The Risk, Reward & Reality of Building a HMO Business with Caroline Pattinson

Building and scaling a HMO business can look great from the outside, but when you’re actually in it, the reality is very different. 

Costs increase, challenges come from every direction, and the margin for error gets smaller the bigger you go. It’s no longer just about finding a deal that works on paper. You need to manage risk, build in contingency, and create assets that perform over the long term.

In this episode, I sit down with returning guest Caroline Pattinson of ChesterHomeshare to talk about the risk, reward, and reality of building a successful HMO business.

This isn’t just a conversation about a big project or impressive numbers, it’s a real look at what it actually takes to scale. Caroline shares the story behind one of her most ambitious developments to date, and the lessons that came with it - both in business and personally.

🎯 What You’ll Learn

• Why financial discipline becomes even more important as you scale
• How to build contingency into your deals and protect yourself from risk
• The reality of delivering larger HMO projects and what can go wrong
• Why a tenant-first approach leads to stronger, more sustainable performance
• How to approach opportunities strategically and create long-term value
• The mindset required to keep moving forward when things don’t go to plan

If you’re building or scaling a HMO portfolio, this episode will help you think more clearly about how to grow in a way that’s sustainable, resilient, and built to last.

💻Resources & Mentions

• Join Andy’s Accelerator Programme: If you’d like my direct input on your current or next project, you can book a complimentary strategy call with me here.
• The HMO Roadmap: Feeling overwhelmed? Access 400+ tools, templates, and lessons to help you start, scale, and systemise your HMO business - all in one place. Join here.
• Facebook Community: Got questions or need support? Come and connect with 10,000+ investors inside The HMO Community here.
• Social: Follow me on Instagram for daily HMO tips, advice, and behind-the-scenes updates here.

If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and drop a quick review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify - it helps more investors find the show!

Transcript

[00:00:00] Andy Graham: Hey, I'm Andy, and you're listening to the HMO Podcast. Over 10 years ago, I set myself the challenge of building my own property portfolio, and what began as a short-term investment plan soon became a long-term commitment to change the way young people live together. I've now built several successful businesses.

[00:00:20] Andy Graham: I've raised millions of pounds of investment and I've managed thousands of tenants join me and some very special guests to discover the tips, tricks and hacks, the ups and the downs, the best practice and everything else you need to know to start scale and systemize your very own HMO portfolio now.

[00:00:40] Andy Graham: In today's episode, I'm joined by a previous guest of mine and somebody that I have got a huge amount of respect for and take a huge amount of inspiration from Caroline Pattinson. Caroline really is one of the best in the business when it comes to professional HMOs. Since she was last on the show, she's gone on to do lots of wonderful schemes, and today I'm gonna pick her brains on her latest 11 bed HMO project.

[00:01:00] Andy Graham: And the numbers are quite frankly staggering. But what was even more staggering was the story and the personal journey that Caroline had to go through and what she had to contend with whilst getting this project done. This is honestly one of the most inspirational conversations that I've ever been fortunate enough to have on the show. Let's get into it.

[00:01:23] Andy Graham: Hey guys. It's Andy here. We are gonna be getting back to the podcast in just a moment, but before we do, I wanna tell you very quickly about the HMO roadmap. Now, if you are serious about replacing your income, or perhaps you've already got the HMO portfolio that you want to scale up, then the HMO roadmap really is your one stop shop.

[00:01:39] Andy Graham: Inside the roadmap, you'll find a full 60 lesson course delivered by me teaching you how to find more deals. How to fund more deals and raise private finance, how to refurbish great properties, how to fill them with great tenants that stay for longer, and how to manage your properties and tenants for the future.

[00:01:54] Andy Graham: We've also got guest workshops added every single month. We've got new videos added every single week about all sorts of topics. We've got downloadable resources, cheat sheets, and swipe files to help you. We've got case studies from guests and community members who are doing incredible projects that you can learn from.

[00:02:10] Andy Graham: And we've also built an application just for you that allows you to appraise and evaluate your deals, stack them side by side and track the key metrics that are most important to you. To find out more, head to theHMOroadmap.co.UK now, and come and join our incredible community of HMO property investors.

[00:02:33] Andy Graham: Hi Caroline. Welcome back onto the show.

[00:02:36] Caroline Pattinson: Hi Andy. Thank you so much for having me.

[00:02:38] Andy Graham: It's lovely to have you here. Now, I'm a huge fan of your work and our regular listeners will recognize you, I'm sure, because they follow you already, but also because you have been a guest on the show before. I think we go back a few years ago when we first had a conversation on the show and it was a great conversation and you took us inside your business and.

[00:02:57] Andy Graham: I took a lot away from it myself, and I know a lot of our listeners did, but you have gone on to do some incredible things in this space and I'm really excited to be having this conversation with you today. I'm a big fan of your work, but you've won, I think since we last spoke. You've gone on and won several different awards for various.

[00:03:15] Andy Graham: Things you are just kind of really sweeping up across the board. I mean, you won the best CoLiving provider I remember at the HMO Awards in 2024. You've won the best HMO design last year for a project that actually we're gonna talk about today. You won the Tenants Choice Award as well, so you are very clearly doing things right, Caroline, and now for our listeners who are perhaps a little newer to the show that perhaps haven't discovered you yet, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your business, and exactly what it is that you are doing in the property world?

[00:03:44] Caroline Pattinson: Thank you Andy. Very generous introduction and, uh, the admiration is mutual with the, with the things you are doing. I really admire the, the HMO roadmap and the community. It's a really great quality, so I'm, I'm very happy to be contributing some value if I can. So thank you for inviting me. So. My name's Caroline Pattinson.

[00:04:03] Caroline Pattinson: I am the landlord, owner and director of a company called Chester Home Share, which does what it says on the tin. It's professional co-living, young, professional, co-living in Chester, in Cheshire, which is where I live. And I've also recently expanded into North Wales as well, which we're gonna talk about in a little while.

[00:04:21] Caroline Pattinson: I also have got the background. I've been in property for 28 years, as well as being a, a bank manager at NatWest Bank and a, a property lender for, for many years. So I've bought and, and renovated and rented out property in Spain. I've got some Airbnb serviced accommodation. Recently took a 200 year old cottage back to Brick, which is a, a copper beautiful holiday.

[00:04:42] Caroline Pattinson: Let in near the forest. That was interesting. Bought land in at auction, renovated an old farmhouse and done all sorts of different, different projects. Done a new property recently as well, but my passion and my bread and butter and my core business and where my heart really is, is with, with HMOs and, and making them the most fantastic customer experience and solid business that I can.

