The Property Unleashed Podcast

Flip Without Buying: Assisted Sales Explained

• Mark Fitzgerald • Episode 359

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We walk through how assisted sales let us flip properties without buying them, reduce upfront costs, and move faster in tight markets. We share how to find suitable homes, structure agreements, control risk, and even pre-sell during the refurb to lock profits.

• what an assisted sale is and why it works
• how to find listings that stay on the market
• confirming ceiling prices and realistic uplifts
• focusing on light refurbs over heavy builds
• structuring contracts and legal protections
• saving capital by avoiding deposits and stamp duty
• partnering with contractors for profit shares
• pre-listing and buyer customization tactics
• risk checks, contingencies, and plan B exits
• when to hold, refinance, or sell for speed

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SPEAKER_00:

How you can use assisted sales as a tool to get you started. Hello, my name's Mark Fitzgerald, and it's great to have you joining me here at the Property Unleashed podcast. Welcome, welcome. It's great to have you. So we're going to talk about assisted sales today. Now, don't worry, if you have no idea what an assisted sale is, I'm going to explain it to you. But first and foremost, think about a property flip. This is where you buy a house, you renovate a house, you make it look really, really nice and good, and then you sell that house on. Okay. Assisted sales is very similar to that, but there's a lot of great benefits from it. Okay. Because you don't necessarily have to buy the house to start with. And I'll explain to you how you can do that. Now, why are assisted sales really, really good? And why am I talking about them today? I'll tell you why. Because there's a lot of people out there, and myself included, as I was getting started as well. And we do some assisted sales each and every year when the opportunities arise. But there are a lot of people out there that have got a chunk of money that want to do flips or want to do the BRR strategy, the buy, refurbish, refinance strategy. Assisted sales can help you if you're worried about running out of money or you just don't have enough money for the areas that you're operating in. Why? Because when you buy a property, you have a lot of costs involved, don't you? You have to find a deposit, which is normally 25% of the asking price. You have solicitor fees, maybe conveyancing fees, maybe some other fees and things like that that get caught up in there. And all in all, it can make a deal and just not stack when you're looking at the numbers. Whereas with an assisted sale, you don't have to actually buy the property. It's a bit like a purchase lease option in the sense that you, so to speak, lease the property off the owner, giving them or locking in a price that they're happy with. You then spend a bit of your money updating the property, making it better, and then you sell it for a higher price. So after the owner of the property has got paid, you've been paid back the money that you put into the property to make it worth more, you get that bit of profit at the top. And that can make it very, very easy for people who've got a modest pot to get started. And you can do a few of these different deals to really help you maximize your money and take it as far as you possibly can. So you want to be looking for properties that are for sale that are sticking on the market, something that's been hanging around, or something that potentially has been sold and then has come back onto the market. Because we're always looking for the property problems. Spoken about this all the time, but you need somebody who's motivated, you need somebody who's got a property problem. Because if they have an assisted sale, might solve it. Now, if they've got the property on the market and it's only just gone on and they're looking for maximum price and they just won't actually, you know, talk about any different terms, then you're going to struggle to do this. So, firstly, in your area, start looking for properties that have maybe been on the market for a while. Maybe they look or they seem slightly overpriced, because again, we can always see if we can give them that price. The numbers need to stack, but it gets our foot in the door and makes it nice and easy for us. So you're looking for properties that are for sale, but instead, what you're going to do is you're going to help to sell that property rather than just coming in and buying it. To use your property knowledge, you need to add value. So you need to know what the ceiling price in that area is, whether you've added the value or not. Be very, very careful. And I've seen people do this in the past, is they see a property, they lock the price in, they can get an assisted sale agreed, but they add the value. And because of the ceiling, i.e., there's a top value for a property in that area, they couldn't actually make any money on it. They lost a little bit of money actually. So you do need to be careful with this, but you just need to know your areas. You need to evaluate the properties to see what you can do. Now, a lot of the times with an assisted sales, we don't want to be smashing the place up, knocking down walls, adding big extensions at the back. You're looking for properties