Title Splitting Masterclass: Property’s Hidden Gem with Rachel Knight

This week, Athena sits down with the brilliant Rachel Knight to dive into one of the most exciting, and often overlooked, strategies in property: title splitting.

Rachel doesn’t just share her story of getting into property; she opens up about how she discovered title splitting as almost an unspoken hidden gem in the industry. It’s one of those strategies that doesn’t always get talked about but, when done right, can unlock some of the most lucrative deals and create incredible opportunities for financial freedom.

Together, Athena and Rachel explore what title splitting really means in practice, why getting started early can make all the difference, and how the right “power team” of professionals is essential to make the process smooth and successful.

The conversation also highlights the bigger picture: The importance of surrounding yourself with supportive people, investing in education, and having the right mindset to navigate the ups and downs of property.

And of course, with Rachel’s fun and bubbly personality shining through, this isn’t just an educational episode – it’s a genuinely enjoyable listen. You’re in for plenty of insights, lots of laughs, and a good time from start to finish.

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Transcript

0:01

Good morning everyone and welcome to today's episode of the Girls in Property podcast. So if you are tuning into today's podcast, I'm going to assume that you have got some interest in title splitting and you know what? So do I. I know very little about title splitting and so for me today is going to be an educational day for me. I'm so curious about it. I know that there's really great opportunities to be made and I have got the absolute best person on in the industry to teach us today all about title splitting and I'm so excited about it. So without further ado, I'd love to introduce Rachel Knight. Hey Rachel! Hello Athena, how are you today? I am amazing. I'm so excited about this because a lot of people have been talking to me recently about title splitting and we actually had one of our amazing community members Lucinda who actually came to one of your sort of master mind days if you like and she three days mastermind, yes, yes. mastermind and you know she called me straight away and she's like Athena you need to start learning about title splitting it is absolutely incredible when you know what you're doing and when you're learning from the right person and I thought right who have I got to get on the podcast and everyone said to me you need to talk to Rachel so here you are yeah looking forward to it. So am I. And as I said to you before we came on this podcast, and as I said to the listeners, I'm also a learner. I'm also a novice. I know very little. So hopefully that will really help with the conversation today, because almost if you say things and I'm a bit like, hold on, I don't quite know that bit or something, we can then revisit it as it were. So in true fashion, Rachel, can you start by introducing yourself to all the listeners? ah You know, who is the person behind titlesplit.com? What's your story? How, how is it that... A person like yourself actually then got into property in the first place and then went on to such a niche such as title splitting. I'm so curious. oh a long story. Right so I'm gonna start right back in the beginning. So I'm Rachel Maria Knight but my maiden name back in the many days ago was Smith so it's Rachel Smith ah and I grew up in Leeds you can't tell by my accent haha very funny it's very broad Yorkshire but I don't live in Yorkshire anymore I live in the Midlands in Derbyshire. But I'm gonna talk about the thing that made me a driven lady. And I think you've got a lot of lady listeners on here today who are going to resonate with some of the stories that I tell today because we're all just normal people trying to make a great life for us and our families. So I was a school leaver at 16 and I got a job and I went back to school to do my exams. And at 16 years old, I managed to get myself pregnant. Right? Now. I'm going to say, aren't I a lucky girl because I now have a 39 year old daughter as a result of that. But if I go back to eh what happened, something that happened to me. So she was clearly an accident. Her name is Catherine, but she definitely was not a mistake, right? But at 16, she was clearly an accident. And literally, I remember sitting on a bus going back to school. to do my exams and I'm gonna ask the ladies to think about this. Think about the time in your life that something happened, that trigger that made you who you are today. And I can literally pinpoint mine, I feel incredibly lucky. I was nearly 17 at this point. em I was going back to the village that I live in on a bus and I heard the girls talking about me on the bus and they were saying em that I would... have no life now because I was pregnant because obviously the word on the street was I was pregnant em I wouldn't ever get a job I would go on to benefits for the rest of my life and that actually had ruined my life. Now I knew very quickly that I would have my child because she means the world to me and I just believed that was the right thing to do and I was a grown-up 16 year old and I was 17 by the time I had it but those girls sat on that bus saying to me that I would have no life because I had a child, I was pregnant at 16. I sat there and they were bitching about me. They knew I was there and they were really mean or they really didn't know I was there, right? It was one or the other and I'll never know. And I don't even remember who they are now. I don't care. But they said this about me and I thought, I'm gonna show you. I'm gonna show you exactly. what a single mum can do in this society that we live in. And that is what I'm going to say, that was the trigger point. fast forward many years, when my child was, when she was about three months old, I had my job, I went back to work after my maternity leave at 17 years old. And I used to have to get two buses, one to drop her at the childminder, one to get to work. And then one back to the childminder to pick her up at one home. I lived in Leeds at the time and I worked at the post office and literally I just was determined and there was a time when there was too much month at the end of the money I'm sure lots of people know about that too much month at the end of the money but I just kept going I kept my head down and I thought if I keep going I can still have a career and look after my children but I think what it did it made me more determined to support myself and my children in the future And I think that's what I was able to do because I've got two daughters, Katherine and Natalie. And I had Natalie 10 years later and I've always been able to support my own children. So I then started my first sales job at 19. Fast forward many years, 29, I have a first sales director's job. I was driving around with my BMW through my little town where I lived going, ha, I told you I'd do it. Do you know what I mean? Not really out loud out the window, but to myself. Because I, you know, determination doesn't matter what card you dealt, just make sure you keep going forward. Anyway, in my mid thirties, I started collecting. I had a corporate job. I worked in the city. I was traveling. The hard thing is I probably spent more time than I wanted to away from my kids as they were growing up. But they had a mum that they could aspire to because I was providing them and you know, with a life. And that was always, we had nice holidays and things like that. And what happened was in my mid thirties, in 2005, this was, I started collecting, I'm going to put it in inverted commas, properties. So I'd get my annual bonus from my job and I'd buy a buy to let, right? And then the following year I'd get an annual bonus and I'd buy a buy to let. And I didn't have any idea what I was doing, right? If I'm really honest and let's be honest, that's a lot of us in property, right? When we first start out, I didn't have a... any idea what I was doing. And then, so I collected a few, but they were not for income so much as the retirement of the future. And I didn't really know how to do it properly. 