I make no secret that my passion is property sourcing in fact when I meet people at our head office in Warrington and they see the development projects we are involved in and the size of our network people often look at me a little strange when I talk about property sourcing with passion and not the achievements the business has to date.
I have always loved property but fell crazy in love when I discovered how to back to back and structure complicated investment strategies, nothing gave me as much of a buzz as finding a way to structure a deal so that the seller was happy, the buyer was happy, and I was making a big fat fee.
Its sounds crazy to say but the fee isn’t the drug, its knowing you have pulled off, what others don’t understand, what others have tried and failed and what others no matter how many times you explain it they still look blankly at you as though you have stolen the crown jewels.
Now let’s not get carried away as much as the feeling of being an international secret agent is appealing, property sourcing has many down sides. My wife will always say the biggest being feast or famine! Yes, the deals are great and yes, they fees are greater but they are also difficult to accomplish when balancing so many plates.
I used to keep a diary of all my appointments, deals, meetings, challenges and goals, I recently found a copy of my 2008 diary and started to laugh which slowly turned to more of a cry when I remembered how hard it was and how different things are now.
It isn’t that my role has changed significantly or the market or access to funds that have changed my position, it’s how I approach property sourcing, and the discovery that changed my whole view.
After the market crashed I moved away from full time sourcing and began building a business that I later went on to sell, during this time I kept my toe dipped in property sourcing, it’s at this point I was in a meeting with another property sourcer discussing the market, the opportunities and his latest conquest.
I realised during the meeting the biggest issue with property sourcing, to me it’s a gift, something I love doing and excel at, to my friends and my family it’s a kind of ‘black magic’, something illegal I mean how can somebody make so much money, so quickly and generally with very little risk, right?
I know property sourcing can be taught, look at the market right now, there are hundreds of people teaching it and making lots of money doing this, this isn’t the problem, the problem is how time-consuming property sourcing is. You see to be good at something you have to do it 24/7, you have to live, eat and breathe property sourcing to get the deals to find the opportunities and to make the real money.
I thought about this on and off for some time and during 2015/2016 I traded with some traders that later became business partners. We talked about property sourcing and the biggest deals we have ever completed and what made those deals happen.
We found that on every deal it came down to one thing. Our Network.
You see property sourcers are a rare breed, and if they are good at what they do they will spend all their time doing it, if they enjoy it then they will naturally gravitate toward it and again dedicate all their time to it.
The problem with this is when they do find a great deal they then have to find investors and finance which they aren’t great at or even worse takes them away from what they are good at and reduces their pipeline.
Sourced was created to work in partnership with property sourcers, introducing investors and alternative finance solutions so that they can focus on what they do best.
My success is based on the strength and quality of my network as it allows me to do what I do best, property sourcers are renowned for spinning plates and there is no problem with that, we are simply offering an extra pair of hands to keep them spinning.
