Hey everyone, it's Rob B here with Rob D and you are listening to the property podcast. Today we have an episode that will leave you inspired. I've been inspired and I know you will absolutely love the story that it's about to be told.
Welcome to the property podcast. Thank you for joining us. In case you don't know, we run a business that buys over 100 million pounds worth of property every year. You can find out about that property hub.net slash invest. And today we're sharing with you one of my favorite conversations of the year. It's time for our new story of the week now. And this week's new story comes from the Sunday Times. I find publication and you should check out the home section. There's a wonderful column in there by two property experts. Definitely worth checking that out. But
We focus on this story which is Labour will build fewer houses than the Tories according to the OBR. Now Labour, one of their big policies, one of their big campaigns is how they were going to build more homes than ever before.
They barely got comfortable before the OBRs come out with a report and said, your numbers are rubbish. You're not going to deliver those numbers. And actually you're going to fall way, way short. And so short in fact, they will deliver fewer homes than the Tories did in the same time period.
So what are the numbers? Well, Labour has a target of 1.5 million homes to be built for England alone. The OBR expects that in England they will build just 1.1 million.
and in total 1.3 million. And the 1.1 million is a third lower than the government targets. It's not going to miss it by a couple of percent. According to the OBR, the plans that Labor have in place cannot be delivered. Now, Rob, we often will turn on our microphone to make fun of house building targets because over the long
period that we've been doing this podcast now. I don't believe that any government has hit a target that they said they were going to deliver. Maybe they've delivered a year, but certainly nothing over a parliament term has been delivered. And we consistently under deliver on this. So this isn't a shock to us, but for Labour, it must be a bit of a blow because this was one of their leading policies. And for the OBR to come out and basically go, it's rubbish. It's not great luck, is it?
No, the OBR's been causing some problems for labor because they also came out and said that their growth budget was basically not going to deliver any growth because they give a pile up a lot of debt and not much to show for it. So that wasn't great. And now they come out with this. So the OBR are probably not going to find their way onto many labor politicians' Christmas card lists.
They, of course, have fought back and they said the OBR forecast does not account for the steps we're taking to unblock the planning system. We've also set up a new town's task force. That's what I heard that before and announced plans to open up brownfield sites. I think in there somewhere is a germ of truth in that.
We were talking about the government building houses. No government builds houses. I mean, social houses can get built, but hardly any of it. House builders build houses. So the way for government to facilitate that is to try to foster confidence in the economy and in business in general. And when it comes to housing, get out the way and not create barriers.
If they can do those things, then maybe this number will be higher. But one thing's for sure, we're not going to end up with a sudden oversupply. When these numbers started getting kicked around, we'd have the old question for people saying, well, does this mean that property prices will suffer? Because so much extra supply will be coming on. No, you would need to have some pretty elevated confidence levels in the power of politicians to believe that that was going to be the case. I'd say, Rob, whatever the number, we're still going to be looking at some variation of undersupply.
Karl Tranter is our guest on this week's episode, and he has achieved phenomenal things in property in what I consider to be a relatively short space of time. In a decade, he's taken a small property portfolio to something that most of us will just dream of achieving, well over 100 by Tilets. Now of course, we're not just going to give you what he's done, we're going to get into how he's done it.
The ups and downs of that incredible journey. And trust me when I say this, there's loads that you will learn from this inspiring story. Let's get into it. Cool. Remind me where and when we met, it was in Leicester, wasn't it? And how long ago? Yeah, it would have been late 2015 at one of the property hood meetups. Yeah. So nine years ago, what did your portfolio look like at that point?
So I was just over three years into my property, business and investment journey, if you like. I had three by two let's then bought my first one in 2012, my second one in January 2014, then moved out of the place where I lived in Kedla as a part of that as well in 2015.