2000 and corporate career don't matter. worked in credit bureaus. You can look at my LinkedIn. You can see it on there, Rachel Marie and I, if you want to borrow yourself, you can have look at my corporate career, but it was boring. And eventually in 2015, I went along to a little half day seminar. on property investment and getting trained. And I was that woman running to the back of the room, right? Because I suddenly realized, right, 10 years into my property journey, that if I got educated, I could actually replace my job income with property income. And it was like a bit of a revelation to me, because I thought I was quite an intelligent woman, right? But it never really occurred to me that this was going to be something that would eventually replace my corporate income until I went in that seminar. So I know people talk about property training and you know, you know, it's all a scam. It's not a scam. That particular training, I did a small investment and I did a larger investment. Then my partner who's just become my husband, he decided to join me in it because he wasn't up for it. He was like, no, no, we can do it ourselves. And I was like, no, I'm going, I'm doing this because, because here's the thing. I knew that I did not want to be working till 67, 70 for somebody else. controlling my life and I thought this is my way out. So I ran to the back of the room and I spent 20 grand in the end on that bit and then another 10,000 on mentoring and coaching and sourcing training with a company called Tigrant that's no longer around. It was Tigrant then it became Legacy then it became Asset Academy and it eventually went bust. So some of your members or people listening to this may have known them but I do not regret a penny I spent on that because They taught me every single strategy, guess what? Apart from title splitting, right? And I was like, but somebody, they told me about title splitting, but they never taught me it. And this is still going on today, by the way, in most of the property training out there, people have been told it exists, but nobody's taught how to do it properly. And I don't mean, for centuries and decades, title splitting has been done. So title splitting. Let me just explain what it is, because I just need to say that because people, what is it? It's where we take one property and we create separate titles to create many properties. So if I buy a piece of land, I may develop bonds on a piece of land, split them all off. That's called title splitting. If we buy a block of flats that's on one freehold and there's hundreds of thousands of those in the UK and I split them into individual leasehold titles, that is title splitting. So I knew I worked out, because I'm quite astute in terms of what will work and what won't work. And me personally, by this time I was in my mid 40s, 47, right? And I was thinking, I don't want to do HMOs. I don't want to do service accommodation. I think it's a job. I know that's a good way to get cash flow. I think if I can buy and make small blocks of flats, so buy one house. turn it into two flats, buy one house, turn it into four flats, I buy one, create many. And then I'll have multiple incomes from the many I've created and they'll be valued as individual saleable properties if I title split them. So I worked that out in 2017 and I was like, I'm doing this. And my mentors were like, well, we don't know how to do it. I was like going to my mentoring meeting and my mentor, lovely man. He m Do I look stupid? Why am I going to teach you to do it so you can teach everybody else to do it? I said, no, no, no, no, no. You see, because in 2000 and, God, how long ago was it? In 99, 2000, I'd set a goal that in my fifties, I would be running a training company. That was my self-actualization Maslow's Hierarchy needs. I was going to be running a training company. So at that point I was like, I'm going to learn this and I'm going to teach people how to do it. And this was 2017. So I did my first title split in 2017. I bought me and my partner at the time, Andy, we bought two houses at auction and turned them into four apartments. And they were worth 30 % more capital, but 168 % more cashflow by having two apartments versus one house. So I'm like, Hmm, what if this was four flats? Right, so each house had two flats. So two apartments in a house create 68 % more cash flow than one house. So I'm like, if it was four, how much more cash flow? And you can see now why we start to subdivide property. And I learned to do it properly. I did multiple deals. and I got financially free from doing it. Financially free means I don't... didn't have to work for anybody else anymore. em And that has now meant, I mean, we're just full-time property. then titlesplit.com or titlesplit limited is the cherry on the cake, right? Because we then have created this company and I now, well, I run this company and we teach hundreds and hundreds of other people exactly how to make money out of this strategy. But the beautiful thing is, they're just single lets when we've done, but we can title, that's the residential, we can title split uh flats, we can title split land, we can title split commercial property, we can title split mixed use property. And I'm not really surprised that you're getting asked about this, Athena, because we are out there telling the whole world about this strategy and we'll continue to do so. because my goal will be that this will be mainstream within the next three to five years and everybody will know how to do it. But right now it's a low hanging fruit because there's still dissenters out there telling the world that they don't need to do it. Yeah, definitely. Gosh, what a story. Also, I did not know that you had your eldest at 17. I didn't know that. how incredible... I mean, I think that... Of course, I can't relate to that. I haven't had a child... I haven't had a child at all, but to have a child at 17, I mean, that changes you as a person and that definitely makes you the person that you are. Can't believe how mean children are, honestly. Back then and now, just children. are so mean. Yeah. But they did me a massive favor, didn't they? And you know, this is what you've all got to think, ladies. When somebody ever says mean things about you, it says more about them than it does about you. But that gave me that little determination to go, do not ever put somebody on the scrap heap of life for any reason. The reason they were putting me on the scrap heap of life was because I'd had a child. And actually my child is now a 39 year old, well balanced, beautiful woman. I have three beautiful grandchildren. She holds down a family and a career herself and she's in a vocation. She works with children, helps children in care. So I'm so lucky. you know, those people that say those things, they're saying what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. is so very true. Absolutely, and you are a strong woman Rachel like you are a strong woman And I tell you what I love I love that to be honest with you So I've been doing I've been sort of in this game now for about sort of four to five years And I of course was an accidental landlord before that but sort of full-time now sort of the full year mark and you're right when I first started it was the usual it was conversations around vital acts, HMOs, service accommodation ah Those were the traditional conversations that people would have. Very very few times did I actually have conversations around title splitting. It's almost something that has only been brought to my attention recently and actually if I think about it, just to sort of help the listeners out a bit as well, so one of the flats I actually own is part of a house that was split into two flats so they made it into a ground floor flat and like a maisonette, um an upper flat. and the person who I bought the flat from, bought the house, she bought the whole house and she made two flats, title-splitted it and she sold both off individually and that's how she made her money and it's so interesting and I'm now sort of getting into it and I'm starting to hear so many stories that I'm gonna be delving more into it but you know just in terms of like what lenders are willing to lend against with title splits because they're so popular, the fact that you can buy a whole block of flats that's on one freehold and there are six flats and you're like, wow, like the opportunities that could be had. And that's what I really hope to give the listeners today. I really want to give lots of value and lots of education about, well, hold on. I've never even, I want to listen to almost listen to this and go, I've never even thought about title splitting. Now I'm ready to just dabble my feet in it and, and know that you are the right person to help us to do that. So before we then delve into the, the, the aspect of today's podcast around title splitting, What is it that you would say at the moment Rachel that you're celebrating in life? wow, so this is another little personal story. So I have to say this, I sit here when I'm recording this with you now and I just got married, what day is it today? I just got married nearly a month ago, right? And I'm 56 years old and it's taken me till, well, I met Andy 12 years ago. So it didn't take me till 56, it took me till 47, 48 to meet Andy. And no, I've just done that wrong. What were saying? 