Man sold his house to buy 20 Teslas in major gamble and reveals if it ended up paying off for him

Putting your house money into a fleet of Teslas is certainly one way to make a business decision.

One UK car dealer decided to take that gamble after a planned property purchase fell through, leaving him with a large amount of cash to invest.

Rather than buying another expensive home, he decided to put the money into his dealership and focus heavily on Tesla.

A year later, he has revealed exactly how that gamble turned out.

Why he chose Teslas over another house

The car and EV dealer from The Lovely Car Company sold his home because he planned to buy a garage, but the deal never happened.

That left him with a sizeable amount of money sitting in the bank, and he had to decide what to do with it.

He was already living in one of his rental properties, which he described as a small three-bedroom terrace in an area that wasn’t exactly glamorous.

But after decorating it and giving it a nice garden, he said he actually loved living there.

So instead of buying another expensive house, he put the money into cars.

“I thought, ‘F*** it. I’m gonna put it into as many Teslas as I can.'”

The plan was to sell 300 cars during the financial year, with a target of around $6 million in turnover.

Things got off to a strong start, with 35 cars sold in September, followed by 29 in October and 22 in November.

December was much tougher, though, with just 11 cars sold.

The dealer said uncertainty around changes to electric-car taxation made things even more difficult, and he briefly considered moving away from EVs.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh my god, no one’s buying these electric cars. It’s so volatile. It’s going up, it’s down.'”

But he decided to stick with the plan.

The Tesla gamble started paying off

Sales picked up again in January, when he sold 20 cars, followed by 25 in February.

He said that by February, around 90 percent of the cars being sold by the dealership were Teslas.

The business then continued to post strong numbers throughout the rest of the year, selling 26 cars in March, 27 in April, May and June, 29 in July and 20 in August.

When he finally added everything up, he had beaten his original target.

He sold 302 cars during the year and generated $6.6 million in turnover, compared with his original $6 million target.

And Tesla made up a huge chunk of those sales, because out of the 302 cars, 213 were Teslas, which works out at roughly 71 percent of all the cars sold by the dealership.

What about expensive Tesla repairs?

One of the obvious risks of selling hundreds of used Teslas is the possibility of expensive repairs coming back to haunt the dealer.

But he said the dealership had only experienced two major warranty issues across the 213 Teslas; one involved the heating system and cost around $1,142, including VAT, to repair.

The other involved a customer’s heat pump, with the EV company itself reportedly quoting around $4,640 for the repair.

Instead, the dealer found a used replacement for around $530 and sent the car to an independent Tesla specialist.

He was hoping the entire repair would cost less than $1.3K

After seeing the results of his gamble, he had no plans to abandon the strategy.

“The aim is to sell 300 cars again, but we just want to do 300 Teslas.”

So it looks like the house-to-Tesla gamble has turned into a pretty serious long-term plan