Okay, so three at that point. And I remember that evening, I remember meeting thinking, yeah, we as a nice chap, he seems to be doing fine. What I didn't think was that I was meeting a future mogul and mega landlord. Where are you now? What does the portfolio look like today? Nine years on? So since born develops around a hundred units, of which we own all of them, stealth, and we've got about another hundred and
40 are under development at the moment on site or very nearly complete across four sites. So that's insane. Almost nobody ends up at that scale. Nine years is kind of a long time, but it's also really not in property things take time. It's amazing for anyone listening who wants to do the same or even a fraction of that. Let's figure out how you did this. Maybe let's have a more context.
What does the portfolio look like now? Obviously, if it was like one tower block with 100 units, that'd be very different if you had 100 separate houses. So where is it? I know it's in between those two.
Yeah, probably 90% of the completed stock or stock in development is from conversions, town centres, city centres in East Midlands, predominantly developed from old office blocks or space above retail. We keep some retail commercial units and small service businesses since 2020. It does small conversion in 2020 of a single retail unit with a single apartment above.
And just growing it on since there. So, I mean, I should say that even in 2017, the portfolio of Bitalettes had only reached a grand total of seven. Didn't buy anything throughout 2018, 2019, because the Bitalette market was quite tough and prices had moved on, whereas rents hadn't really.
So what changed? What changed in 2020? That's when we started looking at myself, my business partner. Peter, we used to work together in corporate life. He went to Australia for a couple of years from construction and came back in 2019, bought another buy to let, would sort of have conversations throughout the period, 2015, 2019 about land.
They'd started with his own investments and when he came back, he had a conversation about retail specifically. I'd been looking for office blocks to convert small ones for a couple of years without much luck. I couldn't get a lot to make financial sense.
And I saw a lot of them think for what I perceived to be to expensive prices. I thought the retail was where the opportunity wasn't by the spring of 2020. Obviously, we all know what happens. We thought the retail was even an even better opportunity at that point. The challenge was actually getting some viewings and being able to buy stuff.
What was the size of the first by-to-let deal you did in 2020? These things are everywhere. It was in a town called Swadlingko, the traditional working-plus town in South Derbyshire, lots of industry, good rental demand. But a warm bedroom apartment, for example, might at the time have rented 375, 400 pounds a month. It's not peak demand area for small living. You could buy a terraced house at the time, probably from 85k.
We paid £61,000 for a poor shop. It was a chain of them a little while back when into administration went into a local auction made a pretty auction bid on the day of the auction. We originally agreed a price at 55k and we were told there was another buyer whether there was or not. We're not sure. But
We almost didn't buy it for £1,000 to our Cafford 60. I convinced Pete the extra thousand was worth it. We collected the keys on a Friday evening, took away our sledgehammers to the shop and started ripping out that night. By Saturday afternoon, we were putting the fire operations in and we had some help. In the old days of Class G permitted development, he even had a prior notification period. It was permitted and that was that.
We had somebody in mind for a commercial tenancy downstairs at a local barbers that was moving out of a shop to set up on his own. We offered to help with this fit out because it wasn't a builder. I tried to help with that. The idea was a 25 square meter studio upstairs, really nice, high end competing with the HMO market.
but a nice small flap in the towel center. It took us about nine weeks in total. Let me spend 11,000 pounds. The commercial tenant did spend about 13,000 as well on their fit out, but obviously that didn't come out of our pockets. So yeah, we were all in for 73, 74,000.
I think the tenant moved in on November the 1st, we completed on June the 18th, there's three or four months or period there. The commercial tenant was open by the end of August, maybe even mid-August, and so we rented the shop for £650 a month, and we got £450 for the studio, which
50,000 more than a normal one bed flat. It broke the ceiling even though it was smaller than average, which was good. The tenants stayed for three years in the residential element and the commercial tenant moved out after about three and a half years. They were on a 10 year lease without a break, but
They needed a bigger parenthesis. We said, as long as they were reasonable, they came and said, well, I'm planning to move out after Christmas. Can we relax this? And I was only getting a new tenant on. Are you happy to let me go with that penalty? So we did that. And then we've been running the studios service departments. The numbers got considerably better at that point. Even before that, doing quick rough maths, I make that at least a 17% gross yield.
