Great advice from dazzling.

You are doing okay already and have learnt to diversify which is fantastic. From this point is would take small, measured and regular steps to increasing your portfolio.

Use the equity to buy a mixture of quality investments and be mindful of your cashflows along the way. Positive cashflow property may help you in this regard or you could balance the cashflow in your portfolio through trading property, renovations + additions, (wraps also spring to mind but have not done one so will leave that up to the others) or developments.

Dazzling said it, you can’t buy the market so look for gems. Properties that you believe will outperform others of their type based on your research which would include at look at the historical performance of the area…but don’t look to far into the past.

If you are resi think what do people want to live in right now and what they will want to live in in the future. Who lives in the area now and what to trends suggest the area will look like in 5 years and 10 years.

Diversify – but with a goal of setting up different growth and income streams with different exposures to risk rather than jumping from pillar to post because of the lastest book or trend.

Regards,

Don

Hi Nylorac,

That is a pretty good summary of the nuts and bolts for individuals. It is not as complicated you might think.

Hi Alexpk,

Can i ask what state you are in and whether you are looking in regional or city areas?

Regards

Don

well done, i reckon don’t let the idea go cold. get in to see your planner/suveyor and get the ball rolling. no better time to start than today.

regards

don

Hi Dom,

Yeah, that is pretty much what I spent 50% of my time doing eiter hands on or for others through the project management side of it.

It’s like anything. Some jobs come together easily and others for what ever reason just don’t want to get done.

Terry is right. Get all the finance ready to go before you give up you day job. At the moment for my own houses I use no doc products but this means I have to put in a 35% deposit and the institution is a bit fusy about the type of property.

I have just finished one (yesterday) and had it dressed for sale by a wonderful local person who has much better taste and furniture than I have. I turned out muc better than I had thought.

Couple of things: You are making a product for sale so you really need to get in tune with what is and is not selling. This is different for every area and every street. You have a distinct advantage over a developer as there is virtually no lag time between planning and product delivery.

You could have ajob done in 4 to 6 weeks depending on how many hours you are prepared to put in.

Doing it full time is great but don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to do everything yourself and then again if others do everything for you then I don’t see much profit left you at then end of the project.

These project need momentum so make sure that every day if it is not you that someone is there doing something. I find that as soon as a house goes quite it takes a while getting things started again.

If there is local casual labour available use it. Contract out all the difficult work. Even if you have a trade skill try anf find someone that you can get along with to work alongside you in your field. Don’t attempt things that you can’t do. Learn in your rental don’t learn on a product that is heading for buyers.

I suppose what I am getting at is that it is better for you to turn over more homes than trying to squeeze every penny out of each house.

One more: Don’t make it the best house is the street. Make it the second best house. Almost as good and 10% cheaper will gaurantee and almost immediate sale and you can move on the the next project. Location and bones are the key. Give the buyer a slightly cheaper product still of the category they want.

We did our last job in 34 days ( have some pics if you like) and really only had half a day off in the middle there. So get help, get others involved and be realistic. The quicker you get the product to market the higher the chance that the market is still the same.

While we were doing that job I had people in another project of ours doing structure work that I won’t go near.

Keep your site clean, tools and valuable looked away and stay out of the way of the pros. Keep the momentum going.

Regards,

Don

i reckon it depends on the actual value of the dwelling before you start.

how much is this place worth? What is the standard that has been set by comparable properties?

cheers

interesting read. Seems very organised?