that need to be tidied up. Maybe they're very old-fashioned. So by taking the plaster off, replastering them, adding new bathrooms, adding new kitchens, you can really give them a good uplift by just doing the minimal amount of work. Okay. Because if you add loads of extensions or you even need to go through planning and things, that can slow up the whole process and make it very difficult. So you're looking for properties that potentially you could buy at a discount, which is what we're always looking for, but properties where you can add value as well. So sometimes everybody thinks that when you're going to buy a property, you're always going to drop it below market value. You're going to try and get, you know, 20%, 25% below market value. Well, sometimes you can go in there and say, I'll give you the asking price, actually, but you just need to give me the type the terms that I want, which will be locking that in, and over a set amount of time, I'm going to add a bit of value to this, and then I'm going to sell the property on. And you'll get the money, the feeds that you want. You'll also then be able to guarantee that we are going to be getting a sale here as well. So it can work very, very well for all parties. Okay. Now, the benefits of an assisted sales compared to a traditional investment is lower financial outlay for your good self. Why? Because again, you don't have to find deposits, you don't have to pay all of those expensive solicitor's fees and everything for searches or whatever needs to be done from the mortgage companies as well. You don't have all of that. All you really have is slights, you will have some solicitor's fees because you're going to get contracts drawn up specifically for this property. Okay. And once you've got those contracts and things, you can use those on different projects. But I always recommend that you get a solicitor to oversee any contracts that you have. Even if you have a blueprint of a contract, get a solicitor to cast their eyes over it and give you that security that you are locking in the agreements the way it's supposed to be done. But all your financial outlay will realistically be a little bit on the solicitors, not much, but it'll be on the refurbishment. So it will be paying for, you know, the contractors that go in there, maybe the workmen, the workwomen, any work that you do in the kitchens and things like that. So the financial outlay. So say you've got a pot of 100,000 pounds, okay? You're trying to buy a property that's in an area that's worth about 300,000, 400,000 pounds, okay, you're going to struggle to pay the deposit, to get everything done, and then you've got to find money for the works. Yes, you can go bridge in, yes, you can go through all the other channels. But if you took that 100 grand, if you locked in the price with the vendor and you knew you could add that value to it, maybe you could make 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 pounds by adding value to it to the price of the property. All of a sudden that 100,000 pound pot is more than enough to be able to do an assisted sales. So in traditional property investing, buyers often need significant capital to purchase the properties outright, covering both the purchase price and all of the fees that are there. In assisted sales, the investor typically only needs the funds for the refurbishment costs, okay, and minor legal fees. This allows for a more accessible entry point into property investment, particularly if flips is going to be one of your strategy. So why do assisted sales? Well, many traditional investors focus on property prices right now. So it'll actually make a difference in the marketplace because you'll see all of the investors that want to do flips at the moment in the marketplace trying to knock down the price of the vendor. They're always looking for what we say BMV deals, below market value deals. And that means that people are saying, no, I don't want it below market value. I won't want the property's worth. These guys and girls just keep going through this, trying to make below market value offers. You don't have to do that, which differentiates you from those people. This leads those in need of the work, these properties that need the work doing to them are sometimes overpriced because, as we know, agents love to elevate or put an uplift in the price so that they get the listing, but it leaves these properties stuck on the market, which is why I'm saying you need to look for properties realistically that have been on the market for a while. Okay. Or somebody needs something to happen, they've got some sort of problem. Because an assisted sale targets these properties and often results in less competition from other investors. Now, what do I mean by that? Well, let's just say again, with my example, you've got a hundred thousand pounds that you're looking to invest, you want to flip some properties. So you're looking in a very, very busy marketplace because you're looking for lower priced properties where a lot of people who are looking to do this will be looking as well. So it's quite shark-infested water, if you like. What I'm saying to you is you can actually start going out there looking for higher-priced property where there's less competition. Why? Because you're not having to buy it. You've got your pot of money to give it the uplift, and