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
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