[00:05:05] Andy Graham: I think that that was one of the things that really stood out to me when we first met Caroline, and that was your, the approach that you have taken to your business and you, I think now in retrospect, you, you are years ahead of the curve. I think we're gonna touch on this today, but with the new legislation coming in, and I think that the direction of travel, generally speaking in the private rental sector, I think more than ever it needs that tenant first.

[00:05:32] Andy Graham: Approach. And you were doing this a long, long time ago. So today I'd really like to find out what it is that you've been doing those special touches, because I'm sure a lot of our listeners will be able to take huge amounts of value, um, and little tips and tricks that they could be implementing in their business.

[00:05:48] Andy Graham: And I think in your words, to help make sure that their tenants stay and pay. And ultimately that's because they're happier. But before we get there, let's just dive into your business a little bit more. So you are predominantly based in Chester, aren't you, Caroline? And

[00:06:01] Caroline Pattinson: yes,

[00:06:02] Andy Graham: that's obviously a strategic choice because I assume that's where you are and where you spend most of your time.

[00:06:07] Andy Graham: But more recently, you've started to think about expanding beyond Chester. Can you just give us an idea about, I suppose. Before we get into any of the detail of your projects, just how the, sort of the broad structure of your business works and what the objective is. Why have you built a property business, I suppose in the, in the first instance?

[00:06:26] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah, of course. So, um, accidentally, actually in the first instance, like so many people, as I said in my first podcast with you back in 2022, amazingly I left school at 16 because I wanted to be earning some money and I got offered a job as a, a junior at NatWest Bank at one of my local NatWest banks.

[00:06:43] Caroline Pattinson: From there, I, I then did my financial degree, like financial planning and, and so on. Worked in a bank. So by the age of 21, when my friends were only graduating uni, I'd qualified as a mortgage advisor and a property lender. And, you know, I had a fair, fairly decent amount of savings 'cause I hadn't got uni debt and the bank paid for, for my, all my qualifications.

[00:07:06] Caroline Pattinson: And it was honestly the best. Leg up in life I could have had really, because I was actually going out on sites where people were investing in property. Just simple buy to let, at the time it started off with, and then more complex things. And they were coming to me for the money. And it was in the days when there was a bit more authority.

[00:07:23] Caroline Pattinson: It wasn't just computers, no computer says yes. And I was able to go out on site and of course, because I had all the numbers, I, I learned what did work and didn't work, and then people would come back and ask me to finance the next one. So by the time I was 21, I bought my first house, and obviously it was a lot cheaper then.

[00:07:40] Caroline Pattinson: And then by the time I was 22, 23, I bought my first. Terraced house to rent out by the ring to my mates. So it was an accidental HMO. And then I just kept saving up and buying another one, buying another one, and just rented it to my mates. I think I said on, on the first podcast. And I had the ethos then totally accidentally, that I still have today in a more professional way, which is I don't want it to be crap.

[00:08:02] Caroline Pattinson: I'm renting it to my mates. I'm going round there. I'm probably gonna use it as a. I am gonna use it as a crash pad when I've been out on the town. 'cause they were Chester city center and I want it to be nicer than your average place. So I just made it homely and cozy so that people liked it and they wanted to stay.

[00:08:19] Caroline Pattinson: So they paid me on the dot and that has never seen me wrong. I still own that. I paid 50 grand for that first house. So I've got it now and it's worth like 500. I've got a load more on that street as well. 'cause I just kept buying, like saved up and bought one. So in terms of forming a business, it was only ever supposed to be a.

[00:08:36] Caroline Pattinson: A bit on the side, so to speak, and then it's grown from there.

[00:08:39] Andy Graham: I think there's some similarities between your story and my story there. I mean, I did my first project, it was meant to just be something on the side and it kind of worked and I thought, well actually I could do this again, and like maybe I could do it even, even better.

[00:08:54] Andy Graham: And I think that your ethos there like just don't be crap. It's so simple, isn't it? But it works really well. My idea was always, I was a student and I lived in shared accommodation as a student and it was pretty crap. And I thought that surely that you can do this better and still earn as a landlord.

[00:09:11] Andy Graham: And that was sort of my object. That was where I came at it from. And I always thought that I wanna create houses, that I would be happy to live in myself. That was always the benchmark. If it wasn't that good, and I've got pretty high standards actually. Especially in terms of housing. Gemma would go mad if she was in the room now because we are currently in rented accommodation.

[00:09:30] Andy Graham: That's nowhere near as good as like any of the accommodation that I've been developing, but we're doing our own house at the minute, but it's always served me really, really well. And I think that there's something quite quite simple, but also quite beautiful just for having these really simple values and expectations set of yourself are just kind of sticking to it.

[00:09:49] Andy Graham: And it almost seems like if you zoom out, the public narrative seems so far away from that at the minute, but I think I look at the projects you are doing and that I'm doing and our community members are doing, and they really are. Incredible and I think let's just to be clear, we are a long way from just not being crap.

[00:10:07] Andy Graham: We are gonna talk about a project today and I've got your thought. Try not to be. Yeah. This project up here we are into like, this stuff is amazing. It's really, really, really incredible. So I just wanna make sure that our listeners understand that. It's a great, great ethos that you've got, but Caroline's stuff is actually really incredible.

[00:10:24] Andy Graham: Um, so obviously it sounds like going back just to your sort of entry into property, you almost had this almost like firsthand experience, this apprenticeship almost without carrying the risk. I've got a question, and this is not meant to be left field, but it's just come to me and, and I think that it's an interesting time to have this discussion, but with so much stuff on social media at the minute, there is a huge amount of impression.

[00:10:47] Andy Graham: I know you've got. Your daughter and stuff, and social media plays a big role, I think, now in shaping what young people want to do. Just going back, do you think that that decision may have been different for you now as opposed to then, because obviously social media wasn't a thing. Do you think you'd have still sort of ended up in property and and done it the same way or I, I dunno.

[00:11:09] Caroline Pattinson: Oh, that's a great question. Been asked that one before. That's such a good question, if I can say this. I can't stand bullshit. A very authentic person, and I believe in integrity and values and treating people and property as you would want to be treated. And so I think the difficulty with social media, and obviously maybe even 10 times worse with AI is what's real.

[00:11:32] Caroline Pattinson: What's real and what is false, and I think it's really difficult for anyone trying to get into property. I know we're gonna come onto that to know what is shiny penny, who are the right gurus and mentors. I'm here because I really believe in what you are doing. People who ask me to go on their show and I don't because I'm not convinced about

[00:11:53] Caroline Pattinson: their integrity and their solidity, and I really admire what you're doing. I'm, I'm happy. I'm very happy to be here, but I think it's so hard for people to know, and it would be difficult for me to know because you would see things on social media, and particularly if people have a vested interest. For example, if they are trying to raise private investment or they're offering their own mentoring when they've only been doing it five minutes themselves or.

