Andrew Walker is a proud husband, father of two children, a successful global property investor, coach and entrepreneur. He has over fifteen years of experience in property investment and business management in South Africa and the United Kingdom. His current roles include:
• Chief Commercial Officer for United Kingdom Property Partners
• Property Sourcing Agent and Director for Investing North
• Franchisor and Director at Letsand Property Management
• Property Investor and Director at We Buy Your Home
• Property Coach and Director at Freedom Through Property
• Host and Director for SA Property Investors Network
How did you first become involved in the property industry? I’ ve always been entrepreneurial, from delivering newspapers in my neighbourhood at the age of twelve, to starting my first business – a sound engineering company – at the ripe age of fifteen! I’ ve also always known that property is the way forward. I bought my first investment property in Durban at the age of twenty-one. When I sold it for three times the amount I paid for it this sparked my interest in property investment.
How did you enter the offshore property market?
My wife, Simone, and I decided to move to the United Kingdom in 2005. We only intended to stay there for a year, but this has evolved into an incredible and lifechanging eight-year journey.
In 2006 I embarked on a journey of education and mentorship with Mathew Sneddon and did the same with Harry Barclay in 2014. Mathew and Harry are both lead property investment mentors within the United Kingdom and helped to accelerate my property portfolio.
With Mathew’ s help, I managed to purchase my first property investment in North East Lincolnshire, United Kingdom without using any of my own money. This first property was a dirty, smelly and run down house I purchased using bridge finance, credit cards and the local council’ s money. Following its refurbishment, I remortgaged the property and pulled every penny back out of the deal. To this day I still has this property, which gives me a neat little cash flow of £ 160 per month.
After this deal I got hooked on the idea of using other people’ s money and remortgaging properties to enable myself to purchase the next one.
How big is your property portfolio now? Since then I’ ve personally bought over 50 properties across the United Kingdom and South Africa. I recently divested from some of my properties in South Africa. Along my journey I’ ve helped international clients do the same and have personally been involved in over 500 property transactions to date.
What is your life philosophy? My motto is to build a solid foundation first. I compare this to climbing the corporate ladder: when you get into the corporate world you start from the bottom – it’ s the same in property. You start from the bottom, get the experience and confidence and then climb the property ladder.
Why did you move back to South Africa? I spent seven out of my eight years in the United Kingdom building my property businesses. But I believe that everyone should have balance in their life and, after having two kids, Simone and I decided to move back to South African. This was in 2013. I still spend a lot of time in the United Kingdom where I continue to grow my portfolio and help others do the same. My one passion is to help people – I get a buzz from it – so I decided to start coaching and teaching in what I believe in: property.
Tell us about your involvement in the events space
I saw a gap in the market for running networking events for property investors in South Africa. I ran my first event in November 2013 – with only 10 people in the room! At this event I met my current South African Business Partner, Warren Brusse, and together we’ ve built a network of over 50 000 property investors in South Africa. This is by far the largest networking community in South Africa and I have to say that I wont stop until we have at least 500 000 investors in the network!
What are your current property investment strategies?
• Buy to let and house of multiple occupation investment properties for professional tenants within Birmingham, Kingston upon Hull, Cleethorpes and Grimsby in the United Kingdom.
• Development and capital flips projects within Johannesburg, South Africa.
RESOURCES
Freedom Through Property
www. reimag. co. za FEBRUARY 2017 SA Real Estate Investor 41