Hi Matthew

I love your street savvy, Matt. My wife & I are developers with an extensive portfolio of our own rentals… we’re moving to Brisbane and have just rented a house which we were very tempted to buy, but looked at the opportunity cost of what we could do with the equity. Usually it’s a no brainer – rent for yourself and use your capital to buy (or in my case build) investment properties because you know how to pick them, but the rents are going up (and I love it!)

Do you mind sharing the basic info re the suburb you bought in and what it would realistically rent for?
Cheers
Greg

Hi Resi

How traumatic for you! What Mongrels!

Were you the victim of a “Boiler Room” strategy, somehow combined with you ringing the advert in Financial Review?

Did they make an unsolicited call to you, or did they swing into action with a smoothe plan after you responded to their advert?

Resi, all regulars here know how good you are at making money, so these mongrels must be very, very super slick indeed to reel you in. Thanks for being good enough to talk about it here, instead of going underground to lick your gaping wounds.

I strongly recommend forumites take out the video “Boiler Room” for a real wake up call about how ruthless some rogue “sharebrokers” are. An awesome, scary movie.

I’d also suggest fellow forumites go to:
http://www.investopedia.com
and search “Boiler Room”

It’s an excellent site on technicalities of most investment media /terms. I use it regularly.

Resi, we feel for you. Is there a way your warning can be kept alive here and on Somersoft for longer than a couple of week, where people can PM you for details? These slick scammers will be around for some time, and we need to forewarn investors for as long as we can.

I’m sure you’re pursuing the asic option vigorously. Go get ’em, mate!! If you can’t get your own money back, there’s always revenge by closing them down in this country.
Cheers
Greg

Hi Jenny

I love your summary about the neutral “is-ness” of seminars. Keep ’em coming.[biggrin][biggrin]

Cheers
Greg

Hi Pete

As a general rule, I follow the maxim: “I don’t buy cars, I buy property!!”

But when I am forced to update, I’m a fan of buying quality cars which get a hiding in the depreciation stakes because of Australia’s fascination with Fords and Holdens (that’s why I buy top of the range Mitsubishis).

I also love my luxuries, so my 2 latest cars are a 1988 Jaguar XJ6 Sovereign, and a 2001 Mitsubishi Verada Xi top of the range Verada (all leather seats, leather draped down the sides of all 4 doors, electric front seat adjustor, electric sunroof, cruise control etc etc).

Some poor guy paid $53,000 in October 2001 out of the showroom, and I picked it up in Feb this year for $16,500 with 145,000kms on the clock. It’s an awesome car, top image, and cheap as chips.

Good luck with your car hunting. By the way, stay away from the Verada Ei; the Xi is a much better fitout, and you won’t pay much more for the extra bit of luxury. Go http://www.carsales.com.au and type in a search under “Dealer” cars
Cheers
Greg

Hi Folks

Anyone want an antidope to fight doom ‘n gloom? It’s been 20 years or so since I first read the biography of the Cattle King:
“Sidney Kidman – The Forgotten King”
I’ve just re-read it, and what a positive morale boost it makes.

Talk about a counter-cyclical, +CF investor!! This Kidman fellow SERIOUSLY invested in the ‘back of beyond”. Bought massive strings of drought ridden properties, and made a squillion with almost every deal. He ended up owning nearly 4% of Australia’s landmass in his awesome chain of cattle properties in some of the worst drought-affected areas this arid country of ours boasts.

The point is this: he had a plan (Steve: “Success comes from doing things differently”). If you wanna know how DIFFERENT his plan was, go to your local library and read the book, even if you’ve gotta get it in on Inter-Library Loan.

The bottom line? Let all the doom and gloomers sit on their hands whilst more experienced operators keep making money.

Here’s the Key Question doom and gloomers need to ask themselves:
“Can you imagine Steve McKnight, Rick Otton, Steve Navra, Michael Yardney, Dale Gatherum-Goss etc etc buying NO PROPERTIES over the next few years?”

Cheers
Greg

Hi Folks

Re suburbs, I prefer Peter Spann’s more scientific approach than the more anecdotal stuff above (it’s fun, though).