[00:12:16] Caroline Pattinson: Anything or they just have an ego and they want to be kind of, oh, look at me in, in Dubai, maybe not the best example of Dubai right now, but there were people who would have agendas other than providing really good homes for people and making a profit, and it's very hard to distinguish the difference between the two.

[00:12:32] Caroline Pattinson: My social media is really basic and authentic because it just does what it says on the tin. It's not really supposed to be hooking anybody into anything on another agenda.

[00:12:43] Andy Graham: Like you said, it's really difficult to know to what extent things are real when we see pictures and images and stories and references.

[00:12:51] Andy Graham: It's trickier. I think this is your podcast. I don't mean to hijack your episode, Caroline, but I'm just gonna share my opinion on, I think if I think back to my younger self, I think I would've really struggled. I think I would've been really impressionable and I'm naturally quite impatient and I think that without the life experience I have now, or I even.

[00:13:11] Andy Graham: Had, by the time social media became pretty mainstream, I think that I would've probably been sucked into the narrative that it's really easy and that I was perhaps doing something wrong and rushed and made potentially bad decisions. And I mean, fortunately. It's gone well for me and, and I didn't have to contend with that.

[00:13:30] Andy Graham: But I do feel for younger people now, and I do think you've gotta be extremely cautious. I think conversations like this are so great because you can't really fake them well, you know, because we ask you to send us loads of stuff so that we can see and then we can have a conversation about it. We ratify 'em and I feel like there's a big responsibility on us as a community and as a content provider in this space to do that.

[00:13:51] Andy Graham: But yeah, I dunno why I wanted to go there, but I just think that it was interesting to hear you talk about your background and professional career in banking and

[00:13:57] Caroline Pattinson: it was very, very unflushed and very simple, but it also, it was, it was easier then it was, there was no HMO. The HMO wasn't a thing. It was a house share.

[00:14:07] Caroline Pattinson: Had all the original pine doors in the house. I probably have the odd smoke alarm battery thing in it. There was no regulations, so it was a lot cheaper and it was a lot easier. And my initial business just spread through word of mouth because I was of the age. I was only like 22 I think, when I bought my first rental property.

[00:14:24] Caroline Pattinson: And so it just went through word of mouth. And so I kind of fell into a young professional demographic because that's what I was, and I rented it to my mates and it was friends of friends. Friends of friends, friends of friends. I didn't even, so it was just so easy. And I think now to get back to your question, I think I would be probably intimidated if I was that age now or even older, and.

[00:14:46] Caroline Pattinson: I looked at a lot of the things and the numbers that are out there on social media. I think it's really intimidating actually. You could either take the approach that you've just mentioned there, which would be maybe a bit naively optimistic and jump in, and the risk is getting in over your head.

[00:15:02] Caroline Pattinson: Obviously, you and I can know can very easily happen and we see people going under all the time because they are over leverage and it's high risk strategy. Or you can be too intimidated to even start. What we're aiming for is somewhere in the middle, which is an informed opinion, which is obviously where your content, you know, you are the only content provider I've ever featured on where you've actually asked me and drilled down to these numbers.

[00:15:25] Caroline Pattinson: And I know with your metrics that you apply that you can sniff out whether somebody is providing something that looks viable or if you're thinking, hang on a minute, this, these figures look like they're a bit massaged, which is really good and should be reassuring to your community.

[00:15:40] Andy Graham: I feel such a great responsibility on this that even when I know a lot of our members and guests who do case studies will self-manage their properties, I still ask them to factor in a cost of management.

[00:15:53] Andy Graham: Because even if you're doing it yourself, there's still a cost to it. It's, it doesn't disappear.

[00:15:58] Caroline Pattinson: I have to pay my staff.

[00:15:59] Andy Graham: Yeah, yeah. And so just trying to kind of almost. Just level the playing field. It, it's very easy to decide where the, the center of a deal lies and push it in one direction to suit one's objective and narrative.

[00:16:08] Andy Graham: And we are always just trying to find that middle point. But I think it's interesting here you talk about how your professional career kind of shaped some of those early views and your experience and then that led you and took you into property and, and here you are now. You've obviously been very successful, Caroline, and I think that the biggest, I think that that's the real kind of success story here.

[00:16:28] Andy Graham: It's the fact that you've done it and you've done it so consistently well, and that can't be said for, for everybody in this game. Why do you think you've been able to do that? Is it sticking to your lane? Is it that you've had certain parameters that you've always worked to? What is it that you think that you've managed to get right? All of these years?

[00:16:48] Caroline Pattinson: Honestly, my answer is gonna be really boring actually. And it's financial discipline. It's, I don't work for NatWest anymore, but I did for 25 years. I started right at the bottom at 16, and I was trained up and at the coalface in the days when I was doing property lending. If I recommended a mortgage or bank loan, somebody in property, and they defaulted on it, I would get hauled in and in trouble.

[00:17:10] Caroline Pattinson: That is not the case now. There's no accountability, so it, it's more difficult. Obviously we know the difficulties of dealing with lenders now. It's blooming nightmare, but it's very standardized. So I mean, you could say that that's a good thing, but I think it was so drilled into me. I was literally sat in front of the bank manager.

[00:17:27] Caroline Pattinson: Bollock really, if you do this wrong, you will lose your job. If I personally got into any bad debt, I will be sacked. You had a CCJ and you worked for a bank? I, so I worked for Net Wests. If you had a, a county court judgment or any debt, you said if you go into your a draft, you will be hauled in. So that basic sat there terrified.

[00:17:44] Caroline Pattinson: I was probably like 18 at the time and it went in. So I was the rare thing of being an entrepreneurial bank manager. And really looking for reasons to say yes. Whereas a lot of my colleagues when I was a, a senior bank manager, were looking for reasons to say no to lend. I was looking for reasons to say yes, but they had stack.

[00:18:03] Caroline Pattinson: So what my thread or advice as we go through this podcast already will be really business. And in this case, we're talking about HMOs, we're talking about property, but that ethos is true. If you're doing any, any form of business, it's just a business. My tenants are my customers, which you might remember me talking about before.

[00:18:22] Caroline Pattinson: But if in a business, you know, you are not over-leverage, you borrow enough money to grow and expand and keep it at the top of its game, and you have to keep innovating. But the customer experience will always, always speak for itself because if your customers are happy, it doesn't matter if you run a huge corporation, a dog grooming business, a property business, it doesn't matter if people go, oh yeah.

