I have spoken with many property investors and entrepreneurs over the last two decades and in the main I’d say they fall into one of two categories in respect of their core goals: income or profit. The largest group comprises those who see themselves as portfolio landlords with monthly rental income as their primary target and who accept and hope that the ebb and flow of the economy and property cycle will over time result in increasing equity. The second group comprise of those mainly driven by the goal of creating profits from deals, either through development or from trading through a buy and sell approach. Many a property auction room would historically have had a number of traders in the room actively participating, and in the main the traders would be selling whereas those with more of a development mindset would often be potential buyers.

Property trading can be an uncertain business due to its speculative nature and ‘stuff’ can happen, which affects buyer sentiment, so this month I spoke with Saif Derzi, who has been gradually building his trading business over the last few years. As he recently won the accolade of Property Trader of the Year at the Property Investor Awards, I was keen to learn more about him and also to hear about a specific ‘trade’ from which he made a very healthy profit without doing any development work.

My first question to Saif when we met was ‘why and how did you choose to trade in property?’ –“When I started out my aim was to build and scale a property investment portfolio made up primarily of HMOs in blue collar areas. I had trained as a pharmacist, as did my wife, and I did a five-year degree, but it was something that I did not really enjoy doing. After two years of working for a salary I then realised I wanted something else and started a trading business in pharmaceutical products focused on the export market. At first that went well but with increased competition I then looked for something which would deliver regular profits on a more sustainable and long-term basis. So in 2015 I bought my first buy to let property, which was a two-bed, purpose-built flat in Manchester. I saw what was happening there with Salford and the huge regeneration and with the likes of the BBC moving there. I avoided the new build premium by buying second hand and off-market at what I thought was good value through an agent and paid £93,000 for it. That is how I got started.

“I then went on two years later to buy some HMOs but again realised after 6-9 months of operating them that it was very capital intensive, which meant lots of money was going out of the bank and nothing was coming back in quickly enough to allow me to scale up and buy more. I had been looking at various property strategies including parking lots and student pods.