nick says...

How to avoid the voids! Useful tips to avoid Landlords' worst nightmare ... !

I thought Landlords and property investors might be interested to know that we are working with Upad.co.uk on a social media campaign called Avoid the Voids.  Upad would like to been seen to be leading the way in supporting Landlords in getting their properties rented fast via maximum exposure with minimum hassle and expense!

Generally speaking, the "void" period is a Landlord's worst nightmare, so it makes sense to find ways to avoid it at all costs, especially in the challenging and highly competitive market conditions we are all experiencing.

This aligns with the core message of Upad: to avoid voids by exposing your property for rent to the largest possible marketplace to maximise exposure.

Upad.co.uk is the largest online lettings agent, helping landlords let out residential property both quickly and easily.  Upad.co.uk allows you to list your property across more than 100 online lettings agencies, property websites and portals, connecting you with the perfect tenant for your UK property to let.

Upad also wants to offer the definitive guide of strategies to avoid the void and advice on how to make your property stand out from the crowd to ensure that you avoid the void at all costs.  We are currently working on this as an e-book and it will be free to all subscribers.

You can follow our information stream on Twitter @avoidthevoids for hints, tips, and Landlord intelligence to help you stay ahead of the competition.

You will notice that the Twitter avatar has "Let by Upad" on it, meaning that every tweet that Upad sends out will reinforce this message!

Here are my Top Ten tips to avoid the void:

1.  Handle repairs professionally and quickly - happy tenants stay!  (Thanks to @juicyproperty for this tip).

2.  Ensure your property is "staged" for marketing photographs and ensure that these photograph are of  a high quality. Tenants "buy" from the photos far more than the marketing spiel, so ensure that the house is immaculately clean, the lights are on, there are some thoughtful finishing touches.

3.  Ensure that the property is immaculately clean and maintained.  The heating should be on for viewings.  Use "plug in" air fresheners or spray Fabreze to get rid of any nasty niffs as smells are very off putting!

4.  Ensure "kerb appeal" from the outside, with a well kept garden and house name/no., with outside security light.  We passed a property today where the Landlord hadn't bothered to put a house number on the door, and the developer's sign for the Plot Number was the only identification.  There was also a large pile of old carpet in the front garden.  This does not give the appearance of a "home" that the owner cares about.  Tenants want to feel "safe and secure" in their new home, so ensure this is addressed by simple security measures.

5.  In areas of over-supply of rental stock, ensure your property stands out from the crowd. Give it a unique selling point. The days of identi-kit, "me too", magnolia boxes are over.  Add a few upgrades and finishing touches to ensure your property is elevated above its competitors.  Think about the target market for your property, and try to put yourself in their shoes.  Young professionals/students/families?  What little touches can you add to the property that will appeal to that target?  An example of this is a friend of ours who has a lot of student lets.  He fits all his houses with jacuzzi baths and students always pick his houses for obvious reasons!  Look to see where you can create "lifestyle" touches i.e. garden furniture for the garden, plasma screen TV, etc.

6.  Offer incentives to get prospective tenants to commit. This could be anything from a crate of beer in the fridge, to six months free broadband, to six months gym membership included. (The Gym offers membership for £14.99 per month and is 24 hours per day. New gyms being added all the time. Have a look at http://www.thegymgroup.com/ for details).

7.  Keep an open and friendly dialogue with your tenants yourself (or through an approved agent) to ensure the continued enjoyment of their stay at your property. Treat even small problems or niggles seriously so that they feel valued as a tenant.  If the tenant hands in their notice, find out the reason why, and see if there is anything you can do to persuade them to stay.

8.  It is our advice not to rock the boat with an increase in rent at the moment. Tenants are worried about the economic down-turn and fearful about losing their jobs, so an increase in the rent might be enough to tip them over the edge to hand in their notice.

9.  In the current market conditions, be price sensitive with your rents. Remember: it is better to have 80% of something, rather than 100% of nothing! Even one month's void will eat into your profit, so endeavour to let your property out as quickly as possible, even if that means taking a hit on the rent.  You can offer an "introductory" special offer rent to be reviewed after six months.

