Hi, this is Richard and I’ve swapped hats to Director and Co-Owner of The Property Lifeboat. I’ve been encouraged by Mayla (Business Development and Marketing Lead) to do a second ‘Overview of 2023’, (see Lifeboat Lettings 2023 overview) this time focusing on the parent company and majority shareholder of Lifeboat Lettings – The Property Lifeboat.
However, I’m going to start by going back quite a lot more than just one year and answer a question that my business partner Rick (Walton) and I get asked very frequently: ‘why are you called The Property Lifeboat’? To answer this, it’s necessary to go back ten years to 2013 when the brand was formed. At the time, Rick and I had recently got together as investor and JV partners. Our focus was to help ‘distressed’ property owners and we were purchasing properties in the coastal towns in our region. This was going along quite nicely but what we didn’t have was a trading brand name. We kind of viewed ourselves as an ‘emergency service for landlords’. It was quite logical to make the association with the well-known coastal emergency service that rescues people that are about to go under-water (literally and metaphorically) at sea; with a slight change in naming: and thus, The Property Lifeboat was formed!
So, what have we been up to this year?
Like other property investors up and down the country, we too have been impacted by interest rate rises, together with utilities costs and costs of maintenance. So, in response to this, it has been a year of consolidating our existing portfolios and businesses and building relationships and efficiencies.
As the majority shareholder of Lifeboat Lettings, we have been heavily focused on optimising and developing the operations of this business. However, outside of those activities, we have also been taking a close look at our existing property investments and optimising the cashflow from these. This has necessitated some investment back into the portfolios, as and when properties have become vacant. In some cases, this has resulted in increases in gross income of between 30-40% on some individual units once refurbished. For those other units with longstanding tenants, we have been aligning rents nearer to market rent levels, whilst also making improvements to the unit.
As part of the drive for top line growth, there have of course also been acquisitions. As an example, we have recently completed the purchase of another 6-bedroom HMO to add to our portfolio and have looked at a number of other investment opportunities.
There has also been focus on operational efficiencies, mainly on the lettings management side (Lifeboat Lettings) but elsewhere also. In particular, we have spent some time looking at utilities costs across the HMO portfolio.
We are aware that many landlords will have chosen 2023 as the year to wind up their investment businesses. However, despite a rough year, The Property Lifeboat is still going strong and we are looking forward to hitting the ground running in 2024. Our focus will be on acquisitions so we will be reaching out to our JV partners and investors and applying all our finance raising skills. If you are interested in learning how to do this in your own property business, go and get our 20+ ways to fund your property deals which is available as a book or e-book – perfect Xmas stocking filler to prepare for your 2024 adventures.
At The Property Lifeboat, we will always help and advise landlords and assist where we can.
If you would like some help with any of the subjects covered above or anything else relating to properties or lettings, please email admin@thepropertylifeboat.co.uk
