Canterbury - 7th November, 2006

The house sale completed on King Edwards Gardens 2 days ago and we simultaneously completed on another 2 bed apartment which we are going to set up as a serviced rental. We have someone moving in today. All the apartments (4 in total) are now occupied but rentals from the middle of November look very scarce at the moment. Christmas in completely booked and we have already taken a couple of bookings for the new year but we are just wondering what to do in November. Does anyone want to come and visit?

We are both working very hard with Julie on a seemingly endless treadmill of activity. Whoever said moving out of London would be a change of pace? We are still not in a break even position with our income and expenses. I really need to have 8 or 9 properties. We now have 6 including ours (which I am converting into a student / sharers rental property) and the 6 bed student house. The business would be a nice little earner on the side if that's what it was but it's not. It's our prime source in income apart from Julie's part time salary. So we need to keep going with another few properties. We are keeping our eyes open but they are hard to come by here.

Canterbury - 19th September, 2006

There is a feint mist and chill in the morning air. 45,000 students have re-populated the city and there is an air of expectancy. Quite exciting.

We have had a busy summer with our apartments booked 80% in July, 100% in August, 100% in September and already 70% booked in October. Christmas is full and we have taken a booking for the Tour de France coming to Canterbury in July next year.

I have never seen a business where the original budgets were wrong by a factor of 2 in our favour. The business is profitable at around 60% occupancy supposing that you don't give away too many discounted weeks. We have just bought another 2 bedroom apartment which will be our top end luxury rental. It's gorgeous. We all want to go and live there ourselves.

We continue to live in our flat roofed 1960s box house with the builders currently converting the integral garage into bedroom 4 and the dining room into bedroom 5. We currently have 2 chinese students in one room and a PGCE student in another. The 4 of us continue to sleep in one room.

Julie is working hard with her refugees, the school (she is already the Chair of the Class Contacts) and trying to keep me and the boys out of trouble and on the straight and narrow. A huge task in itself.

Our vicar has just returned from a 6 month sabbatical and it looks like there are some interesting months ahead of us!

Teachers vs students. Teachers won. 

Julian and Sam in their 3 legged race. 

Sammy and Fox compete in the Sports day 3 legged race at the Canterbury Steiner School. 

The medal ceremony. Something for everyone. 

It was pretty exhausting just watching! 

Julian throws the Javelin. 

Getting ready for the start of the relay race. 

Julian high jumping. 

To the sound of a single drum beat, 400 participants process into the Olympic stadium in the beautiful grounds of the Michael Hall School. 

The olympians prepare to compete. Notice the togas. 400 class 5 students come every year from all over the UK and some from Europe to compete. 

Julian's campsite at the Olympic village they created at the Steiner Michael Hall School in East Grinstead. 

Sammy's class dancing around the maypole. 

Julian and his friend Rob doing a greek dance. 

Sammy's class 4 - performing at the end of term parents festival. Check out the backdrop of green hills. (click to enlarge) 

Canterbury - 16th July, 2006

Business as usual. Bookings are OK. We are running at around 70% occupancy at the moment. August is looking a little poor but we seem to do quite well with last minute bookings.

School finishes in 2 days time which is great for the boys but a challenge for us. We are not going to New Wine this year (sorry Lynn and Simon) as we have to stay and look after the clients.

The weather in this part of Kent is always a few degrees hotter in summer (and cooler in winter), so we have been enjoying some really hot days here. Perfect for me but not so good for Julie.

The boys have had a good term and have done some great performances in their end of term shows and displays. I have some photos above.

Julie is working hard with her mentoring project but is quite distressed by the management of the organisation. Not quite what she is used to.

I am convinced that the world is about to suffer a set back of significant proportions in the financial and property departments. I have sold all of my shares, liquidated my SIPP pension and now hold these assets in cash. During May the stock market fell 10% but this is just the tremor before the quake. Hold onto your shirts in the next few years. There will be people trying to rip them off your backs.

I have also sold our pride and joy: the house in King Edwards Gardens. The deal has yet to complete and I am hoping to get it through before the property crash bites. It is a sad moment but it has served us well and I need to use the money more productively down here in Canterbury.

To supplement our summer holiday income we have taken in 3 language students at home. A 14 year old boy from France, a 17 year old boy from Shandong Province in China and a 22 year old boy from Russia (Moscow area). Makes for an interesting breakfast. The language schools are just around the corner from us and they provide the students with lunch and evening meals during the week, so it's not such an onerous proposition.

Canterbury - 19th June, 2006

Some time since I last posted! We have been so busy with getting the apartments up and running.

I has been hard work but then we have had a nearly 100% rate of occupancy for the last 8 weeks. The end of June and begining of July look a little less busy but then our bookings pick up again.

