Hi everyone 👋,
🔥 What I have been doing this week
🚁 There have been several deadlines to meet with Design work that has drained me quite a bit this week. I have managed to achieve the objectives, but it seems to have made me procrastinate in the evening by about 2000 when I eventually get some time to work on my own stuff.
🚲 I went out on my road bike again and managed to get about twice as far as I did previously which I am proud of, but it is still by no means impressive.
🏠 It’s here! The first Grand Review has been finalised and published on my site. Take a look and let me know what you think about it. Are there any details that are missing that you would like in future reviews? I am reviewing each episode for my own purpose but publishing it for others, so any feedback is appreciated.
📌 I have found a few more properties and added them to the map. I have reached the first episode that seems to be missing from the channel 4 archive footage. The first episode and the revisit has been pulled for some reason. I began trying to locate the property anyway, however I will not be able to do a review on it as I will have none of the information about the build so I have excluded it
It looks as though there are around 170 properties if you exclude the revisit episodes. I have found about twenty-three of the properties now. Take a sneak peak at the early version today. And don’t forget to subscribe for any future updates.
📝 The Value of the Pound
✍️ Quote of the week
Money makes the world go round, or so the song by Liza Minnelli suggests. There isn’t any avoiding the fact that if you don’t have enough life is difficult and sometimes when you have too much it can be difficult too. We all know which problem we’d prefer to have though, I’m sure.
An interesting thing about money is that it hasn’t been tied to anything tangible, like Gold, for a very long time. And partly because of this de-tethering the value has been able to diminish significantly over the long term. Over the short term it seems invisible and often catches us out every ten years or so when the price of something like a 10 pence Freddo is suddenly repriced at 25 pence.
The same effect has happened on property (land) prices and building materials too. It happens on practically everything. Rob studies through various charts how much the Price of Money has diminished by.
On each Grand Review I index the value of the figures given in each build and correct them to todays prices as best I can. The adjustment shows that cheap sounding properties of £100,000 in the 90’s are actually significantly more expensive today. This isn’t necessarily because you get less for your money today but because the buying power of the pound has reduced significantly in that time, mainly due to Quantitative Easing.
The indexing pulls a sense of realism into the figures presented so that we will be able to compare each build through time. It also highlights what is going on significantly at the moment with high inflation rates in the UK and other areas of the world. We need to remind ourselves of these effects on the value of the currencies we use and determine if the new price is actually more expensive than it was a few years ago because working off of the price alone is not a true indicator.
I find these sorts of things interesting because it gets to the truth of one of the main blockers of self and custom build which is the financials. Grand Designs have been glamorised for years and it is clear to see in some of the earlier episodes that millions of pounds were being spent and this just isn’t a reality for 99.9% of people even with heavy borrowing.
🕵️♂️ Property Glossary
I share definitions each week of words and terms that pop up now and then in the property world and can be confusing.
Easement
Easements grant specific rights to one landowner over another’s property, allowing them to enjoy certain privileges or use the servient property for the benefit of their own land. These rights can include a right of way or other specific entitlements. Easements can be established through explicit agreements or can arise through prolonged usage, and they are transferred when the dominant property is sold or transferred to a new owner. Examples are: a right of way or right of light, or drainage rights.
📖 Interesting Things I’ve Read
Schedule Maker – There has been a tonne of related content I have been consuming this week in different formats. This article explains how to timebox your calendar to get the things done that align most with your values.
🎧 Interesting Things I’ve Listened To
E249: No.1 Habit & Procrastination Expert: We’ve Got ADHD Wrong! Break Any Habit & Never Be Distracted! – I took some interesting snips from this podcast and found it to be useful to help remove distraction. I am now listening to Indistractable by Nir Eyal and Julie Li. It touches on the psychology of distraction that the modern world uses to control consumers and provides insight into how to claim it back to use that traction for your own things.
🔗 Links
Here are links to books and other resources that I may have mentioned above or that I think you might find useful.
Book/Article Snippet
The Price of Money by Rob Dix. I have followed Rob’s work for years since I have been investing in property. His latest book is his best, in my opinion. The complexities of money often explained by Ray Dalio are simplified even further in this book. It is a must read for everyone under the age of 90.
Apps I Use
Readwise – I’ve been paying for Readwise since 2021 and gained access to Readwise Reader Beta in 2022 and find it extremely useful for knowledge retention and research. I pass all my email newsletters through it and whenever I get a spare few minutes I can pick up where I last left off without any friction.
If you sign up using the link you’ll get an extra month free (two in total) so you can really test out the software without it costing you a penny. They don’t advertise widely so it is down to word of mouth like this that gets the tool new users. I find it invaluable.
Monzo – Carefully budgeting my spending is fundamental to being able to save towards the build. Monzo has helped me track and itemise spending for years. I now pay for the Premium account which gives me access to extra features and things like airport lounge access, phone insurance, worldwide travel insurance so it practically pays for itself. If you join using this link we’ll both get £5 (which I’ll use towards the build!).
Focus@Will – This app has superpowers. It has the ability to allow me to switch off from a noisy home and get some work done and it seems to work for me in about 5 minutes.
Socials
I’m now on:
Twitter as @Brendan_Burr
Instagram as @MeasureTwiceBuildOnce
Pinterest as @MeasureTwiceBuildOnce
Snipd for Podcasts @MTBO
That’s it for this week, thanks for reading!
Brendan