On this week's episode of WealthTalk Luke Spikes discusses the property opportunities from reinventing retail and how to drive value from marginal retail space.
On this week’s episode of WealthTalk we interview Luke Spikes, discussing the opportunities in the retail space and how to generate income by reinventing retail. Luke has extensive business expertise, having built businesses from ground up for 35 years. Learn a number of valuable wealth lessons and find out how Luke was able to see the property market from a different perspective by making a better use of different buildings and properties.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
>> Connect with Luke Spikes [LinkedIn]
>> Join the WealthBuilders Academy
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Unknown Speaker 0:01
The purpose of wealth talk is to educate, inform and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth builders recommends you should always take independent financial tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances.
Unknown Speaker 0:19
While Welcome to Episode 136 of wealth talk, my name is Christian Rodwell membership director of wealth builders. And I'm joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whalen. Hello, Kevin. Hi, Chris.
Unknown Speaker 0:28
Good to be with you again.
Unknown Speaker 0:30
Yeah, here we are. And following on from last week's episode 135. And we revisited the debits process. So six ways to reduce your outgoings. And we added a slight twist. So we changed the s, which had previously been support costs to stop market fees and had some good feedback on that this week.
Unknown Speaker 0:49
And quite right to you know, I think we were quite appropriately judging. The stock market piece was interesting, because I was reading an article actually, you know, quite opposite just this week, which said, institutional investors in other words, people like me, people who are fund managers and so on. You know, they pay so little for their access to the market, and that the retail investor, usually our listeners are paying 300%, three times more than the institutional investor. Why? Because they can. Why? Because it pays for marketing, and it pays for excessive profits is not right. And, you know, 95% of the IFA population take their final salary, pensions if they've got them. And they use them for themselves. But only 5%. Do they recommend other people move so feels a little bit like what's going on in the UK government right now one rule for you when one rule for me. While I'd rarely get political, I'm not going to comment about parties in Downing Street. I am saying though, that there needs to be a change to how retail customers are downtrodden in terms of their fees. And I'm so pleased that we are the disrupter in the middle, trying to do something about that. And we're going to focus on that. And this year. And by the way, talking about disruptors in the middle, we've got a brilliant guest today, who I think calls himself Higgy in the middle, more about what Higgy actually means. Little bit of new language for us all. And as we're wealth builders here by nature, we recognize that there's always a bit of new language to learn criticism. There's always something new to learn, and you're in for a treat today, because you're going to learn a bunch
Unknown Speaker 2:39
that say, Yes, well, we should be familiar. If you've been listening to the podcast for a while now that we've got our recurring revenue roadmap, that's our process that helps our members move from a place of financial insecurity through to financial independence. And of course, a key part of that is understanding the Seven Pillars of Wealth, seven different asset classes that you can use to generate recurring income in your life every month and stay we really focused around pillar number four, which is the property portfolio. Pillar four, are we Yes, although guest actually comes from a business background, pillar five and interesting, as we'll hear from Mr. Luke spikes today, the founder of Higgy house, how he's taken those 35 plus years of business experience and pivoted really into the property, world and very successfully, too.
Unknown Speaker 3:29
Yeah. And, you know, listen out, for all the lessons that Luke just dispenses in a rapid style. I mean, it's almost if you want to hear an entrepreneur in action, if you want to feel and hear the cogs literally turning, and you can hear the click, click click click of the brain making distinctions and differences to to do better for his customers and better for his investors and better for himself. That I've never think I don't think I've heard a better example of that entrepreneur ism in action than the interview you did with with Luke. And I've got to say, Chris, you did an outstanding job. Pulling out those lessons. So what on you?
Unknown Speaker 4:09
Thank you. Okay, well, let's not wait around any longer. Let's head on over to our conversation with Mr. Luke spikes. Luke, welcome to wealth talk today.