You need to consider the cost of holding out for the right price. As an example, suppose you're renting a property and asking £700 per month. Within a short time of advertising the property you get an offer for £650. You reject this offer because you believe your property is smarter than other rental properties available at £650. However, suppose it takes an extra 2 months to get the rent you want of £700.

Have you achieved a good bargain?  Your initial though may be "yes" because you've achieved £700. But infact over a 12 month period if you had let at £650 per month your income would be £7,800.  If you held out for an extra 2 months until you got a rent of £700, your income over the same period would only be £7,000.

Your aim both in selecting the right property and in determining the acceptable rent should be to get the property let as quickly as possible.  (Thanks to @marywaring for this one!).

10.  However, it's not good enough having a great property to rent if no-one knows that it's there, and there is no better way of making your property as visible as possible with the minimum of effort as by using the internet.

Websites such as Rightmove and FindaProperty get the widest coverage, so it is crucial to get listed on as many of these as possible, including free listing sites like Gumtree and ToRent.  This said, it can be time-consuming and costly getting your property onto all of them, so find a company that can do this for you. Upad, for example, for a one-off fee of £59.00, automatically lists any property uploaded onto its site onto over 100 portals sites, including the aforementioned sites.  This way, most of the work is taken out of your hands while the internet is still working hard to find your tenant.

What do you do to avoid the void?

What else do Landlord's fear most?

Share your tips and stories here and we will credit you/your business in the Upad guide!

$$$$ for nothing and your bankruptcy for free ....

This post is prompted by a heated discussion that occured on Singing Pig recently. Rich Greenland posed the question "Where are all the good deal sourcers?" and it generated a very healthy discussion which threw up this comment:

"The biggest problem with the property market, and why it is so attractive to people, is the barriers to entry are relatively small. i.e. with a small amount of start up capital you can begin finding properties, then sourcing, selling etc. This has resulted in a whole host of people being involved in the property market, some of which are ethical and responsible, some of which see it as the quickest way of getting rich in anyway possible".

But which property "industry" or "market" was being referred to here?  You see, my wife Vanessa and I are in the property industry as a full time professional investor/Landlords and it bears no relation to the above.

Let's be clear.  The property industry referred to here is the "property marketeers" industry i.e. other people offering "get rich quick" schemes, NMD deals, armchair investment schemes, and teaching others how to get wealthy, rarely actually doing it themselves.  As noted, there are low/no barriers to entry. I recently came across someone who was a student on one of these courses six months ago. The person in question has not managed to buy any property themselves, but they are now offering mentoring!  If the "system" worked, surely they would be busy buying property?

To clarify something: there was a window of opportunity up to April 2008 to structure legitimate/transparent "no money down"  deals.  I took advantage myself!  However, that window of opportunity was slammed shut when Mortgage Express withdrew the same day bridging/remortgage product.

Unfortunately, many property sourcing companies are living in 2007 and still telling people you can structure deals in this "no deposit required" format. An example is Gekko. In reality, they were unable to pull off any such NMD deals and the whole thing unravelled very quickly when they sold new build properties via a third party without doing enough due diligence. In their case, the reservation fees should have been refunded, but the money had already been spent, as is the case with Passive Investments.

I am not suggesting that there are companies offering to teach a "get rich quick" business model for selling deals. What I am alluding to is those people who go on "get rich quick" training seminars end up finding that they can't actually implement the strategies they were taught, and bring any deals to fruition using these methods, so they then end up selling the dream on to someone else. It's actually a bit like an MLM scheme if you think about it, because many of them get affiliate commissions for referring unsuspecting newbies into the scheme that they got sucked into themselves!!

If you really had a deal that was No Money Down, and £20K cash-back, why would you sell it for a few £K intro fee. Wouldn't you keep it for yourself?  If you really have what amounts to the six numbers to the lottery, why would you sell them for a few thousand pounds intro fee?  If you think about it, it just doesn't add up.

If it sounds too good to be true, it is, every time. Without fail.

Whilst I am all for education as you can never learn less, many of these courses teach the theory not the practical.  Without wishing to squash anyone's dreams of a better financial future, there must also be room for a reality check.