44, 45, just tried to think when I met him. 12, in my 40s, 12 years ago. Anyway, and we just got married and I'm gonna say I have been married before a couple of times and I've had bad experiences, right? And I'm not gonna say, you know, my children are a great experience, but relationship wise, I've had bad experience, right? And it's taken me till my mid forties to meet the one. I've now just married him and he is a great guy. He promotes me going forward. I've had people in my life before and I know lots of women will have experienced this, who when you do something amazing, try and put you down, right? Put you down. not saying, I meant... Men and women have experienced this, not just women. So I know we're talking to a women's podcast, but men and women have experienced this because they might be in a relationship and I've been in a relationship where somebody wanted to put me down every time I did something good to take away my sparkle. And my husband, Andrew, he lets me shine and he lets my sparkle go. And I'm going to say, ladies, there's lovely guys out there. Find one of those lovely guys. don't sit there going and not going on dating site why i'm just gonna say why who are you helping not yourself right so just i met him on match.com not advertising them but i met him on match.com 12 years ago he's five foot two right so lots of women were screening him out because he's quite short in stature fantastic normal down to earth great guy with who supports and lets my sparkle sparkle. And I let his sparkle sparkle. And that's what you want in a relationship. So that's what I'm celebrating. And I've just come back from a honeymoon and we had a lovely time. You know what? I love that Rachel. I just love your energy. Like your energy is so infectious. uh And I just think to myself, it's a really interesting concept, isn't it? Because... There are some really, really great guys out there, as there are great women as well. And I think it's just about finding your person. Like it's just about finding your person, whoever that may be. doesn't matter gender, it doesn't matter who they are. Like as long as you, and never give up on love, I think is a wonderful thing to say. I think that, you know, even though you had these bad experiences, you never gave up. You said, know, I know that there's more out there and I love the fact you're living life. I bet your girls are so happy for you, just seeing you happy. m him and you know they are in fact in in my how in my daughter my older daughter's family they go they go hashtag save Andy because he's with me but I laugh about it because they love him and you know my oldest daughter said to me listen Andy needs to make it really clear to us what he wants when he dies and his funeral and everything because we will be looking after him because he hasn't got any children of his own do you know what I mean so That's many, many decades away, but that's lovely because it's my family adopting him as well. So that's really cool. I love that. I'm so happy for you, Rachel. you know, that to me is people often talk about, I don't want to go too deep on this, but people often talk about what is the definition of success. And I listen to a lot of podcasts about this. I read a lot of information about this, about the definition of success. And, you know, I'm still quite young, I'm 33, but I feel like I'm on this journey myself of kind of redefining kind of what my definition of success is as well. And I think that if you can just find happiness and have that family unit, I think to me that's actually what's priceless. And that means more than any amount of money, any amount of awards, any amount of anything that you can have. It's actually just finding kind of your one true love and all of that. It sounds a bit soppy, but I think it's true. It's about family and it's about the connections, connections that you actually make in life is what to me is at the moment defining success for me. love that you're celebrating that I'm very happy for you. Thank you. So for me, mine's going to be, let's go on a similar vein then. Let's keep the momentum going before we roll into the learning part of today's podcast, which is let me follow suit and let me celebrate the fact that literally yesterday, because we're recording this just at the end of July, I've just got back from Venice. So I literally flew in yesterday from Venice um where my partner, took me away for our five year anniversary. um So he took me away. And do you know what? And I've talked about this very opening on the podcast, I talk about this very very openly always because I think that's best way to do it. You know the life of being an entrepreneur and being in a relationship where both of you have your own businesses and being entrepreneurs is very difficult. We talk all the time about the fact that we feel like our relationship if you were gonna do it like a video game is constantly on expert mode because you're both trying to build your businesses, you're both trying to lift each other. But actually it was so nice to just go away, reconnect with one another and just have the most amazing time where, you know, my laptop literally gathered dust for five days because I didn't pick it up like once. And he said, why did you bring it? And I said, oh, I just feel like I had to bring it just in case. And he's like, okay, baby steps. He's like, one day you might not bring it, but it did gather dust and we were able to reconnect. ate loads of gelato, loads of food and we were- able to just be a couple again and be in a relationship and almost just reconnect and I think that that's so important and I recommend to anyone who's listening to this this episode today even if it's just a day like just take five minutes to just go and reconnect as a family reconnect as a couple because it will be one of the best things you ever do and in a way it refuels your battery far more than looking at your bank balance and far more than taking on the next deal ah So I recommend just going and reconnecting today because you can have those connections and I think that's what, again, the definition of success is, which is so lovely. So let's celebrate together. Yes, and do you know what I want to say? I was going to say it just before you said that when I talked and now I'm going to say it after you've said it. On nobody's gravestone did it ever say this person was so successful because they were very rich? Right, it didn't say that, it never says that. It's what you do for the people you love, what you do with the people you love, what you do to help other people. in your life, they're the things that you'll be remembered for, not how much money you had. And sometimes, and by the way, you know, people say to me, why don't you, because I could literally just buy blocks of flats and make an absolute fortune out of splitting them, right? I know how to do it. I know how to finance it. I know I've built a power team that can do it. I could do it. If you asked me, though, what drives me every day is not money. It's not money. That's just a side effect of success, right? If you're lucky, as long as you've got enough, it's not money. It's about what you achieve and what you do for other people and how you're remembered for a difference you made to their lives. Whether that's your children, whether it's people that you meet, whether it's your friendship group, whether it's women that you're helping with the property podcast here, Athena, you know, helping other women to be strong. uh Helping, don't get, all right, we're talking about women, but there could be guys