I was born in Harlow. My first property I bought was in Harlow. My first investment property was in Harlow. You could say I was a Harlow Boy. And for the first 26 years of my life I was a Harlow Boy.
But this Harlow Boy grew up and saw there was more to the world than just Harlow. Even though I studied at the LSE in London for 3 years at age 21 I still thought Harlow was the epicentre of all that mattered.
I knew Harlow like the back of my hand. That is why it was so easy for me to invest in Harlow at relatively such a young age. However at the age of 26 I some how found the courage to buy OUTSIDE of my home town. I was considered a loon by my fellow Harlow colleagues but I didn’t care. I was fed up of the high prices that Harlow was now commanding and I wanted to keep on buying.
Now if I did not break out of my comfort zone I would be poor now. That is no over exaggeration. 100% of my wealth has been derived from my property investments and if I had stopped at Harlow then I would only have 7 properties now. Okay that is not bad but it is nowhere near the 200 properties that I have now which were bought from the seed capital that my Harlow properties provided me.
So looking back I am so glad I invested out of my home town. Now I think nothing of investing in a town I have never heard of. I do not really care where it is for one simple reason:
I want to be wealthy!
I am so committed to my own success that I refuse to get frightened of remote places in the back end of nowhere. For those who want to know the most remote place I have invested in then check out Campbeltown in Scotland.
I have 5 properties there. I paid:
£9,000 for a 1 bed flat
£9,250 for a 1 bed flat
£11,000 for a 1 bed flat on the high st
£28,000 for a really nice 1 bed flat
£24,000 for a 2 bed flat
All rented apart from one. All worth at least double (but more like quadruple!) what I paid for them. All bought with the assistance of credit cards and remortgaged later.
Now Campbeltown is really really remote. It is a pain to get there. I have not been there for over 3 years. However this little known town has made me £100,000 in equity and provides me a really nice cashflow profit of £600 per month.
I am not bragging here. Just trying to help you overcome any fears you have of investing in a town next door to you. Some investors like to stick to a 5 mile radius from their own home which is fine but I suspect they will never become rich unless they have access to some serious unsecured finance to put down as deposits.
So what is your radius? Is it single digits? Double digits? Triple digits? Or even quadruple digits?