In the property industry I am in, the real world, not marketing/sales hype and dreams of get rich quick, there are HUGE barriers to entry, namely a 25% deposit, stamp duty, legal fees, services charges, management fees, all sorts of legislation to comply with, money for repairs, furniture, blinds, maintenance - the list goes on. Not only that, you need a minimum salary of £25K, a squeaky clean credit rating, three year's audited accounts (if you are self-employed) to even get on the short list for lending/finance.

It is often mentioned that it is investors who demand low/no deposits. Of course they do! But that does not make it legitimate, nor does it make for a long term sustainable business to supply a demand that is based on unsustainable practices. Also, just because you do not know of anyone who has been prosecuted for fraud does not mean it is not happening. It is. From buy to let to mortgage fraud. And this, Mortgage fraud in the headlines , which was posted by a broker which lists a number of cases.

But we can all agree that it is going to take a lot more effort to find clients with big deposits, than it is to offer "money for nothing and your properties for free" to quote one of the greatest exponents of armchair investing, Andy Shaw whose company "Passive Investments" recently went bust taking millions of pounds of clients money with it. I must say it certainly worked for Andy Shaw, but not for his unfortunate clients! ;).

So which property industry are you in? The "head in the clouds" one, or the real world?!

To conclude, myself and Vanessa are in the business of providing a great service to our valued clients (tenants).

Join the discussion on this topic at the Property Tribes forum >>>> here.  We now have over 600 members and growing daily.  It's a great place to hang out, network, share knowledge and opinion, and keep up to date with the latest property news and views for anyone who is serious about property investment and Landlord-ship.

Top 10 reasons to buy houses rather than flats ... every time ....

Picture:  one of our four bedroom houses in Basingstoke, Hants. 

From our experience of purchasing both houses and flats over the past five and a half years, we have come to the conclusion that we will not buy another flat outside of London again - London being its own unique micro-market where flats can work well.  We thought we would share with you our reasons for this:

1. Houses are freehold, flats are generally leasehold.

2. Cash flow is better off a house than a flat, as flats/apartments have service charges that bite into cash flow.

3. You can extend a house, put on a conservatory, do a loft conversion, convert a garage into an extra room etc. You can not do any of that with a flat! All these things ADD VALUE.

4. Houses have gardens/useable outside space and storage. Flats are restricted on both fronts.

5. There is an over-supply of flats, and less and less houses being built, meaning that houses will be at a premium in the future.

6. With more and more people working from home (a growing and long lasting trend), space is going to be an important consideration and houses can offer a home office in the garden or over a detached garage.

7. Flats are supported by the amateur investor market and first time buyers - meaning that they are very volatile with both rental and selling prices extremely fragile. Houses are supported by more sophisticated investors and family buyers, meaning that they have more stability in the market place.

8. Houses can be let in single occupancy or multi-let formats, giving you more flexibility and less chance of voids.

9. Houses open up your tenant market to families, house sharers, and therefore have wider appeal. Families do not tend to rent flats!  My experience is that there is a greater turnover of tenants in flats.  In houses, tenants tend to put down roots, and stay longer.

10. Mortgage products are more favourable for houses than flats on the LTV front, meaning lenders see houses as lower risk. That should tell you something!

If you would like to join a lively discussion on this subject, please visit our Property Tribes forum and join the discussion >>>>> here.

He who shares wins ....

My wife, Vanessa Warwick, wrote this blog for our new Social Media Tribes forum and I thought it worth sharing here.

Vanessa wrote:

For those of you still struggling to understand the benefits of social media engagement, I thought I would share with you a few stories of where sharing and networking led to unexpected results.



It seems to me that sharing inevitably creates a "win/win" situation for both parties!

Sharing # 1:

I have contributed over 1,000 posts to various property forums over the past few years, sharing my experience and knowledge, answering questions, and supporting new investors. A few weeks ago, I got a call from a man and the conversation went like this:

"Vanessa, I am so grateful to you. You have helped me more than you could ever know. I came across one of your posts on the Singing Pig forum about how to get money back from unscrupulous property clubs. I followed your advice to the letter, and today I received £30K back in deposits! I now want to spend that money with someone I trust, and I have read so much of your advice and experience on line, that I feel that person is you".

So, something that took me ten minutes to write three years ago has delivered me a client! Don't you just love the longeivity of the web and the law of increasing returns! Traditional marketing adheres to the law of diminishing returns.

