Tenant quality
Cheap and high yield attracts a tenant profile that the yield calculation never mentions. The arrears and the turnover come out of your money, not the agent’s.
My story
I kept losing deals because my numbers were too conservative.
Same properties, same streets, different projections. The client would take the version with the better looking yield, and it wasn't mine. That happened often enough that I had to decide whether to soften the figures or build a business for the people who wanted the honest ones. This page is what happened next.
Where the method comes from
Aerospace first, property second.
I trained as an aerospace engineer and worked on complex manufacturing systems at Boeing and Stanley Black & Decker, using Lean Six Sigma. That work is mostly one habit repeated: measure what's actually happening, not what the plan said would happen, and fix the thing the data points at rather than the thing you assumed.
Property analysis is the same job with worse data. So I do it the same way. I use real historic figures rather than a percentage someone quoted me, I price the costs people leave out, and I show you the workings instead of a headline yield.
It isn't a clever methodology. It's just refusing to put a number in a spreadsheet because it makes the deal look better.
What that changes in practice
- Rent based on what comparable properties are letting for, not the listing
- Comparable sales, so you can see if the asking price is fiction
- Refurbishment costed on quotes, not on a guess per square foot
- The costs most projections quietly drop: voids, management, maintenance
- The workings sent to you, so you can disagree with them
The part that nearly changed my mind
The competition used the same properties and better numbers.
I started by sourcing below market value and reviewing thousands of deals across different strategies. My research came back more conservative than everyone else’s. Clients would take the same property, packaged by a competitor with a rosier projection, and go with them.
Losing work for being more accurate is a strange way to run a business. But I'd been close enough to those properties afterwards to know how the optimistic version ends.
Realistically, problems arise that aren’t seen initially. Yields are promised, but the profits generated are there to cover the maintenance costs in reality.
Connor Blades
So the projection was never really wrong on paper. It was just spending the client’s return before they got it.
What I saw with my own tools in the boot
Then I did the conversions and the management myself.
HMO conversion projects, refurbishment oversight, and enough time around management companies to see how the properties were actually being looked after once the sourcing fee had been paid.
Maintenance that stacks up
Deferred jobs don't go away. They arrive together, usually in the same year, and a year of rental income can disappear into them.
Repairs done as cheaply as possible
Work signed off to the lowest quote gets done twice. That's the quiet cost of being 200 miles away and taking somebody’s word for it.
Doing the projects taught me the other half of it too: creative acquisitions and complicated structures might squeeze out a few thousand pounds, but for most investors it isn't worth the risk it adds. Simple, well bought, properly checked beats clever nearly every time.
Why UK freehold, specifically
I went and looked at the alternatives.
Before deciding to build this around overseas buyers, I travelled to study other property markets rather than reading about them. Three of them are the reason I stopped recommending anything except UK freehold.
The Philippines
Ownership law requires majority Filipino control, so a foreign buyer is capped at a 40% stake. You're a minority partner in your own purchase.
Bali, Indonesia
A saturated villa market sold on 25 year leases. The asset depreciates towards the end of the term rather than appreciating, and the structures around it weren't clean.
Thailand
Foreigners are restricted, so nominee arrangements get used to work around it. I watched those go badly for the foreign national every time it was tested.
The pattern was the same in each: a foreign buyer can put money in, but can't fully own the thing they paid for. What people actually want is somewhere their currency is safe and the title is theirs.
The UK gives you that. Freehold title in your own name or your company’s, no citizenship requirement, sterling, and a legal system where the ownership question isn't open to interpretation. That isn't patriotism, it's just the comparison.
Those are the conditions I found when I was there, not legal advice, and rules in other countries change. Take local advice before you act on any of it.
The record, including the bad half
Sixteen sourced. Four written up in full.
I've sourced 16 properties at 10 to 20% below market value. Four are published with the full numbers, because a page like this is worth nothing without them.
16 sourced at 10 to 20% below market value
4 written up in full, with the numbers
28%
below original asking on 23 Beech Grove, bought at £90,000
How that ended up as a business
Buyer side only, and paid mostly at the end.
Bullseye Properties Ltd has been registered since 15 May 2023, company 14869608. It works for buyers and takes nothing from sellers or estate agents, because the moment somebody on the other side is paying you, the conservative number stops being in your interest.
The fee is fixed and agreed in writing before anything starts, and most of it falls due on completion rather than up front. That's the same idea as the projections: put the risk on the person making the claims.
I work in one patch, around Worksop, because knowing the streets is the whole job.
What hasn't changed
- You get the conservative figure, and the workings behind it
- You get told when a property fails, and why
- Nobody on the seller’s side pays me anything
- The person who viewed the house is the person you speak to
- The deals that died stay on the website
Straight answers
What people ask about me.
Who will I actually be dealing with?
Connor Blades. I run the searches, attend the viewings and do the negotiating. There's no account manager layer between you and the person who saw the property.
Why only South Yorkshire and North Nottinghamshire?
Because the value is in knowing which street is fine and which one is the reason the price is low, and that doesn't transfer. I work in a roughly 10 mile radius around Worksop. If you want to buy elsewhere I'll say so rather than learn a new area on your money.
Why publish the deals that fell through?
Because a sourcer claiming a perfect record is either new or not telling you everything. Nothing is binding in England until exchange, so deals do collapse, and pretending otherwise sets you up for a shock.
If the conservative version is what you want, say so.
Five questions, two minutes. If we're a fit I'll book a call. If we're not I'll tell you, and point you somewhere better.
Connor Blades, Founder and Director. You'll be speaking to me, not a call
centre.