[00:18:45] Caroline Pattinson: Go down to there. They're brilliant. You have a reliable reputation, and this is why I really advocate something. I'm think I'm quite rare in Google reviews. You can go on my Google reviews Chester home share Google, and you will see Caroline did this. Caroline said that, or members of my team, and you will see my name and my team's name littered through there.

[00:19:06] Caroline Pattinson: That is the ultimate transparency. You can buy a. File anything off Amazon and have a thousand reviews that tell you what this product is and if it's, if it actually delivers what it looks like and where you live. The biggest commitment at all. There's nothing, there's hardly anything. So I think that kind of level of transparency is, is really important.

[00:19:25] Caroline Pattinson: And I will always, my, I am willing to put my neck and my name and my face on the line for tenants, investors, anything, because it keeps yourself accountable.

[00:19:36] Andy Graham: Yeah, I think you've just shared some really great points there. I mean, the big takeaways. Are, first of all, financial discipline and I couldn't agree more.

[00:19:45] Andy Graham: Even as a small business owner, it's really important to know your numbers. Know where you're spending money. No way you can save money. No way. You should be investing your money and know where your risk is. You talked about putting the customer first, and again, I couldn't agree more, especially this sort of a really critical moment in the industry that we found ourselves in as well.

[00:20:05] Andy Graham: I think something to add to this as well, I think the, the creative element that people like we have and other people in our community, I think that that's the kind of the really kind of special bit. It's finding these projects and playing around and figuring out what you can do with it. Love it, and you do love it.

[00:20:19] Andy Graham: And this project that we're gonna talk today is such a good example of that. Well. Let's not waste any more time. Let's talk about the nunnery because it is a really special project. Now, the first thing I'm gonna say, I don't gonna give too much away too quickly, but this is quite a big project. It's an 11 bed HMO, and like my first sort of, my first thought is like, that's kind of big HMO like I've done big HMOs, but depending on the amenity sizes and things like that and location.

[00:20:43] Andy Graham: But you know, an 11 bed, HMO, it's a big HMO. So just kinda talk us through this project, Caroline, what is it, where is it? What did you pay for it and when you saw it was the kind of the idea that you have, you know, this creative piece. Like what was that creative buzz telling you about this project?

[00:21:02] Caroline Pattinson: I just love it so much.

[00:21:03] Andy Graham: It was a gut feeling.

[00:21:04] Caroline Pattinson: I just love it so much. I really want to talk about why I did it because there's so much content in your community and, and elsewhere out there about a property and what we did and how we make it look pretty and how we make it stand out and everything, and that's really important that we'll come onto it.

[00:21:20] Caroline Pattinson: But I actually want to talk about advice to other people who are looking for their next move, whether they've established investors or not. I've got 30 grand extra interest on my, some of my. Portfolio, borrowing up with a bank. I've got tax bill Lummi, massive one and high rate tax, and I had the 2040 grand a year I needed to find to fund my girls through the education that I want them to have.

[00:21:43] Caroline Pattinson: So that's like a hundred grand a year on the bottom line income to just pull outta thin air. So I thought, well, okay, I can either take. Take, take, stop having my holidays and take it out of my cash flow and just be poorer at the end of the month. Or I can obviously generate some more income to make sure that I'm not going backwards financially even when I'm paying out for all these things.

[00:22:08] Caroline Pattinson: So that was my strategy and I also wanted to negate my track tax strategy as well. And obviously one of the ways to negate the very few options we have open to us as property investors is to keep investing. Just to keep reinvesting your profits into the business rather than take them out. Right? So I started looking intentionally for something that would tick some of all of these boxes, and it was just on right move.

[00:22:34] Caroline Pattinson: It was unsold, it was sat there, it was it well over 3000 square feet, a jungle of a garden. I didn't know it was an nunnery, an ex nunnery at the time until I went and started looking into it. Because you get there and think, this is a bit weird, but at the price of it was just under 300,000 and I thought immediately thought, what's wrong with it?

[00:22:53] Caroline Pattinson: And it's over the border into North Wales. So North Wales border is only about half an hour from Chester where I live. But the demographic in that area is completely different. Chester. It's quite affluent. It's not difficult to get decent rents there. It's got a university hospital, tick all the boxes.

[00:23:11] Caroline Pattinson: This North Wales area is very much blue collar, lots of industry, but it has, I'm on the local business club board. I keep tabs of investment in the area. I have a lot of contact with the big employers and I was turning people away all the time from job creations. At places like Airbus, there's a huge Airbus where they make the Airbus wings and stuff and another big ton of government investment and it was attracting graduates and nowhere for them to live in the vicinity.

[00:23:37] Caroline Pattinson: 'cause the standard was, Andy was. Woeful in the area and I was turning people away. 'cause I'm full constantly. I run a hundred percent occupants. I run my HMO portfolio, like I run my Airbnbs, I run them on a zero void, a hundred percent occupancy payment on the dot. No late payers. Like that's my strategy and it works.

[00:23:58] Caroline Pattinson: And I was turning people away, so I thought, okay, I'm gonna put all of these things together. And this house was in North Wales and it was smack bang between the two big employment centers, which are not with no very little catering for them. So I went to see the house and had to fight my way through the jungle to get into the viewing.

[00:24:18] Caroline Pattinson: The garden was so overgrown, the nuns had planted this magnificent wraparound garden. I mean, it would've been beautiful in its day, but it was like, it was like literally like trying to fight your way through to the door. And it had been used as an HMO since, but it wasn't licensed. It was unlicensed. It was hideous inside.

[00:24:40] Caroline Pattinson: And I met the agent in there and the first thing I saw was a pile of arrest warrants on the table and in the front door. I was like, okay. And I just went in. I thought, one, I thought, God, this is SH one T in here. And two, I thought, I absolutely love it. I have to have it. So that was my first impression

[00:25:03] Andy Graham: of that sort of value as well.

[00:25:05] Andy Graham: 3000. It's a big building. It's a big lump with a lot of potential. I love looking at buildings like this and. If I can see this, I'll just zoom out. I'll look at the footprint. What's the gross internal area and what could that potentially give me? I love like just simplifying things down to that, but it feels like you just had that real gut feeling from this project and it definitely sounds like it needed your special touch.

[00:25:28] Andy Graham: Caroline, I mean, I guess that the big question is, you said it, was it too good to be true? What were the problems? You obviously decided to go ahead and buy this. You paid just under 300,000 for it. You spent a lot of money on this project, so I think for context, this is important. You turn this into an 11 bed, but you spend over 400,000 pounds.

[00:25:46] Andy Graham: So that is a lot of money to spend on a building, I mean it's, it's substantially more than you paid for the asset in the first place. So. What did you do to it and what problems did you encounter, Caroline?