Sharing # 2:

On our Twitter walk a few weeks ago, @surreylets met up with @jonniejensen. They have now collaborated together, and @jonniejensen has used @surreylets as a case study for an article about successful social media engagement. They have published this article in their respective networks, so now have enhanced visibility through those new networks. You can read the article here.

Sharing #3:

Speaking of Sally Asling of @surreylets, she very kindly wrote an unsolicited testimonial on our Property Tribes forum. In her testimonial, she described how we helped her generate £7K of business out of Twitter in four months. That testimonial has resulted in at least 10 people picking up the phone and asking us to help them with their social media and twitter strategies. Note that Sally attended one of our events for free and the information we shared at that event set her on the path to success. (Our next property/social media/business networking event is on 20th September in Guildford and you can find details and register here.

Sharing #4:

One of the contributors to our forum, property tax expert, Stephen Fay, got in touch with us to say that, by posting advice on our forum, he was getting a lot of referrals and business. His exact words were "Sharing and advising about tax information on property forums has generated me more business than any form of traditional marketing". I also advocated him to a lot of people in our network who need tax advice. He now wants to take social media to the next level, and has employed Nick on his one day on-site social media business consultancy. Stephen said "I am using my marketing budget to invest in understanding social media as this is where business is happening". We agree. The marketing dept. is now closed, and you should be investing in your "findability on the web" department!

Sharing #5

A few years ago, we were offered an amazing property deal to purchase four luxury apartments in North London at a massive discount as the developer had made a mistake with his cash flow and got into a lot of financial bother. We were only able to get the deal if we purchased all four apartments. However, that was too risky for our taste, so we asked the developer if he would still consider the deal if we bought in three other people. He said "yes". We then went to our close network of investors and invited them in on the deal. As a result, all four of us were able to acquire properties worth £450,000 for £350,000 (and remember, this was when the property market was healthy!). So everyone was a winner, us, our network, and the developer.

Sharing people and valuable information always leads to a win/win situation.

When people share, serendipity is ignited and great things happen - probably in ways you could never imagine.

What or who are you going to share today?

If you would like to join a new community of people sharing social media ideas and innovation, please join our new Social Media Tribes forum.

Tantrums, Threads, and Threats: The birth of a social networking site ....

Through Twitter, my wife Vanessa recently came across Ollie Cornes, the founder of one of the original property networking forums, Singing Pig.

Seeing as how Ollie is something of a trail blazer when it comes to forums, having started Singing Pig in 2002, she took the opportunity to ask him a few questions as I felt I could learn a great deal from his experiences. I thought I would share the interview with you here.

1. What gave you the idea to start SP forum seven years ago? What was your vision for it?

Ollie: Much of the driver in my life has been some non-life-threatening, manageable, but chronic, challenges with my health. These things make us question our values and priorities - they are a gift if we let them be. "Rich Dad Poor Dad" led me to learn about assets, cash-flow and building businesses - although I had previously run a dotcom/VC-funded business (it failed), that book crystalised many ideas for me. I needed to meet like-minded people to share ideas and learn, and out of some meet-ups in London, and chats online, connecting with people like Lisa Orme, I set up Singing Pig as a social venture - there was no intention in the early years to build a business out of it - I just wanted mutual-sharing. In 2002 I was scouring the web to find books or courses or articles on property investment and landlording, and there was almost nothing there.

2. Did you have a platform custom-designed or did you use a generic one?

Ollie: Technology - build-or-buy - the eternal question I've been searching for an answer to for longer than I can remember. My thinking continues to evolve, but at this point I believe that buying a software platform is likely to be better than building your own AS LONG AS the platform is extensible and open and you have ownership of the data (ability to get a copy). It's far quicker, and users benefit from a far wider range of features. Choosing a platform remains a difficult decision (it's hard to undo), hopefully it will get easier as more apps move to the cloud and interconnect. Singing Pig started on MSN Groups (to migrate away from here we had to screen-scrape the content off each page with custom software - ugly, but it worked), it then moved to a proprietary forum platform, and then moved again to another, much better platform, later on. The migrations were painful, for me at least, but I think they worked out in the end.