listening here. We're helping everybody to be strong. So if we can go through adversity in life and help others be stronger as a result of the stories we tell, then that's way more valuable than money. As long as we've got enough for what we want to do to spend the time with our families and what we do and why we do property is to give us more time to be with the people we love or doing the things we love. And then a consequence as well is you can gain wealth at the same time. But if money's all that drives you, that's a very shallow life. Yeah, amen, Rachel, amen. So let's help everybody today who's listening in that case, and let's talk about title splitting and let's think to ourselves, right, how is it that we can move forward? So let's do this in chronological order. So let's go back to this definition of title splitting, just so that we're really, really clear. So can you give us the clearest, easiest example of taking a property, any property, and creating a title split on it? Right, I've just done one, which is a commercial property. And I'm going to tell you about this one. So this is a little tiny church and I'll literally, if you want to get your pens out, write down the numbers, right? It's a little tiny church. I don't like big deals because I don't like risk. is a small one even for us, but it is small. But I want people who haven't, don't know how to get involved to understand that you can start small and then go big if you want. or can start small and stay small. You have to choose for you. So this is an example. We were driving past this church quite a lot and it was sold subject to contracts and then it came back on the market and it was a little tiny mission church. That's what it's called, which means it was an extension of another church in the community, right? And it was a stone built in Derbyshire. and kept driving past it and it was for sale for 145 or 150,000. So we went to see it and I mean it was literally collapsing, the floor was collapsing inside, it had woodworm everywhere, it was a right mess. So we bought it, because why wouldn't you? So we bought it. And we bought this church and it already had planning to be turned into two side by side bungalows, sort of apartment sized but small bungalows. The reason that we didn't turn it into one big house as it didn't really have a garden and you know if you were turning that into a family house, a far-bed house, you'd probably need a garden so we created two small bungalows. We've just finished it and it cost about 110, we're not 100 % in with the costs at the moment because we finalized everything in the accounts because we literally put it on the market about three weeks ago. So this little tiny bungalow Two little bungalows side by side stone stunning beautiful beams inside lots of features Inside we've kept the features has gone on the market for a total of 460 to 230 each right we bought it for 140 we spent We spent 110 on it, so that's 250 right and it's on the on the market for 460. That's 210 Now realistically we might accept a lower offer, we might not even sell it, but as in we might decide to, we could do SA with it, we could, so you talk about exit strategy, we could do SA, we could service accommodation, we could do, we'd probably do single X instead because I can't be bothered with service accommodation. And it's in the Derbyshire, so we could get any of those strategies. So it's on the market, it's making over 200,000 pound profit. It's a very small deal. but who wouldn't like 200,000 pound profit from a small deal? Even if it sells for a bit less, it'll make 190,000 pound profit. Now, let me explain the title split element. So everybody understood what I just said. We didn't know whether we wanted to keep this, so we split this into two separate commercial units on the day we bought it. So what that meant is the land registry documentation now is two separate titles. Now this is a freehold title split, not a leasehold title split. So it's two separate freeholds side by side that were created on the day of purchase. And now it's now sat as two separate freeholds, right? So each one was bought for 70,000 each, so that adds up to 140. We've now added the value through a refurb. Each one's now selling for 230,000 each, right? That is a title split in its truest form. Most developers would do split on sale, which is after you've done the refurbishment. The problem with that is if you cannot sell it and you are stuck with it, right, and lots of developers are in this mess when they get onto big bridging loans, we didn't use, we use private finance for this, we haven't got a bridge on it. But literally, Lots of people get stuck in these big bridging loans in that situation and then something happens in the economy and they can't sell them and they've now got them sat in the wrong structure. So what we've done is we title split on the day we bought it. That gives us options. We can rent it out. If we rent it out as buy to let, we can now go and get each of those properties. This is the really important bit, right? We can get them valued as individual buy to let. properties are individual saleable properties and each one is worth £2.30 each. Now that means we can borrow 230 times 70 percent, I'm doing it on my calculator, 161,000 on each one, right? Times that by two, we can borrow 322,000. Now remember, we've only spent 260,000 doing it. So we'd get all of our money out if we went and financed it as buy-to-lets. If we hadn't title split it, this is really unfortunate. But because the way that banks value property, If it was all on one title and it was two separate units, it would be classed as a multi-unit for your block. Even though it's not a block, it literally is two side by side units. It would be valued as a commercial property based on rent and yield, and it would only be worth 260,000 what we'd spent on it. So we would only, so we could borrow three to two because we title split it. But if we hadn't title split it, we'd have only been able to borrow two 60 times 70%, 182. we spent £260 on it, that would have meant we've left £78,000 of our own money in the deal. So instead of getting all the money out by title splitting, we've increased the valuation massively. In fact, this is way more than 25 to 35%. But I say if you title split something that is multiple units on one freehold into individual saleable units on one freehold. The valuation is 25 % to 35 % higher just for the title split. And it's not my valuation. This is how Rick's surveyors value property and banks value property. Wow amazing and this is why so many people are now doing it. Okay so I've got a couple of questions based on what you just said. So my first question is you said that what you guys did when you got the church was you title split on the first day whereas some people don't do that and they title split on sale. oh title splits it on sale. The whole world, the whole market would have bought that on one block and title split it on sale. Okay, so explain to me Rachel what the difference is and why you're then coming from a different angle, which is title splitting on day one. Right, OK, so this was the reason and actually this is difficult to do because this was a commercial property. In the main, right, we'd be looking at freehold block. So four flats on one freehold at the land registry is called a multiple unit freehold block. Anything over one address on the land registry. OK, anything over one address on one title. So there's two addresses on one title at the land registry. That is a multi-unit freehold block. whether it's a shop downstairs and a flat upstairs, or it's a multi-unit freehold block. Right, so the majority of investors do not title split on purchase because it's nearly impossible for them to do it. Solicitors tell them it can't be done. Their mentors tell them it's not worth doing, right? The reason that we do it on purchase, and this is absolutely crucial, is we reverse into the parking space so that, like when you come along in your car, and you get to parking space, you're supposed to reverse in because when you come to leave, you might not be able to leave if the exit isn't clear, if you've driven in, right? So what we do is we teach people to reverse into the title split parking space so that they can sell one unit, they can keep the units, they can finance them individually on buy to let mortgages. If they do not title split, the