[00:25:57] Caroline Pattinson: So yeah, you're right. And you would look objectively at those numbers and just think, what the hell are you doing?

[00:26:03] Caroline Pattinson: This woman's just gone like way over budget. That surely can't have been intentional. And partially you might be right and I'll come on and talk a little bit about it. But the main thing I know I want to buy a house when I've not even been in, like I've only been in one or two rooms and they're awful.

[00:26:21] Caroline Pattinson: And it stunk and it was just grim. And I was actually trailing my hand along the wall like a small child, nearly perming going, uh, this is mine, baby. I just, I think there is an objective. Yeah, like you say, the square meterage the location. I know that, again, I'm on the board of the local business club, so I keep my sort of finger fingers in the pies in terms of listening to the local.

[00:26:46] Caroline Pattinson: Council investment. The government investment, I knew that there was gonna be a whole load of government money coming into the area. And I know that whilst that's a risk, nobody wanted to buy the house because it was far too big to buy as a home temp. 'cause the. Well say it's 11 bedroom capacity, so it's too big to buy as a home.

[00:27:05] Caroline Pattinson: It's not in the right location to buy a big posh house as a home. The area has had been on the down, but is going to be coming on the up with all the local investment. I know the local employers, I would not aiming to rent necessarily to local people 'cause they would not pay my prices because you can rent the whole house over the road for.

[00:27:23] Caroline Pattinson: The same amount as one of my ream that I'm getting now. So it's really important to know your demographic, like really, really important. So I put the offer in same day and the agent said, oh, well there are some people in here already. You could just carry on renting it out. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, no. I said A, I wouldn't put a dog in here.

[00:27:44] Caroline Pattinson: B, it's completely illegal as an HMO, just because you've got people living in some of the rooms. It does not make it an HMO. It does on paper, but it's illegal. So I negotiated a deal that was buying the house subject to planning permission, which you'll know the joys and pain of that. North Wales is particularly, they don't like English investment, it would seem, and they've already had the equivalent of the Renter's Rights Act in Wales the ages ago.

[00:28:12] Caroline Pattinson: I had to requalify there. My experience as a landlord and fit and proper, nothing in over half an hour over the border in England, counts for nothing. And you're literally a foreigner. It's, the demographic was shockingly different. I had one of the neighbors screaming at me in the street when he knew I was buying a house saying.

[00:28:29] Caroline Pattinson: When the planning went in saying That house is why my wife had a, a miscarriage and lost our baby banging on my car window. I kid you not, I was like, I mean, he must have been 80. So I'm not quite sure how long ago that would've been, but I got out the car and I said, look, let's just talk this through. I think what you're concerned about is I'm here, I'm gonna put in the house.

[00:28:50] Caroline Pattinson: Isn't it like, do you wanna come round and have a look? So, yeah, I had neighbors screaming at me in the street. I had other neighbors screaming at me in the street, A filthy landlord. Um, I suppose you're just gonna put people don't want in HMOs because the place was so awful. And I was like, no, I'm buying it to make it beautiful.

[00:29:08] Caroline Pattinson: So I think one of the initial problems, obviously with a deal, as you will well know, is getting something that you can take, get taken off the market, subject to planning, because planning can roll on for 12 months, right. For me, there's three tips that I'll give your community in this. One is I had all my finance sorted out beforehand, so I was able to make a cash offer and I was able to have proof of funds.

[00:29:31] Caroline Pattinson: Now, obviously not everybody is in this position. You might need developer finance, but I was able to take mortgages. I already had this million pound rolling off that was refinancing on my portfolio anyway, so I just refinanced it higher and did that, which meant I bought the house for cash and I was able to have that proof of funds.

[00:29:50] Caroline Pattinson: So I'm a safe bet straight away from a vendor's point of view because they can say, I've got the money. I also use my reputation to leverage a good deal on it. And I just said, look, this is me. You can Google me, this is my company. You can Google my name, my company, look at my reviews. So I was also just building trust and I also offered to take some pain out from the current vendor in order to get the subject to.

[00:30:17] Caroline Pattinson: Planning deal. Some of it was he had council demands all over the house for overhanging trees, overhanging bushes. The guy lives in, in London. He wasn't, I don't think he ever came. He wasn't interested. He didn't wanna come to the house. It had issues and I just said, right. How about I sum, my lads will tidy up the garden, sort the council enforcement out for overhanging hedges.

[00:30:39] Caroline Pattinson: I will pay for all of that. I will sort out the people in the house. I will. Sorted out some leaks and just some basic things. So I paid for all of the that stuff to sweeten the deal and in order to get the direct access to the vendor, not just going through the agent. So in terms of advice to your community, these will kind of things that you can do.

[00:31:01] Caroline Pattinson: If you can't get past the agent and you want to do a deal, which isn't just a straight up right move deal, you need to speak to the lender and you need to do some negotiation. So that probably just cost me. I dunno, a few hundred quid, but I suppose as you will well know, if you get your ducks in a row and you can just show that commitment, you shows you're reasonable, it shows your professional because the vendor wants to know that they're not gonna sit around while you wait for your planning and then that you're just gonna dump them because you can't get the money, or you're flaky or you don't really know what you're doing on such a big project.

[00:31:34] Caroline Pattinson: So I made sure, and this is what I would advise other people to do as well. I made sure that I had all of this sort of. A human touch if you like, in place, so you get the trust, and then he was willing to wait.

[00:31:47] Andy Graham: I think that's creative approach to trying to structure a deal is, is so important. And it comes often with experience that I find.

[00:31:54] Andy Graham: But I think I've always thought, yeah, if you want a good deal, you've gotta be prepared to walk away. First and foremost, you've gotta set your stall out and know, look, this is where it works for me and this is where it doesn't. And there can be people and things that get in your way. Obstacles like agents that make it tricky and that.

[00:32:10] Andy Graham: Sort of creative approach to maybe just finding a backdoor way to get to the, to the vendor. I've done it myself on a number of occasions, and it's a really good method of just sort of trying to sort of get over that bridge. You've got the phone number, all of a sudden you've got an email and there you go.

[00:32:25] Andy Graham: You've kind of got your entry in and you can just sort of start to build that relationship and sometimes. You do have to be willing to put that work in if you want to try and strike.

[00:32:34] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah.

[00:32:34] Andy Graham: A good deal like that, don't you? So did you have to give them any additional insurances, Caroline, other than you had the proof of funds?

[00:32:41] Andy Graham: Did you have to pay anything like a non-refundable or an exchange fee or anything like that at all?

[00:32:46] Caroline Pattinson: Oh gosh, that's a good question. I offered to. Actually I offered to do it. I said obviously we'd need to have a solicitor's letter or something. 'cause I'm of the, of the opinion when you're talking spending, I spent just shy of 750,000 pounds of my own money on this.