Try reading the chapter on Median Rent & Price statistics in Peter Spann’s “How to Build a $10 Million Property Portfolio in 10 Years”. He outlines his 5 year cyclical approach for deciding which specific suburbs to buy in a particular city, at this precise moment in time.

Great stuff. Also go to http://www.matusik.com.au
for his Quarterly Reports.

He’s tipping Coolum & Marcoola on Qld’s Sunshine Coast as suburbs with a fair bit of rise still left in them. You’d be amazed at how affordable the median house price is in these suburbs, relative to others so close to Noosa.

Cheers
Greg

Hi Damo

Love your determination, and encourage you to keep thinking of Steve McKnight’s advice to “Take Massive Action Immediately”.

HOWEVER, while doing this please reflect on the fact that Steve & Dave kept their jobs as accountants while they built up their “130 Houses in 3.5 years” property empire.

I know many property multi- millionaires who still keep their day jobs which have nothing to do with the property industry.

My wife & I have what we consider to be a modest portfolio of 17 IP’s, and we’re working on our first 30 x 1.5 acre block subdivision. And guess what?…

…To keep growing our portfolio into more SERIOUSLY impressive figures, I still need to keep my job as a schoolteacher.

Happily, I love teaching, and am quite content to keep doing it for another 5-10 years. In fact, we’ve deliberately set ourselves up to just need one more round of this new property cycle to retire very, very comfortably indeed. Will it take 7, 10, 12 or 14 years before the next property boom doubles the gross value of our portfolio? Haven’t got a clue, but one thing’s for sure, it’ll happen sometime, right? And when it does, you’ll hear our whooping YAHOO!! YAHOO!! all the way from sunny Qld.

You’ll get there too, Damo, just like we will. Be patient, and keep thinking outside the square.

Cheers
Greg
PS: Re doing your own renos, I remember my father’s saying: “Manual Labour’s a Spaniard!!” The really serious success stories on this forum and on http://www.somersoft.com.au hardly ever lift a tool on their own projects.

I thought the whole concept of LEVERAGING was to use OPM and OPT [biggrin][biggrin][biggrin]

Oh, and by the way, have you read:
~ Peter Spann http://www.freemanfox.com.au
and
~ Steve Navra http://www.navra.com.au

Strongly recommended. Don’t do anything until you’ve dived thoroughly into their worlds, okay?

Hi LK

In my experience, the “fear of debt” you say you suffer from is your biggest obstacle. When I was 27, I suffered from the same malaise. Now I know better.

If you do not take immediate action to educate yourself to overcome it, I predict:
1. You will keep buying IP’s till you reach your comfort level
2. Over the next 30 years or so you will achieve a modest level of assets and financial security.

In other words, you are dooming yourself to mediocrity. Is this what you really want? Is this why you visited this site?

The good news is that there is a much, much better way.

But before I offer my suggestions, I hope you appreciate the collective wisdom behind the quality people who have ALREADY responded to your post. Some extremely experienced operators have given you the benefit of their experience. I hope you will honour them by acting on their suggestions. Here’s what I would do:
~ Log onto http://www.navra.com.au
~ Click the dropdown menu under “Articles”
~ Print out every single article in that link
~ Put them into your “self-education” folder, and treat them like the “investor’s gospel” they are.

Also, log onto http://www.somersoft.com.au
~ Click the Search function
~ Type in “Steve Navra” and read all 18 pages of the threads Steve has contributed to. Exhausted yet?

You should also read Peter Spann’s 2 books “Wealth Magic” and “How to Build a $10 Million Property Portfolio in 10 Years”

Now it’s up to you. Just act on all this advice, okay?

And by the way, I have never met Peter Spann or Steve Navra, and I have absolutely no affiliation with either gentleman. I just know quality when I find it.

Cheers
Greg

You guys are A REAL CRACK UP!! [biggrin][biggrin][biggrin]

I’d be going WAHOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
[cap]
Cheers
Greg

Hi G7

I’ve got Adobe Acrobat Reader, I get pdf files all the time on this computer (I researched 3 large pdf files only last night), tried Michael’s link again just now and it still didn’t work!! What gives?

Adobe flashed on the screen for a millisecond then disappeared into the ether, the screen went white, the message at the bottom LHS told me the search had been “Done”, and there was no scroll bar down the rhs.

Can anyone suggest what’s happening?

Cheers
Greg