Unknown Speaker 4:18
What Christian it's a delight to be here. Thank you very much for the invitation. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 4:21
you're very welcome, Luke. And today, we're talking about you know, reinventing retail and how you're driving value from marginal retail space, that succumbs to the juggernaut that is online shopping. So looking forward to hearing about that. But before we do that, would you mind just introducing yourself for our listeners who perhaps have not come across you before?
Unknown Speaker 4:40
No. Happy to and I think the thing that I usually prefer to preface any introduction with is I'm not a property person. And that might sound a bit unusual when you actually are spending another half an hour talking about property but but the reality is, I think from where I come as give me a distinct advantage. I am a business person. This is startup number seven, I mean, 35 years building businesses from the ground up. But the first six businesses are all technology businesses. And therefore you're about as unconnected to the world of property as it's likely to get or possible to get. And very different characteristics as the way you operate in those environments. But what I learned, as I ended up in the world of property, that is all of the lessons, many have lost majority of the things I learned were equally applicable if what you did was to focus on property as a market, where there were customers, and those customers had needs. And if you could deliver against those needs better, faster, more effectively, the competing alternatives, you'd make progress. In other words, that's what you do in business. So So although I'm not from property, I do think being not from property an advantage because we look at the market and the world of property very differently from most.
Unknown Speaker 5:48
And I mean, it was only really a few years back 2017 I believe that the kind of entered the world of property and no, what was it that made you decide at that point? That was the right time for you
Unknown Speaker 6:00
accident, genuinely an accident? And yes, it is relative, we are relatively young, and I think he has is one of those brands because we put a lot of effort into building a brand and creating awareness in and around what we were doing. A lot of people assume we've been around forever. Well, actually, we haven't. What we've accomplished is HP has been accomplished in a relatively short order. I I found myself in the world of property by accident, because I had a property that I didn't know what to do with like a lot of a folk, you know, kids, older children grown up left home, bigger house than you need what you know, question like, What do we do with this, and I had just sold my business, I was now working for a large my last business, I was working for a large corporation now and collected some cash. So I sort of sitting there and on the one hand, I had this asset, this property that's the family home that we own for quite some while that was too big for our needs. On the other hand, I had some capital some cash, and what do I do next? Once I have done my earn out with this large corporation, thinking to my wife, she she didn't want to do anything at all because she was fed up with a whole world of startups and, and all the pain that that brings with it not just for you. But for everyone else in and around. And I so I know I'll do I'll just buy some books. And it was my natural instinct is to is to intellectually curious, but get to know something about property. So I bought some books, and one of those was Simon's ouchies. But property magic, picked it up, didn't put it down. And so wow, there's some really interesting ideas in there that have got her started my brain sparking on on what I might do. And I in parallel with that I had conversations with my children about how difficult it was for them, as young adults, young professionals, young adults, making their way in the world to find good quality accommodation that met their needs, as they perceive that needs to be today. And classic entrepreneur going hang on a minute. There's loads of properties, there's loads, I hear this all the time, there's loads of properties, there's loads of landlords, how come you can't find what you say you want a need? What is it you want to need? So I spent time then listening to them about what they felt they didn't be scratching around, it's clear that there was a gap in the market, let's call it that. And, and so Higgy house was effectively born out of that mix of things. And the next thing I know I'm, I'm looking for more education. I go on to Simon's website, having looked at the book, and there's a accelerator on the accelerator. And halfway through the accelerator, it was a three day course, I put my hand in there said, this is intriguing enough and exciting enough, and I can see opportunity, I'm going to sign up for the 12 month program and get myself educated so at least I was I know how to build businesses execute at scale International, that sort of good stuff. I knew nothing about property, the technicalities of property fact. That's where I met Kevin across so so I went on the program. And I begin to learn all of these things and, and up pops wealth builders, and starting to talk about how I could use my Sass more creatively. And I, at that point, I hadn't even imagined I could use it because I was one of those sort of fairly typical entrepreneurs, I think, who, who look at pensions as a bit of a bit of a pain in the ass a bit of a ball. It's like, what am I going to do with this? I'm not sure I know what to do with this. And it was Kevin then. And the conversations I had with wealth builders at 50 have helped unlock that as a as a as an asset that I now have been able to deploy that in the business which has accelerated the growth of E house from that point. So that's that's the long winded answer to your very simple apparently question as to how I got started in property burners.
