Our Story - Deciding on a Dream - Buying a Reno House to Sell

Our Story is currently at this blog. Right here where you are reading. A travel blog that we put together to keep our family & friends updated when we start travelling around the world. We've always loved travel and adventure and have travelled a lot with the kids and we document it here. This time we're upping and travelling for a whole year and worldschooling as we go (that's the plan).

We haven't set off yet, we're getting things in order. It's quite a big thing making things right so we can go. And that's where we're at right now. At this moment of writing.

In brief: We've felt very tied down in the UK and we don't feel that our kids are getting the most / and best from life / education. We feel like all of our lives that we've been trying to squeeze ourselves into a round hole. When we are a different shape. We're now doing it to our kids and it feels wrong. Check out our post about world schooling: what it is? Why we want to world school our kids?

Go back 5 years. When we decided to travel. Let's call this the 5 year plan. And we are at smelly stinky houses to do up & sell.

We're not rich. We're not from a wealthy family. And we've ran our own businesses for around 12 years, with mixed success. I mean we're ok but we're not high earners. The work ethic has always been the same. High level, fast paced & unsustainable long term for our health and ourselves. We're determined and never give up. Sometimes to a fault. But this is us and together doubly so. So, go back 5 years, and we were starting to get tired. We were not really achieving. We realised that the life we were living was not the life for us. Even though we were happy together & in love with our little family. We have everything in that sense. But we needed to make changes. We needed a plan. This is where the 5 year plan came in.

We needed a strategy that would get us to be able to travel more / hopefully full time. We love travelling and seeing new places. We're happiest by the beach, in the sunshine. We love the outdoor lifestyle. But we needed to set ourselves on the path of financial freedom & passive income that would allow us to get anywhere near our dreams or living our dream life. And this certainly wasn't going to come from slogging our guts out in our time demanding businesses that we had become slaves to.

So 5 years ago, we decided to buy a house at auction with a plan to renovate it and sell for a profit. We had saved £50,000. See our post about how we scrimped and saved to save £50k (second jobs, investing in shares, day trading but all money in the pot). The savings part is not a magic pill post, you know I wish it was and that I could give you that & access it for myself too!. It was boring, long, saving. This money was everything we had and was saved as a deposit for a mortgage. BUT, it had taken us ages to save it, years in fact. We were falling behind friends, who already owned their own homes and because we were self employed directors, we couldn't get a mortgage and were repeatedly told that we were risky. It did nothing to help our distrust of the rules, the system, the way you are kept in your box, in your lane, despite everything. 2 very hard working people being told time after time that they couldn't do this and couldn't do that. If you're in this position now, we feel you. It's very frustrating. And you either give up or you fight harder. You fight until you cry, but then in your little cry-ey snot bubble, you get back up and you push on. And here's the secret, money makes money if you do the right things with it. Getting hold of the money in the first place is the difficult part (or at least it was for us). Once you have that money, you've got options. Choose them wisely or follow the herd to be mediocre.

we get the kids involved in the house reno for free labour, tiny little hands to get in places ;-) we'll reward them with life enhancing travel & ice creams

We could either use this £50k and give it to a bank, who would allow us (begrudgingly) a mortgage, where we would be in debt to them, and at their mercy and no further on in life really. I mean, we already had a roof over our heads, food to eat. We were ok. Our kids were happy, healthy, loved and ok. Would a mortgage change any of this? No, and we wouldn't have £50k to do anything with. We wouldn't be able to make that money work for us. It had taken us so long to save it, we didn't want to just give it away, just so we could have our own house.

Now also go back 20 years or so. I had lived through a recession, parents losing their jobs, and parents splitting up plus a forced sale of our home or threat of repossession/ bailiffs etc. I had seen actual real life homelessness as a possibility within hours. That night. I knew first hand what owning your own home actually meant when the going got tough. And it didn't really count for jack shit. No one cares about you. You must build that security for yourself and truly own it. The aim is to be a sovereign individual.

So we are back to 5 years ago, with some hard saved money in our bank and 2 options: use it as a deposit for our own home or use it and try to make it become a bigger pot. You know what we chose. And we chose this every time. Time & time again. We chose it then, we chose it now. We get any money we have working for us. See our blog post buying a house at auction. In short we bought a run down, 3 bed terrace house in a very cheap location around 50 miles from where we lived. And we worked tirelessly to do it up. You can still get a bargain at auction. If you are patient.

It was horrible. The house/the reno process. We cleaned up other peoples shit (literally) read the post. We didn't even get any keys, we had to break in once we'd bought it as there were squatters. It was not for the faint hearted but we were determined to make this money GROW. And this was our modus.

adding a loft bedroom in £10k cost should / could add £40k to our sale price.

