My Introduction.

Hello!
I asked if I could blog for Property Hawk and Hawkeye asked me to first post an introduction. So here it is...

I'm 24 from Warrington, Cheshire and I currently own 5 buy-to-lets and work as an Estate & Letting Agent in Liverpool.

I bought my first house in the summer of 2004 for £80k as I didn't like paying rent as a student. I took out a 97% LTV residential mortgage with my parents as guarantors, used £2,400 from my student loan for the deposit, and then got a full-time bar job to pay for the renovations. 3 months later I moved in and rented two of the rooms out which, in the beginning, meant I was actually making money after the mortgage and living for free! Awesome! That quickly changed however when interest rates went up but still...

I didn't buy another house until October 2006 after my first house had gone up £30k in value and remortgaged to realise some of the equity. By this time, although i'd graduated with a 2:1 in Business, I couldn't find a better job than being a barman! So that got rented out and I continued to work until January 2007 when I told everyone I was retiring to become a property mogul! Didn't quite pan out but hey!
So I then renovated that house, rented it out for more money and then used some of the left over equity left over from the first house to buy another one. Whilst undertaking a full renovation of that one I bought nextdoor-but-one too. They both got rented out and then I remortgaged the third one to buy the fifth for a steal.

During the buying of the 5th, I took a job at a small estate agents in Liverpool (forgive me if I refrain from giving the name...) and the Managing Director and I have gone from having less than 10 houses in November 2007 to over 60 sales & lettings today.

That's pretty much it for the past. Hopefully the future will hold some rapid growth through buying more houses against the ones I already have. When the market bottoms out (however we can tell!), I hope to buy up houses like they are going out of fashion and get them rented out quick sharp.
I'm sure i'm not alone with that plan...