start they will end up having to pay stamp duty and everything else again to do the title split later right and if they are not selling everything this is the so let me explain for since the 15th century people have title split as they sold so when you explained to me about your flat earlier Athena that you bought somebody title split on sale that's not new that's been around forever it's title splitting as you buy our title splitting during ownership that we have really pushed into the market in the last five years. So there's no accident that you are suddenly hearing about this because we've been banging on this drum for five years, right? And we are teaching people to do it at the earliest point possible to get access to that 25 to 35 % capital uplift. I've got clients getting 40, 50, 60 % capital uplift. But in my area, generally, where I invest in the Midlands, it's about 30%. So I say 25 to 35%. Okay, so just so that I'm understanding this, are you therefore saying that the reason people aren't title splitting on purchase is just purely based on lack of knowledge as opposed to anything else? oh knowledge and it's partly that they cannot find the professional team to help them do it because when you go to the deal that we did, if you go to most solicitors in the UK, they'll tell you it can't be done. And your mentor will tell you not to bother, there's no money in it. But can I explain the difference between on this particular block, a 260 valuation the block based on rent and yield and we have a masterclass that people can watch and it explains this more but two properties together on one title the end value from a RIC surveyor is £260,000. When they are title split the end value has gone up by £200,000 it's £460,000. And in this particular instance, it's sort of nuts. And I'm using this one because it's brand new. So if you take 460 and divide it into 260, that is. 176 % capital uplift. Now, the problem that people have today is that the person that tells them, you don't need to do this, might be a mortgage broker who says, I can get you a commercial mortgage. Don't worry about title splitting. Just kick the can down the road. What? Me as a property investor leave 200,000 in this. I've decided to keep it just for example. I've decided to let it out as vital X, right? and I leave 200,000 in the deal forever. Why would I do that? The essential thing towards property investors is recycling our money out of deals. So title splitting is pretty much the only strategy where you can buy at market value, Title split early and get a capital uplift that gives you a higher value. and get your money out, MIMO, money in, money out property deals, is pretty much the only strategy. So who's copped onto this? It's some bridging brokers have copped onto this and they're trying to sell bridging to do it. But we have much more creative ways that we work with our clients to do this. I'm not a great lover of bridging em and we teach clients to do it without bridging and using lots of different creative strategies, which is why your client. Lucinda was like, you've got to talk to these people that you don't understand how good this is. Because once we share our secrets in our mastermind training program with people, they then have the blinkers taken off. We show them how to find the off market blocks. And literally, this is probably the only memo strategy out there. And what happens is, this is the biggest thing. When we title split a property early, decisively, right? It now grows in line with UK capital growth. UK capital growth is what happens to residential property. There's a lot of information in this, guys. Residential property. So the average house price in 1992 was £52,000. The average house price today is around £268,000. That is capital growth. Just to make this really clear, Blocks that are valued as commercial, which they are, and sui generis HMOs that are valued as commercial, which they are, do not grow in line with UK capital growth. It's not sexy, it's just true, because the banks value them in a completely different way. When you have the property as an individual saleable property that you can sell tomorrow to a retail buyer, It's the difference between retail and wholesale. The block is wholesale, multiple units on one title. The individual flats sell off one at a time. That's retail. And it's 25 to 35 % more value. That's it. Yeah, definitely. Okay, so I had one other question I wanted to ask about this one, but just to make a comment just before I ask that question is I think this happens quite a lot to people, um which is such a shame. We talk about power teams and there are many, many times, myself included, where I've experienced this myself, I know others have experienced it, where just by having the wrong power team, they've been told that something can't be done and they're told this can't be done, this isn't possible. And I think when you haven't done something before, you have the lack of experience, the reason you have your power team is to trust the people who are advising you. And if the people who are advising you are saying this can't be done, even though their information could be inaccurate, that's quite... concerning I feel because I've been in that situation before where somebody has personally told me that something can't be done and I know it can be done and I've gone and found the person that told me that it could be done and I think to myself how many people are missing so many opportunities by just having the wrong power team and and more so how do you even know that somebody is the wrong power team because you might feel that they're trying to protect you from making a mistake it's quite a difficult balance it's a balancing act which is quite difficult. So I'm gonna give another example here, which is the other end of the spectrum. A gentleman came on a little mini-course we did the other day and he owned, I'm not gonna say where it is in the country, he owned 10 flats on one freehold and he'd split off some land and he was building 10 houses on another freehold. His mortgage broker had told him not to bother title splitting it. He could get him some great commercial finance on that. just to, it's words, the mortgage broker's words was, kick the can down the road. You don't need to do this. only, because the man wanted to only borrow a small amount of money. He said, kick the can down the road. Now let me explain why the mortgage broker might have done that. And this is, I'm not being funny, but this is the reality. Right. First of all, the mortgage broker has no idea how to title split. Second of all, he's going to earn a nice big fat commission for getting two. Commercial mortgages one on the block of 10 flats and one on the em one on the 10 houses, right? The developer the difference in valuation wait for it was 3.1 million if it was kept on on Freehold title. So in other words if it wasn't titles play so it was two titles two titles 3.1 million on two titles wait for it 4.1 million if he split them into individual saleable units. Now you tell me why anybody would want to leave that million pounds on the table for their, I mean this gentleman was older, know, maybe their children to deal with later, right, when they've gone. No, that's crazy all because of mortgage brokers' advices. Oh, I could... So let me translate this and I'm not being mean. I love mortgage brokers. I have to work with mortgage brokers. I love you all. But let me explain, right? The mortgage broker is going to earn a big commission. What do they care that you leave your million pounds in the deal and never get it out? Right? That's the reality that you have to think about when you're doing things. What is it that's best for you, your family to get the access to the equity? What if you decide to sell them individually? Well, I'll tell you now, because you've got a fixed rate mortgage with a commercial bank, they're probably not going to let you sell them individually. So you'll never ever sell them. You'll just sell them as a block deal or a wholesale deal to another investor. So the reality is when people say split later, there's a lot of things that need to go into that. What they're effectively saying, because it's better for me right now, what's better for that? can I just say? his commercial mortgage is going to be 2 % higher interest rate for 5 year fix, 10 year fix, whatever it is, it's going to be a 2 % higher