Ever since I moved to London in 2004-5 I knew I’d never be able to get a mortgage to buy a property and feel safe/properly at home in London (…or even the wider UK given the mismatch between earnings and property prices). So I’ve never really felt secure, and I’m sure many others feel like this.
However, a month before Covid lockdown one, I managed to purchased my first ever property. Not in London, but instead a derelict commercial unit on the ground floor of a building in Tenerife… derelict for over a decade… 2,200 miles from home… at the age of 40… it was a risk even without the global pandemic that was immediately about to happen… and also Britain’s stupid decision to leave the EU was also just starting to officially kick in. I mean timing isn’t my strong point obviously. Alongside the monthly costs of holding an property asset, that tbh is really just a liability until it starts generating some income to cover the costs. The building was listed for 60,000 euros, I managed to negotiate a bit off, and then BBVA bank helped me get the deal across the line.
So I lost 2+ years on a project, as flying out to get things done etc wasn’t possible, plus I had plenty of challenges in the UK to deal with in the midst of the pandemic given how poorly the government handled the situation (although hindsight is a beautiful thing).
Why did I think this was a good idea?
For a decade I’d been running coworking spaces for early stage start-ups, small businesses, social enterprises and charities. Opening 25 different spaces in the London and also one in Portugal, alongside a coffee shop, rotational pop-up restaurant, street food market and a bunch of pubs.
I’d always wanted to try and create a live / work space for entrepreneurs and creatives, London just makes that whole possibility challenging due to the property market.
In order to create and start projects people need to feel “safe” enough financially so they can partially step off the tread mill of trying to earn enough to live or just get by. Therefore they need super affordable spaces, I think this significantly holds back the UK economy, as there are very few people get to be creative / entrepreneurial.
The original plan was to buy in Lisbon, as when I first opened a coworking space there in 2015/16 it was still relatively affordable in comparison to the rest of Europe, however in the time we were there the market exploded and since then property is now priced as stupidly as London. The building we ended up renting there had been up for auction I just didn’t have time to organise a mortgage in a foreign country before the auction ended, it went for €100,000 at auction… Just look at it!!!! what a bargain the owners got.
The trouble with investing in a building to test out a concept is its investing in an asset that ultimately benefits the owner, so the risk / reward model is skewed. So we didn’t get to try Live/Work space there, just a coworking space, which was probably one of my worst ever decisions as a founder… although I did learn a lot.
We were based in Almada a short ferry from central Lisbon.
So Lisbon had outgrown us financially, and therefore I had to look further afield. I tried looking at Madeira and the Azores, the weather isn’t quite as good as the Canaries… and Cape Verde isn’t as affordable to get to. Plus the Canaries are part of the EU, so there’s an element of comfort in how it operates.
So then it was just a matter of island hopping to find the right building, in the right location, at the right price (with very little budget… I wouldn’t be able to buy a garage in London).
So now I just need to get planning permission, and the small matter of refurbishing the building.