3. How did you generate groundswell in the early days of the forum?

Ollie: I remained active in the forums, I was interested in what others thought and were doing, I felt passionate about the community as it grew. Looking back I think there was a mutual sense that we all wanted to learn, and I listened to what people wanted from the forum and tried to deliver that. There was some luck in there too. For a while I had business cards with "Pig Daddy" on them, and it was a bit of a joke, but I did hold a kind of sense of paternalism, to encourage learning, to deter the idiots, to nurture the community.

4. How did you monetise the forum, or was that something that developed over time?

Ollie: I didn't press the monetisation very much, that was a side-benefit, and made sure costs were covered. If it was all about the money the ads would have been a lot more intrusive. It was about meeting people. We all know that landlords are often solitary workers - cabin-fever can set in, and lots of us (me included) relished the communication. Singing Pig was there at the right time really, Buy To Let was exploding, and there was a thirst for knowledge. To be honest if I wanted to build an income business, I wouldn't set up a content/community site, it's hard work for limited returns (as Rupert Murdoch is finding out on a larger scale). If the owner has a product/service they can promote on it, that's often a different matter...

5. What were the biggest challenges you faced with running the forum?

Ollie: The cowards who libelled people & companies behind the mask of anonymity, and the lawyers acting for their (often scumbag) clients. Mishcon de Reya had a dig once (you can probably guess who their client was) - they were so aggressive it was like being in a movie, but I had to admire their solid understanding of the law and technology (many lawyers who came at me were strangely clueless). Ironically I often felt like "piggie in the middle" - someone posts libellous comments in the forum, but the lawyers came after me - it was boring, and time-consuming.

6. Did being a forum owner help add credibility to your personal brand?

Ollie: Yes, I think it has, but as an (admittedly confident) introvert, that has limited appeal.

7. Why did you sell SP and was there anything in the timing of the sale?

Ollie: I sold it as I wanted to focus on other projects, I was working too hard, I was spread too thin. The timing worked for me, it took some pressure off, though I hope the new owner has benefited from it since - there were certainly days afterwards when I had mixed-feelings about the sale.

8. You rarely appear on SP now. Why is that?

Ollie: I decided back in 2007 that I wasn't prepared to continue working such long hours, and my community activities were a casualty - I focused on buying property, on building a business around that, improving the management of my properties. I continued to network, and still do, but much has been with smaller communities through people I know.

9. What are you doing now?

Ollie: I'm a property guy, but I have just as much passion for technology. It was natural that I fuse the two, and so for a number of years I've managed my portfolio using a scalable software platform that I evolved specifically for that purpose - I rather over-engineered it for one landlord, but it brought me great pleasure to build what didn't seem to exist on the market. I'd been asked on quite a number of occasions why I was not making it available to others to use, but I resisted - too busy, would other landlords find it useful, how to solve the technical hurdles to re-sell, etc. But I came around eventually and so this year I'm bringing it to market - opening myself up to the views of the landlord masses. It's designed specifically for landlords (not agents - so it isn't missing essential features to manage mortgage debt, valuations, equity, cash flow, buildings insurance, leasehold etc etc) and it is a cloud-based app, so secure, easy to access, a 30day free trial, no backups, no software to install, mobile access, free upgrades, and instead of a large up-front payment, it'll just be a small monthly fee. It's not commercially available yet, there is no web site yet, the service is in a small private trial. Like Singing Pig, there will be a community element, and landlords can vote on features they'd like added - democratic software, if you like. I'd love your feedback Vanessa & Nick - if you think it might be useful to you, let me know and I'll add you to the next trial phase.

10. Do you have an opinion on the future of SP and how it has become orientated towards deals and leads selling rather than discussion?

Ollie: There was some pressure before I sold it to expand this facility, or charge for it as a service, and I admit I resisted it, but I think since I let go of the business the market has changed a great deal. One of the challenges with any community/group is that ultimately the "owner" has limited control over how people use it, and BMV became the core focus for a great number of people - that "gold-rush" changed the nature of the community. To twist the old phrase "Cash-out is vanity, cash flow is sanity" smile

You can read the original interview and ensuing discussion on the Property Tribes forum here.

I really take my hat off to Ollie for creating such a vibrant community and selling it on. You can follow him @juicyproperty on Twitter.