He was pretty good. The gross rent was 13,200 a year. We got it refinanced in the second lockdown on a mixed-use commercial mortgage with Shawbrook. And they valued it about 146, but they'd only lend based on vacant possession because of all the sort of.
uncertainty around retail and Covid period. And then they'd only lend that. I think it was 65% LTV. We got a £83,000 release from the mortgage. So all of our money out plus some mortgage payment to £424 a month. So
Yeah, pretty good return. It's amazing. So that's a great first project, but it'd be intimidating for a lot of people because there's commercial element and a refurb element, but it still feels like a long way from the huge schemes that you're doing now. Let's map out the next chunk of that journey over the next year to is whatever it was. Did you do more like that? Or did you start stepping it up? It has been quite an organic step to process.
See, in the time that the reefer was going on, we were pursuing a couple of ballistic buildings in central Derby and Spanish to complete one around the end of October 2020. A big premise is about 200 square meters across three floors.
We knew we could get two two-bedroom apartments on the upper floors, had some rear access, which was nice as well. And then, yeah, made the shop downstairs on the business rates threshold for small business rates relief of central tenants looking at half the outlay that they would be on a monthly basis compared with a shop that was even more generally bigger.
It also had a neighboring shot that kind of shared the rear access and had quite a nice garden and was on one of the quite old streets that you find in most cities, built into four or 500 years old and where the premium shops are. So we were pretty confident in the demand for commercial tendencies there. That took us through the first part of 2021, when you go show you did a leasehold purchase in Anita Workshop for four apartments above retail.
Right in the town opposite McDonald's and converted them in late 2021. That took us into 2022. We did a small office in Derby to five apartments in only 2022. We were also negotiating a purchase throughout 2021 of a solicitor's office in Burnon, Trent.
Some law changes were coming in there. We took a bit of a punt in solicitor's offices, which used to be categorized as going into class E on the new class MA that had a nice garden, stretched into the river train and confirmation area. Out of all space for a town centre apartment is rare. That's some nice feature. We got seven apartments and two retail units.
Up to that point, there's a few constraints that people normally come across doing the kind of thing you do. They could be finding opportunities in the first place. They could be time because that's a lot to juggle. But most commonly money, how are you financing this? Yeah, I'm not going to pretend there's some magic bullet because we all know there isn't and all those challenges that you call to our don't go away.
Anybody's thinking about doing it, be prepared for that. We use development funding from traditional banks and development sources, but to the best list is office where we did seven apartments and two retail. We just used private investment or our own money, just from refinances, rental income and savings, pretty much every penny that we had.
Were you living off the rental income that you were generating? Or were you rolling that back into future deposits? Around August, we were mid build of the first conversion. All when he generated from that point, stayed in the business and did up until April the year. So we've not taken any rental income or capital from the business until then. So for a sort of three and a half, four year period.
Obviously, I have my portfolio that supported my income. I think it's important to get yourself to a base where you can survive without being reliant on the things that you're trying to build, which is difficult and takes a long time to me eight years to get to that point. And it was only really from sort of 2016, 2017 that I decided that might be a possibility. Property was very much a pension for me up to that point. So it was only three years, really.
So was there a point at which you had a particular goal or you committed? And because I hear at this point in the story on the threshold of moving up to the 30 something unit development, which is getting into the much bigger league. So had you before doing that gone, we can do this. Let's go bigger. Or was it more opportunistic? How much has planned out? I was at my mum's property in Spain in 2017, reading your book beyond the bricks. I remember the guys from Wolverhampton. That's when I decided to find
applied some plan and to gusto to property investment that might be a route to supporting my life. From then I saw I need to get to 10 properties just because it was a round number and I could sustain and lifestyle average net income of 350 to 500 pounds a month from an average to letting the Midlands sort of thing. I felt we could support that.