you want to be looking for good properties, potentially properties that you think are out of your budget if you were to buy them. Because you can normally, normally, not always, but normally you can add value to a greater standard with a property that is bigger, that is in a better area. Obviously, it makes sense, doesn't it? So you can work with these people. This opens up all the opportunities to negotiate better deals and acquire properties that others may be overlooking. So we don't have any stamp duty when we do this, so we don't have that as a cost. Okay, and this can significantly increase the cost of purchasing a property. Stamp duty in this day and age now can make or break a deal. Assisted sales, they allow the investors to structure deals in a way that avoids this tax. So you can have an enhanced profit margin in the deals that you're doing. By not incurring these costs, investors can often be more competitive with the prices to the seller. Of course, you can make your offers more appealing. So if you're looking at something and it's overpriced, they won't drop the price for whatever reason. If you take into account that you've not got stamp duty, you've not got to find a deposit, you've not got high solicitor fees or anything like that, you can potentially give them that market value. As long as you know for a fact that when the property's done up, it's going to be worth X amount more. And most of the time, the proof's in the pudding when you look at past sales in the area, you see what people have done with properties, and also talk to the agents, but take whatever the agents say with a pinch of salt. You'll also be able to guarantee yourself, if you do this right, higher profit margins. Since assisted sales course involves adding value throughout by doing refurbishments, investors can sell the properties at a price that reflects the improvements made to the property, and this can lead to substantial profit margins, and this can also make it great because if you do a property, and let's say for argument's sake, it doesn't sell, but you now have this property that is worth X amount more, then potentially you can then buy it yourself. You don't necessarily have to sell it on to anybody else. You could then buy it for the price that you've locked in with the owner. You keep the property, and if you've given it a good enough uplift, potentially it could be a no-money down deal or a deal where you only keep a certain amount of money in there. You can be very flexible with your financing and not have to worry about having high fees when it comes to all of that, because obviously you're not taking anything on. What you can actually do is look at doing these sorts of deals with contractors. So if you find the right contractors in the area, if you say I can go negotiate and structure the deal, I want to spend X amount on this deal, will you come in and do the works and stuff, and then we'll split the profits at the end of it? Brilliant stuff. As long as the contractors know that the costs and everything are covered, you will get contractors and you will find contractors in certain areas that are happy to do this. And this is something that I do, and I also help and train and teach my inner circle members how to do as well, because it's very good to do joint ventures with the right contractors. You've got to build up that no like and trust, and that doesn't happen overnight. But of course, by using contractors to cover the refurbishment costs while the investor remains in control of the project is very, very good business. This can minimize any personal financial risk and allow for a more creative financing solution because you're not having to go for bridging, you're not having to get marked mortgages and things like that. And of course, this makes it easier to make multiple projects happen. So you might be saying I can only do one deal at a time because I've only got a set amount of money. You can do maybe one, two, or three of these once you've done a few. I wouldn't do that at the beginning, but once you've got a few of these under your belt, you can potentially move the contractors from site to site to site and just keep doing this. All you have to do is build up a pipeline of opportunities and deals to be able to do this with. It can speed up transactions as well. So it's a great benefit to the owner of the property. If that property has been sat in the market for a long, long time, we add a bit of value to that property. All of a sudden, it's in more demand. And of course, it can speed things up in that sense and make it a quicker sale without the need of extensive surveys and assessments that typically accompany traditional sales. Because all of those searches and all of the information that needs to be done, you can get done whilst you're doing the properties up to a point. Obviously, if there's still works that need to be finished before they can all be completed, then that's fair enough. But a lot of the time, while you're doing this and you're going to look to do an assisted sales over about four to six weeks, if you can. You don't want it really going on any longer than that. And then you want it put back onto the market. Now, one of the beautiful things that we do is we will list the mark the property on the market whilst we do it up. And we will put a sign in the window as well with