Subject to Creative Financing with Chris A Williams | BTF 280
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
Release Date: 10/01/2026
How the Iran War Will Hit Your Mortgage, and the Housing Crisis in Spain | BTF 281
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
LEARN MORE - YouTube Channel - *** Oil prices and property seem unrelated. They are not. In this episode I trace how the Iran war and oil above $100 a barrel will find its way into your wallet. It starts with the obvious first-order effects, fuel and heating bills. Then come the second-order effects most people miss, because oil and gas feed into around 500 products, from tyres and paint to fertiliser and insulation. Finally there are the third-order effects: inflation, higher interest rates, tighter mortgage approvals and developers being squeezed until projects stop being viable. That is...
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Subject to Creative Financing with Chris A Williams | BTF 280
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
LEARN MORE - YouTube Channel - *** What if owning a property has nothing to do with getting the mortgage? My guest this week, Chris A Williams, buys houses in Virginia without applying for a new mortgage. He uses a creative financing strategy called "subject to": he takes over the seller's existing mortgage payments, takes the deed, and gets into each deal for under $20,000 all in. It won't work the same way here in Ireland, but the thinking behind it will change how you look at any deal that seems out of reach. First, the property news. Mortgage approvals hit record levels,...
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Is Now the Right Time to Buy? (The 2026 Market Clock) | BTF 279
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
Is now a good time to buy property? It's the question Gavin gets more than any other, so in this episode he answers it properly. Using the market clock, he shows where sentiment actually sits (almost everyone says 11pm) and why "peak of the market" means nothing until you ask "peak of what?" Residential, office, industrial, data centres, hotels and medical are all moving differently. From there he breaks down the three forces that decide where prices go next: the bond market and rising interest rates, the AI bubble and whether it bursts like the dotcom crash, and the 18-year property cycle...
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$11 Million From 50 Investors: How Syndication Works | BTF 278
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
Kyle McGee has raised $11 million from 50 investors. He is in his early thirties, and almost none of that money came from institutions. It came from aunts, uncles, family friends, and people who have sat in the same church as him for 30 years. This week I am breaking down syndication: the model where you raise money from a group of investors to buy an asset far bigger than you could buy on your own. It is not new. Irish partnerships were doing it in the early 2000s, including the syndicate that outbid a Saudi prince for the Savoy Hotel Group. Kyle is doing it at a more modest scale on the...
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277: The Interest Rate Ladder | How It Affects Mortgage Payments
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
My father died in November 1993. When we finally opened the pile of post he had left behind, one letter showed the interest rate on the family home mortgage. It was 16%. In this episode I build what I am calling the Interest Rate Ladder. Every rung of ECB policy since the bank was created in 1999, priced against the same loan so you can see exactly what each rate does to a real monthly payment. The loan: €300,000, 25-year term, tracker at ECB plus 1%. We start where we are now, at a main refinancing rate of 2.4% and a payment of €1,486 a month. Then we climb down through the cutting...
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276. Irish Property News Roundup for Week Ending 12.06.26
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
REGISTER FOR WORKSHOP - *** BTF Episode: 276. Irish Property News Roundup for Week Ending 12.06.26 All the news impacting the Irish property market in one place. If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review! *** Support for the podcast: Buy me a Coffee: Learn more about my Accelerator:
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275. From Six-Pack to Seven Figures with Rob Lipsett
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
LEARN MORE 👉🏼 *** BTF Episode: 275. From Six-Pack to Seven Figures with Rob Lipsett Rob Lipsett has built Ireland's biggest fitness brand from his iPhone 5 and a few hours of grind after a 9-to-5. But this conversation isn't about health and fitness, it's about what comes after you've built your audience. We sat down in Marbella to talk business, property, and what it really takes to turn a personal brand into a long-term asset. Rob is one of the sharpest operator-creators I've come across — and his journey from college dropout to Villa Lipsett has lessons that go...
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274. Is the 5x Income Mortgage a Dangerous Sign?