Once I got close to that, it was then a 31 property so that I could get paid on every day of the month and just have something to smart a pound just because that was a kind of nice number. And then obviously as that got surpassed it. And then yeah, there is no necessary goal or.
specific number that we chase. It was about organic growth and return on time. You know, people say there's not a lot more effort in a 32 apartment scheme than a nine apartment scheme. Some of that is true from a developer's point of view and tasks that you have to complete is the case. There's inherent increased risk with some things, but I don't think that's necessarily unique size. There's lots of variables to obviously create that
One thing we have stuck to is staying low on the risk side with it being 90% conversions. We can stay away from new build where possible. We have looked at stuff and done stuff and Pete's background in building new builds is there. Putting space in the ground comes with risk.
We don't sell any developments that we're not exposed to the sales market, which is not a place where I'd like to have been in the last couple of years. Strong rental areas in big towns and cities in the center. There's always rental demands and everything will let up some price, not using full money position.
as a way of removing risk. Also, 95% of schemes we've done are forensic development. We have done a full planning or site subjector planning, which we decided to sell and not develop. We have construction completely in-house. We made that decision in 2021 when we were on the project.
And everybody who spent lots of money on the houses, new driveways and extensions, and all the local contractors were busy printing money from the funds that people had during that period. And we found it hard to get contractors into a town center where they car park, short storm materials, can't get waste off site, that sort of thing. We weren't the most competitive and knew what stuff should cost. So we were stringent on the contract. We decided we had the contacts to take that in-house. And I think that's helped us grow in not just the same manner, but take those jumps.
For very bigger conversions, the problem comes with landing because...
Every lender wants you to have done 10 projects the same size. The way we structure things helps with that in the end and getting a track record, both on the contracting side and the development side. Of course, it's hard to work. Yeah, that's great. And I'm curious about alignment and your partnership with Peter, because I've been in a business partnership for a long time as well, and it's worked out really well. But you need to be aligned on some pretty big decisions, especially in what you're doing. So like, for example,
not taking any money out. That's quite a commitment. And also, when you come to scale up, how much risk you are willing to take, how has that worked? Did you ever sit down and work something out between you, or has it just evolved?
I think JVs should be entered into with caution. Many of them go wrong because people don't do some of the things that your question alludes to. So do as I say, not as I do, because I'd known Peter since 2012, like we were new to each other in space away from business. That doesn't mean it's going to work. We agreed very much back with a fag packet sort of shareholders agreement, which
what money we'd got, how we were going to buy things and what we were going to do. Peter was still employed by a contractor at this point. It was very much in the spare time of forming a business session kitchen table and that sort of thing.
Oh, we did write out a bullet pointed gel agreement between ourselves. And we didn't really agree roles necessarily. It was just very much a natural, we knew each other's strengths, witnesses, and to this day, that is the case. We don't discuss who's going to do what very often, maybe with some small stuff.
But we are very different, and we think differently. I'm more strategic, Peter thinks from here and now, I'm always thinking about next year, which works in any partnership. There's no point having two people the same by any stretch, just getting your own sort of echo chamber. And we have disagreements, most days, and have for four years, never fallen out. And we respect each other's view on the thing that the other person is stronger at. It might be a subject area where one of us has got
more knowledge or experience of the other willing to go with that view. And it doesn't mean that's always right. Of course, like this, the challenge to that is sometimes right. Yeah, proven that over time, made mistakes and from women move on. I think you can over-complicate it. That's for sure. There's no formal written plan or wealth dynamics. I think we're both unaware of our strengths without spending too much time on the science. Sure. Have there been any major differences of opinion?
There's been times where we've bought something where one of us was not so convinced at the other and times where we'd both been convinced and probably both being not wrong, but beyond reflection would have done things differently. No, there's never been a lock of horns where we go, we need to do this. And the deal of person said, no, we don't think. I think we're both quite willing to, if we do it, that
somebody is going to be wrong. And hopefully that works out in our favor. It's okay being wrong when it's worked out. Well, isn't it? Yeah, being able to disagree well is important. And if once you're pursuing a course of action to both be committed to it, even if it's not what you would have done, rather than griping or told you work, that's super important. I would have liked some more drama for the podcast, but I'm happy for you. Let's move on now to the first kind of significantly bigger scheme. You say a bit more about the background to that one, how it came about.