I have rediscovered the joys of ironing - something which I really enjoy but rarely used to do. Now when 4 people move out of an apartment, you need to wash and iron all the bed clothes to prepare for the next lot. We do have 2 sets for each bed but we seem to be turning them around pretty quickly at the moment. Last week we had 10 people move out - that's 20 sheets and 20 pillow cases. I think ironing may be outsourced shortly!

It seems that the one bed apartments is the mosts popular. It has been 100% occupied since it first came on stream which was 7 hours after we completed on the purchase on the 26th of April. We may need to find another 1 bed apartment to keep up with the demand. I have had to turn customers away.

We are invigilating too. We are now doing the actual GCSEs which are quite fun. There seems to be a little more commitment by the students this time around although we still have those who finish an exam of 1 and half hours in less than 20 minutes.

We tried Julian on the foundation science paper (Did you know that there were different levels of exam at GCSE? Neither did we. Some of the core papers are split into Foundation, Intermediate and Higher tiers. I am reliably told that you cannot get higher than a grade C at Foundation level and so on) and he scored over 50%. Typical question: What is the liquid rock called that comes out of a Volcano? Choose your answer from: core, lava, metamorphic, sedimentary.

The RE "A" level was good stuff. "Scripture is the word of God", discuss. How much time do we have?

We enjoyed a free Elton Jon concert last Saturday night as he was playing at the Kent County Cricket ground just over the road from us. We all lay in bed and sang along. Sammy has recently discovered the joy of vinyl records and we inherited a gramophone (as Julie still calls it) with one of our houses here. Julian and Sammy now often go to bed singing along to the Seekers or Police from records they found in the local charity shops.

Canterbury - 7th May, 2006

On Saturday night we get the call that one of our upcoming apartment guests has arrived in the UK 2 weeks before her booking date. Do we have somewhere for her to stay? She is a student from Hong Kong who is over here to take exams in a local college. We had had a lengthy e-mail conversation with her about where she would stay and we had told her that she could "homestay" with us if the worst came to the worst.

Well it did. We had heard no more from her and she had booked to stay in student digs (of which there are many around here) sharing a house with some Canterbury University students. However, when she saw how bad they were she was unable to stay there and called us up.

We had originally offered the accommodation with us on the basis that if we knew she was coming we would have at least 2 weeks to prepare a room in the house for her. As it turned out we had 10 hours. This is what it looked like at 6:30 am on Sunday morning:

And this is what it looked like at 4:00pm. Bonkers or what?

On top of that the rest of the house had to be made into a respectable place, which since we have just moved in, was something of an ordeal.

It's all business.

The finished lounge upstairs apartment Station Road West. Do you recognise the colour scheme and the furniture? Compare it to the same room shown 12 photos below (it had a fridge in it then).

One of the finished bedrooms at Station Road West. 

One for Charlotte - the view from our kitchen window. 

This is what we have done to the bottom flat at Station Road West. 

Oh check out the wallpaper and the green cupboards. 

A view of our "lounge". We have been in the house for 6 days now. There are no carpets, except for the rug we put down over the lino, the heating/hot water system is not functioning properly and Julie is cooking on a cooker we found in one of our other purchases. We are living in a tip and our tenants are living in the lap of luxury. Hhhmmmmm. 

This is our "dining" room. Note the lovely wallpaper and the heating vents from the no-longer used forced air heating system. The designer furniture adds a nice touch. The 60's lampshade is priceless and shortly to be sold on e-bay. Any offers? 

Canterbury - 26th April, 2006

Just don't know how we do it.

We took possession of St. Peter's Street at 10:22am today and the tenant moved in at 5:00pm. The place was transformed into a serviced apartment in less than 7 hours.

Previously (on 24), we took 40 days (and nearly 40 nights) transforming Station Road West into 2 serviced apartments. Both these apartments were occupied over the weekend and we are now hosting 10 people for a 3 week period. We have other bookings too but I now need to concentrate on marketing. You will see why if you look at www.canterburyservicedapartments.co.uk.

On top of all this, Julie has a job and we have had the boys on half term and we have moved into our own house, which as you can see from the pictures, needs to have the treatment done on it.

When we moved in we discovered rats. Not proper ones but fancy rats. The boys were promised a "pet" and now they have one (2 actually).

They are just such cool ski bums.

Daddy under the peak of Mt. Blanc. We had a great week skiing except for a final day fall by me that left me hobling. 

The living room at St. Peter's Street. The apartment is over a shop in the pedestrian area of Canterbury and has parking spots at the rear. It was built at least 350 years ago and the roof beams are all original. It has one bedroom.