We started our Window Cleaning 26th September 1974, then, in just one year what we were doing had changed out of all recognition as we had moved onto being a Decorating and Property Maintenance business so we thought it better have a name so, Wrightway Decorating was established.
Then over the next few years we realised that name wasn’t conducive to what we were now rapidly getting into, which was buying renovating and selling our own houses, along with the thought of building a large portfolio of Commercial premises so, we needed to review the name again.
With the business being a 50-50 partnership Marville properties became our new name which came out of Marilyn and Neville, then adding on the end with a tagline of residential and commercial investments.
We had traded properties from 1975, buying and selling one or two at a time, we started to go into estate agents and ask what they had in our price bracket at the time, they would bring out 6 or 8 properties at a time and we would bid for them all.
I would make ridiculous offers on all 8 properties even though I had not seen inside them, the price of a virtual rebuild, thinking any condition above this was a bonus.
I used to be thinking there was no way that all of these people would accept my offer but just in case they did I was confident enough that I would find the money from somewhere and the chances were quite slim that I would get any at the prices we had offered but if we were lucky then we would probably end up with one, and one a month was good.
Our number-one goal was establishing financial freedom as quickly as possible, but at the time it seemed hopeless to us, but an outsider would have seen it differently, they would have seen the substantial number of properties we were working on at any one time.
Marville was growing but we just hadn’t got to the tipping point of keeping investments; we had properties that could produce 20% income but of course, this would have meant keeping them for 5 years to get our money back, which we couldn’t do.
Sometimes you have to give up what’s good in the short term to get what’s great in the future!