Mortgage Free - so good they'll do it twice! Wynnvegas aiming for the big house

gallygirl

Yay, we missed you Billy, look forward to update :T.

newgirly

Glad you are ok Billy and back with us

Secret_Saving_Squirrel

Sounds interesting....... Look forward to it!

wynnvegas

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Hi Billy, just checking how the land of B2Ls is going. By now you must be up to your ears in paint, new taps etc and hope Moyra is keeping everyone in lne.

Best wishes Tilly

Jesus, has it been 5 months! Sorry Tilly - yes it got a bit hectic back there! The renovations to 2 of the 4 rental properties got a bit messy and very expensive. We've, through a variety of rental bits and bobs and expensive endeavours, managed to find ourselves somewhere in the region of £15,000 below where I had planned us to be at this point so not impressed with myself there!

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

ammonite wrote: »

Your user name reeled me in WynnVegas! We spent a happy week in LV last year Good luck with your MFW journey!

Hi Ammonite,

Well, quite aside from the username, my trusty regular witticisms will keep you with me no doubt!! properly disappointed with myself on the updating front but life is genuinely starting to calm down just a wee bit at long last. I may even sleep this week...

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Froggy-G wrote: »

Thought about you today Billy!

There's a restaurant called the Heart Attack Grill in Vegas.. If you weigh more than 350 lbs, you eat for free!! Bargain!

Come on Billy, get eating!! You can't miss the opportunity of a lifetime!! :beer:

Gnaw Froggy,

We seen it and you've never in your life seen dissapointment and shame in equal measure at a 346lb lad on the industrial scale outside the place. I was tempted with the quad bypass burger but I didn't have the guts to give it a go.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Tilly_MFW_in_6_YRS wrote: »

Morning Billy, stopping by to check how the empire is building? Hopefully all the properties are let out now and the renovations were straight forward.

Are you having a rest or looking for the next property?

Best wishes Tilly x

Hi Tilly,

A rest has been enforced as there's no way we'll buy 4 or 5 in the same timeframe again. We want to get this lot settled down and then we'll move onto the next batch. 2 of the first 4 have been nothing but trouble. We won't be buying any more until January at the soonest.

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

unhappy_shopper wrote: »

Hi Billy, please come back and tell us your experiences. We are waiting to embark on our BTL journey, but before that we would like to learn from your/others experiences :-)

Hi US,

I'm a veritable tome of information now on all things BTL. Sitting here just now putting off the tax return (it's forms, records and spreadsheets so should fire me up appropriately but not just now).

Ask away...

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

Evening All,

And apologies again for my period of absence. No excuse - particularly when in Vegas as Moyra's hour long showers should have given me ample opportunity to provide a few of my regular musings.

Unfortunately, a combination of the iPad being dreadful to type on (and you'll all be aware of my love for brevity) and a constant need to check on twitter that Sevco (formerly Rangers FC - RIP/LOL) were being booted appropriately at every given opportunity by the great, good and insignificant of Scottish Football took up far more time than was reasonable for any one person.

Let me give a wee rundown of our expenditure in the last 7 months and this will frighten the life out of me for a start! I'll try to explain how we've blown through more than £100,000 and what we've gotten for that money. Needless to say, frugality went a little out of the window for a bit.

We took out an I/O mortgage on the squalour (shame) of £112k which took us to a reasonably healthy bank balance of £127k at the beginning of the year. Repayments of around £212p/m so no worries on that front - it was all going toward positive things so we thought at the time.

Houses 2 and 3 were straightforward. Combined deposits of £33,000 for those two and legal fees and such of just over £8,500 for the two meant that we blew through more than £40 pdq. Those two are the good news stories though as we currently stand with over 50% equity in each and the ability to remortgage to 75% and reclaim nearly £32,000 should we feel the need to do so.

Houses 1 and 4 were very much a different story. On top of combined deposits of £28,000 and fees etc of £7,500, we had a combined repair and renovation bill for both of £22,000 and we've probably sunk another £2,000 into further repairs as the plumber wasn't quite as up to par as I had been led to believe. Live and learn there...

Whilst we were on the renovation kick, we knew we needed to do the squalour kitchen and it had always been planned for this summer. Moyra, in her inimitable style, decided that, whilst we were away and people were doing stuff anyway, we should get the kitchen...the stair carpet, the bannister, the upstairs hall carpet, the downstairs toilet, the living room walls, lights, floor, the front door and the internal doors done. Quite a jump and we went from £12,000 to £20,000 very quickly. It's been done and it looks quite the very thing and I have to take some accountability for around £3,000 of that as my fancy dan new telly and surround system was my treat. Big jacuzzi bath, big telly and big cooker - we may never move (and, at a current estimate of £1.2m for the big house all in, that may be just as well!!)

The holiday, in the end up, cost us just over £13,000 so we've taken the big step of deciding to stop paying for people to experience Vegas. We've done it twice now and that's probably plenty. It's cost a whack but been well worth it.

I'm too scared to add all that up but what it means is that we now sit at our new poverty line of £15,000 in the bank. If we were at £30,000, I'd be plenty delightable but we'll need to address that shortfall in the next few months. We're still clearing more than £3,000 after bills and the like each month and, on a good rental month, we'd probably bring in another £1,200 (we've never yet had a good month though) so we'll hopefully get back on an even keel in the not too distant future. I've cancelled Moyra's planned trip away in October as she's seriously talking about a cruise in April next year around Scandinavia and Russia - I don't think she understands MSE at all!

More later as the detail of work, BTL, the book, the holiday and the future planning of the big house is all to come...

Cheers,

Billy

wynnvegas

I should quickly note that we've both had promotions at work. Moyra is now Head of Biology at her school and i'm carrying the grandiose title of Head of HR and Business Improvement. Workload for us both has been fairly daft and, since 6am this morning, I've only stopped for the commute to and from the office between then and around 11pm. Loads done though and a wedding to attend tomorrow so no work stuff to worry about in the pm.

Cheers,

Billy