Billy Turriff explains how he converted a struggling old pub into two high-yielding multi-lets on the outskirts of Manchester
STRATEGY
Over the years I’ve been involved in various different property strategies. My main aimis to have cashflowing assets, so I’ve got amixture of single-lets and multi-lets. Multi-lets (or HMOs) are great for bringingin cashflow. At the moment we’ve got approximately 150 rooms, which are rentedto both students and professionals.
WHY PUBS?
Pubs lend themselves very well to being converted into multi-let rooms. They’re big buildings that can get you anything from seven to 20 units, which is perfect for multi-let, but not too large to manage. We’ve always been keen to add a pub or two to our portfolio, and as our high streets change and many pub landlords are forced to sell, there are some really amazing buildings coming up for sale that are just begging to be developed. The first pub I bought was The Nag’s Head in Liverpool. It had been converted into three apartments, which were then split into 17 multi-let rooms. This was one of the few developments I bought that had been developed by someone else, and it caused me nothing but grief. The developer hadn’t done a good job and there were plenty of issues, including wet and dry rot in the timbers, and a lot of ongoing maintenance issues that we hadn’t expected. It wasn’t the best introduction to pub conversions, to be honest, but it didn’t put me off. Instead I vowed that on the next one I’d take it back to brick and start again, setting my own standards and knowing that everything had been done to a high standard.