interest rate. So whose best interest is that in? Is it in the best interest of the mortgage broker or the investor to put it on a commercial mortgage and leave a million pound in the deal? It's very interesting and obviously, you know, there are some incredible brokers that give amazing advice out there and everything like that, but it's just a different way of looking at things and it's through different perspectives and different eyes and that's such an interesting example that you just gave Rachel. And then my question I wanted to just go back to before I forget it is going back to this church example. So it was a commercial property that you bought. I'm just really curious in terms of planning constraints, talking about it, then if you're going to title split it and obviously then turn into residential with the Byte Let's. What did you have to do in terms of the planning restrictions on that? Well, we didn't have to do anything because in this particular instance, somebody had bought it at Arksham as a church and already got planning to turn it into two separate units, right? So we didn't have to go over planning for that. There's no permitted development rights on converting a church because it's used class G. But we didn't need it because it already had the planning. All we had to do is make sure that we started the work within the three years that the planning was in place. Okay, okay, makes sense. So Let me ask you this, I'm trying to think of good questions for the listeners to try and help them who are thinking about dabbing their feet in, because I appreciate that it can be quite overwhelming, Rachel, like when you do something over and over again, for you it's like probably riding a bike, speaking about it and speaking about the numbers, but I'm trying to help the listeners who are maybe listening to this and maybe having to re-rewind it, feeling a little bit overwhelmed at the moment with all the information. So let me ask some basic questions to kind of help some of the listeners. how about this? If you were to think to when you did your first ever title split or when you were just sort of learning about it back when you were being mentored by this guy, what do you know now that you wish you would have known kind of back then to help somebody now with the best piece of advice getting into title splitting? that's a really good question. Can I just say, so it goes even further than that, because I did my first one in 2017 and we're now in 2025, so that's eight years ago, right? So I've been doing this for eight years. I've been training it for five years. I've learned more since training it than I ever learned doing it. And this has really been interesting because I coach and mentor people. And I'm going to say I am the title split queen. Have the maximum knowledge of anybody I'd actually love somebody to challenge me on that anybody In the UK I have you know, if you ask me about HMOs, I am NOT your queen I am definitely not your queen. It's not my thing. But if you ask me about title splits, I am your queen, right? I know exactly how to do this. I But here's the thing. I am an 8 out of 10. I Will never get to a 10 out of 10 because this is one of the most complex strategies in the market today. So all those people, when you ask your mentor as a result of this call, listening to this, should I do title splitting? Many of them are going to say, just like my mentors did to me, my mentor was lovely and he said, I don't know, but he had enough humility to say, I don't know how to do it. So Lindsay, you know who you are, right? You said that, right? Some people don't say that. They say, oh, there's no point in doing that. There's no money in it. Right. That translates to, I don't know how to do it. Right. So I'm going to say, this is complex. Once you've done one, you'll get like me, you'll learn to do more. Right. So I've got great examples of clients have come in. They follow exactly. You have to follow exactly what we teach you to do. We, one of the things I did as well, that's really important is And this is for my mastermind clients. So Lucinda's on the mastermind program. It's a full program of training and learning for this. we support, don't just train people. We then support them through their first deal. Right. But because if we just train them, it's so complicated. is so complicated. I can't even tell you when people come to us, who've got a deal, they literally go around in circles. They've been to this person for advice. They've been to that person for advice. They've been to that and they get different advice from everybody. So one of the things that I do with my clients is I train solicitors, I train architects, I train accountants, I train mortgage brokers. In fact, here's the thing, you don't get to work with my clients as a mortgage broker unless you come on my training. And here's the thing, I won't let you come on my training unless I've checked you out and you're all right as to be a mortgage broker for my clients. That is how strict I am about this. Why? Because what happens is my clients, not only do they get us helping them so they get to learn how to do it then we teach them by doing then we give them the power team that's been trained by us to do it on their behalf in the right way for them not the mortgage broker that says I can get you a great commercial mortgage on this because actually that's easier for me to get your commercial mortgage on a block of 10 why don't you I mean did the mortgage broker say why don't you kick that million pounds down the road you don't need it Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do need it. You might want to do another deal. I mean, that's nice to be in that position where you've got a deal, lots of landlords today are struggling to work out how they're going to make property work because it's hard to money in money out deals. Lots of people are in property and want to do more faster. The answer isn't to go and do saturated strategies. The answer is to find something new. that everybody doesn't know how to do. And I'm so lucky as the title split queen to be able to understand that there's this strategy that's been hiding in plain sight for decades and every lots of people are still allowing their blinkers to let them step over it. There are, wait for it, over 600,000 unsplit blocks of apartments in the UK today where landlords own them. and have not split them. If this was easy, why have they chosen to leave all that equity in? Yeah, I can imagine. they can't find the people to help them. They're told not to do it. They're given the wrong advice by... And sometimes the wrong advice comes from well-meaning professionals. I'm not saying... There's sinister in the fact that people are telling them, don't do it, there's nothing in it, no money in it. The person who says that believes what they're saying. They just don't understand that there is a massive opportunity in it. I go back to my question again. You didn't answer my question. I want to know the advice. I want to know like the advice that... Well, yeah, I want to know like if you were gonna restart again tomorrow as yourself, I want to know like the one bit of advice that you now know that you'd wished you'd told yourself. Well, I'm going to say it, 2005 I'd have told myself to get educated. Because if I'd have known in 2005 what I learned in 2015, I would be living on some foreign island now with my own private, not quite. But listen, I am going to say, if I could say to my younger self who went into property in 2005, one thing that I would have done differently is I'd have learned that this could change my life and get educated. Because in the eight years since Andy and I, well, it's not now, it's 10 years since we got educated, which 2015 to 17. em We've built a property portfolio. We've got title split portfolio that cash flows enough to retire in its own right, because that's all we ever wanted. And then we've also got a SAS portfolio. So our pension portfolio that's got enough to retire in its own right. So that's the answer. It changed everything for me. Yeah, I love that. definitely feel like I because because I went through it myself with education, I definitely understand why people why people have concerns about the education system for property because it's unregulated and there is a lot of noise. I feel like when I speak to a lot of people, there is so much noise