I quit my 9-5 and now earn £8,000 a month working only 10 hours a week by renting out properties I don’t even own
GETTING on the housing ladder is incredibly difficult right now, especially for young people who don’t have any financial support from their parents.
For most of us renting out properties doesn’t even seem possible in our lifetime.
But one entrepreneur has revealed she is making thousands of pounds from properties she doesn’t even own.
Lina Akhtar, 26, from Bedfordshire, is raking in just over £100,000 a year renting out properties to other people that she rents herself from other landlords, pocketing the difference.
After graduating from university in 2018, Lina thought a 9-5 was her only path.
She said: “As the eldest daughter in a second-generation immigrant household, I didn’t have a choice of universities to go to, I was just told to attend a local university by my family.
“So that’s what I did, I chose something generic like business management which I had no passion for at the time, but studied hard regardless.”
“When I graduated in 2018, I was totally indifferent, I had zero ambitions and thought that getting a simple office job was my path all the way up until retirement age.
“So I naively hedged my bets on the idea of a day job being my entire future which obviously didn’t work out.”
‘9-5 not for me’
Lina said her first jobs out of university required long commutes and claims she was forced to work with misogynistic coworkers.
She said: “After graduating from university, a few months later, I got my first 9-5 at a small cybersecurity start-up in south London where I did sales.
“This was an hour-and-a-half commute each way so I’d be travelling five days a week, getting up at 5am, and coming home at 8pm.”
“I was treated terribly at that job, and as the only female in the office, I’d hear all sorts of misogynistic things and was constantly being made to run errands.”
Two months into the job Lina said she knew she didn’t want to stick to a regular 9-5 – but none of the side hustles she tried took off.
She said: “ I went on to do many other side hustles in the background such as writing a book, writing articles, starting a clothing line, a print-on-demand business, and the list goes on in the ardent hope that one day I would become my own boss.
“However, they all failed, so I continued working many more regular jobs.”
It was a holiday with her family in a lush Airbnb that sparked the idea to rent-to-rent.
Lina said: “I researched if there were any other workarounds and that was when I saw an American girl on YouTube describing the rent-to-rent strategy.”
This is when you rent a property long-term from a landlord, then rent the property to tenants charging a higher rent.
The profit comes from the difference between what you pay in rent and what you charge others.
Online travel platforms like Airbnb can be particularly useful with this model as you can let out a property short term for higher prices than long term tenants or the amount you rent it yourself.
She said: “Although I knew it might not pay off since it was so different compared to my past ventures, I was willing to take the risk as I desperately wanted to build a better future for myself, so I began to study the business model relentlessly.”
Bright idea
Lina only had £3,000 when she initially started business so she had to come up with an extra £6,000 before she could get things going.
She said: “When I first started my business, I only had £3,000 in the bank, which was nowhere near enough to set up a property.”
“I decided to start networking with landlords and letting agents and whenever they had a property available, I’d refer this property over to an existing Airbnb host for a bespoke finders’ fee. “
“After doing this four times over, I had generated £10,000 in fees which was more than enough capital to furnish my own Airbnb.”
Even once she had started the business, not everything was smooth sailing and Lina had lessons to learn.
She said: “For my very first Airbnb, things were quite slow to pick up and that’s because I didn’t furnish it in a time-effective way.
“This was mostly due to the fact that I was doing everything by myself, so things took twice as long as it should’ve, with building furniture, staging the property, and shopping for all the supplies.”
The rent-to rent model doesn’t come without risks either.
Regardless of whether or not you manage to find someone to rent your property, you will still be responsible for the terms of your lease which will include paying rent.
This could mean you’re out of pocket if you can’t find anyone to live there.
During this time you take on any bills and sometimes property maintenance, which can be an added expense.
You may have to foot the bill if one of your tenants cause any non-accidental damage to the property too.
People who rent-to-rent must also have specific permission from their landlord to do so, or they could be in breach of their tenancy agreement.
10-hour working week
But this didn’t put Lina off, and although she had to do all the work on her own, things soon picked up.
She said: “But after my Airbnb started getting bookings and I figured out how to systemise my business, everything got so much easier.
“I now only work 10 hours a week on my business and I’m proud to say that I did it all on my own.”
Five years later Lina is now making over six figures a year.
The entrepreneur said: “I’m generating a turnover of £104,000 a year just from my Airbnb, I’m managing three rental properties at the moment and combined they make a revenue of £8.6k and in terms of net profit they make roughly £3k per month.”
As Lina makes money working for herself, it means she has to report her income to the taxman herself.
This is done by filing a self-assessment each year with HMRC by January 31.
She also has to pay her income tax bill by this date, at a rate of 20% on any earnings over £12,570, and 40% on anything she makes over £50,270.
Lina had developed her own sense of style when it comes to decorating and attracting renters.
She said: “For staging the property, I like to use the current features of the property for example if it has carpeted floors, then I aim for a cosier look and if it has a dark laminate floor, then I’ll go for a chic modernistic style.”
Plus she has more of a choice where she lists her properties and has positive developing relationships with her landlords.
She said: “There are a number of online travel agencies that Airbnb hosts utilise such as VRBO, Agoda, and even Facebook Marketplace!
“But in my experience, the two platforms that bring in the most traffic are Airbnb and Booking.com.”
“I only work with landlords who are specifically seeking to work with companies such as mine, because these landlords have often faced many struggles with their previous tenants, such as them missing their rent.”
Now Lina is using her earnings from her rentals to develop an educational platform where she can teach others how to leave their boring 9-5.
She said: “What I’ve realised is that confidence is absolutely everything. The more self-assured you are, the harder it is to knock you down.”
And now her only regret is that she didn’t start sooner.
She said: “If I had the courage, I would’ve started my property journey right after that very first holiday abroad but I didn’t.
“Instead, I hid and stayed in the respite of learning and never doing. Life’s too short for all that.”