Steve Evans – Star of ‘Homes Under the Hammer’ Joins us ! (July 2017)
Steve Evans a property investor in the Crewe area joined us as our speaker at our July Property Meet.
There were no updates this month. Everyone was reminded about the Property Meet’s Summer BBQ which is taking place on Sunday 6th August.
Steve was introduced and welcomed to the property meet. Steve’s bank conversion has recently featured on the TV programme ‘Homes Under the Hammer.’
Steve began by saying that he has been self employed since he was 19 years of age. He loved music and listening to it and like a lot of people who are blind, he became a piano tuner. He stated the reason he’s where he is today is because he watched that industry die; he could see this happening in the 90’s and wanted to reinvent himself. As a result, he decided to study NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) and attended Tony Robbins seminar ‘Unleash the Power Within’ where he learnt a lot about himself. At that time he was paying into a pension, but quickly realised that it wasn’t going to be as good as had been made out. He learnt how to invest in property with Progressive Property; at that time no-one had heard of Crewe.
He learnt that he needed an income and had heard a lot about yield in the property world and wondered how he was going to make that work in London, which is where he was living at that time. That was 7-8 years ago. The properties he looked at in London provided a yield of 4-5%; he was looking for an 8-9% yield. In the meantime he had a brother who worked in Crewe, so he started doing his yield calculations on properties in the Crewe area and discovered that this was the most logical place for him to start investing to attain the yields he was looking to achieve.
Fast forward a few years and he now has a modest portfolio, he has also moved to live in Crewe and him and his wife have rented their previous property out on a Rent to Rent basis. His wife spotted a property which was going into auction, it was an old bank and offered 2,000 square feet of floor space. She initially wanted it as a studio for herself, meanwhile he thought he could convert it into a HMO !
It was a very interesting and exciting property which had been mothballed and had been empty for over 5-6 years. The original bank safes were still in situ and there was a vault downstairs. He kept an eye on the price on Rightmove and saw it drop by £5,000; it was on for £50,000. He offered £40,000 before the auction which wasn’t accepted, he therefore had to go to auction where he managed to buy the property for £45,000 plus £9,000 VAT. He tried to negotiate on the VAT but to no avail ! He said that to date this has been his most exciting purchase. It has taken him just over 2 years to complete this project and it is now a 7 bed HMO with part of the building being kept for commercial use. He is now a franchisee for Concentric Sales & Lettings and this occupies the commercial space in the building. Up to now he has been managing all of his own properties.
Steve was thanked for coming along to the Property Meet to tell everyone about his property journey and his bank conversion.
Should anyone wish to speak to Steve then his contact details are:-
E-mail:- steve.evans@concentricproperty.co.uk
Phone:- 01270 749205