Yeah, we took on a 32 apartment scheme towards the end of 2022. It was a site actually had planning for the two apartments and it was quite a difficult purchase because the vendor had obtained prior approval, but the architect had left in stairwells at either side of this big concrete office block.
Which didn't go to the ground floor. It was on top of a shopping sensor So it was incorrectly designed and eight apartments couldn't actually be accessed like it was just fictitious the drawing this had been corrected but not via the planning department It left us in a situation where this had been missed and you didn't says important but we have to complete on the building, but
basically with the premise of just having to design our own scheme because the scheme that we had could be built. That obviously made the purchase lending or difficult. So we were in a purchase bridge on this and the vendor helped with deferred consideration of half the purchase price. We obtained our own scheme for 32 apartment. The original scheme had some three bad apartments, which we didn't think would appeal.
in a town centre like the Newton wasn't too well designed. We created basically four wings of eight apartments in the mirror image. We started to build July last year, really the end of June, and it's been finished for
quite a period of time now we're just waiting for some commercial fire doors and electricity to be connected in the street. Utilities are always a challenging development and anyone getting into it that should be the first thing you saw out in any scheme. We bought with the purchase bridge and then obtained a development loan once we'd got the prior approval through which came through about the end of
It was mid-April, actually, as it was the 19th for the 32 apartments. It raised the development facility of about 1.4 million, and yeah, we're hoping the end valuation comes in a few weeks, around or 4 million, and raised to 75%, sort of.
buy to let mortgage at scale, if you like, and we'll tune it pretty hard, bought mortgage. Yeah, for about 75% of that and repay our debt. Yeah, that must have been a big cash commitment, right? Yeah, indeed. We raised about 300k with private investment, and we had about 220k, maybe 250 in the end, sort of fees and stuff, because of the problems we had and other outplay. So I was probably there with the 300 mark in terms of
By the end of getting on to the development facility, but the initial purchase put back to 120k of the directors own funds into that. On the financing side, how did the private finance come about? Something else which gets taught a lot is going to use other people's money, but obviously it's harder than that in reality.
It was through a contact that I sat on a private mastermind that came about through some sort of training years ago. And yeah, that was injected in because of kind of trap record and reputation. We'd used the same avenue to purchase the solicitor's office in Burton on a temporary basis.
because we weigh in some money from a refiner that's to pay that back. That's structured on a debt basis, not equity. We don't do equity investments generally. I don't think anybody should have 20 business partners. I don't think it's an efficient use of anybody's done. I think it's very tough to find 20 JV partnerships and keep them all successful. That's something that we try and stick to. We could have done a lot more. We get a lot of offers to do JVs and stuff and have done for a number of years, but
Probably a little bit less, but in the longer run, I think it will serve well. I'm really interested with this one with 32. This is why I thought you might challenge your view of keeping hold of everything, because that's a lot to keep hold of. So you go, well, we could sell some of release and cash. We've got a big concentration in one area. Has this ever been a conversation for you? Or are you just like very much set on? No, we're ending a lot.
You have to consider the size of the town and the market when looking at a large number of units. I would hope once, necessarily, I've had that site doing 80 units, probably not. And we decided to do all one bedroom apartments here in this 32 where there was some debate about it and some two bedroom apartments.
We had some stock in the town or bedroom partners, and there isn't a lot of that. There's a lot of investment going to the town center and Hilton. I was helping build big redevelopment of shopping centers. We knew there was demand and the amount of industry, big sheds and business parks. We knew that there was a lot of inward migration of employment.
We found there was good demands there. The biggest factor is that there wasn't much good quality stock, especially not on the bedroom front parking as well. Pretty unique. If the product is good enough, that's our job to deliver that then, you know, it's absolutely fine. And every single project is broken through the rental ceiling for what it is, which we'd expect from new build property. I think if you create the demand or at least spot the demand, that's what we met. Then there's also opportunity.