Unknown Speaker 9:43
Very interesting. And I'd love to hear more about how you've used your Sass as we as we progress and so I guess coming to the name then so obviously, you know it's very unique name and Hickey house so perhaps just spell it out for those that don't know Luke and tell us what's the origins of the name
Unknown Speaker 10:00
Yeah, it's having having any having a memorable name is an important part of any business building any brand. In my opinion, if you truly are going to create something that has occupies a position on everyone's mental shelf, you've got to put a bit of effort into that name, you can't just have some long random name of words, list of words that as your name. So these days, it's not about whether your the limited company is available, it's whether the URL is available, right, so so so I have a little science, I suppose, when and how when I'm starting to look for a new name for a business or a product or brand, which is to try and find short, memorable names on the internet. Now, you have to be creative like and so what I was doing was I combined two languages together to create a unique word that has never existed in the hope that no one else has spotted it. So that when I type it into GoDaddy, it will be available that mean that's as simple as where I started. And so I started down the path of taking, I don't know, the finish for comfortable and the and the Urdu for house, stitch them together and see if I had a word type into type it into into GoDaddy and if the.com and everything was available at all, that's a candidate, and it was the 5050 of them, all of which were not quite right. And then one day I was I was given a cougar so so if you're familiar with the Danish term, sugar, which is spelt hyg G effect, it has no real literal translation in English, but it broadly means komfortables It's describing the environment as being a comfortable, warm, safe place. Think of it like that. But well, cougar and the house. Well Higgy would be how we were present in England, let's misspell it like he gave the middle piggy in the middle. So I went Higgy hyg gi house, let's try and make it feel a bit continental European, let's throw in the German for house ha us not h o u s, he stuck it together, typed it into Google available here and I just rubbish shouting through Tu, Tu TU Delft who was in the other room. He actually said that's the one and just yet and immediately purchased all of the URLs, all of the dot coms dotnet all the various variants. And Higgy house was born. And you know, so it's proven, you know, it is memorable. People do know it, it does actually have meaning. So, so he Heuga and house. I mean, it has has appropriate context in them. So I think we were a bit lucky. But we went through a systematic process that arrived at the end result. And that was the end result.
Unknown Speaker 12:36
Yeah. And of course your your properties have a very unique look and feel like and, you know, I know our focus today conversation is is really where you're moving towards now, which is reinventing retail. But I think really good to understand what the foundations of the business are. And, you know, for someone who who doesn't know what a hickey house property looks like, how can you best describe that.
