Did you know that there's over 600,000 empty properties in the UK today?
Boy does that represent a fantastic opportunity for you.
But how do you find these empty properties?
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So, depending on the sources that you go to, yep, 600,000 empty properties in the UK today,
11,000 of which have been empty for in excess of 10 years.
I can't get my head around that.
It seems amazing when there's so much demand for property.
Can I suggest that if you can find one of these empty properties and connect with the
seller and put together a win/win solution for that seller, one that works firstly for
them, and I would suggest works secondly for you as a deal, you could potentially make
a lot of money.
But how do you find these empty properties?
Well, I've got loads of ideas that I could share with you here, but I wanted to share
a few quick ones that I know will work well for you.
So the first one is to contact the empty homes officer that works at your council, most councils
will have one of these, and have a chat to them.
I phoned three up in the run up to making this particular video and every single one
of them was really, really helpful people.
Sure, if you're going to ask for a list of all the empty residential properties in their
area, they're going to probably tell you to get lost, they would see that as being a real
invasion of privacy.
But they probably would share with you any empty residential properties that are owned
by any commercial entities.
Two of the three people that I spoke to were happy to do that, so that's a fantastic tip
for you.
Look on Rightmove, look for any properties that clearly show that they have empty rooms.
Speak to estate agents, they will of course know if any properties are empty and depending
on the level of rapport that you've built, and I talk about rapport a lot, they may well
share with you the motivation or the level of motivation of that particular seller.
Go to auctions, auctions are obviously usually going to be putting forwards empty properties,
let's be honest.
But by far the best way to find empty properties, in my opinion, is to simply keep your eyes
open.
Walk around your investment area and look out for empty properties.
You'll be surprised, I bet that within a mile's radius of where you live, there's one, or
two, or three, or five empty properties, you just haven't spotted them yet.
So what sort of things should you look out for?
Well let's start off with long term rubbish built up on the front garden.
Not short term rubbish, where they're clearly doing the place up, long term rubbish.
Or gardens that are completely overgrown, and goodness knows, I've seen plenty of those.
Or dirty, or broken windows for that matter.
Or maybe properties that have got boarded up doors or boarded up windows, or sometimes
you can look at the front of the house and you can see loads of mail piled up behind
the front door.
Although obviously, if you're looking for that kind of thing, mail piled up behind the
front door, be very wary if you're going to have to approach the house to actually look
for this.
If there's any question that the house may be occupied still, and you're going to know
really pretty quickly whether it is occupied, don't start looking in the front window, that
is really obviously the wrong thing to do.
Having said that, if I walk up to the front of a house and I'm really, really confident
it's empty, I'm going to be honest here, I am going to look through the front windows
and see if I can make sure that it is indeed empty.
Don't forget the owners of these particular properties are still going to probably be
paying council tax, they're probably going to be paying standing orders for electrics,
gas, water.
They're probably going to have maintenance issues on an ongoing basis, maybe they're
worried about vandalism.
You need to connect with these people and actually put together those win/win solutions
and finding the sellers is the next thing.
I did a great little video here which you should watch and it will give you four great
tips that will help you find the owners of those properties.
For more tips and tricks like this, be sure to subscribe to our channel, and also download
this 50 point checklist because it's going to really help you the next time you buy an
investment property.
My name's Tony Law from Your First Four Houses, with online training to help you build your
property portfolio.