as a student – the fees alone amounted to more than £9,000 a year – he began looking at what else he could do.
Halfway through his second year the youngster launched his own clothing brand and started researching property investing, having heard that was a good way of making money. It was then that he found Samuel Leeds online and attended his £1 crash course.
“That blew my mind. I didn't realise that it could be so lucrative, and you could start at a young age. It's very motivational as well, showing that you don't have to save up for 20 years to buy a property.”
Steven took the plunge and paid £12,000 to sign up to the academy, using his savings from working in his year out. That was in July 2023. Since then, he has turned out to be not just a quick learner but a fearless entrepreneur too.
Millionaire lends Steven the cash for his hotel
When Steven became a member of the academy, he was determined to find ‘an amazing deal.’ So, he searched Rightmove for the cheapest properties with the most bedrooms. His thinking was that with a lot of rentable rooms he could do well if he bought at the right price.
After many viewings, Steven found a 22-bed hotel near Grimsby which matched his criteria. It was miles from where he is based south of London, ‘just below the M25,’ but went to view it anyway. He then bought it at auction, bidding before even having the cash.
He admits it was ‘scary’ but managed to negotiate an agreement to buy the hotel within 90 days, rather than the usual 56 days, to give him time to get the finance in place.
“I’d done the course about auctions and made sure I was prepared. I talked to a load of people who'd done it before and then managed to make it happen.”
He was confident of raising the funds. “I knew I'd be able to find it somewhere because the market valuation was so different compared to the purchase price and it just came along after I believed in myself that I'd be able to get it done.”
Steven found out that one of his parents had worked with someone who became a hugely successful property investor. By investing his salary into real estate over about three decades, he amassed a £50m portfolio and is now worth £10m.
When the hotel deal came up, Samuel Leeds’ mum Sue Gray, who acts as a mentor to students, advised Steven to put together an investor pack and run it past him.
“That’s what I did. I asked him to look over my investor pack pitching for finance. I got halfway through it in front of him and he just stopped me and went, ‘Well what if I loan you the money at this interest rate.’
“I went that's perfect. You solved my problem. I didn't even ask him for the finance, and it came across.”
He adds: “The week after I agreed to purchase it, I got a RICS valuer (a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) out. They valued it at £510,000. I showed him the valuation and he said, ‘I can loan against that.”
The investor put in £367,000 which covered the purchase price of £320,000, plus auction/legal fees, Stamp Duty and around £10,000 worth of improvements to the property.
Again, Steven was sure he would manage to repay him after formulating an exit strategy and seeing others on the academy raising finance.
“I knew that the price I was buying it at was about 70 per cent of the actual value of the property. I knew that if I hold it for six to 12 months, I can refinance it, pull all my money out and pay the investor back.
“I was comfortable with that idea of I can just hold it, refinance, pay them back and I own it for free, buying below market value.”
That was the plan which would in turn fund his next project.
Through his training Steven had become ‘investable’ and the deal he secured was attractive to an investor.
“I've seen so many people do it in the past, raising finance to buy a property and paying the investor back. It's a win-win because you get the finance you need for the property; the investor gets their interest every month. So, in every way everyone's winning out of it.”
As well as buying the building, he took over the hotel business from the previous owner. Within a year Steven had scaled the operation hugely.
“If we look at April 2023 the revenue was £8,500 a month which was okay. It was owned outright. There wasn't a mortgage [on it], so there wasn't that extra overhead. Then in April 2024 the revenue was £18,500.”
The previous owner is a GP and Steven believes it was hard for him to focus on the hotel and his surgery at the same time.
“When one runs itself, it's usually fine to just let that carry on. It didn't make a loss and over the 12 months of the year he made money on it.”
Steven is the sole director and shareholder of his own company and the hotel is in his name.
He employs a manager to look after it on the ground, while he provides backend, administrative support. He also employs staff, including cleaners and a handyman.
“I'm fortunate to have found that team because without that team the business could have died as soon as I took it on. It really helps building that team around you and making sure it's a win-win for everyone.
“Obviously I've taken that huge risk. I get the big upside and big downside potentially, so I'm at risk. But I'm providing work for these people at a great wage. I'm really happy to be able to offer that.”
Liverpool aparthotel turns over more than £15,000 a month
Steven and his two business partners also earn a few thousand pounds each month from sourcing and negotiating investment opportunities which they sell through their company, The Alliance.
They sold their first deal four months after Steven came on to the academy. Then they, and another joint venture partner, took on an aparthotel in Liverpool called the Seven Suites. Steven describes it as a seven-unit block of flats. They took it on a commercial lease – in the same way that Premier Inn leases its hotel buildings.
The aparthotel is advertised on sites like Airbnb and booking.com because they spend millions of pounds on marketing, and it would ‘silly not to use them,’ he explains.
“That’s been going since late November and turns over upwards of £15,000 a month.”
It was popular over Christmas and into the New Year, but then bookings dropped.
“It was a tough couple of months, and we just about broke even. We had to put in a little bit of money but now we've learned how to market it.
“We've learned how to pitch it to people online, getting professional photos, optimising our listings like Samuel teaches. Just doing that helped.”
The deal came about after a fellow student found a rent-to-rent opportunity on one of the courses and it emerged the whole block was available. Steven then became involved, as part of a joint venture agreement, and they obtained investor funding.
Steven feels he has been treated differently at times because of his age. One person thought he was working alongside his ‘dad’ and was surprised when told by Steven it was just him in the business.
Someone else asked him: ‘So how do you own this?’ to which Steven replied: “I just work in the industry.”
On another occasion he felt belittled when he and his business partners, who are both older than him, went to a meeting. They met a man who shook hands with both his partners, but then looked at him and said: ‘oh, young energy.’
The young businessman is still trying to work out whether that is good or bad. Even so, he felt ‘hit down’ by the remark.
“You've just got to learn to fight back against it and prove why you are good enough to be in that meeting.”
Steven has benefited from being in the environment of the academy, finding it, like the crash course, highly motivating, and encouraging of younger people.
“Now I'm around five or six people who are anywhere from 19 to 25 and are all involved in
this. Traditionally you wouldn't be able to do that. You'd be told you're too young; you haven't got the money; all these things pulling you down rather than building you up.”
He has partnered up with several academy members on deals and regularly seeks advice from others with more experience than him when he has a problem.
As for the training itself, he says it is ‘unbeatable’ because there are so many courses and strategies to learn about.
“I knew that you could do buy-to-lets and HMOs, but I didn't understand other strategies like lease options and auction purchases below market value. These are powerful strategies which Samuel teaches.”
Steven says he is enjoying being a property entrepreneur so much more than being at university, especially as he now has a bigger vision of what he wants to do in life.
“I just want to build my own business and show other people that it's possible to get into property at a young age if you’re driven and work hard.”
Steven’s tips
- If you make a bad purchase or a bad decision, it's not a failure. It's a first area to improve.
- Everything is about belief. If you don’t think you’ll do it, it’s never possible.
- Get the right training and get around the right people.
Samuel Leeds’ verdict
“Steven has achieved so much in a short space of time at such a young age. He is a natural entrepreneur who thinks out of the box. I wanted to create an environment in the property space whereby I could level the playing field and give everybody an opportunity to be able to get into the industry. Steven has seized that chance and I’m so pleased to see him succeeding.”