Unknown Speaker 12:56
But I think what, wherever we're going and where have we been they're all connected. So there's notice a good point. So the aesthetic, let's let's describe it as that the way that he has looks, has been very carefully contrived to that contrives the wrong word considered. And it started out with a brief for our thinking that said, New York loft meets Danish, with a dash of Tokyo for For Inspiration and application of small space living. So that's what we started with. And we said, oh, what does that look like? And after a after, you know, degree of iteration between myself and my sister, a couple of creatives and one or two other members of the team, we ended up defining the look, that has become the heavy house look, which I would describe as sort of industrial upside called quirky, colorful, because it's a little bit of colorful, but actually designed around the target market, we were seeking to seeking to serve general interest, you know, something instantly Instagrammable for example, right? So, so very cool. Deemed to stylish by the audience we were seeking to. So that's, that was the original aesthetic. What we then proceeded to do was to define that as systematically as we could in terms of what did that mean in terms of the furniture we put in the place the flooring, all the finishes. When executed that and then each time we've executed subsequently, we've stuck to the core principles, but improved or innovated slightly each time. So if you looked at it today, compared to what it was five years ago, it is different, but it's definitely connected. And as we as we started to think about our position in the world, I went well, why does everyone run about worrying about service accommodation, and each of those to me make no difference? None None whatsoever. from the customer's perspective. It's a place to stay the differences you stay for one day, or one year or longer. So why would they be any different? Why would you confuse the customer with this service company? This is rendered forget all of that. The focus now is on what on the customer what the customer sees and perceive so. So the aesthetic was designed around what we felt would attract our customer. But also at the same time to be sufficiently distinctive. So if you went walked into one, even if I hadn't told you, you'd notice he has, and I think to a lesser or greater extent, we've accomplished that. And we will continue with this, by the way, so. So it just because we are now incorporating some new activities and new activity directions into what we're doing, does not mean it will suddenly be a completely new look and feel, in fact, quite the reverse your will, we're incorporating new things in because we think that's the right way to do it. But they are incorporated in not not different. Does that make sense?
Unknown Speaker 15:43
Yeah, it does. And it's interesting, because obviously, we've all of your business background look, and we know that any business really needs a proof of concept, right? So you need to make sure that what you think is is wanted is is actually wanted by by the customer. So with that first property I mean, did you go into that feeling confident? Yes, we've got a product here that we know the market is demanding.
Unknown Speaker 16:03
No, no complete completely the opposite. It was like Well, we have no idea everyone was telling us that we were mad. Because our first property we was in Swansea and Swansea I love Swansea. It's a really interesting place. But we were told as we arrived that it was where ambition went to die, I think is what Dylan Thomas said about or someone said I said about is this really the place to put down a high end highly specified community centric, new model for for shared living, co living co living as we now refer to it, maybe not and all the local landlords and investors are going to you're going to do what you know, spend a ton of money more than they would spend on on a property. So So actually, we entered it was with some degree of trepidation that this, actually we could be wrong, this might not work. We did it. The rooms were let within I'm not within a week at record rents, by the way. And we went, we were right, there is a thing. And that was the first one we did with our own money. But we did have some investors involved. But you know, I was effectively underwriting it all, taking all the risk, which I felt was the right thing to do. We did the first one. And now, let's say we continue to knock them out. And the and the same thing happens every time. I mean, the last, the last one we had, we started the marketing before we before we had finished, which is customary because we've got models and other things from other properties, we sold seven rooms without a single viewing for weeks before the building was even finished at record rents again. So you know, so So the brand, the history, the aesthetic, and all the things we use to support that are now helping us drive drive the model forward in terms of the income and and some of the operating metrics as well.
Unknown Speaker 17:41
Yeah, and I'd encourage anyone listening to head to the Higgy House website, have a look, because you'll see the images straight away, you know, and get a really good feeling for what properties look like. Just
Unknown Speaker 17:50
don't just don't copy it. No, I'm kidding. I know we have YouTube, it's amazing how you see lots of so we were one of the first I think it may even been the first to have used bright colors and paint window reveals there were a few things that we did that people would do. That's unusual way to do it. And now people do that. But But I would always say I can look at something that's not Higgy house, you can go into something it's not your house it just because you paint the windows orange, or, or use the same scuff headboard as we do doesn't make it hygge house because an important point just to flesh out a little bit on the question. There's an aesthetic. But there's also a couple of other things that are really important how it looks is important how it feels is important. And how it feels is not just about the space, but it's also about what you do to foster and create community. So how you get who you have in the house will make a difference. So how you how you go through the process of recruiting your your housemate, we don't call them tenants, by the way, because I think that's abusive, right tenant landlord somehow sets the wrong tone, it's their house makes their customers they're giving us money each month for a service, we have to deliver that service at a level that meets or exceeds their expectations, very different way of thinking about it. But the community is about who is in the house, but sort of what you do when they're in the house. How you and that's partly design as well. So it's not just how it looks. It's also how you organize the space makes a big difference. The opportunity to to gather to bump into one another as a group of strangers ostensibly when they arrive, and they do end up emerging friends, you know, there's no question about it. So there's a layer of service that often gets missed by most investors, which is a little bit of investment of time and effort. But it produces extraordinary returns in terms of the rates people appear to pay, how quickly you can let the let the unit's rooms how, how long people stay. Whether you have voids or not, your operating costs are lower. There's a whole bunch of real sensible reasons as to why investing a little bit of time and effort into the let's call it the service layer that sits on top of the asset is an important and sensible thing to do. I do get a lot of folks who come to me, too. I really spend that much money and effort and that much time Not to his or no, but if on the other hand, you want to produce record rents that 50% higher than market average, you want to avoid sub 0%. You want to sell every room without a viewing. And you want 100% conversion, which is what we finally got the last property. If you would like all of those things, yes, do what I'm doing. If you don't want that, then don't do that. It's entirely up to you, you know?