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
LEARN MORE 👉🏼 *** BTF Episode: 274. Is the 5x Income Mortgage a Dangerous Sign? Ireland’s mortgage market is shifting again, with Nua Money now offering up to 5x income borrowing. In this episode, we break down the history of Ireland’s lending rules and explore the potentially dangerous second-order effects of expanded credit colliding with rising construction costs and housing shortages. If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review! *** Support the channel:
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273. Where Next for UK Property with Charlie FitzGibbon
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
LEARN MORE 👉🏼 *** My guest this week is Chalie Fitzgibbon who built a construction and development business in Edinburgh, Scotland, scaled it to a staff of 110 before grappling with some serious challenges that drove him to the decision to sell the business. All before his 30th birthday - this episode will open your eyes. If you enjoyed this episode please leave a review! Thank you *** Support the channel:
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Property Market Crash 2026: Iran, Interest Rates and Irish Supply | BTF 272
Behind The Facade - Real Estate Investing
Is a property market crash coming in 2026? After a five-month break from the podcast, Gavin J Gallagher returns to make the case that we have just entered year one of a new 18-year property cycle, and that year one historically starts with a downturn. The episode opens with a personal story. In January, Gavin and his family stayed in the Fairmont on the Palm in Dubai, in a city-view room overlooking the car park. Weeks later that exact spot was the first impact site of the Iranian drone attack on Dubai. What followed has reshaped the risk picture for property investors in Ireland, the UK and...
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YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/@GavinJGallagher
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What if owning a property has nothing to do with getting the mortgage?
My guest this week, Chris A Williams, buys houses in Virginia without applying for a new mortgage. He uses a creative financing strategy called "subject to": he takes over the seller's existing mortgage payments, takes the deed, and gets into each deal for under $20,000 all in. It won't work the same way here in Ireland, but the thinking behind it will change how you look at any deal that seems out of reach.
First, the property news. Mortgage approvals hit record levels, with almost €1.7 billion approved in August alone. Wholesale electricity prices are up 76.9% year to date, which will feed through to the property market. Construction costs are also rising, though not at 2022 levels, with asphalt the biggest mover, up 16% since January.
Chris's own story is the other half of this episode. He lost his football scholarship, had $30 in the bank, and got his real estate licence a week before COVID shut the world down. His first year produced two sales and $12,000, and he sold every share of Tesla stock he owned to pay his bills. By 26, his brokerage team had done $58 million in sales. The lesson I took from him is the one I give my own clients: it is never a lack of resources, it is a lack of resourcefulness.
For Irish and UK listeners: subject to, as Chris describes it, does not transfer to Ireland or the UK. Here the lender's charge is cleared on sale, and taking over payments without lender consent breaches the mortgage terms. In the outro I cover what does transfer: finding the seller with a problem, structuring a solution others can't, and buying right on day one.
CONNECT WITH CHRIS
@IamChrisAWilliams on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook
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In this episode:
- How subject to deals work, and the due-on-sale grey area
- Why banks never advertise this strategy
- Who sells on these terms, from low-equity sellers to military families on 0% down loans
- Wholesaling explained: locking up a contract at $100K and assigning it for $150K
- The max allowable offer formula flippers use to protect their margin
- The daily texting habit that turned a dead first year into a pipeline
- Why subject to doesn't transfer to Ireland, and what does
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CHAPTERS:
00:00 Intro
00:23 Property news: mortgage approvals, energy and build costs
02:39 Meet Chris A Williams
03:36 Lost scholarship, $30 in the bank
06:15 Passing the real estate exam
08:31 Starting out during COVID
10:25 Year one: two sales and $12K
12:24 Bulk texting: four leads in one day
14:33 Selling Tesla stock to survive
16:21 Building a brokerage and team
19:47 The Navy SEALs team model
20:57 Elite Property Academy
21:31 First deal: buying subject to
22:39 The due-on-sale grey area
25:13 Why banks don't advertise subject to
25:54 Deal economics and the entry fee
28:02 Who sells subject to and why
31:11 The 5am routine
32:40 How $58M in sales breaks down
33:54 Wholesaling explained
37:03 The max allowable offer formula
39:26 Building on YouTube
41:02 What he'd do differently
42:27 Elite Property Accelerator
42:53 Resources vs resourcefulness
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Behind the Facade is hosted by Gavin J Gallagher, a Dublin-based property investor and developer with 30 years in the Irish and international market, and first-hand experience of three property crashes.
Need some help: https://workwithgavin.com
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Support the podcast: https://buymeacoffee.com/gavinjgallagher