We knew what house prices where in that area so we pushed ourselves on. We knew what the house could be. This was the plan to make ourselves better than we were, and we were sticking to the plan. We did the house up evenings and weekends and it felt like it was never going to end. Did I mention that it was horrible ;-). No, we enjoyed it because of what it meant for our future. See the reno instagram page lotnumber21 (Give us a follow there if you like reno projects as our next one will be in a beautiful sunny place we promise you) to see that journey and the house reno progress. Before and after pics. We learnt everything from youtube and did everything ourselves to save money on trades. If we were going to do this we wanted every single penny for ourselves. Is this the best way? I'm not so sure as time is precious and your time costs money especially if your time could be put to better use / with more value. But it's how we did it.

follow our instagram lotnumber21 (the lot number of our first ever auction house) for the house reno projects. It's not a pretty account but shows the reality of house renovations with no money.

We sold for a healthy profit and repeated the process. It's really a rinse and repeat process once you have the formula. Buy in the best street that you can afford. It doesn't matter what state the house is in as that can be easily sorted. The best street / area that your budget allows. Then rinse and repeat. As fast as you can if you don't like it - I wouldn't say we 'liked' it. It was a means to getting to where we wanted to be. It's important to note here that you don't HAVE to be a cash buyer at auction. You can also get a mortgage, but it has to be a quick one and it helps if you have a large deposit. So don't worry if you can't access a huge savings pot, houses are generally cheaper at auction, so there are still options, if you don't have a large pot of cash.

As the house was our only owned residence we were exempt from capital gains tax on the profits. We lived in a rental house whilst we did it up. And as it took us longer than 1 year, we were able to sell it without tax as it was classed as our home that we would one day move into. As circumstances weren't right with the house (wrong location for the kids schools etc, it was impractical to live there). We sold for good profit. And best of all this was all cash.

The £50k starting point was no longer £50k. And because we knew the reno process worked. We repeated the process. We bought again. By this time we could buy our own house for cash, which then affords a bit more financial freedom. We didn't buy the dream house, we bought a tiny house in a great street, in an area close to schools and our life, but out of our beautiful area. And we planned to add real value to it. Like a loft bedroom & open plan modern living downstairs. This way, we knew house prices would increase in this area to a certain level & sell once done up to a good standard. We've lived in this last reno house. With our 2 kids. To save us the extra wasted rental money (with the house being so close to our life / area). And we still live in that reno house. We call it our reno house, because it never really feels like our home. Home is wherever we are together and it's not about the house. We're coming close to finishing our current reno house getting ready to sell it. I'll post some finishing projects soon, as we have this blog now and whilst housey stuff / home reno stuff isn't exactly in keeping with a travel and lifestyle blog - it feels important to the travel journey.

finally getting the keys to our own house that we would live in whilst renovating. The last house in a plan to freedom.

Now, doing a house up as a reno project is no easy task & it's not for everybody. To start you've got to have a whole load of 'can be arsed'. On top of your job or business, it takes a lot of motivation to bother doing it up. It takes a lot of weekends and evenings where you'd rather be resting, going out, travelling etc. But if you have to 'go' and the motivation. For us this motivation was so deep within us: we wanted better for our family. And even though we'd done the right things: setting up our businesses, growing them, taking risks etc. It felt like we were never going to achieve anything other than an ordinary life doing this that way. WE wanted more.

With motivation & a lot of 'can be arsed' - doing a house up to sell for a profit can be a way to get onto the property ladder, or build up to start thinking about living the life you dreamed of. For us our dream life involves travelling, then one day settling in our favourite place with a view to building our own place. That's the actual dream. And 5 years to be living your dream is worth a shot in my book. We slogged and got to a place with options. And without our reno houses we'd be a million miles away. We'd be holding out for a lottery win! Instead, we had a dream, we actioned a plan, and we got cracking. We started. 5 years ago, it felt like an eternity away. But 5 years was not a long time & we still had fun along the way. The best time to start on your dream life was yesterday. The second best time to start is today. Read my post about time and starting something. Hopefully it will motivate & spur you on to just START whatever dream or plan you've got in mind.

I hope you liked reading our story. And got something useful from it. It is my biggest wish with this blog & website that I can inspire someone to think differently and just follow their dreams. To just start. Whether that's get that dream life, that dream job, lose that weight. If you believe you can do it, you're half way there. Action a plan. Start today. And one foot in front of the other, one step at a time, slowly the thing is done!

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