We all love to hear and read about the property investing success stories don’t we? These days, social media outlets such as Instagram are awash with marketing savvy property investors and developers posting some carefully crafted profiles. These often include videos, podcasts and of course ‘Hello style’ celebrity editorials, which some property publications feature regularly. The amount of time, effort and cost to produce these online profiles can be quite considerable and of course it is mainly being done for a specific purpose: to attract new investor money for their property projects.
However, as we all should know, there is another side to property investing, where things do not always go to plan and many a promising property development project has not quite turned out as originally expected.
Given the above I was fascinated to hear about a real ‘warts and all tale’ from Ruth Hobbs and to learn what she and her sister Gillian have been doing since they won the prestigious award at the Property Investors Awards some four years ago. Their award-winning project had been highlighted in an article here in the October 2019 edition. It was an 18-bed student HMO, which they converted from a vacant office building in Derby.
The building conversion work was completed just in time for the autumn student intake and all 18 individual rooms were almost immediately let due to their high quality accommodation standards. All seemed set fair for the Hobbs sisters and their entrepreneurial endeavours were on-track to deliver some great rental returns, however, seven months later the Covid pandemic hit the UK.
“My emotions quickly went from one extreme to the other,” said Ruth. “Winning the award was great and with all the rooms let it was going really well and I also acquired an older property, which was being converted into an eight-bed HMO ready for the autumn 2020 student intake. We were on the crest of a wave and had many accolades for the stunning interior design, which set new standards within the Derby student accommodation market.
“This successful conversion played to my strengths and track record of acquiring and converting outdated property to give them a new lease of life. The former office building had been vacant for some five years so it helped the broader aim of the ongoing revival of the Derby city centre, by bringing in more ‘life’ and activity from
student tenants.
