We've heard about and learned about a great deal of amazing strategies and we started out targeting the motivated sellers adverts, etc, and we very quickly came to the conclusion that that wasn't something that was working well for us in terms of how the leads were coming through. So, we changed to developing our relationships with the state agents and all of our deals have come through that channel. We've also focused on a value ad strategy and very early on in the program we learned very quickly how to use other people's money and we started out with cash loans and moved very quickly onto JV partnerships which we now have a number of JV partners who are investing in further properties with us. Our core approach has been to find three to four bed houses which have attached garages and converting the garage either into a lounge or a double en-suite bedroom and using the additional reception rooms to convert them into bedrooms as well.

So, we've taken three, four bed properties and converted them into six bed HMOs which has given us a very good profit in terms of cashflow. The other thing that we identified in the market that was a gap in terms of originally we were going to focus on the student HMOs and very quickly we realized that actually there was a gap in the market for young professionals and mature students who were looking for lovely homes but didn't necessarily have the deposit and capital to buy their own. We focus absolutely on a minimum 20% ROI. We have a business model now where we can literally put in the price of the property, the number of rooms and within 15 minutes we know whether it's going to give us the right ROI or not. So, we've got very quick at deciding whether there's a business case there or not. We also sent out HMO letters. We had a great response on that and we've got a couple of option deals that we're looking at, but there's two key things that really helped us in our success.

First of all, I decided to give up my consulting in December of the course and put a very lucrative business on hold to concentrate on property and the portfolio. So, it was a big opportunity cost there to us but it was absolutely the right decision. The other key thing is we worked out very quickly what our respective strengths and weaknesses were and we have two distinct roles in the business and we only invest in two areas. So, I'm responsible for the JV partner sales and marketing and Amanda is responsible for deal sourcing and all of the re-refurbishments, and we only invest in West London and we only invest in Norwich, two areas that we know really really well and that's absolutely where we're focusing.

We've invested in Centrepoint which provides homes for young homeless people between 16 and 25. We're now sponsoring two rooms in the Centrepoint hostel in London where they get not only a safe home but also life coaching, training, and helping them to get back on track. We've supported a water well in Africa for a community and a water pump to serve that village with constant water, and we continue to support the foster care home that I mentioned. We're really excited about being able to provide them with two more homes and so, we're really pleased that we could get back into the charity to give back, because that's what's really important to us, to allow us to have the lifestyle to be able to free up our time to give back and I think that equation works really really well for us.