Hi guys,

I’m one week into a 3 months kiwi adventure buying IP’s and I’ve chosen to go for the camper van option. I’m telling you, it’s far better than renting a car and staying at overnight accom. Far less to think about and always a good view to wake upto in the morning. Every 2-3 days you’ll need to stay at a camp ground to charge the battery and use the 240v power to charge your own appliances (laptop etc) but the rates for powered sites are $5-$20 depending on where you are. All up it’s working out cheaper for me than last time I came over and rented a car. The van I’m using is from Kea, they’re very cheap but still really good quality, I’m paying NZD$40/day, unlimited km’s and comes with everything you could possibly need.

Cheers, Leigh

P.S – Yes, pretty much all of the vans over the Lions Tour are booked, it took me a long time of ringing around to make my booking!

Hey guys,

I’ll be over there busy finding properties from February 29th – March 21st. I’ll be covering areas of both Islands, where will you both be and when?

Castledreamer,

Mini mentioned your name last night in regards to investing in NZ, I’m Mini’s partner in our joint NZ Bird Dog venture! Would be good to hear from you.

Cheers, Leigh

My thoughts are that if a decrease in property values exceeds the short term growth the area has experienced then you would class it as a bust. What is everyone’s thoughts on this?

My example would be, somewhere that has increased in 40% over 12 months and then decreases by 20% surely couldn’t be classed as a bust because the net effect is still a 20% increase.

This would most likely be caused by properties being overvalued in a sellers market. Therefore the value decrease might be better seen as a price correction rather than a bust in my opinion. If this is the case, then much like a share investor values a company, a property investor should be able to see when an area is undervalued, overvalued – or heading that way, and either a) take advantage of that, or b) invest somewhere else. If the prices fell below their short term values then I’d be looking at is as a bust.

I think there’s even more to look at than just the market (or markets within the market) also. The situation of the individual investor is crucial to how they are affected in the event of negative growth. i.e. An investor who bought 10 years ago using a buy & hold strategy will most likely have a much different opinion to someone who just bought 5 off-the-plan properties with the intention of on-selling them in 12 months! Investor 1 rides the tide of the property cycle, investor 2 speaks to a solicitor regarding his bankruptcy options!!

Leigh

Hi Bruce,

>Leigh and Mini (who I thought was a guy), not trying >to be a wet blanket, but have you considered getting >some local knowledge on board?

Absolutely. The success of our system will come from not trying to do everything ourselves. The very first thing I’ll be looking for in each area is a team of professionals i.e. real estate agents, building & pest inspectors, valuers…

>I’d certainly feel more comfortable with a sheep >loving local digging up the due diligence then Leigh, >who is going to have serious time constraints

I actually disagree on this one. One idea we had was to run everything from here in Aust using the net and telephone to dig out all the deals and handball the rest to locals. However, look from another angle (the angle of one of our clients) and ask how confident you would be on a deal that even the bird-dog hasn’t seen!!

One of my favourite quotes is ‘Know what you know and what you don’t know’. I acknowledge that I don’t have the local knowledge, but by surrounding myself with people that do (i.e Mini for a start, the NZ estate agents, plus the many ‘sheep loving locals’ I’ll meet over there) it doesn’t become much of an issue. Due diligence isn’t rocket science, neither’s property investing for that matter!

>apparently has no long term local connections???

Mini’s a kiwi [] She has pretty good knowledge of the areas we’ll be looking at, and also has a range of contacts in place over there already.

>There must be a zillion fisch and chup shop owners >who’d love to make a few bucks on the side filling >out templates and going for weekend drives with >digital camera in hand.

I’m glad we’re on the same wave length here! The power of a network together with a strong system is something which can be hugely leveraged to benefit everyone. We have considered, once putting the system in place, delegating some of the basic ‘time consuming’ tasks to some local fisch & chupies! The ‘templates’ have to be made first though [].

Cheers, Leigh

Hi everyone []

It’s time to come out of the closet! My name’s Leigh Storr and I’m the guy working on the ground with Mini. As of tomorrow I will have a return airfare for 12 days to New Zealand, departing on Sunday 15th of Feb. Whilst over there I’m going to be doing a lot of travelling, speaking to a lot of real estate agents, putting in a lot of offers to purchase cashflow positive properties, and following up with plenty of negotiations and property inspections.

Initially (for this first trip anyway) what we’re looking for is about a dozen serious investors who are ready to play ball, and in a position to purchase properties in NZ within the next couple of months.

Sorry if this sounds rude, but I must emphasise that we are only prepared to deal with serious, committed investors at the moment. The service we are offering is a property finders service (bird-dogging), and as such we will be putting 100% of our efforts into finding the best properties, and negotiating the best deals for our clients. Therefore, at the moment we would prefer not to be spending a lot of our time bringing clients upto speed on the benefits of investing in real estate, debating positive cashflow or investing in NZ. Although we will assist with our best efforts, services such as obtaining finance, managing the property and predicting the direction of the market we are going to leave to the respective professionals at the moment [:o)]

Thanks to everyone that has PM’d or emailed Mini, we will be getting back to you all within the next 48 hours with the full details of the trip and service we are offering. Anyone else that feels they may be interested in purchasing positive cashflow properties in NZ, or if you have any questions, please feel free to PM either myself or Mini rather than continuing this thread (I think it may have entered into the grey area of the forum rules).

I look forward to working with many of you.

Cheers, Leigh []

Steve and Dave outline a ‘no brainer’ 10 year retirement plan in their Wrap Secrets Revealed Kit which will see you retire on >$100k PA. I’ve also seen similar plans in books elsewhere.

A very basic overview (off the top of my head).

First 5 years
Purchase 1 property a quarter.

Second 5 years
Reduce debt

The properties are based on $70k value, 10% deposit (which you will need to save) and positive returns of $50/week each. You will also need to re-invest your returns over the 10 years and continue to save the equivilent 10% deposits each quarter over the second 5 year period to put towards debt reduction.

My advice is to work out what you want to achieve and when you want to achieve it. From there spend a few months investigating different strategies to be a position to decide which strategy/s will best suit your current situation and personal qualities. There are no standard templates to success which will suit everyones personalities and current situations.

Cheers, Leigh

May the FORCE be with you []!!

Try this one also…

You have three boxes of fruit which are all incorrectly labelled. One box contains apples, one contains oranges and the other contains both apples and oranges. If you can only take one fruit from each box at a time, how many fruits do you need to sample before being able to correctly label the boxes?