Unknown Speaker 20:20
How many housemates typically will be in one of the properties loop?
Unknown Speaker 20:23
Well, so they are smaller. They're seven to sit? Well, they're five, seven sixes 10s. That sort of size, or they've just agreed terms, despite going on in a moment to talk about where we're headed. I've just agreed terms on a on a building yesterday, which will be our first 40 Bed co living unit. Okay, so scale is, is important in terms of financial returns, but also that was always where our ambition was, how do you take a large commercial building and converted into a 2530 4050? Bed? 150 bed, co living unit? That's where we're headed?
Unknown Speaker 20:59
Yeah. I mean, you joked a moment ago about not copying. But, you know, wealth building is all about collaboration. And I understand you, you know, you have an investor program now that enables other people to collaborate with Hickey house. So maybe just let people know a little bit about that, if you don't mind.
Unknown Speaker 21:14
No, I'd happy to. So up until now, most of the most of the work that we've done, we've done for our own account, and you know, at our own risk, so that we would borrow money. And we would involve investors, it would be very typical arm's length, term loans and those sorts of things. We're making money for other people, but it was always you come in, you're in for short period of time. And 18 months or so ago, I started thinking about how we might adjust what we do to more effectively involve others. And I'm, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, many years standing, I love working with entrepreneurs, it happens, I accidentally started mentoring. And that was genuinely accidental. And I got gathered a few people who thought I could help them. And then turns out I could, and I really enjoyed that. And effective out of that, and the strength of the Higgy house brand and the fact we've sort of systematized how we go about doing what we do, led me to conclude that the best thing for us to do right now to achieve our goals in terms of numbers and scale was to start effectively collaborating with others. In other words, we've done the proving if you want, we've got the model, we got the way we operate, I've got the team. Now what we should do is to grow more quickly towards our 10,000 units in 10 years, by the way, that's the objective. I need to work with other people. And so conceived of a program, which is a sort of business partner investor partner program, whereby not only can you participate in deals that we do, so there's an element of joint venture now. So you can participate in deals that we do, we will also help and support our partner in building their own portfolio, he has properties to independent of us, they can use our services, we might operate them for on their path, depending on what they're wanting to accomplish. So we created this program. But if you have capital, and you're wanting to commit that capital to produce a return, and you are interested in Hickey house and our model, then now what you can do is work with, with me, the team Higgy. And we have a program where you can sign up for the program, yes, it's a bit of money involved, because we've got costs that we incur, but you become a partner of mine, you work with me that you participate in our deal flow, you I mentor and support your your towards your business ambitions, whatever you want, whatever it is you want to do. We even will help organize the senior debt, this or this money supplemental to your own equity investment to help find fund and finance stuff. And on and on it goes so So I sort of looking now for a few. We have four ready, by the way. So there are some already, we're starting to get a little bit of momentum and folks starting to join us looking for just a small number more of individuals who are interested in really working with closely with with with me and the team. And then we can help you accomplish your objectives, but at the same time accomplish that. So it's important to bear in mind that this is a mutually beneficial thing. I've got a big goal that I'd like to accomplish. I'm not going to do that. On my own. I need the help support and involvement of others. So this is a way creative way for us to do that.
