It's Not Always Smooth Sailing...

Well, looking back at the date of my last blog entry it's been exactly a month. So much for my goal of blogging weekly.  Sometimes things don't always go as planned.  I've had an extremely busy March and April.  As any of you that follow me on social media or have seen me at an event in the past few weeks will know, I took on 7 new properties in April.  YES SEVEN!!  And six of those were from one family of landlords who had a rouge Rent to Renter managing their properties and has left them in an absolute state. We've got tenants with no contracts, over crowded houses - not to mention him running off with all of the tenants unregistered deposits and not paying the utilities in goodness knows how long.

So my team and I have been working flat out to try to get some order into these properties.  This is something I've never done before.  In the past we have always taken over the properties with no tenants in them.  That way we didn't inherit any of the issues we are having currently.  But because of the owner's situation we agreed to take these properties on a management basis to start (like a normal letting agent at just a straight commission) to help get everything under control and figure out what was going on.  And then after 4 months we would start to transition the properties one at a time to our Rent to Rent agreements.

It's been a rocky road.  Some of the properties and tenants are much better than expected and others have been a nightmare.  I've just been sitting tonight reminding myself that really I only have 2 or 3 difficult tenants out of the 48 tenants that we have taken on.  We've come to terms with most of them and just have one that we are really still struggling with at the moment.  So I'm trying not to let that overshadow all the good ones and how well we've done overall.  Sometimes it's easier to focus on the struggles than on the successes. 

On top of that the person that we use to do our Spareroom ad management and tenant viewings went on holiday right at a time when we were showing nearly 10 rooms!!!!  I haven't done tenant viewings in a long time and I forgot how much time it takes to constantly be responding to SpareRoom messages.  Whew - I'm glad that's over!  We did manage to fill almost all the rooms, but it was a busy busy time.  

So anyways - this was just an apology to say sorry I haven't been posting, although I have put together a short video series about one of out newest properties.  It's a follow-up to the last blog post - those are in the Rent to Rent Membership Area for anyone that wants to check them out and follow the project from start to finish.

And I also just wanted to let everyone know that sometimes it's tough.  I try to share mostly my positive stories and information on the stuff that I have figured out and systemised.  But sometimes the system breaks or something changes and it takes time to adjust - and this happens in any business.  So whether you are new and just getting started or have been in property for a while now - there are always going to be ups and downs and times when you work harder and times when you can sit on the beach and drink a cocktail. I spent the last month working in the trenches (along with keeping up with all my normal speaking events, launching a new online course, and a new ladies only business group).  In fact, I was so busy working and stressed that I wore myself out at the end of last week and ended up in bed with a nasty cold for the weekend.  So remember, we are all human.  I have an amazing business that I'm really thankful for, but sometimes it's still really hard.  I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now, I've recovered from my cold, and I'm spending this weekend visiting family and having lunch with one of our landlords in London. And next week I should be all caught up with my work and be able to pull back and get back into flow.  And I'll be more regular with my blogs and updates, as I've got a great list of articles that I want to write for all of you!!  So stay tuned and come back next week for a new blog entry!  My goal is to post on Thursdays!