The overwhelming sentiment from this thread is that people seem to begrudge Steve and Dave charging for a seminar, even just in general there seems to be a begrudging of others making money, perhaps.
I find the best cure of this ‘you’ve got way too much and I’ve got less, you’ve got some of mine! i want more!’ vibe which is ‘fear and lack’ thinking rather than ‘abundance’ thinking – is to start making money yourself.

You choose – either pick an expert who’s done it and do what’s required to learn from them – either by paying someone such as with a seminar, book, video, etc – or by forming a mentor-mentee relationship where both help eachother. Or else, just get off your arse and get in the real world and learn by your own experience. All are valid. it’s not a crime to do a seminar. As long as there’s demand and it’s ‘worth doing’ for Steve and Dave, I’m sure they’ll continue to put them on. I was bummed i couldn’t make it, but I had to go off and be a rock star in tokyo for ten days. (haha. it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it, and it may as well be me…hee hee)

Yah so, nobody’s forcing anyone to do anything, if you don’t want to go, don’t go. But why rubbish a) people who do want to go and b) the seminar organisers themselves?

It’s a business. I wouldn’t be bothered to run a seminar for free, because nobody would value it anyway!

I’ve found that in my general business life. Mostly i charge quite a bit for my services. Occasionally, I offer a day here and there for free to help a project. Guess when I get the most cancellations and no-shows? Right.
When clients pay me, well, for my services and time, they show up on the dot of their appointment.

Sorry, bit of a tangent there. but I am delving into why people really have a problem with others doing well? is it because they aren’t? And they feel jealous? they feel they must be crooks? they feel like ‘i’ve worked just as hard so why aren’t i there? (bitterness) – etc etc

Just ditch all that stuff, and get on with your own investing, you’ll be sooooo much happier, guaranteed. Leave others to their journeys. Try to become so busy building your own castles and making your own grand plans that you literally don’t have time to ponder and judge the lives of others, or evaluate and compare yourselves to others as if life’s some wierd competition (fear and lack). Concentrate on getting up in the morning and putting your time into making plans, achieving goals, and less into running down the next guy.

cheers-
Mini

yes indeed, being able to do the numbers means eveything

cheers-
Mini

sis, please don’t think I am getting at you, but I have a problem with that whole sentence and in particular the words
“predict accurately what the value will be”….

I mean, sure you do the yield/IRR based on the known costs. income, and how much cash you put in. Writeoffs too. Steve calls it the cash on cash return. I realise that gross yield means nothing, it’s the net yield or IRR that counts.
But let’s say I buy a house for 27K and today it’s worth 35 k (boom) and next year it’s worth 29. (slump.)
but let’s say rents are constant and in three years go up ten percent. All I should care about as a CF investor is the relationship of my income versus holding costs which haven’t changed. Value is only factored in if you plan to sell, or might want to sell. Timing it right. but as I’m not a trader and a B+H long term I’m more Kiyosaki in my approach, really. He says he values a property on how much cashflow it gives him. If my property’s rent rises five dollars and the yield is now 24 percent, the value of the property has increased to me, no matter what the market says it’s worth that particular day. I guess i see it a bit like commercial property. For example when looking for deals, a tenanted house always has more ‘value’ to me as an investor than a vacant one, because there’s one more thing that’s known that you don’t have to ‘predict accurately’.
cheers-
mini

> if our expensive properties had potential for both
> CG and rental yield that was CF+, well, we’d all be in there doing the CF
> thing.

I think that – from what i can gather in my studies of the RE market – is that the regional areas which traditionally ‘don’t have capital gain’ (yeh right, they so do- ) do get it, but as a catch-up after the cities. That seems reasonable, logical, and predictable. That is how come you have a property bought for 10K in 1991 (the cheap CF+ve house of that time) worth 5 times that in 2004. That’s an actual example of a house in a regional town in NZ where you can still get really good yields today like 15 percent or more.

Is that about the same as Sydney? If you bought for 200K in 1991 it would be worth 1 mill today? Maybe.
>If only our $300k property got $600 a week rent, well, wouldn’t we love
> that?

Do you mean they don’t exist? Or you don’t choose those properties?
Would you choose a property like that if you could find one?

Cause i think you could definitely buy a 300K property with 600 a week rent -. That’s only a ten percent yield. it might be a commercial property though rather than a house

> But *someone* has to buy nice houses and apartments.
yah, of course, the lion’s share of property sales in the market are to owner-occupiers, a fact which many investors in their egotism (bless!) seem to forget.

> To suggest a beautiful
> unit with views, or a lovely landscaped house is a bad investment

It might very well be. I mean today’s beautiful is tomorrow’s dated. Also, as an INVESTOR do you buy the house for top dollar because the landscaping is nice? You sound like an owner-occupier buying on emotion and vibe, which is fine, and obviously I agree that aesthetics are important to tenants too – but now, just thinking about my friends – who painted their house in Auckland before selling it, because fresh exterior paint adds 10-20K to the price. but it didn’t cost them that much to have it done. You dig? Ditto landscaping. i think all that stuff is designed to emotionally appeal to buyers, but investors are supposed to be wise to that kind of stuff.