Unknown Speaker 24:23
Absolutely. No, it sounds fantastic. Like so 2020 comes along, we know. So how did this affect what you were doing, Luke? And how has that then sort of shifted the course for you in terms of your outlook?
Unknown Speaker 24:38
Well, our CO living business was fine. In fact, we were all a little nervous early on that our young professional market would all disappear home to mom and dad and we'd have voids and vacancies. It didn't turn out to be that case at all. We put with a little bit of extra effort into care and support. We put microwaves and all sorts of stuff in and we did all the things that you know lots of other folks did to to just to make sure that our customers looked after and that helped So really solid, in fact, did we lose a single day's rent throughout the entire period on our curling businesses. The service accommodation business, which is the other business we have was in Bristol based in Bristol, which is a mix of one beds, studios got a couple of two beds, some houses was hammered, as you might reasonably expect, so we had to pivot real hard and real fast early on. All the small stuff we switched to STS. And we just got creative with the houses as to how we would serve support people in the market who were eligible to rent and there were a few so we, we thought we had about one point for the bulk of lockdown one and possibly even two, maybe into three. We had a group of guys who were in Bristol, repairing big buildings in the wake of Grenfell, they were fire folk 70 A crew of 17 Guys, I needed housing all deemed eligible to continue to work through lockdowns because of the nature of what they were doing. That I met the boss, the boss at the VA, can you help me accept it? I just so happened had 17 rooms. So we had all our properties 15 100% occupied by switching quickly to right, we'll focus on the contractors weekends were washed out, of course, you know, typically, our typical leisure guests gone, wasn't allowed to rent. But we were doing well enough with our, with our mix of contractors and single let's just to sort of Bumble along and you know, crash on through, I suppose. And we lost a little bit of money. But we did. Okay, by pivoting that way. What then towards the tail end, as we see not everyone went well, okay, the world continues on, and we're gonna have to deal with at some point. So we can't just sit there and stop. We continue to deliver our living buildings come to work through as it were, we were allowed to adjust the way we did it, of course, but we were looking for for more purchases. And what I found was, it was becoming increasingly difficult to purchase the type of asset that we had been purchasing. Because there were lots of people I don't know where they'd seen a video somewhere about you can buy a house for a pound and HMOs are the thing to buy. But, but price is just silly. I mean, people were paying way too much money. And we're very financially disciplined. So of course, if someone's going to bid the price up to beyond what that asset is worth. And I'm not going to make the returns I would need to make I'm just not I'm just not gonna chase it. So that was that was happening too often, for us to release, achieve our longer term ambition. I couldn't buy enough properties, in other words, because people were popping up and paying silly money for him. So he went, Okay, what do you do in that circumstance? If you're a business? Well, what you do is you look for alternative directions in which you might travel to continue the momentum. And I happen to be offered a building in 2020, middle of 2020, June 2020. So we weren't far into the into lockdowns and all the trouble that we subsequently had. And it was a retail building. And it was right in the heart of Bristol for those who know Bristol, the Old City, beautiful Georgian building. Grade One and two star Bislett buildings listed in and around it high traffic area right in the heart of the city. And I got a it's an off market deal. got coffee here today. I think I've got one for you. And I want to have a look at it. So on Wednesday, I bought it on Friday, it was like oh my god, this is amazing. And the reason I bought it was because all that was a retail building and an empty retail building that previously had a a a building society actually occupy the retail space. And how what happened in November, bit unlucky for the vendor, I suppose. November 2019, the 17 year lease came to an end. And the buildings I said sorry, we don't we don't need retail space anymore. And it was empty. They did it a little bit. So what they should do with it. Of course March comes along lockdown happens and they panicked. What we're going to do we've got an empty retail building, the offices above are empty, we've got no income coming in, we've got costs going out, what do we do, we've got to sell it. And I was able to buy that building. So they paid 495,000 for it 17 years ago, I paid 400,000 for it the middle of 2020 and that got me thinking I went hang on a minute. If the world is running from the High Street maybe there's value to be had in finding creative ways to repurpose these buildings that would add more value. So we put a lot of thought before we bought it in the few days before we thought it was okay we'll take our hospitality experience will take our CO living experience will effectively transform of that and we're what we will do is we'll convert the upper storeys into an aparthotel
