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Four flats to flip at Mill Lane

Cheshunt, North of Enfield, Greater London

A 7-bed detached property in Cheshunt, north of Enfield, Greater London. It only had planning for a 6-bed HMO. I bought it with the intention of doing a 6-bed HMO and then doing the planning application to get the seventh bedroom eventually. It was already set up as a HMO and I paid an extra £5,000 on the purchase for all the furniture to be left.

It was ready day one, literally straight in, tenanted. I went through the planning process to get the 7th bedroom and they refused me on not enough parking spaces. There were five parking spaces and they wanted six or I think they wanted 6.75 spaces, something ridiculous like that.

Going through the mastermind process, there was a couple of speakers during the year that made me look at the deal completely different. I thought to myself, this property would be perfect to split into four dwellings. I was looking at five originally but it became apparent that four would work better. After the planning application went in the council’s feedback was that there weren’t enough parking spaces – they said we needed five but in the previous discussion, they told me there was five, which is why they rejected it.

So, in effect, they created their own argument against themselves. It was interesting. We eventually got it through. Work that was left to be done was a full conversion into 4 flats – 2 x 2-bedroom ground floor garden flats with a 1-bed flat upstairs and a 1-bed studio at the top. Plus sound-proofing, splitting the supplies etc.

  • Purchase Price: £415,000
  • Deposit: 25% £103,000
  • Refurb Cost: £0
  • Monthly rental income: £3,520
  • Monthly costs: £2,000
  • Monthly profit: £1,520

The fact that they refused the planning helped me in the end. It made me look at this deal completely differently. It would take me years and years to get the same profit via the cash flow of the HMO. Changing the view on it became way more lucrative for me.

  • Purchase Price: £415,000
  • Deposit: 25% £103,000
  • Refurb Cost: £180,000
  • Legal fees/stamp duty/planning: £20,000
  • Estimated gross development value: £1 million
  • Expected resale prices: £285k, £270k, £220k, £205k and 20k for the freehold
  • Expected profit: £366,875
  • ROI: 125%
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