Yeah. Okay. In terms of where we're up to in the story, what number of units does this development get you up to? What else is going on? What else is in play at the moment? So that's technically still in construction, but it finished. We've then got a 15 apartment site and look, bro, which is stripped out, but not doing much with it this year. We've got planning permission for nine apartments, but we're increasing that. So just delivers a much better scheme.
And then we're on site at the 73 apartment scheme in the center of Derby, the former DWP job center, short for about sort of five years. And we've got another company purchases going through. And so we've also been doing a block of 12 in Derby, a block of four up the road, I was trying to think all the stuff's going on at the same time, as well as some sort of refurb stuff.
The big time to obviously the main focus next year, we're hoping to be finished by the end of next year. Granger have just built the UK's biggest landlord and PLC, built a 300 unit scheme on a regeneration area opposite the road. We've got a performance venue that's going to house 3000 people regularly for gigs and shows. Literally right opposite us. We're hoping that creates some
demand in the short term, but that whole area is having 200 million spent on it with part of that. The investment agents in Derby and the council are doing good things, putting Derby on the national stage. There's a lot of people talking about Derby. Nationally, I talk to people in London and from the south, they're buying in Derby. Don't advertise it too much and create too much competition.
The only two many people will be troubling the same scale. You are in Derby. So that's probably okay. You've got a lot going on, which I suppose there has to be, because you'd need things at different stages. How do you juggle it all? Both on a personal level, it is just keeping it straight in your head, but also with your team, making sure you've got teams ready to go at the right time, especially with there's so many moving parts that planning can come to a different stages. It just seems like a impossible puzzle to self.
It always feels impossible, incredibly difficult to keep everything aligned. Of course, things go wrong. It's far from perfect. So you know yourself, like property, even at a small scale, it creates its own sort of challenges. So yes, that is tough. I'm not here to say this is for everyone because
It really isn't. Vanilla by Tilla Investing is absolutely fantastic. And there was probably the best time since I started for purchasing net returns or getting back to or ahead of where they were six to seven years ago on a light for light basis. I can only compare the properties I've got now that I still had then. There's
negative sentiment in an experienced landlord, managing that huge beast. There was aggressive growth up to the sheer and the sheer has been for consolidation, getting the business organized, running separate businesses, the asset business, the construction business, the development SPVs all have to be assessed in their own merits.
To be able to grow and be credible at a larger scale to us, but keep an accounting structure, all those things. There's been a lot going on this year. I think there's good advice in taking people off before you need them, because when you take them afterwards, there's catching her, I did lots of long days, stress, hair loss, remaining hairs going growing, that sort of thing.
Anyone listening to cars still looks wonderful. He's over-rigging it. But I was going to ask what a day a week looks like for you when you are juggling all this. If I'm local and around and on, which is difficult, but if I'm on holiday, it's mainly spent working from a different location. But yeah, we try to keep Mondays pretty structured and have scheduled meetings with the people that run each bit of the business if you like, particularly Monday afternoons. We used to try and do it on a Monday morning and
We just found that there are too many instructions and people wanting our attention. So we take that period to fight a few fires and keep up with people happy, but it's got their own agenda on a Monday morning. So we've just succumbed to that facts and say, we try and get some of that done payroll for the contractions. Lots of admin in the office. Myself and people stay out of that, let things process. Monday afternoon, week structure is formal meetings and get the plan for the rest of the week.
as well as look at our reporting for the previous week as that be on the rent collection side on cash flow planning for the construction side of things.
And just those big tasks that we need to get involved with Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, very much about out and about doing site visits, meeting people, just greasing those big wheels if you like and getting things done. Fridays, we tend to be pretty quiet from income and traffic. We plan more strategic stuff. I spend a lot of time on a Sunday when the phone is not ringing and people are doing things with the kids and stuff like that.
