How I went from zero to 28 year old property millionaire

can you live

on 48 pounds a week

can you live on 48 pounds a week because

that’s the average pension payout of the

average

pension pot in the uk after a lifetime

of saving

after your entire lifetime of saving now

i don’t say that to scare anyone i don’t

want us to be terrified but that’s what

we could be looking at if we’re left to

our own devices

and i say i don’t say that to scare

anyone i want us to take control

of our financial future you see

everyone’s heard that property is a good

investment

and a lot of people don’t know how or

why you know it is so

as a result they don’t get into it and

what i want to share with you in the

next 15 minutes

is not just why we should but why we

must do so

to take control of our financial future

for those of you who don’t know me my

name is dan bucken i’m a

business owner an author and a property

investor

and i’m 28 years old which i get is a

weird

occupation for a 28 year old

and you know i didn’t start with bags

full of money i started with none and i

hope that by sharing my story with you a

bit of the lessons i’ve learned

and some of the mistakes and screw-ups

as well hopefully

sharing that starts with me today that’s

a spark to maybe have a look at

property in a way you’ve never thought

possible before in a way that’s more

accessible before

and if you were with me seven years ago

i’d be sat in these exact same chairs

exact same chairs you’re sat in right

now taking exams

at the university of york and it’s funny

that no matter what exam you take

it’s always the most important one in

life

i was brought up in a very middle-class

upbringing my um mum’s an accountant my

dad’s an auditor

and for those of you who are feeling

familiar with the in-betweeners i don’t

know if you’ve seen that show

it was very much the setting of my

upbringing you know that was

it was very much me and so i went to

you know do gcses and i was told son

these are the most important exams in

your life

and maybe you had this at a levels child

these are the most important exams in

your life

and then maybe your lecturers at

university maybe there’s some lecturers

in the room

i’ve told you these are the most

important exams

in your life maybe not first year

and i was brought up with that

upbringing and i was taught to make

money

i needed to go to school get good grades

and get a job

and 16 year old me thought that sounds

good you know let’s

have a go at that and at 16 i wanted

some stuff

i don’t know if you think about the kind

of stuff you wanted when you were 16.