Unknown Speaker 29:40
because that delivers higher density this was the thinking and if this see one class so in other words, it's a commercial to commercial effectively, offices in this case to to to commercial to to see one part hotel, we're gonna have to worry about space standards. We could deliver the density that we wanted to If that makes it economically viable and work, and then what we're going to do with retail space, then we said, well, we'll revisit our original objective, which was co working. So a combination of all of these my thought were all of these people who've been forced to work from home when are fed up tripping over dogs, cats, wives, husbands, working in cupboards, closets, and generally fed up with this, what felt like an exciting and interesting thing to be doing at least for a few months, now it's a pain in the backside. And we'll want the other other human beings and we are your social animals by nature. So we thought, if we are able to reinvent retail premises on high streets, which are accessible to folk who just want a desk and to hang out with a bunch of folk a bit like them, then this is the right time for us to revisit, co working, and the Higgy hub was born. So So in essence, what we have conceived of at that point was, we were called distressed assets, but good value, retail buildings, others are scratching their heads wondering what to do with it. As they're running, we're going back towards it, acquire those assets and have a product to put into it. So the upper storeys would be an aparthotel studio based. And then the, what would it be the retail will be converted into these desk based Higgy hubs, which are for local entrepreneurs, where anyone really who wants to get out of the home and have a desk, and a place from which to work that suits work would sit underneath. And that's how they sort of hybrid aparthotel co working models anyway. Literally a few weeks later, I got a call from another agent, carnivals, another city are interested in. And I took control of another one. Which is well on its way. This month, we'll get planning permission for 16 lofts studios at 45 desks. And it's right smack in the middle of Cardiff. It's 200 meters from the station a couple 100 meters from the new BBC headquarters. It's in right in front of the St. Davids shopping center. It's a perfect location. And we got a very good deal on the on the on the asset when one considers what it will be worth when we do what we do with it. And I got another call. So this is how these things happen. And it was a another agent of our friend of ours, who in who was operating in Cardiff, too. And said, I think you need to come and talk to this individual, the owner of this building, he's just got Planning Commission convert this hotel into three flats. Mine not really interested in three flats. And that's not that's not our thing. Really. He said I'll come along. He's interesting. Go have a chat with him anyway. Anyway, long story short, later, oh, he took purchase lease option on a seven bed seven bath boutique hotel in Cardiff day, because he has a massive carpark which is part of the deal upon which we think we can build a 21 Better part 21 unit aparthotel a 30 bed co working a 30 desk co working unit and convert the original hotel into a 10 bed 10 bath co living to have our first hybrid co living part hotel co working all in one one physical site. So it's about that I'm going hang on a minute. So it's really tough over here. People are paying too much for these assets. And yet, in this space, when we talk about retail assets, hotels, I'm finding real value because we have a product that we can put into these that makes them more valuable than they are at present. And that's effectively how our our thinking evolved. And we then said you know what? This needs to become our strategic direction. So that has said this whole hospitality business, we've got five years experience doing it anyway, reinventing retail, creating these extraordinary party house aparthotels and co working hybrid hubs on Britain's high streets has become our, our strategic focus from for from this point forward.