Yeah, it's a seven-day operation. I'm trying to enjoy a bit of downtime on a Saturday, but that all just depends on what's going on. By the time you've finished what you've got in the pipeline, you could just stop at that point. You own everything. The rent would give you a very nice lifestyle. You've got the potential to have other little offshoots, like your lettings as well. You could stop there. Yeah, we could have stopped last year. And some days you've gone, oh, we should have.
Yeah, no, absolutely. By the end of the year, we'll be 200 units. I don't go HMOs, which kind of keeps some of the hairs that I've had. This is the first time we're not buying anything bigger than what we've currently got on site. We shall see this year's been very much about organizing what we've got. We've created this big storm of
into flowing capital and everything being built. We decided to rebase and focus on what we've bought, as you said. We do have a decision whether we take it to another level or not. I honestly better ask you. The fact that you've bootstrapped from a small portfolio to going toe to toe with big, built or rent operators in a decade is
Unbelievable. Congratulations on everything you've done. And thank you for taking the time to tell us about it. Thanks for having us for your time. Thanks Rob.
Wow, sir. That was incredible. Thank you again to Carl for coming on to the show. That was just a brilliant story. So much in there that you can take away. So many nuggets. It's one of those episodes that you just want to get your pad and pen out and think, OK, I need to up what I'm doing. I need to up my game. I know I certainly feel like that. So congratulations, Carl, on all your success. A phenomenal story.
But before we wrap things up of course we've got hub extra and we want to bring you even more! We just want to ram even more value down your ears and we will try to do that with this week's hub extra because Christmas is coming and with Christmas comes gifts and of course those gifts you will need to shop for. And whether you're spoiling somebody else or yourself it's always good to get a good deal.
It's also great to pick the right type of product. So I'm going to give you a little deaky way of how I make any decent size purchase or any purchase that means something to me. So I've done this with bags. Yes, backpacks. But also if I'm banking new computer, for example, I've also adopted this method and it's YouTube plus chat GBT.
So I will start with an idea of the type of product I want. So if it is a backpack, I will enter into YouTube, Best Pack Packs 2024. The great thing about YouTube is you don't need to do much more beyond that because it will feed you your first few videos, but once you've watched those, it will feed you more. And then once you've done your research,
Through YouTube, hopefully you've made your pick, you can then move to chat GBT to get you the very best deal. Now, if you don't want to do the research part and you know what you want, you can just go straight to this bit. And that is asking chat GBT to find the best deals for your product. I find Google such a faff to use now when I'm searching for a deal. It seems to be the same old results, whatever you search for. It doesn't really film you more confidence that I am actually finding the best deals through Google anymore.
So I asked chat GBT to find me the best deals, but then I challenge it. So let's say I was after an iPad and it may tell me the type of iPad that I want is 1200 pounds.
Well, I will then challenge it to find me that same iPad for under £900. And as long as you're too unrealistic for your pricing, it will. It's that good. Its first results are brilliant, so you have to put the effort in to then go and challenge it to find better deals. But if you just keep going with the prompts, it does. It's absolutely fantastic.
I did this recently with Apple TV. I went on to Google, I couldn't find a better deal than 3 months free. I just couldn't find it, bringing you. I just knew that in the back of my mind I'd seen a deal where I could get 6 months free, but through googling I could not find it.
I asked chat GBT to find me that deal. And not only did I find it, if I had me a deal that I could use with my current phone provider, which meant that I got even a better deal than just a six months, it was absolutely fantastic. And I got there in seconds through chat GBT. So for your research, use YouTube and you can use chat GBT, but then for your deals with prompting, remember one prompt probably won't be enough, but with prompting, you can find the very best deals through chat GBT.
Most people don't see it as a shopping site because it isn't, but you can use it that way. So a little bit of a different way to use chat GPT. Hopefully that's inspired you to come up with your own ideas, but I found it really useful. I love that. Google is an absolute state for this kind of thing. I completely agree with that. But even though I use chat GPT all the time, it never occurred to me to use it in that way. So thank you for that. A great have extra to end a great episode. And I hope that you have a great week until we see you again for the property podcast next Thursday. Until then, bye-bye. Bye-bye.
