Hi and welcome to Progressive Property Network Brentwood! We are your hosts, Sarah and Tony Harding. We specialise in sourcing and refurbishing high-end HMO properties in Essex.

We are married with a young family and have been working together on our property venture since we first attended Masterclass with Progressive in November 2015.

Tony’s background is in sales, estate agency and construction. He spent 10 years managing a successful roofing and maintenance company and established a scaffolding business utilising the existing customer base with his business partner at the time. Tony raised the profile of the business, implementing health and safety measures to increase the customer base as well as managing sub-contractors and staff. Tony still provides health and safety services to a small group of tradesmen today, he left the construction behind to concentrate on property.

Sarah enjoyed a successful City career working for PwC for ten years where she travelled extensively and developed her business acumen and project management skills. She left in 2010 and became an independent project management consultant working with top tier banks to implement global financial change projects. Sarah is also a qualified Craniosacral therapist, a gentle body therapy that helps to relieve tension caused by stress, trauma and chronic illnesses, she has small practice that she fits in around property and family.

All this kept us both very busy but we barely had time for anything else! With two lively young boys to raise, we knew something had to change if we wanted to see them grow up and be a big influence in their lives.

Tony came across Progressive Property on the internet and signed us up for a one day introduction, we quickly booked our spot on a the Masterclass four day training event. This was the start of our property education and we meet so many interesting people that have become friends since. It was after this, that we decided to take the plunge to ‘sack the boss’ and make property our main income. Fortunately, we had both always been interested in the property world and wholeheartedly agreed that it would be our way forward to achieving the lifestyle we wanted – flexibility to spend time raising our family, financial freedom and enjoying life!

We decided that HMOs would be our main business for profitability and it was a good fit in our chosen area. In August 2016, Tony was first to quit his job to start working full time (well in between the school run) on building the HMO business and continued to educate himself through training and joining the Progressive VIP mentorship programme. Sarah continued to work as a project manager in City and focused on finding investors and helping on the finance and administrative side.

Two years on, two profitable six bedroom HMOs and a couple of smaller projects under our belt and a third baby…we are now our ‘own boss’. Our objectives for the next 12 months is to expand the HMO portfolio, increase investor relationships and establish our deal sourcing business. We still have some ground to cover to meet our goal of financial freedom but we are working hard and have gained masses of experience over the last three years, which we are looking forward to sharing to help others get started. This includes working with investors, raising JV finance, extensive refurbishments, identifying and structuring deals. There have been some missed opportunities and times where things have not gone to plan. Learning from our mistakes and mistakes of others in the community is something we have benefitted from and its value is not to be underestimated!

We both believe strongly in continuing to educate ourselves in property and believe mindset and personal development are at the core of success, this is something we aim to incorporate into our events at PPN Brentwood.