A Lease Option, a Hotel, 25k profit and a Costcutter Supermarket. 

Read the article below by Neil Larkin, who we work with regularly at MS Law, to learn more about this intriguing lease option deal that Neil and his business partner Chris Smith completed.

This deal, like the majority of our property deals, came through our Gold Mine Advert in The Blackpool Evening Gazette.

 OPTION DEAL

1.  10 BED HOTEL, OPEN MARKET VALUE £195,000.00

2.  5 YEAR OPTION WITH CLAUSE IN CONTRACT TO EXTEND FOR A FURTHER 2 YEARS

3.  PURCHASE PRICE IN 5 YEARS FOR HOTEL WAS AGREED AT £120,000.00.  VENDORS  OUTSTANDING MORTGAGE      

4.         OPTION CONSIDERATION OF £7000.00 FOR VENDOR TO RELOCATE TO SPAIN

ABOUT THE DEAL

When Chris and I purchased the hotel, the hotel was called The Grosvenor Hotel and the reviews were bad to say the least. I don’t think we realised what a big project we had taken on until we stepped in to the hotel on our first day in charge. We decided to close the hotel for two weeks while we came up with a new plan and strategy to take this business forward. Within the two weeks we installed a new bar area, refurbished all downstairs including new kitchen and dining room, we also decorated all the 10 bedrooms, cleaned the hotel from top to bottom and had a complete rebranding of the hotel to the new HOTEL 33 BLACKPOOL. Our new website was also designed www.hotel33blackpool.co.uk

Chris and I had no experience of the hotel industry so we had to learn quick. Our initial plan was to get managers in to run the hotel, we did this but they were not doing the job to our satisfaction, so Chris and I left our full time employment to save our investment. Chris was a fireman and I was a civil engineer. We decided our ethos was going to be excellent customer service, spotless hotel and good value for money. We adhered to all of these and more. We soon realised to build this business and get repeat custom reviews were imperative. Please see our reviews on tripadvisor.com, type in hotel 33 Blackpool in the top left hand corner and also on laterooms.com.

We have now built the business from the Grosvenor Hotel where no one wanted to stay to Hotel 33 were some guests have honestly been back 3 times since we have been in charge. The re bookings for 2011 is also beyond our wildest dreams.  The hotel has been such a massive learning experience, from marketing to sales to business systems.

Chris and I decided that our love is property and in 2011 we wanted to focus all of our attention on this, so we decided to sell Hotel 33 now that it was in a great position for new owners to take over. In a 5 week period since advertising the business for sale we had over 20 viewings and 52 enquiries. We are now in the process of assigning the option over to new owners for a fee of £25000.00 with MS LAW SOLICITORS acting on behalf of the new owners.

This has been a massive learning curve, but most importantly the hotel has released Chris and I from the rat race to now focus on our love of business, property and wealth creation for 2011. With our profit we are pursuing a venture of building on a plot of land. We plan to build a ground floor unit to let to Costcutter with flats above that we can sell/let individually.