you know i wanted to make some money i

don’t think we talk about making money

enough

and there’s no problem with saying that

and so when i turned 16 i decided to go

down to

um the town center where i was from in

south east london and get a job in a

retail store

and i had a vision it was a very

specific vision of what i wanted

i wanted it to be able to buy a car

because that was going to get me to the

top of the cool ladder in my head

whether it worked or not i’m not sure

but it wasn’t just any car

it was a peugeot 206 cc convertible

in black with red leather seats

and i wanted that and 500 pound worth of

river island clothes

that’s what i needed and i had a little

spreadsheet and all of that came to 3

600 pounds so i thought okay cool i’ve

got my little part-time job but

it wasn’t building up enough so i needed

to get another one and at 18 i got a job

as a mystery shopper

you know going into supermarkets and

kind of doing that sort of thing

and i started to have money coming in

but it was it was kind of like holding

on to sand you know

the money was coming in but it kept

slipping through my fingers

and maybe you found that with trying to

save up money and stuff like this

and it was then i was at a fork in the

road i could either choose to go into

um you know education as i always

planned to do and still would continue

to do

or i could take a year out and see how

much money i could make

that’s what okay you know i haven’t

achieved my goal yet i’ll take a year

out and see if i can make some money

and still with the same mindset i used

the only time i had available which was

night time

now i don’t know if you’ve been in a

nighttime job but i got a job in a place

called watts farm and if you can imagine

a warehouse size refrigerator bigger

than this room

that was the place i worked and it was

nine at night till six in the morning

and i would go to this farm at nine at

night you know

running around finish at six in the

morning and then maybe have a nap in the

car before starting

my retail job at ten finishing that at

four o’clock

maybe having a bit more sleep because he

still needs to sleep right

and then coming on to you know going to

some mystery shops and then back at the

farm and this was again

and again every single day i didn’t have

any time left to make money with

and maybe you’ve seen this cycle you

know maybe you’ve been in this cycle

and i started to realize that the wealth

wasn’t accumulating and working for

other people wasn’t working for me

so i needed to do something different i

needed to re-wire my thinking

to take control of my financial future

and i did what any self-respecting

teenager would do i went straight to

google

and i saw that people were making money

in stocks and shares and so i thought

okay you know i’ve had a job and now

let’s have a look at stocks and shares

and

myself and my business partner jamie

york we use the small amount of money we

had and we

put it into high risk sort of stocks and

shares

and we made quite a bit of money doing

it we made tens of thousands of pounds

and i thought i was a genius

i thought i was really smart but what do

you think happens

when a 19 year old suddenly has some

money

spend here disappears isn’t it and i

spent it having a really good time

um i went to university and i decided to

i’ve lived within sort of walking

distance of the campus but i still get

taxes everywhere

i ended up that i did purchase a car but

it wasn’t the peugeot it was a mercedes

instead

and so i bought that and then i realized

that after time i wanted you know i

didn’t

i didn’t tell my parents about the

mercedes because my head i hadn’t made

it yet

so i didn’t tell them and then just

decided instead to hide it around the

corner when they came up

so they did and eventually i got um

caught because i got a parking ticket

sent home so i wasn’t obviously the

brightest person

knowing and i then thought okay

this money isn’t replacing itself this

money isn’t continuing to come in

so i had to do something again different

i was yet again another fork in the road

and had to rewind my thinking and maybe

you’ve had a chance encountering your

life and for me i had a chance encounter

i realized that there was there was a

chapel in my university quite alex

and he was studying politics philosophy

economics he was doing the same degree

as me

at the same university at this

university he was a couple of years

older

but he was already a property

millionaire and i thought wow how

how did he do that and so again i was a

decision sort of fork in the road i was

looking at the corporate job that i was

lining up and then i looked at

what he had and i thought you know what

i want to try and do that

again though i had to rewind my thinking

because i had some conceptions and

preconceptions about property

and i needed to challenge those and

having now built up a portfolio i can

kind of

help with the answers to those because i

thought the rich invest in property

maybe you’ve thought this as well but

then i started to think what if the rich

are wealthy because they invest in

property

i can tell you now that of the forbes

1000 886 have made or put their wealth

into property

it’s what the the asset class of the

rich choose to invest in

i also thought that you need to have

money to have property and i’ve spent

all of mine

and but money’s more accessible now than

it ever has been

interest rates are a record low people

need to make use of their money in

savings accounts

in studying wealthy people i’ve come

across across a chap called robert

kiyosaki

and he says that every person’s got a

money problem for most people they don’t

have enough for some people

they’ve got too much and for those

people they’ve got too much they need to

invest it

and helping them invest in property is a

way we can do that

says story and also can i afford not to

do it as well and we’ll come on to that

shortly

i also thought can i do this just a

little bit of personal

you know belief can i do this can you do

this

i realize that more people now are doing

this than ever before for the historians

amongst you there was a

landowner’s return in 1883 where all the

property in great britain and ireland

was owned by half of it was owned by 4

200 people

today there are 2.5 million landlords

and a lot of them were just with a few

houses

there’s more people doing this now than

there ever has been so

that kind of possibility started to open

up for me

and what i want to share with you is why

property as an asset class

is something that we should get into and

how the best way i can think to explain

that with the experience i’ve gained is

through just showing how i made money

through the other ways so in a job

i had a salary coming in and obviously

some of you they’re employed maybe

you’ve got that too

but what happens if you become ill

what happens if the company stops you

know the the money stops as well doesn’t

it

and also it takes a long time to get a

massive growth in that salary

so i thought okay that’s cool um what

about stocks and shares

stocks and shares go up over time they

appreciate in capital value they do

um but also you get a dividend income so

you’re making wealth in two ways there

but i found that it took a lot of