potentially my number in or a contractor number or the agent's number, because obviously the agent's still involved in all of this. You can give them a nice little sweetener, or potentially the agent could get paid twice as well. You could pay the agent a fee to say, Thank you very much for helping me with this deal. Find me some more. Okay. And it could be like a sourcing fee if you like. And then they can get paid off the vendor as well once the property's sold. So the agents are happy, they want to work with you. And it's all about how you pre how you go to them and how you actually speak to them and the terminologies that you use to make sure that they understand this. But equally to that, you can also make sure that any deals that you are doing are done to the best standard as well. So you don't want to bite off more than you can chew, but there's some great benefits for everybody in this. And of course, it just helps you to be able to take that pot of money that you've got and be able to grow that pot of money as well. Relatively risk-free. There's always risks. There's always risks, everything. Don't say, well, Mark said there's no risk. There is risks. You need to do your due diligence, you need to know your numbers. All right. And you also need a contingency in there as well because sometimes we just don't know what we're going to unearth. But of course, having control over the selling process of this is, and I'm going back to that, is I like to have a number out there. People can bring me up, and I can potentially show people around while it's a little bit of a building site. But I do say to them, listen, if you wanted to buy this property and you want certain colours, certain tiles, we're putting in this kitchen. But if you'd like to upgrade it slightly, we're gonna we're gonna put this kitchen up to this cost. If you want to add a little few thousand pounds to this and add some features for yourself, then feel free to do so. But just be mindful that if you pull out, you have invested that money, it's non-you know it's it's non-refundable. All of a sudden, we've done this twice where people have actually started to pick colours, pick tiles, and they picked a kitchen as well that was a better grade than what we were putting in. We put it in a good grade anyway, but it was a better grade than that. All of a sudden they've invested in that property. You know you've got a guaranteed sale, you've locked in the price, and they can start buying it off you before you've even finished the works. It's really, really good. You know, this this can really be a great win-win for all parties, allowing you to be able to tailor your approach to any property deals out there once you've got this strategy and once you know this strategy. And of course, you can go out there, you can get people into bidding wars, you can really maximize your profits on there. There is a risk to this that you do so much on the property that it's just not worth what you expect it to be worth. Again, you just need to know what you can expect in those areas. But of course, the great thing for the vendor, for the owner of the property is they're getting what they want. A, they're getting a sale, they're getting that price locked in. You might pay them a lease fee while you have the property. You don't have to do that, but you might do. So you might almost take the property on and pay them a monthly fee. Obviously, we we're not trying to hold on to this property for a long time, but we just need consent from them to be able to go in there and to be able to do the works and stuff. And of course, the opportunity for remote investing with this is massive because all you need are contractors in those areas. So if you know and you have somebody in the area that can manage the projects and communicate with the vendors and contractors via emails and phone and video and everything, you can do this sat in your own chair, sat in your own office. You can operate from anywhere in the world, and this really opens up the market to the investors who know how to do this strategy. Now, in property education to action, my community, I have assisted sales training. Now, anybody who's done my trainings before knows how in-depth my trainings are, and I don't just share with you all the highs, I share with you real-life case studies, warts and all, because there are risks, there are things that can go wrong, and I share with people what has gone wrong and what has gone right. But if you're interested in that, if you want to join the property unleashed education to action community in the vault, there is assisted sales training there. Come and join us. It's just a monthly subscription, and there's lots of different trainings in those vaults. If you would like to just purchase the assisted sales training on its own, then reach out to us and we can do that for you as well. But this is a great tool to use in your property investing because it allows you to tap into so many more opportunities in various markets in various areas without having to say, Well, I'm just looking in this one area here and I can't find any deals. So if you are struggling to get deals to stack, then assisted sales can provide you with a unique alternative to traditional. Property investing by minimizing any upfront costs, reducing competition, and allowing for greater flexibility and control in