that gets on and I feel like sometimes the people that manage to sort of cut through the noise are purely just the people that have the bigger advertising advertising spend, bigger marketing budgets, the bigger companies, which isn't necessarily always the right way to do it. And then they get the negative stigma because they've had this bad experience to start with almost like dating. know, if you take it back to dating again, Rachel, you know, you have a bad day and then suddenly all people are awful because you had a bad day. No, that's not true. You had one bad teacher, suddenly all teachers are bad. That's not true. So I definitely understand why people have this real reservation towards getting education. educated and I see so many people who just rely on so much free education. Let's face it, who just listen to this podcast but actually never actually buy any of the education behind it. not taught you any. So on this podcast or any of my free stuff that's out there, because the stuff that we do is not right. I don't have a competitor. Five years, five years in, if this was easy, why haven't I got a competitor? But Rachel, there's more than that. I'm just speaking about this at the moment, which is I understand why people have reservations against getting educated because I've been through it myself and I understand it. do you know what? It's so right with what you say, like with all of the knowledge that you have and everything that you've been through, you are right. I do believe that education is a great way to start because you simply cannot, and it's not your fault, as in the listeners, it's not your fault. cannot know what you do not know. It's impossible. Like it's impossible to do so. And there are, there are, there is always going to be pros and cons with everything that you do. But I always say this and I always say this in my presentation, which is if you're scared about the cost of going for it, you should see the cost of staying exactly where you are. So I'm going to say, so first of all, to address your point, uh I think my honest view is that there are people out there who are, haven't got the right positive intent towards their clients, right? And there are good educators out there, first of all, right? And there are people who take advantage and do things that are wrong, right? I'm going to use one really good example I'm happy to talk about because I never name names of anybody. I'm just going to talk a really good example. So I am a mentor. I'm a trainer. I run a training company. I am a great believer and I want your listeners to listen to this massively important point. First of all, I want to see that this company that I'm going to work with has phenomenal reviews, but phenomenal reviews from people like me, you know, that normal ordinary people not flashy people just normal ordinary people. Second of all right as a mentor I am absolutely morally opposed to me ever asking my clients for money to do my deals and if you're a mentor listening to this I'm gonna say this out loud if you are a mentor or a trainer or a person who runs a training company listening to this right now, I'm going to say shame on you if you are taking money off your clients to do your own deals. Shame on you, right? And let me tell you why. Because when that goes wrong, and I see the examples where that goes wrong, right? The client is left in a really difficult, the client being my client, my customers would be left in a really difficult position where their mentor has lost their money or they can't get their money back out of the deal because their mentor has taken their money off them. Now I know examples of mentors doing this and you know who you are if you are listening to this. Shame on you. I say that if you want to come for me, fine, do it. But shame on you because first of all, I would never ever take a penny off my clients other than for the services they're paying me for, which is educating them and mentoring them. Right. I don't have clients approach me all the time. Can I invest in one of your deals? The answer is no, because it's a conflict of interest. Second go and check trustpilot and check Google, but these are real people go You know if you look at us look on our website We've got client reviews a video recorded reviews as well, but real people I know there's something out there where you can buy reviews today But if you go through the reviews of a company that's doing things properly and I think that's fair enough What I will say to people is Free is not teaching you what you don't know So you said it right, Athena. You know what you know, you don't know, you know what you don't know, but you don't know what you don't know. That's the biggest thing. You don't know what you don't know. And I see examples, because what happens is because we are the title split experts and people come to us. I see examples of where people have been missold a bridging loan, for example. They're now at the end of the bridge and they can't finance out and they come to us in a desperate, desperate situation. I'm talking about owing sometimes hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions because they've made a mistake. You know, I won't name people, but say, I see deals where somebody's gone off, done the development and they are at the end of the bridge. The bridging company is threatening to repossess and they come to us too late for help, right? and they're just about to lose everything because when we're doing property, we actually do personal guarantees even if we're doing it in a company. So they're just about to lose everything. And had they only had the education to understand what they were getting themselves into before they bought the deal, they'd have never done the deal that way in the first place. A very specific example I'm going to give a gentleman who had come along to me who I felt so sorry for him. It was horrific and I couldn't help him. There was nothing I could do to help him because he was in such a mess. He'd gone to auction, bought a piece of land on a bridging loan. So four weeks later, he's paying a bridge. It had planning for nine houses. So he was planning to build the houses. It turned out he had no access to the land that had got the planning for nine houses. He had no access to the land. He was on a five hundred and fifty thousand pound bridge on that property. Right. And the only thing he could do was put it back into auction and kill somebody else with the same deal, right? And the reality is if that man had come and been educated by us before he bought that property, he would have known exactly what to look for and he wouldn't have bought the property in the first place. So it's just as much about protecting people from pain as it is about putting them through a strategy that enables them to make profit. When people try and wing it on another one, a lady in London, I hope she's listening to this. She's still probably scrabbling around trying to split her block, but she bought something called a broken block. So she bought a flat on a freehold where the other part of the freehold had been sold off on a 990 year lease. And she can't get a mortgage. She bought it at auction. She paid 350. The flat on its own was worth 500. She couldn't get a mortgage. So. She couldn't get a mortgage unless she title split the flat. She couldn't title split the flat because she couldn't find the solicitor to help title split the flat. Because everybody believes all you need is a solicitor when in fact you need a power team of at least five qualified individuals and at least two solicitors to complete a title split. So this lady didn't know that. She can't get the deal done. She doesn't want to invest in the education. So she's still going round with her 350,000 cash stuck in this deal. Right. Okay. Well, Rachel, let me ask you this last question then and follow my lead on this. So basically if we were to again, cause I want to give so much value on this podcast for just anyone listening to this. So my last question to you then is we talk about power team with this and we're talking about it. So if somebody wanted to, do title splitting, they're starting to learn about it, they're dabbling in it. Who are the main power team members that they need to adopt in order to do so? they need at least two solicitors. They need tax specialists, right? They need at least two solicitors. need, because you