[00:33:03] Caroline Pattinson: I own all of my properties. I own everything myself or in my company. I'm not sort of doing JVs on these things 'cause I like having the control. So, and one example of that is like, look, if I need to chuck a couple of grand at it on the scheme of things, it's not going to matter. But it can mean a lot in terms of getting the deal at the beginning on a flexible goodwill, more relaxed and, and potentially cheaper basis.

[00:33:30] Caroline Pattinson: I always normally go for vacant possession, but part of the strategy of me buying this house was for tax planning because I deliberately bought a house that needed a ton of renovation and replacement work, which for those of you who don't know, means that you can legitimately offset that against your wider portfolio profit.

[00:33:54] Caroline Pattinson: So this was a deliberate strategic acquisition for me because I was gonna have a massive tax bill coming, like I needed to reinvest my profit before it became taxable, right? So I deliberately chose a property that didn't need loft conversions and extensions and things like that, because as you and I will know, you can't offset those.

[00:34:13] Caroline Pattinson: Things for capital gain rather than income tax and renovation. So I did go to town on the renovation partly because I wanted to and it needed it, but partly as well because I'd prefer to spend the money on my house than have it as a pushing me into a high rate tax bracket. So that's why I kind of overspent strategically on the house as well.

[00:34:32] Andy Graham: I guess that begs the question, did you overspend

[00:34:34] Caroline Pattinson: well? Yeah.

[00:34:35] Andy Graham: Yeah. Let's fast forward. You've turned this into an incredible eight bed. We haven't got the time to just go into all the detail about this project today, so I'm gonna encourage everybody listening to go straight stage from the roadmap. 'cause your case study is gonna be in there and it is really, really, really special.

[00:34:49] Andy Graham: But you obviously spent a lot of money, but. I think it's fair to say that this property was worth a lot of the money at the end of the day. So if we fast forward, Caroline, can you just give us a flavor of, of what that looks like at the backend, because it's pretty staggering.

[00:35:05] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah, sure. So the biggest thing was is that two years, almost two years to the day, actually, we were due to have spades in the ground.

[00:35:12] Caroline Pattinson: Right? It was the week before I was committing to the biggest single personal investment I've ever made. I've invested personally just over 4 million pounds in the last five years. Just, just for some context in like growing my portfolio, including this one, and I was about to invest, you know, 750 odd thousand.

[00:35:31] Caroline Pattinson: Of my own money, it was a big deal, was every penny I've scraped together, it's a bit squeaky bum in an untested area, which hasn't got posh HMOs in it at all. And so I was due to have space in the ground the following week. I had been waiting for some test results from the hospital and it came back.

[00:35:50] Caroline Pattinson: Literally, my builder was saying to me like, Caroline, are you okay? You've not signed the contract. I thought we were all good to go with waiting for the contractor to come in. Last week I was waiting for these test results and uh, it came back and I was diagnosed with cancer literally the week before.

[00:36:06] Andy Graham: And I mean, well, strangely, and as, as you know, I've actually, when I was younger, sort of been in a similar position myself, although with a sort of a, a very different condition. And we had a chat about this before we hit record, and it's great to see how well you look right now. I mean, go and watch around YouTube guys, if Caroline is sparkling.

[00:36:26] Andy Graham: But I mean, Caroline, how did you comprehend this? And then how did you comprehend? A challenge of like in the project itself was a big challenge. And why did you even continue to do it at that point? Like most sane people would probably say, yeah, I'm gonna just focus on the big C and get that sorted.

[00:36:45] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah, well that would be the sensible thing to do, Andy, wouldn't it?

[00:36:50] Caroline Pattinson: I had all this money in my bank account, good to go. And also for those that don't know me, I crawl around in the dust at two o'clock in the morning on my own in this house, literally drawing out the wall. So yeah, I've got my architect, but my architect really writes what I tell them to write a hands-on designer.

[00:37:06] Caroline Pattinson: So I buy stuff, I find it, I source my own stuff, I go and see it. I finance it myself. I literally. Go on my hands and knees with a tape measure and a pattern piece of paper, and I sketch out the rooms. How far away should the toilet be? If we open the door here by when you've got a 27 inch door and a en suite that needs the sink, is there, the toilet is there.

[00:37:28] Caroline Pattinson: If we put a a 90 shower door, will it open? Where does it need to be? That's the level of detail, and I do this myself. I absolutely love it. It's probably my favorite thing to do, but obviously. I've just been told I've got cancer, and it was pretty bad to be honest, and it was like, yes, I've got a fantastic build team coming on, but it was a new build team that I haven't tried before and therefore I was fully intending to be.

[00:37:54] Caroline Pattinson: On site on a very regular basis, doing my own quantity surveying, doing my own finance, making sure that everything's done, and then you pay that week. And my own supplies, I supply all main materials. I have a lot on my own trade account, so I'm very hands-on. And so that's partly why this end user customer experience is so good, really because I know exactly from years of making mistakes what it needs to be.

[00:38:18] Caroline Pattinson: And all of a sudden it was like. Oh, how am I gonna do that? So, and I remember speaking to my mom, my mom and dad, and they were like, well, obviously you can't do that now. You're gonna have to go in for chemotherapy and surgery and radiotherapy, and if you need that, what if you can't get it on the NHS? I didn't have private healthcare, so what if I need that to pay for private healthcare?

[00:38:38] Caroline Pattinson: And I was like. Because all my money is literally about to get dropped into this massive house. And I was like, yeah, you're right. That would be, I've got three kids. That would be really stupid. And I thought about it for 24 hours and I remember having a text off the builder going, everything all right?

[00:38:54] Caroline Pattinson: And I just went, yeah, not a problem. Good to go on Monday. See you there. And I went there and we put spades in the ground for the rip out and taking massive chimneys out. Took huge chimneys, loads of massive chimneys and staircases and God knows what in this house. And then I went straight off to the cancer hospital to start my treatment.

[00:39:12] Caroline Pattinson: And I didn't tell the builder, I didn't tell anyone. He didn't even know. He didn't even know about I had cancer and I was in chemotherapy every single week. I haven't told anybody that, but he didn't even know about it. Nobody did.

[00:39:23] Andy Graham: Wow.

[00:39:24] Caroline Pattinson: I didn't tell anyone apart from my immediate family.

[00:39:26] Andy Graham: It's almost unbelievable, really, Caroline, to think that you managed a project to this scale with all the challenges that I know that these projects do throw up on a day-to-day basis.