your approach. This can be particularly appealing to new investors or those looking to diversify their investment strategy without heavy burden of traditionally buying the properties, having to go through all of that financing, getting mortgages, bridging, and all of those things. With this strategy, you don't have tenants, but you also don't have month-on-month cash flow. You have to think of these as bonuses. So maybe you'll do two, three, four or more of these a year. You're not going to be able to guarantee that income coming through because it might take a little while for the sale to go through. But you don't have to hassle a tenants, you don't have to worry about management fees and all of those things as well. But you can do several assisted sales at a time once you know what you're doing. Don't go out there and try and do three or four at once. Do one, get it over the line, see how it goes. It might not be the best deal you've ever done. If you're a part of our community, then you can bring your opportunities to our live sessions and we'll have a look at the refurbishment costs with you. We'll have a look at the cost of the property in the area, and we'll help and support you every step of the way. So if you are interested in this, then check out the link for education to action. Jump in there now, and we can help you with all of this. There's lots of different strategies that we help our community members do. This is one of those that is really, really good. So if you're struggling for resources, you're struggling for finding deals, and you're just not getting the traction that you want, then check out education toaction.com and come and jump in there now. It's a very, very small fee for what you're going to get, which is massive value training and support. Having said that, if you've never heard of assisted sales before and you want to find out more about that, I will share some of my case studies in future episodes with those because we look to try and do at least two or three assisted sales. We used to do flips, okay, me and some contractors. Now we do more assisted sales because I'm looking for assisted sales, and when I find them, I negotiate the deals and things, and then my contractors go in there and do the work and we split the profits. Do we always get maximum profits? Not always, not always. Sometimes we get more than we were expecting, which is always a bruisey bonus. And sometimes they don't work out quite as well as we had hoped. But as with anything, you get better and better over time, and we have yet to actually lose money on an assisted sales. And I say yet because you never know what is around the corner. But the fact of the matter is, if we had a property and I just could not get the price that I was expecting for it, A, it means something's off, and I need to review that and see what's happened. That process obviously isn't right. The process we're using at the moment quite clearly is, but B, do I then really want to just look to keep the product? Okay, keep the property, so to speak. I look at everything in a business term. So a property for me is a product that I need to sell. But anyway, yeah, that's another that's another podcast episode. But do I keep the property? So, in which case then I'll buy it off of the owner, I'll keep that property. Okay, maybe I'll be able to pull some money back out because we have we we can get a bigger mortgage on there than potentially we would have if we'd have just bought it from the owner straight away, because we've added value to the property, and then I can keep it rent it out, and then sell it in the future. Because what happens in the future, my lovely audience? You know, you know, don't you? Property prices tend to go up, don't they? So maybe we got to sit it out. So, worst case scenario is I have to hold on to an asset, sit it out to get the price that I want. So maybe over a few years, and in that time, I have somebody living in that property that pays for the mortgage and also puts a bit of money in my back pocket. So that's a worst case scenario. Worst case scenario is I have to have some tenants, or I can let it out of service accommodation, or maybe an HMO or something like that, and really maximize my profits. That's the worst case. The best case is within six, seven weeks, we've sold the property, we've got our chunk of money, the vendor's happy, they've got their chunk of money, and we move on to the next one. It's a great tool to use, and it can be, of course, your full-time strategy as well. So if you are looking at renovating properties of doing properties up, and you think to yourself, do you know what? A few assisted sales along with me keeping the properties as well could really, really work, then get stuck in with assisted sales. And if you need any help, let us help you with that. So thank you very much for joining me here today. I hope you've enjoyed this episode and continue to listen, like, subscribe, share, and please, on any platform that you're listening or watching this on, do leave us a five-star review. It would really mean a lot to us. So if you've taken one nugget from any of the episodes and it's really helped you, if you could take 20 seconds, 30 seconds to just leave us a five star review, that would be really appreciated. You take care, look after yourself, get out there, get stuck in, and bye for now.