About Us
PropertyTribes.com was founded in February 2009 by husband/wife team and residential landlords Nick Tadd and Vanessa Warwick. The platform is owned solely by Nick as the Director and major shareholder.
In February 2004, a relative handed us a leaflet concerning a free property seminar by a company called Inside Track. We'd been thinking about how to secure our financial future, as we were both self-employed in the broadcast TV industry - Vanessa as a Producer/Director of music videos, live concerts, and music specials, and Nick as a camera-man.
We had also recently got married, so our view on life - and our priorities - had changed somewhat.
So the timing of this seminar seemed like the Universe was talking to us. We went along and signed up for the two day educational weekend.
During the weekend, we got talking to Inside Track staff members and other investors and realised that we could learn a lot from them, so we kept in touch. As a result of the educational training, we purchased our first investment property in April 2004 and our second one a few weeks later, having released equity from our flat in Finsbury Park, north London.
Inside Track saw we were doing well and asked Nick to speak at the educational workshops and sometimes at the weekend seminars. Nick was happy to do this, as Inside Track had helped us get started and we believed property education was vital.
Over the next 16 months or so, both of us worked on a freelance basis for Inside Track, helping out on educational workshops. We never joined the "Instant Access" buying club and we never sold a single property.
As we became more embedded in Inside Track, we started to notice things that made us feel uncomfortable - the hard and sophisticated selling techniques, the use of fear, greed, and scarcity ... and, as our own property knowledge grew, we started to realise that Inside Access's property deals were not as good as they claimed.
We also came to understand that Inside Track was really the first part of the marketing funnel into the Instant Access property buying club - a kind of loss leader if you will. That's when we started to comprehend marketing funnels and how they were designed to up-sell people to more and more expensive products/services. This did not sit comfortably with us.
We therefore made the decision to discontinue our relationship with Inside Track. About 2 years later, the cracks started to appear in the "Instant Access" business model and property deals, and Nick was something of a "whistle blower" in talking to the media about what went on behind the scenes.
We realise that Inside Track is not our finest hour. We have always held up our hands and admitted to our naivety at the time. We take full responsibility for this and have never tried to hide it.
It was as a direct result of our experiences at Inside Track that we decided to start Property Tribes.
We wanted to create a free to use, safe, and agenda-free place for landlords to get information from a "hive mind", not a singularity, so that they could learn and grow their property business.
Property Tribes allows people to use other's foresight as their hindsight, thereby mitigating risk as well as allowing landlords to form and build their own opinion and knowledge base through robust debate.
We believe that Property Tribes shows that we are atoning for being involved with Inside Track and also shows that we have provided the means for others to learn from our errors, lack of judgment, or naivety.
Inside Track and other property training and deal provider/sourcing networks are what is known as an "ego-system" based around a singular view.
We wanted Property Tribes to be an "eco-system" - a hive mind of information - because that is a far healthier learning environment:
Although Inside Track is way in our past - 16 years ago at the time of writing - that was not the only mistake we made on our property journey. The common denominator behind all our mistakes was only getting information from one source and also not challenging our own "confirmation bias". We've always assisted anyone who has contacted us and who is struggling with a property issue, and will speak to them off-forum if its not appropriate to post on-line.
Looking at our past errors through a positive lens, our personal journey to date has actually been a catalyst to provide a positive learning platform for landlords that is free to use and these experiences also helped us to understand how a "hive mind" approach would deliver authentic education for landlords and property investors.
See our further views on the topic of Property education, training, and mentoring.
The information that we ourselves learned from the community-generated content on Property Tribes has assisted us in growing our own portfolio, alongside the growth and the development of the platform.
Fast forward over a decade and Property Tribes has grown to become one of the busiest, most engaged, and influential independent sites for landlords and property professionals in the U.K.
The mission of Property Tribes is simple: To ensure a positive experience of the private rented sector for all.
Property Tribes achieves this by adopting the eco-system model and the mantra - “None of us is as smart as all of us”.
The busy platform presents community-generated news, views, legislation up-dates, opinion, property strategies, best practice and much more from a wide variety of contributors who generously share their knowledge.
There are approx. 2.5 million landlords in the U.K. and many of them do not even think of themselves as a landlord - they are a vet, or a solicitor, or a teacher. Because of this, they may be unaware of legislation, especially as it is constantly changing whilst also becoming increasingly onerous.
There are over 160 Government statutes and regulations that landlords need to adhere to in order to be compliant. Property Tribes acts like a “hive mind” of the ever-changing landlord regulatory landscape to ensure landlords are kept up to date and aware of their obligations, the premise being that an educated & informed landlord is a better landlord. This also helps mitigate risk as "prevention" is always less costly and less emotional heartache than "cure" in property investment!
This is done through news articles, discussions, and interviews with industry stake-holders and professionals.
Property Tribes has an associated YouTube channel.
There are over 1,000 videos clips currently on line and landlords are spending over 200 days per month watching the content. Property Tribes' youtube channel passed the 1million views mark in September 2019.
Property Tribes is for anyone who has an interest in property investment, landlord-ism, or the private rented sector. It is a friendly and professional community that offers a huge amount of support and advice for landlords, no matter what their level of experience.
It’s is free to use and members receive a bi-weekly emailer newsletter to ensure that they are kept up to date with the landlord latest.
Most property investors love to talk about property, and, as landlords can often feel that they work in isolation, many like to come and share their thoughts and experiences with the PT community.
We have many thousands of members with tens of thousands of years of experience between them, who generously share their knowledge, help people solve landlord issues, guide, and give advice and encouragement.
The generosity of our members sharing simply for the sake of sharing are what makes Property Tribes such a valuable resource.
Business Model of Property Tribes
As mentioned above, Property Tribes is free to use because we believe that community-generated, agenda-free advice is the healthiest and most authentic advice there is.
Obviously there are significant costs in keeping this platform on air, including a development team, server space hire, security software etc., so the forum is transparently monetised by a sponsor/advertiser/affiliate business model, where commercial partners are clearly sign-posted.
Our partners are all legitimate, well known, and trusted providers of products and services that landlords need on a regular basis.
If a member has got value out of the platform, they can choose to use the products or services of our partners as a way to help maintain Property Tribes as a "free to use" community resource. We call this business model "reciprocity" and is one of the ways you can support the future of this platform.
The other is that you can buy Property Tribes a coffee!
We thank all members who choose to support Property Tribes in any way they feel appropriate.
Note: All our commercial partners are accountable to the Property Tribes community, giving an extra layer of confidence in using them. Should you have an issue with their product or service, you can come back to Property Tribes and share your experience.
Having said that, as per our Terms and Conditions, Property Tribes cannot be held responsible for any financial loss resulting from your use of this free site.
Company information for the management of the website:
Propert Tribes LTD
Company number: 07875701
VAT no: 230 0417 69
ICO registration number: ZA394206