Lady Lea / Lea Beven Biography - Edited and reworked by Red Barrington & Lea Beven
9M PROPERTY INVESTMENTS, BUILDING OVER 80 WEBSITES ..
Lea Beven is an entrepreneur with many experiences. Rags to riches to rags again .... who knows what is next?
Overcoming disability / domestic violence and bankruptcy - Lea touches other people's lives with her positive and lively energy, showing others that if she can do it so can they! If you want to know more about Lea and her ventures, read on:
Investing and refurbishing property since the age of 19, Lea Beven has learned many of the advantages and pitfalls in different types of investing. Lea has written most of these pitfalls and put them on this site for people to learn from.
Lea's property investments have so far included off plan, starter homes, student flats, student houses, inner city luxury penthouses, ex-local authority flats, large family homes in the suburbs and northern terraced properties.
As well as the many styles of properties Lea has owned and tenants she has rented too, she has done lots of different styles of financing. When Lea started investing, Buy to let mortgages were not widely known, and her initial portfolio was built using 100% residential mortgages (in a time when growth was fast). Once she had several of these, and buy to let was introduced, Lea wanted to still buy without putting money down, so found ways of doing more no money down deals. Most of the deals Lea has done have been creative and challenging and she has done back to back deals, selling on contracts, cash back deals, loan to value purchases.
Sourcing property was easy when Lea first started, finding deals with local agent in the times before lots of investors were knocking on their doors. As this became harder Lea turned to auctions and advertising - having some hugely successful purchases of 30% BMV. Her "needaquicksale" website brought in many deals and she sold the site to a fellow investor, when she started to get too many calls.
Lea did a rather large amount of off plan investing in a 3 month period in 2002 that went quite wrong. Everything that could go wrong in off plan happened to Lea in around 100 separate deals all over the UK with different developments - she talks about this at events. This 3 months of investing haunted Lea for 3 years before she finally went bankrupt in November 2005. More than happy for people to learn from her mistakes - read about some of the deals and the story of her bankruptcy here.
Lea's knowledge and contacts have been pulled together to make an incredible resource of free information for would be property investors here.
Lea now pursues her teaching and consultancy in property pitfalls and continues to develop this site. Throughout 2006 Lea took a year out from property to pursue other interests but stepped back in Late summer as a Part Time Sales Negotiator for Developers selling off Plan and New Build property. From April 2007 until November She became a foster carer, then returned to New Build sales in December. Lea is using this time to learn about the "Other Side" of property investing and will be sure to fill you in on her experiences soon in a detailed "how to negotiate a property deal".
Lea Beven was known in the UK Affiliate industry as a serial networker. She stamped her name on the industry by helping a busy affiliate forum to hold regular monthly pub meetings in 2004 by both organizing, getting sponsorship and hosting them. She organizing 2 fantastic events that attracted affiliates, merchants and networks.
Lea helped the forum set up their 2004 / 2005 meetings.
Lea's site development experience dates back from 2000. She started off using cheap software, then notepad, onto a CMS system, and finally dreamweaver before moving on to spec up her own CMS for her totalmouse sites.
Lea's knowledge in the industry is not just based on her own experience, she knows hundreds of people in the industry now. Listening to fellow affiliates concerns and ideas, she has been able to avoid certain types of affiliate marketing , and works on a very "ethical" level, ensuring that everything she develops is unique, coded well and accessible for all users and browsers.
Lea recalls from her early days of website building ...
"My mum asked me how I was going to make money out of a website, and I said at the time - Mum, I don't know, but I'm sure I will." years on Lea brings in a modest passive income from the net, that is growing all the time as she develops new sites and strategies.
Leas portfolio of 80 sites was lost when a server and pc hard drive went down at the same time, and the backup discs were corrupt. Her technical staff failed to return backups to her when requested. Throughout 2006 / 2007 Lea has rebuilt the bulk of her main website's including this one.
Taking a back seat now in the more public side of this industry - she continues to use and develop her skills on this site and occasional consultancy work her web services include, Affiliate marketing consultancy, website analyzing (code review and monetising), web development, Web Hosting, Event hosting & organizing.
Lea is a very exciting and resourceful person, who has an amazing positive energy and touches people's lives. Nearly always smiling and laughing she draws attention everywhere!
Appearing on ITV Tonight With Trevor & BBC several times, and regularly quoted in national and local newspapers, Lea (known as Daisy to her friends) loves attention, and makes herself available for interviews, events and filming whenever she can. Watch out in the new year for Women in Property on Sky.
Massive Changes in 2006 - From High Life to Chilled Life
Taking a bit of a back seat throughout 2006 to recover from the 3 years of sorting out her off plan disaster and loosing her web business Lea has totally changed her life. After rebuilding this site and a couple of others she enjoyed, she ventured into Fostering early in the year - taking most of the year out to train and be assessed. At the end of the summer she took a step back into Property doing some TV work for Sky and working on New Developments for builders as a Part Time Sales Negotiator.
Lea was approved in as a Foster Carer in November (ironically one year to the day after going Bankrupt) and did respite care on occasional weekends for older children who need a break from their family. Following on from her approval in Fostering Lea took in a long term placement that broke down, and returned to property sales and temp work for the PDSA.
So why is she so driven?
Well looking back at her life, she was an army brat, who went off to boarding school - putting a good peg in the ground for independence. She tried college, but could not get to grips with traditional learning and went on to pursue a caring career, working with people who had severe learning difficulties. During this time she tried a few different things - car booting, property investing and buying and selling cars - feeding her entrepreneurial spirits that seem to come from her father.
First married at 24, Lea found herself in a relationship haunted by domestic violence, and ended up with a severe back injury that she carries with her still (though it does not affect her day to day living). For 3 years Lea lost the ability to walk and put on a lot of weight.
A pain management course (INPUT) put Lea back on track, managing the pain with no medication. Once active again and went down from a UK dress size 22 to a normal 12/14.
Lea used the course in a positive way, learning about stress management and applied this to every day life. She basically eliminated everything stressful in her life, and learned to handle events and people in a more relaxed way.
Lea's current interests include Ceroc dancing, web development, swimming, walking her tiny pom-poo dog, listening to live music / bands in local pubs, going to music festivals, visiting family and friends, pub nights out with her local buddies, and when time and money agree (not often at the moment), she loves to travel the world.
She now lives in Shifnal, Shropshire in a spacious flat right in the center of town with her lively pomeranian x puppy called Poppet, taking an active part in the community when she can. More than anything now she would like to stay settled in Shifnal and invest time and energy into her fantastic friends and supportive family - as they are more valuable than money!
Oh .... and just incase you wondered - she is happily hooked up!