Our next Guildford ecademy/property/social media networking event is on Sunday 20th September. You can join us here. At our events, we share a lot of inside information about how we monetise social media. This is a great way for you to expand your knowledge and contacts in a collaborative networking environment. Nick and I hope to see you there.

Are you a leader?

We are entering the era of the individual and the networked economy.  In order for you and your business to stand out from the crowd, you need to be a leader.

In a tribal society, the Elders are the most respected and committed members of the community, the leaders, the sharers of wisdom, and the people to turn to for support and advice.

Following the amazing news that Property Tribes has grown 180% in the last three months (Alexa stats), we’re introducing two new levels of membership to help grow the forum and provide enhanced benefits for our members.

“Tribal Elders” and “Tribal Elders PowWow” are our two new levels of paid membership for those of you who want to lead the property community and signal your commitment to property, networking, and raising the visibility of your businesses through on and off-line networking.

Tribal Elders Yearly Membership Programme:

For an annual subscription of £60, you will access the following benefits:

• FREE entry to all our networking events for the duration of one year, plus bring a guest FREE. (Value £240).
• An exclusive Tribal Elders gathering after our networking event for deeper networking and relationship building.
• Enhanced visibility for you and your business on the forum and at our events.
• 10% discount voucher off any of Nick's training events or consultancy services at socialmediagraffiti.com

BUY NOW £60

Tribal Elders Yearly Membership Programme PLUS Pow Wow:

• For an annual subscription of £400, you will access the following benefits:
• FREE entry to all our networking events for the duration of one year, plus bring a guest FREE. (Value £240).
• An exclusive Tribal Elders gathering after our networking event for deeper networking and relationship building.
• Enhanced visibility for you and your business on the forum and at our events.
• 10% discount voucher off any of Nick's training events or consultancy services at socialmediagraffiti.com

PLUS:

• Discounted rates for sponsorship of Property Tribes.
• A video "PowWow" interview (max. duration 10 minutes) filmed on HD with Vanessa to promote yourself or your business, which will be featured on Property Tribes. (See The Bookwright Interview). You will also have access to this video to use on your own website etc for your own promotion. (Value £450)
• 1 hour business consultation with Vanessa and Nick. (Value £240)
• Leveraging of our network, social media platforms, and contacts to increase visibility and awareness of your business in the online community.

BUY NOW £400

Sample Video screenshot of Vanessa interviewing Tome Evans @thebookwright These programmes represent excellent value for money to give you access to very affordable networking and other benefits that will enhance your visibility in our network. They are designed to help you grow your business and brand on-line in a supportive, open, and collaborative community which has been built over the past five years on trust and ethical practices.

By aligning yourself with other like-minded people, you can use the momentum of the group to move yourself and your business forwards.

Whilst the normal Property Tribes membership remains free, by joining one of our paid programmes, you are making a commitment to yourself to become a leader in the property community. The programmes are for serious and committed people only who see the benefit of joining the “inner circle” of our community and benefitting from enhanced visibility and credibility in our network.

Smoke signals ...

To celebrate the news that the Alexa statistics report that the Property Tribes forum has grown 180% in the last three months, we're introducing some exciting new initiatives and benefits for tribal members:

Special offer from Upad for tribal members:



We are delighted to report that the Property Tribes forum is now sponsored by the U.K.'s premier rental marketplace, http://www.upad.co.uk/. Upad are offering tribal members a special offer of buy one listing, get one listing free. (Go to the Property Tribes home page and click on the banner to take advantage of this). Your Upad listing will be distributed to over 100 portals for a one off cost of £59.00 until the property is let. The great news is that upad covers room lets as well as houses and flats, so do take advantage of this special offer. The upad site is a great resource for both Landlords and tenants, so do take a few moments to visit and see what it has to offer.

The sponsorship of the Property Tribes forum will allow us to invest in and improve the forum and develop it into an even better resource for members, so please do support upad if you have a house or flat to let out!

You can also follow upad on Twitter @jamesatupad

Tribal Gathering on the horizon!

Our next tribal gathering (networking event) has been scheduled for Sunday 20th of September in Guildford. Please make a note in your diaries now not to miss the fastest expanding property networking event in the South East!

