Lee Johnson property magnate (from 2009ish)

[ronnieblair]

A home win for Bristol City’s Lee Johnson: Footballer times his £1.2million transfer to perfection

It takes courage to buy a house and renovate it for profit when the property market has slowed to a near halt.

But Bristol City footballer Lee Johnson has just agreed the sale of his spectacularly renovated house he bought two years ago – at a 21 per cent return on his investment.

And it is in his timing that he has done so well. Lee, 29, decided to wait until he thought the property market had bottomed out in the spring of 2009 before snapping up a tired six-bedroom Victorian detached house in Redland, one of Bristol's most desirable areas, for £890,000.

 

Property players: Lee Johnson spent £94,000 making improvements to the tired six-bedroom Victorian detached house in Redland and now expects to exchange contracts this month at an agreed price of £1.2 million

Opportunists and serial investors were holding back at the time, either because they feared making a loss in a falling market or because they couldn't get a bank loan.

In the following year, Lee spent £94,000 making improvements and now expects to exchange contracts this month at an agreed price of £1.2 million.

'We bought at the lowest point in the market and are selling at the top of the recovery curve, before prices plummet again,' says Lee, who lives in the house with his wife Nicola, 27, and two-year-old daughter Isabella.

Clearly conscious he will soon be approaching the twilight of his Championship League football career, Lee believes the £200,000 profit he now expects to make (after sale costs) points him to a source of additional income for the future.

'I am very aware that when footballers reach the age of 30 the value of their contracts fall so I need another way to earn money,' he says.

 

Property ladder: Lee and his wife Nicola intend to find a place for his family to rent over the next year while looking for the next renovation project

'Having proved to myself that I can make a profit in the recession I now want to repeat this success. 'I love football and would like to be a club manager one day, but I am also passionate about property – I'm always researching the local market for opportunities.'

Two years ago Lee and Nicola were living in a four-bedroom apartment in nearby Clifton, which they had bought in 2006 for £330,000. In early 2009 they sold it for only £30,000 more than they had paid. Lee was convinced it was the perfect time to upgrade, despite fears that prices could still fall further.

He felt larger homes in the area might never look so cheap again and spent six months scouting for an investment opportunity.

He settled on a three-storey detached former guesthouse in Redland with a large basement, double garage and enclosed walled garden. The owner was inviting offers of more than £1 million and Lee initially offered £867,000, but was then negotiated up to £890,000.

'My offer was accepted because I had the money and could move quickly,' he says. 'I was really pleased with the price I paid per square foot – it was at least £30 cheaper than anything else in the same location, but we decided to keep our renovation costs low to ensure making a profit.'

Leafy Redland is an area close to the centre of Bristol which, along with Clifton, has always been popular among family buyers for its abundance of terraced and semi-detached period homes.

The chance to pick up a detached Victorian home so close to theatres and shopping areas in Bristol is relatively rare and Lee knew this would add to its final appeal.

He is also fortunate to have a builder as a personal sponsor with Bristol City and says he only had to pay £56,000 to have his structural modifications made.

Over a period of six weeks the house was gutted and rewired, two bathroom walls knocked through to create more en-suites and one smaller bedroom was converted into a walk-in dressing area.

The roof was leaking and the tiles were old so Lee decided to have it sealed with a resin spray. And in the basement he created a separate entrance and installed partition walls to form a large games room and toilet along with plumbing for a kitchenette.

 

Classy: The rooms are stylish despite a decoration budget of just £15,000

'We decided against extending to save money,' says Lee, 'but because we partially converted the basement the house now has 5,500 sq ft of liveable accommodation.

The main work was done quite quickly and then we went around redecorating room by room and installing floor tiles.'

A sea of marble tiles now greets visitors in the hall and flows into a large kitchen, which is kitted out with thick granite tops, a central island and double cooker range. In three double-height reception rooms are chandeliers and full- length curtains and the bathrooms are tiled in luxury 'wet room' style.

According to Lee, the house is full of bargain items that Nicola has sourced carefully to keep to a decoration budget of £15,000. She bought the marble cheaply from Cyprus, for example, found £300 chandeliers in Belgium and made the curtains herself.

'She is a natural with interior design and I kept challenging her to find things cheaper,' says Lee. 'When she found a Clive Christian kitchen she wanted, she used a local carpenter to mimic the carved features and install them over standard carcasses, which saved us £60,000.'

Lee now intends to find a place for his family to rent over the next year while looking for the next renovation project and also wants to invest some of his equity into starting a buy-to-let portfolio. Lee wants to purchase 20 properties off-plan in and around Bristol, Oxford and Milton Keynes.

'I think the market in Bristol will now dip between three and seven per cent so we hope to be renting when that happens,' says Lee. 'We'll put our kitchen in storage as a head start on our next project. 'It's crucial in a market like this to keep your costs down and to think carefully about timing – even in a recession there are occasional surges in activity and you want to get in just beforehand.'

According to Richard Harding, at Richard Harding estate agents who are handling Lee's sale, the value of large family homes in Bristol have now recovered to peak levels. 'In 2008 our transaction volumes fell by 40 per cent,' says Richard, 'but we recovered in the summer of 2009 and prices came back quickly. In this office we are now seeing almost the same number of transactions as before the crash.'

[singe]

In fact, this is from the Daily Mail in Feb 2011.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/property/article-1354164/A-home-win-Bristol-City-s-Lee-Johnson-Footballer-times-1-2million-transfer-perfection.html