need, you need, so one of the things we teach solicitors for is you need a solicitor that understands this, that's on the bank panel for the mortgage that you're trying to get, right? And the banks just literally give you a panel of solicitors, right? And you pick a name of a solicitor. And when you go to get your deal done, If the solicitor does not like what they are looking at or something doesn't seem right to them and most of these conveyances solicitors do not know how to title split, they'll just reject the case and you won't get your mortgage. So you need a bank panel solicitor and you need a solicitor to do the title split. You need tax specialists to get the tax specialisms in place. You need people who can do the estate plans for you, which are the plans that go to the land registry. You need mortgage brokers that understand exactly what products to get you into the right stage at the right time. Not that earn them the most money. The products that give that you the right product at the right time to get the deal done. So that says a minimum. And that's why we train those people to do it properly. Yeah. what listeners if you're listening to this what I want you to really think to yourself is I really want you to like lean into this because it's something that Even if you're thinking I don't want you to sit there and think to yourself. Oh, this is a little bit too experienced for me This is a little bit too far ahead. Nothing ever is and never ever shortchange yourself. Anyone can learn about anything It's just about taking that time that knowledge and really really getting to grips with it And what we're actually going to do for all of you listening to this podcast today is in the show notes I'm actually gonna put a link to a free masterclass with Rachel because then you can digest it in your own time, you can take it all in and then of course you can contact Rachel and her team about any questions that you might have with it. But it's really important to learn about not to have shiny penny syndrome but to understand and educate yourself so that if there's anything that you actually wanted to do with title splitting then it's there because it really does seem like there is a real market for this and I think it's really important to do. So Rachel I'm sure that so many people are gonna really want to connect with you after this podcast so Where would you say was the best place for people to find you to do so? So we have a website www.titlesplit.com so you can go to there. What I would say though is we'll offer you a free webinar there which you've just talked about. Come in through the free webinar, watch what we talk about. We have a masterclass which is only going to cost you, we charge £97 for our masterclass. oh So you can choose whether you're going to invest in that masterclass. That's then going to give you... the exact methodologies that banks use to value these properties and start you really understanding the journey that you need to go on. I'm going to say for those people who think I haven't got enough experience to do this, I'm going to say you're not right if you have done anything in property, whether you're doing rent to rent, you've done one buy to let, I'm going to tell you, when I got trained and educated, my first deal was a single let, right? and we got the property training value, the 30 grand I'd spent on property education back out of that first deal. The second deal was a far flat title split. So if you've done one property deal somewhere at any time, you are not inexperienced, you can do this strategy. You start small with the little ones like the ones that I've just talked about. At the other end of the spectrum, we're going to have people who are landlords who own blocks. Right, you've got a choice. You're going to sell them. to another investor for a massive discount because that's how they'll get valued by the bank, right? Or you're gonna come and title split them yourself. But you're not gonna learn that for free because this is an absolutely deep strategy. And once you know how to do it, you're gonna release tens, if not hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equity. So for new investors, this is a great strategy. We start small, we grow. For existing investors, you're crazy if you don't do it. That's what I would say. Yeah, I love it. And I'm learning, learning. I love learning more about it and talking to more people about it ah and sort of dabbling as it were. So yeah. And thank you, Rachel, so much for today. So what I love about this podcast is this podcast is more than just a here's a question, here's an answer. You know, this podcast is about raw, real, authentic conversations with people who have a voice to share. And I think that that's what's so important about this particular podcast is I want to enable everybody to shine as you said at the beginning and to have their voice in their own unique way. So I really thank you for coming on the podcast today and sort of sharing that wisdom. um And with everyone, if you wanted to always get in contact with me, I'm Athena Dobson underscore official and girls in property on Instagram. Now, the amazing thing also is if you really enjoyed this podcast today, the good news is, is that um we are actually releasing this episode today, which I'm sure you've seen, which is Monday, 5th of August and I've actually got Rachel who's going to be coming on and she's agreed to do this which is incredible for the community next week on Tuesday the 2nd of September. So Tuesday the 2nd of September mark your diary 7.30 she is going to be live in the girls and property community for the community ladies to talk about title splitting, do a hot seat coaching Q &A and to really delve into more about how we can actually be doing more of these deals. So if that sounds like something that you're interested in then come and join the Girls and Property community, DM me the word community or title splitting and I will send you that link, come and join. The community is only 30 pounds a month to join. I do two of these calls a month. It's got the online platform. Rachael's in the community of course and really, really exciting with over 100 women now. ah But yeah, thank you so much for listening. Rachael, I'd love to leave you with the parting words today for our listeners. What are your parting words for everybody? believe that you can do this. Some of you might have had education and you might be beating yourself up because you haven't done enough in property. I'm going to say partly that's probably because you haven't found the right thing that you should be doing yet and keep looking you will find it. There's something out there for you and surround yourself with people that believe you can do it and so that you can believe you can do it. And if you haven't got enough cashflow yet and you think, yes, but I've been doing this and I've got not enough cashflow, it definitely is probably because you're not doing the right thing yet. You will get there. Property is hard. It's not easy. People make out when they're selling trading that it's this easy thing. It's not easy. It's hard. Surround yourself with doers, can doers, and invest in your education, but be careful where you invest in your education. Yeah, definitely and just I love that what you just said believe in yourself and never ever give up Like I always say you are your best investment you always will be so believe in yourself go forward trust the process always and My top tip would be if you are gonna go down and look for education Trust your guts follow your gut your person will be in front of you and you'll know it's your person And if you're still really not sure just ask to speak to people who've worked with them before Give them a call give them a text pick up the phone and they will give you an honest review about working with that individual. That would be my top tip for education. ah But Rachel, thank you so much and thank you for all your energy today and I look forward to seeing you next week on Tuesday the 2nd for the Masked Man. I'm so excited about it. Very selfish because I want to learn more myself but also I know that the girls are really going to benefit so much from it. So thank you for today everybody. Have the most amazing week wherever you are. DM me, let me know what you're celebrating. Let me know what you're up to. and have a great week. Take care girls, bye!