Entry is £10.00 and you can register and pay here.

On Property Tribes, we have a discussion on how to create the ultimate networking event. Please have your say here as to what you think makes for the ultimate networking experience.

Property Tribes is now on Facebook!



We have now started our own group on Facebook to increase the tribe's visibility. You can join us here.

In the Spotlight

We are currently in the process of introducing some new initiatives to make Property Tribes the most valuable property resource on the web.

One of these includes "In the Spotlight", where we interview key/active members of the community so that you can get to know them better.

The purpose of this is to raise awareness of what tribal members do, so that you know who to go to if you need a particular product, service, or some advice. We hope that one of the benefits of membership of the tribe is increased business transactions between the members.

Our first Spotlight feature is dedicated to our good friend and mortgage broker, Wasim Ahmed. You can read all about his personal property journey and strategy here.

If you would like to be featured in the Property Tribes Spotlight, please do get in touch. However, please note that this feature is only for active contributors to the community, not passive viewers.

It's one of the ways we are going to "give something back" to the members who contribute the most to the forum.

Coming soon in the Spotlight: Roberta Ward, Brian Heath, John Corey, Sally Asling .....

VideoBlog: Why we started Property Tribes

If you would like to know more about why we started the Property Tribes forum, and the benefits of membership, please view our latest video blog.

Property Tribes Twitter League



If you want to find all the most influential people in U.K. property, look no further than the Property Tribes Twitter League! John Corey is out there in the No. 1 position with over 11,000 followers!

Coming soon: "Tribal Elders" programme

We are shortly going to be introducing a subscription programme for those of you who want to lead the property community and signal your commitment to property and networking by becoming a Tribal Elder.

For an annual subscription of £60, you will access the following benefits:

* FREE entry to all our networking events for the duration of one year, plus bring a guest FREE. (Value £240).
* An exclusive Tribal Elders gathering after our networking event for deeper networking and relationship building.
* Enhanced visibility for you and your business on the forum and at our events.
* 20% discount voucher off any of Nick's training events.
* A free copy of our new e-book "Social Media : Why you have to be there".

If you have any suggestions as to what other benefits you would like to see, please let us know.

Regards
N

   socialmediagraffiti.com
 

Why we started Property Tribes ...

Click here - to learn more.

 

 

Is there any such thing as an "armchair investor" and if there was, would you want to be one .... ?

I am just wondering what the Tribes' thoughts are on the term "armchair investor".

I must admit, I find it very perplexing.

I strongly believe that the best person to look after my money and my financial future is the person I see in the mirror, not a third party with a sales agenda.

I cannot understand the concept of sitting back and letting someone else take all the responsibility for my money, my investment decisions, and my financial future - no matter how trustworthy that person might seem.

I actually want to roll up my sleeves and get my hands dirty. I want to strive to understand my investments from every angle. I want to take responsibility for how my money is spent. I want to be on the "factory floor" dealing with the everyday running of the business so that I can grow my skills and knowledge.

If I invest my time and diligence in my property business, then there is hopefully far less chance of it going wrong than just taking someone else's word for it.

Maybe armchair investors sitting back in their armchairs calling themselves "investors" are really "armchair speculators on a third party's ability to make the right buying decisions for them".

Property is not a case of "one size fits all". If you don't want to roll your sleeves up and get your hands dirty, then maybe you shouldn't get involved at all ... ?

If you think of yourself as an "armchair investor", maybe that allows you to feel very disconnected from your property business? If you are not in the thick of it, then there's a strong possibility it will go off the rails.

Passive Investments, Grant Bovey's Imagine Homes, and Instant Access Properties are three high profile companies who have proved that the "armchair investor" concept is a recipe for disaster.

Yes, I can understand that if you are cash rich but time poor you might like a bit of help and support. That is understandable. However, to absolve yourself of all responsibility and "just sign papers", which I have heard someone say recently, is a complete anathema to me personally.

What do others think?

Join the discussion at Property Tribes - click here -

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Top 10 FATAL mistakes made by novice property investors ...