>(if just messes
> with my psychology, because at the end of the day, being an investor is a
> psychology, and we do what makes us feel comfortable. Otherwise, we’d just
> feel off our heads all the time- completely worried about what we were doing.
> Who wants to have a nervous breakdown about RE?

Nobody, but financial stress is the reason why most people have headaches about RE. They have to work harder in their jobs to pay the shortfall, and if an unexpected expense, death, divorce or whatever happens and they can’t work they are in trouble. but then ask anybody who is making money from their properties – like a cash surplus – how it’s going and they will say ‘fabulous!” I bet!

>We just do whatever feels
> right for us- and that’s such an individual thing.

I have a friend who buys on gut instinct, and sure capital gain hotspots can often be picked just like clever stylists pick fashion trends way before they’re on the high street. That’s about people. what are PEOPLE going to want in the future?

> Sis, I will buy properties that suit my headspace. I’d have no probs with
> buying CF+ properties if I felt they were good buys.

But do you ‘feel’ something is a good buy, if buying for CF, or do you work out the yield?
>But do prefer post-1985
> apartments- I am not a renovator, and wanna set and forget.

I am so not a renovator, at least, i thought I wasn’t. I don’t like it, but I see that it’s a great investment strategy to use with buy and hold. Firstly it eliminates nasty surprises in the future if you deal with every problem on your builder’s report upfront. Secondly it attracts a better tenant if the place looks nice. Even though I really hated the thought of renos and thought I never wanted to get my hands dirty and do one ever – – I also realised that if I did get into a bit, ‘cosmetic makeover,’ – i could get three houses and make ’em goood for the price of one already good one, basically. So i did that. OK, I lifted a roller for one whole day and got paint in my hair before I was over it, and the fumes made me ill. So after the novellty wore off I hired tradesmen and believe me they are not at all expensive in small towns. I know you hear of people doing 2 year reno,s all by themselves, but that’d be the owner occupiers.!!! The savvy investors just make phone calls and everything happens very quickly. So you can get your tenants in.

I forgot to add, my overall portfolio is entirely CF+ve at the moment as i am building up my passive income. My strategy later is to ensure that my overall portfolio remails CF+ve even if I later add some negative geared properties in the mix. though I reckon I have about four years of flattish prices to find a good one. Q’land perhaps! Over time negative geared properties become positive, anyway, yippee! Plus they give you the growth burst to buy more properties. in a boom, that is! but you need your portfolio to be CF+ve overall, if you want to continue to buy properties (my plan) or else you’ll max out, or have to get a second job, etc!

cheers-
Mini

Hi there,
Yes! I know they do!
I had two properties valued and the valuer asked what the ‘purpose’ was. ‘Um, so I know what they’re worth’. i replied.

‘for the purposes or achieving finance, or to sell?’ the valuer asked.

‘For finance, eventually’,I replied.

‘which bank?’ said the valuer.

‘I have no idea. yet.’ sez I.

‘because it depends on the bank, how I value it – we have to be very careful’.

so there’s your answer.

One of the properties I had pretty much just bought for 19K valued at 25K. Sounds good on paper except that I had spent about 9K on it painting, polished the floors, new bathroom, and he valuation hadn’t even seemed to have capitalised these visible things at cost! The final straw was that this valuer (who had been rather patronising to me the whole time anyway) told me if I was *selling* it, it would go for 10 K above the valuation figure he’d given me. As in 35K. That sounded more like what I was expecting.

So the moral of the story is that a bank valuation might be ….hmmm maths….30 percent lower than a ‘market valuation’. To me that really sucks, is totally meaningless and it’s all just rigged, and yes, yes, yes, the banks scare the valuers into undervaluing so they keep getting the work. The valuers are just, in the end, bank slaves, and employees, waiting for the phone to ring for a job…i mean, i geddit, i just don’t like it.

cheers-
Mini

well Leigh and I still have deals at 17 percent returns coming out our ears, so we are still finding, bird-dogging, and attempting to buy the ones people don’t want ourselves
(well that’s the plan anyway!)

cheers-
Mini

Dolf de Roos says that whatever is the number one suburb last year isn’t going to be number 678 next year. Property trends are nice and slow enough for people to pick up.
I.e. Manly, where is manly on the list these days SIS? Manly I remember being the number one a couple of years ago.

I nominate Ipswich and Queensland in general. This is according to an investor who I heard speak last night, with 30 poperties, a lot of which are in q’land. who has heavily researched the area as to population, employment, and growth for the next years as far as 2020 and 2050, and it’s huge.

Oh also, Darwin, more infrastructure going in.

melbear,

“10% interest over 3 years.”

6 and 5 years, and you’ve got a deal….

” …and need to come up with $25K to pay to me at the end of those 3 years.”

5, ok?
By then the market should have moved, I can refinance, pull the 25K out and pay out the vendor.

I think with vendor finance the vendor has to agree to take the second mortgage, i.e. bank gets first mortgage.
And yes you have to use a solicitor who is au fait with what you are trying to do to draw it up.

cheers-
mini

I agree, I think travel!

If you don’t you will maybe start to hate your investing for what you’re sacrificing. I dunno.!
When you find a place to ‘settle down’ in and get in a position where you have a regular income, the bank will lend you money to start property investing.

Then again my partner met some people who had one flat in Dublin and were in Queenstown NZ living off the rental income- and basically could have done that indefinitely.