[00:39:36] Andy Graham: Just things behind the wall, the minutia of the decisions to make. If you're not appointing a main contractor, if you are essentially the main contractor and you're managing different trades and suppliers and things like that, that the kind of a level of oversight that that needs. I honestly can't comprehend how you were able to do that and, and not just that, but do it so successfully

[00:39:56] Caroline Pattinson: because it was my distraction.

[00:39:58] Caroline Pattinson: I decided that I was not gonna focus on destructive things. It's like I'm really big believing, like, what can I control? It was like, I cannot control having cancer. I cannot control how bad it is. I cannot control. The treatment program I'm gonna go through, which I can't speak highly enough for the NHS I was in Manchester.

[00:40:18] Caroline Pattinson: Like I also, it was bloody miles away as well because the, my, my treatment for the cancer was at a specialist hospital in Manchester, and this is in North Wales. And I was in there, I was in Manchester literally like twice a week. So it was a Fabo trek. But I've got to laugh on, honestly, because. I'm really hyper high energy person and probably got a ADHD uh, to be honest, I'm very passionate and very enthusiastic, and I wasn't, people were like, oh, well, you know, we, you're not, you're in hospital.

[00:40:43] Caroline Pattinson: You're not ill in bed after these drugs. I was high as a bloody kite. I was literally going down the. Built, I was going straight from the ward to the building site and I must have driven them absolutely nuts. 'cause I was basically high as a kite on drugs and I, I don't, and as a personality, I don't need to be high as a kite on drugs 'cause I'm already a bit quite full on anyway, so the poor guys, and they didn't know either, so I was like, dah, dah.

[00:41:09] Caroline Pattinson: But it did get to the point, part of the, there's an additional 65,000 pounds spend in my 435,000 pound that I spent, which was unaccounted for and unplanned for. Because I did end up employing a QS, a Rick's qualified qs, which for anyone who doesn't know I'm talk about, that means it's an industry qualified quantity surveyor, building surveyor to come in and to support me because I did think literally at one point I need to have a contingency plan in here because I don't know how this is gonna go.

[00:41:43] Caroline Pattinson: What happens if I do get sick. What if I don't, I'm not well enough. What if it goes downhill? I need to get this project finished. 'cause if you're doing it, as you know, you cannot leave it half done. It's got to get done. So I employed a mixed quantity QS, who cost me about 65, 70,000 pound. And that's why partly the spend on this was far that much more than it would've been as well.

[00:42:05] Caroline Pattinson: So he did support me, but to be honest, I could have done it without him. In hindsight, it did help, but it was more a contingency measure. Because another thing we learn, learn is don't wait till the problem happens. Put your contingency measures in else. 'cause that can be the difference between your, your project succeeding or failing. And it's too egotistical to think, I don't need to have a backup plan when you do.

[00:42:27] Andy Graham: I would agree with that entirely. I think is one of my sort of key principles as an investor is having that contingency against everything that could really sort of go wrong. Build costs, contractors throwing their sort of toys out to the pram planning issue, like whatever it is.

[00:42:43] Andy Graham: I think having those contingencies make sense, but what I would say is having a contingency for what. You have to go through is pretty left field. I mean, I think you could excuse most people for not having a contingency, for getting a diagnosis like that, but kudos to you, Caroline. I think you're a huge inspiration, and again, I'll keep saying it, but the project itself is incredibly impressive and I think even more so given like what you had to contend with on a very personal level.

[00:43:12] Andy Graham: As well a question and you know, again, this is very unplanned, but when I had a cancer diagnosis when I was younger, I was probably in my early twenties, very different type of cancer, treated very, very differently to yours. But it changed everything about me and I think largely 'cause I was very young.

[00:43:28] Andy Graham: And so that sort of thing at that sort of age, it's just not on your radar. And I mean, I'm, I'm older now. I'm nearly 40 now and it's still not on my radar. But I mean, in my early twenties it wasn't. Has it changed your approach to how you, you do business? Have you changed? One thing it did for me was that I think I actually took more risks as a result.

[00:43:47] Andy Graham: 'cause I thought, well, God, if this can happen and I, I, I'm pretty healthy and I eat well and exercises and this can still happen, then I can think I'm just gonna have more fun and take more risks. And I actively have done that since in my life. Like I continue to remind myself that, well, you kind of never know and like, and I know that sounds a little bit dark and sadistic, but it's worked well for me since.

[00:44:06] Andy Graham: Has it changed anything for you at all? And I'm, I'm asking purely out of interest more than anything else.

[00:44:11] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah, such great questions. My youngest was 10 years old. She was going to high school. I needed to see her in high school in the September. There was no way, I was not getting, being there to see her in high school.

[00:44:24] Caroline Pattinson: In my mind, and I needed to finish this project, so I was already excited when I bought it. I bought it for all of the base, sensible, financial focused reasons that I explained before, but now this takes on a whole other level because if this is gonna be my legacy, it better be damn good because this sounds really brutal, but it's just how I am.

[00:44:44] Caroline Pattinson: I'm just looking now 'cause I think my little girl's probably come in somewhere and she might be listening, but I just thought, here's how I see it. If I die, I need to have this house done and in fantastic shape to hand down to my kids and they won't know how to do it. And I can't leave a building of this size half done because unless you're somebody like yourself who was a really seasoned investor who would obviously don't want it at a fire sale, it's gonna be really difficult to finish.

[00:45:09] Caroline Pattinson: So one, I thought, if this turns out to be. I'm not gonna survive this. I need to get this past, I need to have it done. So it is cash flowing and it is is in good shape to hand onto my kids. So that's one thing that sort of motivated me, but the main thing that motivated me was if I'm fine, which I am, I'm completely fine.

[00:45:27] Caroline Pattinson: Thank God. I want to have this done so that I can do what I want and I can go on more trips and I can have this cash flow, which I've done, and I want to have something that I'm really, really proud of. I love this property and I have been gone a little bit over on what I've spent on it from a. A passion point of view, but you can tell in the rent roll I've got as well and the people that are there.

[00:45:48] Caroline Pattinson: And if you'd read my reviews on the Chesterhomeshare that, you can see some of the tenant's voices in there as well. And it is the best thing I've ever done. And what it did I thought, I am not having a year of destruction. 2024 is not gonna be the year that I had cancer. It will be the year that I delivered the best project I have ever done in my life.

[00:46:06] Caroline Pattinson: And I crawled in the dust. I measured doors. The individual bins, the individual cupboards, the customer experience, and I will leave. This will be the best thing I've done. And it was that passion really that I put into it, I think is probably where you can feel it. And it got finished. I finished my treatment in the August and it was finished and filmed.