expertise to invest in stocks and shares

you know to choose the right ones and

that sort of thing and you might

the other thing with stocks and shares

is the value can go all the way down to

zero

now again with a bit of expertise maybe

you can sort of mitigate that but i’m

sure the people who invested in blue

chip stocks like kodak thought their

investment was safe

and property makes us money in three

different ways so you get the rental

income coming in over time

regardless of whether or not you’re

there or not it comes in when you sleep

continuously it’s really passive if you

have a letting agent as well

you get the capital growth over time

property on average doubles every 10 to

12 years in the uk

now let’s be under no illusion that is

not a straight line upwards and we’re

going to look into that in a second

and then you also get the rental growth

as well and this is the one people most

often forget

is that rents grow at faster than

inflation’s more and more people need in

housing

and so you have freeways there that the

property generates your wealth but when

you consider that you can leverage this

it adds a kind of a superpower to it you

know 25 000 pound deposit buys a hundred

thousand pound house

it starts to blow the other asset

classes out the water and you can really

see why

wealthy people choose to invest their

money into property

now what i’m not saying is don’t get a

job

i think that could be terrible advice

but i want this to be the spark that

makes us think about

property investment as a nest egg for

the future a nest egg that grows itself

to continue to protect yourself so

you’re not living on 48 pounds a week

and nowadays i’ve built up a property

investment company we’ve sold over 40

million pound worth of property to

hundreds of investors

and i’ve trained thousands of people in

property investment and

some of the things i’ve learned and the

facts particularly about capital growth

i feel like i should

share with you um because properties

grown in the uk is one of the oldest

asset classes

in 1086 the doomsday book valued all the

land in england

at 75 000 pounds who wishes they’d

invested then by the way

by all the land in england for 75 grand

and

what about recently because you know

maybe you plan on living for a millennia

for a thousand years i hope you do

but a lot of people won’t and so since

1950 the average house price in 1950 was

1

891 pound just shy of two grand today

is 240 000 pounds

so that’s in recent times and people

might also say what about the times

during the crash

in halifax uh they valued all the

property in the whole uk this time

just shy of 4 trillion and this was in

2007

just before the pinnacle of the market

went down

10 years later that same property after

the gone down and up

was worth 6 trillion across the whole of

uk

and this really shows that even the

price changes are okay with us you see

property is like a roller coaster the

prices

do go up and like a roller coaster they

do go down but the only time a roller

coaster is

really dangerous is if we get off in the

middle of the ride

so what i wanted to have a quick look at

just to make sure because that’s

why we should do this but why we must do

this

just to compare what happens if we leave

ourselves our own accord

in the average pension pot in the uk 61

897 pounds

according to the guardian and that’s

just the people with pensions by the way

and this is after a lifetime of saving

so i want you just to kind of project

forward in your head you know what am i

going to start doing about this what am

i going to start

putting in place because if left your

own devices at 48 pounds a week is kind

of the annuity

that’s what could happen and on top of

that

the pension might go to your spouse when

you pass away but you can’t pass it down

you know so that money disappears with

property if we look at a hundred

thousand pound house

we might think okay cool that’s

fantastic um we’ll add four percent

growth per year which is very

conservative by the way but let’s be

conservative with the numbers

it makes you four thousand pound a year

in capital appreciation

they might make four thousand pound a

year in net rent winter that’s eight

thousand pounds a year

for that hundred grand house and that

makes you money it works out to be 21

pounds and 92 pence a day

every single day for the lifetime of the

investment

so not wait until retirement it starts

now and einstein says that compound

interest

is the eighth wonder of the world and

with property you really take advantage

of that

you get that for yourself to help grow

and protect yourself

so how do we do it again i want today to

be a kind of spark to let you know that

property is more accessible than maybe

you fought in the past

how is it we can get into it though this

is how i managed to do is invest we’re

using other people’s money

again lots of people have funds set in

savings accounts and

they need to make use of that maybe it’s

time to start talking with friends and

family

lots of families invest together you

know they buy maybe one house

and even if you put one every 10 years

that’s still starting that nest egg for

your future

and that’s what we want to protect

ourselves from people can save in isis

and then invest in property when they

have enough

you know there’s i’m not saying though

you need to suddenly jump in and dive

into this

i actually nearly failed my degree

because i got into property full-time

and whilst i’m happy with that now what

i guess i mean is that

if you have a job and a stable income

put some money aside invest in property

it’s also good fun as well then you

build up that nest egg over time

there’s rent to you can learn to invest

as well so i learned to do it um

the vision of my company is to be able

to grow the wealth grow people’s wealth

through property investment i’ve just

finished a good book called the property

strategy guide

which helps people do just that

you can have a rent to buy scheme and

some people may not know these exist is

where you rent a property and

incrementally save to purchase the house

so you do up the house you rent in and

you benefit from the capital value

appreciation

and the improvements you make and you

can also

pay someone else to do it via sourcing

service so there’s a couple of different

companies out there

that help people invest in property so

there’s plenty of ways that we can get

into property

and increasingly companies will let you

letting you invest via crowdfunding so

even if you have small amounts of money

you can get into it now

and get a feel and a taste for it

it’s not for me to say what is to do

with wealth we create

you know not everyone wants a peugeot

206

as much as i wish they did not everyone

does but it is for me to give you maybe

another avenue and have a look at some

property in a way that you haven’t done

before maybe it’s a way that’s more

accessible that you have done before

because if we do what we’ve always done

we’ll have what we’ve always had

if we do what we’ve always done we’ll

have always had and i don’t want this to

be maybe the spark for you to think

about putting that in your future

so that you can create the wealth that

you want to

you’ve all been amazing and i’ve been

done