1. Not having a reason for doing this. Over my five years of speaking at property events and presenting at workshops and seminars, I have come across hundreds of people, who, when asked why they want to get involved in property say "I wanna be rich". That, in my opinion, is not a clear enough reason. There must be some specific goal that you want to aim for, an outcome, a purpose that will drive you to achieve success. "Being rich" is too flaky, too undefined, to wide a goal to aim for. Think carefully about why you want to get involved in property - to fund your child's education, to prop up a pension, to allow you to follow your dream, whatever that may be. Without a clearly defined goal, your efforts will be unfocussed and you will not be committed to moving forwards step by step.

2. Thinking one size fits all. Property investment is highly personal to you, your financial situation, your attitude to risk, how much time you have to devote to it, how much support you have from your family etc. The type of properties that suit my investment strategy to reach my goals, may not be right for you. You must acquire properties that are suited to your personal strategy and will take you one step closer to the goal that you have clearly defined in your own mind. This is why property clubs, passive investment programmes etc are flawed from the outset, because property is never one size fits all.

3. Not doing enough due diligence or research. Before investing in any property purchase, you MUST do full due diligence and research. We come from the school of find the demand, then create the supply. Unfortunately, most novice investors create the supply, and then wonder where the demand is coming from. In other words, it's no good buying a property, no matter how good the deal might appear, if no one wants to rent it! You must fully research an area in terms of rental demand, amount of stock on the market, etc. Understand who your prospective tenant is and then find properties that will meet their criteria.

4. Taking someone else's word for it. It is your money, so satisfy yourself of the veracity of any deal you are considering or the integrity of the company you are thinking of doing business with. Do not take anyone's word for anything. DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH EVERY TIME, WITHOUT FAIL.
Never pay large fees upfront for anything. You should only pay for results achieved, not promises.

5. Focussing too much on the deal. Time and time again, I see novice investors focussing on the deal. They are intent on getting it no money down, with a rental guarantee etc. The focus should be on pre-acquisition (due diligence) and post-acquisition (ownership and management). You may be in a business relationship with a property for 25 years. The acquisition stage is a blink of an eye in that context. There's no point in acquiring a property, even NMD, if no one wants to rent it!

6. Becoming a seminar junkie and addicted to gurus. Whilst Nick and I are all for education, there are many people out there who "follow" the wrong people, and end up paying for more and more seminars because they haven't registered that the information they have already been given has not enabled them to produce any results. They then pay to go on another seminar with the same guru, to get the missing piece of the puzzle, but that is never revealed. These people become trapped into paying more and more for information, while they should be going out and putting the original information into action to see if they can achieve any results. There are many sharks in property who make a lot of money from telling others how to make money. Be sure to follow someone who talks the talk and walks the walk. Too many newbies do not recognise that they are being "sold to" and end up spending money unnecessarily. Do not fall for marketing hype, spin, and promises of get rich quick. If you adopt that attitude of wanting something for no effort, you will fail, EVERY time.

7. Lack of massive and sustained action. To be successful in any walk of life, you must be committed, and engage in massive and sustained action every day. Many people make excuses to themselves why they will do this next week, next month, after Christmas, etc. The net result of that is that there is no result.

8. Not treating your property portfolio as a business. Cash flow is the life blood of any business, and property is no different. If you do not focus on cash flow and manage it appropriately, your business will fail. Property is no different. Too many people focus on the acquisition, with no thought of the cash flow prospects etc. A property portfolio based on capital growth/equity release is a VERY HIGH RISK strategy, and one to be avoided by novice investors or those of limited financial means.

9. Lack of education and networking and lack of commitment to learning. When working in isloation, it is easy to make mistakes and lose direction and momentum. There is so much free information available on the web, that there is no excuse for not learning something new every day. Forums such as this allow you to expand your contacts and knowledge and learn from others who are more experienced than you.

10. Thinking that property is a race or a competition. It's not. It's about you taking responsibility for your financial future and doing what is right for YOU and on one else. Take your time to build your team, research deals that work for you, and triple check your research. Never be pressurised into anything in property. There is ALWAYS time to take a step back and reflect on what you are about to do to check that it is right for you.

If you would like to join an active and supportive community of like-minded property professionals, please join our Property Tribes forum.

If you are experiencing any difficulties or problems with your property investments, please post them on the forum and myself and other members of the community, will be only too happy to share our thoughts and help you resolve them.
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