[00:46:28] Caroline Pattinson: The video I sent you was filmed in the August and it was fall. I pre-sold it all when it was still in build stage. So people arrived with their suitcases the next day. I always pre-sell my properties when they're still in build stage from my other. Master my portfolio so I don't, 'cause every gap it's month, it's empty, there's eight grand going down the drain or whatever.

[00:46:46] Caroline Pattinson: So, and the rent roll on it is 104,000, which is off the scale for the area. So, yeah.

[00:46:52] Andy Graham: Wow. Well 

[00:46:53] Caroline Pattinson: It was good.

[00:46:54] Andy Graham: You've given the numbers away, but let me just, I'm gonna have to pick these out again 'cause it's really impressive. So the value was drum roll please, Caroline. The value was what?

[00:47:04] Caroline Pattinson: Just over a million pounds.

[00:47:06] Andy Graham: Just over a million. And the rent roll over a hundred thousand a year.

[00:47:11] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah. 104 something. Yeah.

[00:47:14] Andy Graham: And I know that you haven't really got any leverage on this because you sort of leveraged other parts of your portfolio, but this for many people would be a retirement sort of producing project in its own right.

[00:47:28] Andy Graham: It's making that much money every single month. Well, it's so impressive. Please, everybody listening, go and check it out inside the HMO roadmap. It'll blow your socks off. And Caroline. Is an incredible developer and investor, and I think there's a huge amount more to learn there from your case study. Caroline, and thank you for sharing it.

[00:47:46] Andy Graham: Before we wrap up today, I've got a final question for you, Caroline, and you're obviously a very passionate investor, but things are changing and I know that you told me one of the reasons that you looked across the border was, and have been doing some of the projects over recent years is because of the changes in legislation and changes in the private rental sector.

[00:48:06] Andy Graham: When you look ahead now, what do you see? What do you think? How are you approaching your business differently, and what advice would you share for our listeners? 

[00:48:16] Caroline Pattinson: I think you cannot be, um, mortgaged or debted up to the eyeballs because if we just look at, there's got to be wiggle room. It's a bit boring to say that.

[00:48:25] Caroline Pattinson: I would rather kind of talk about the sexy stuff, like all the pretty stuff I've put into my houses. The fact that I've taken away the downsides of the HMOs like in this house in the nunnery and this some of my others that have renovated since then. There's no communal bins. No communal bins. So I've tried to keep.

[00:48:40] Caroline Pattinson: One tip is to keep all of the upsides of co-living, which is obviously cost. It's affordable community. If you do it like, and care and consistency and all of that, that's really important. The customer experience all, all the Cs, but. In reality, the Renter's Rights Act will mean that people can leave within two months.

[00:49:00] Caroline Pattinson: We might be turning people over far more regularly, and we can't get somebody out who pays the rent every month, but it's just a general bad vibe and a bad apple in the house and causes the problems that we all know and hate. So to me, there's a whole load of extra diligence in there about obviously getting people in in the first place.

[00:49:16] Caroline Pattinson: So the one thing, I've got a team of about 10 people, but the one thing I always do is. Be the final say on who comes into the house. I decide that myself because I want to know who's in the house. And also, tenants really like it as well because they know who I am. I am the landlord. I own the house. If it needs fixing, it's done.

[00:49:34] Caroline Pattinson: So I think that personal touch is really important. It doesn't scale very well. That's just what works for me. And the other thing is just to have enough contingency. It's great when you have a massively high commercial valuation, but if you are then taking a 75% mortgage on that or finance on it, or you have a lot of private investor finance to pay and then people are leaving more often, it's really careful.

[00:49:58] Caroline Pattinson: It's really important not to leave yourself in a financial situation, which is too risky for your own personal circumstances. Yeah.

[00:50:05] Andy Graham: I think that's all great advice. Things have changed. They are changing. I think there are some great opportunities about, and that's the allure of property. I think if you were just for inflation at the minute, stuff looks really sexy to buy, but whereby no means over the hump of this sort of economic slump that we're in and property now has been one of the consequences.

[00:50:25] Andy Graham: What's happened, I suppose, in terms of property values and we're seeing it a little bit now, I think in terms of. Rents and the softening of the rental market as well. That is in part sort of the, sort of the byproduct of what's been going on. So I think it's all really great advice, Caroline, and, and you shared some superb advice today.

[00:50:41] Andy Graham: Thank you so much for coming onto the show now. For anybody listening who wants to go and find out a little bit more about you, follow you, maybe sort of see what else they can learn from you, maybe even at some point learn from you directly, where is the best place that they should go?

[00:50:58] Caroline Pattinson: So I've been neglecting my socials a lot over the last couple of years.

[00:51:01] Caroline Pattinson: I’m, sorry. So you can find me on Chester home, share on Instagram and on Facebook, or if you just put Chesterhomeshare.co.uk. I have a link tree on there with all my things. Or there's me personally, Caroline. Pattinson as well. So I haven't looked at any of my Facebook friends requests for ages because there's just so many, you know, when you just kind of get so many.

[00:51:22] Caroline Pattinson: So probably Chester home share and if you really want to connect with me personally, send me a DM as well, because otherwise I won't, I won't kind of look at it. So

[00:51:30] Andy Graham: thanks, Caroline.

[00:51:31] Caroline Pattinson: Yeah, that's the best way.

[00:51:32] Andy Graham: I'm probably one of your outstanding Facebook friend requests.

[00:51:36] Andy Graham: But yeah, I think we're gonna have to make sure that we don't wait four years before we record another episode because there is far, far, far too much for us to catch up on because you are just doing far, far, far too much great stuff in the space.

[00:51:48] Andy Graham: Thank you, Caroline. It's been an absolute pleasure to have you back on the show.

[00:51:51] Caroline Pattinson: Thank you so much. I've really, really loved, um, coming on the show. Thank you for asking me.

[00:52:02] Andy Graham: That is it for today's episode. Guys. Thank you for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Caroline and I, I'm sure you did. Big, big, big thank you to Caroline for not only sharing all of those pieces of wisdom and insight, but also sharing her incredibly brave story. Now if you are investing in HMOs yourself, or at least you want to be doing, you've got a few options, you're finding it difficult, you can continue to struggle alone.

[00:52:25] Andy Graham: Or you can head over to theHMOroadmap.couk right now. You can go and take advantage of everything that we've got inside the portal, which will give you the tools, the resources, the document, the case studies, the lessons, everything you need to get on your way. But if you wanna really step things up and take things more seriously then head on over to the show notes right now.

[00:52:46] Andy Graham: There's a video there that you can watch and if you want to. Work with me and you can find out more about what that looks like and whether or not it would be right for you. That's it guys. Thank you again for tuning in today, and don't forget that I'll be right back here in the very same place next week so please join me then for another installment of the HMO Podcast.