Forum Replies Created
capital gains are awesome, but harder to duplicate unless time passes and it happens to have been in a boom, (like we’ve just had) – because usually negatively geared properties have the most capital gains and it’s hard to buy multiple negatively geared properties (once you’ve ‘saved’ all your tax and you can’t service any more debt.) Cashflow positive properties pay for themselves and have a surplus which means you can quickly buy another and your serviceability goes up not down. At the top of a boom or just after I would personally not buy any cap gain properties for a wee while, because prices will likely go down a bit before they go up again, or at least, they will stay the same, so i’m intending to buy only breaking even or better CF+ve properties for the next 3-4 years and increase my serviceability so when the property cycle looks like halfway through again, interest rates are low again and everyone starts buying property again like mad, I’ll be joining them to (hopefully) ‘ride the elevator’ up.
cheers-
Minii would like to add that if anyone can get an exceptional deal in Invercargill, it’s westan, he’s on the spot, and he’s in with the powers that be. And he’s a bird-dog!!!
cheers-
miniPersonally, I think Invercargill….hmmm…may not get cap gain there, decreasing population…although it’s a great town, reminds me a bit of Gisborne, but colder.
OK, Tim Shadbolt is great mayor (so great that even people who have never been to the town have heard of it, and Tim!!) -he’s a rock-star major, if you know what I mean –
who has fantastic ideas such as ‘let’s get students here by offering education for free’, which temporarily (as long as scheme is there but not in other towns) gets bums on seats, so to speak, but, hmmm, population increasing? Trends say no. So, if CG is not a given, might even be a risk, then only buy there if on returns. But is 10 percent enough to bother? For me, no. I am used to 10 after holding costs. But for someone used to three, it seems stupendous. Go the Aussies…
*unsure*
mini
however people who bought BEFORE it was in the papers and prices rise, like a year ago, are laughing.
yields were better then too.
I think the moral of the story is have the confidence to do your own numbers. that enables you to be ahead of the pack.
say wha….
I think it’s probably happening to the men that live in Sweden. All that lack of sunlight affects them and they have the highest use of anti-depressants in the world. A lot of them go to ‘sunlight therapy’ in winter. (dark almost the whole day.) I’m sure the statistics don’t apply to the ones who break out and move to Aussie.
i think they get Aussified.
I’m very scientific with all my ‘i think’s’ aren’t I? (not.)!I’m with Telstra Bigpond Broadband because at this point they have a monopoly in the street I live in!
Apparently Optus is a better service. Telstra is pretty hopeless and drops out a fair bit. I pay about $90 a month. More if I go over 1 gig, or whatever I’m allowed.We have three Macs running OS9 and I’m going to upgrade one of them to OSX soon. All are on a network via ethernet with an Asante network router (around $300-350) which not only has a built in firewall (I use Norton Personal Firewall on top, just to be sure -) but lets the printer share over the network too.
Not only that but the Network Router communicates directly with Bigpond rather than having to use their crap connection software.
What I did was first get the Telstra guy to install the rig on one computer (I don’t think they support networks) and then got my mac boffin to install the network router. All computers are online all the time, and thanks to the network router we can file-share too if we want to, though we only connect when we want to transfer data because otherwise it slows things down.
Apart from the increase in speed and productivity which I would now never give up even if it wasn’t ‘cashflow positive’, i think it’s no more expensive in the long run given that we had 2-3 people logging on to the net every day twice to several times a day. In fact I’m sure we end up saving. Also the phone-line stays free.
I think ADSL has a few problems still, or did when we were asking around our boffin friends which to choose,
and was more expensive and not available in our area anyway.cheers-
minimarkpatric,
“It`s understandable he is a little annoyed and looking out for the sellers best interest.”
Yes but the agent and you are both pre-judging what the seller’s best interest is without giving them the chance to consider the offer themselves. The way I see it, if the vendor doesn’t like the offer, then it’s either ‘reject’, ‘counter’ (or accept of course.)
‘Most if not all sellers would be extremely angry about such a low offer imo’
again, the only people who can really say if the vendors will be angry or not is the vendors.
i once offered 70 percent of asking price, after researching that it *was* 2K under what would have been a fair market price based on similar properties in the price range. After an outright rejection two weeks went by, and then a counter offer of 86 percent of asking price. I then came up to the real price I’d worked out the house should be (7o percent of asking price) and was accepted.
I think if you know what something is worth and what you are prepared to pay, you will either get it accepted or not. I thought I was rejected and that was fine, I’d walked away from the deal because at anything more than what I paid it wasn’t going to work out. It’s not a matter of being ‘angry’ or not, it’s just when buyers meet sellers and try and find a fair mid-point.
I use a conveyancing lawyer close to where I am buying. Local knowledge, the more the better, is what you want when buying away from where you live, and that’s one more person on your side with the stuff. not to mention, the prices are very reasonable – quarter of the price of my Sydney lawyer.
you could swap PPOR’s with a friend and rent eachothers’ for a while, then your PPOR becomes a negatively geared IP with all the tax benefits. but you don’t get to live in your own house. Hm. Unless you then house-mind eachother’s houses for extended periods…hmmm…getting into dodgy territory here. But the first part, i know people who have done that.
hey chan. why don’t you say who it is. I’m sure the person would appreciate positive public feedback.
……
*i’m not hinting honest cause I know who it is and I agree this person is incredibly nice, generous with his time, knowledgeable and legendary, and it’s not even me* heeheeIn my opinion any ‘company’ that is getting a commission between you and the property is potentially taking some of your investing ‘cut’, whether that be a developer, a marketer, RE agent, syndicate organiser, bird dog, or other!!
Not that they are all necessarily sinister.I think the average ‘company’ is more likely to be marketing _ve gearing properties, and brand new ones at that, with tricksy depreciation schedules to make them look more CF+ve after tax than they really are (say if you lost your job, you’d feel the ‘real’ loss.)
I think companies that own commercial property (i.e. medical centre in cairns, the one I looked at) and you buy a slice, like a syndicate, can be OK as in, legit, but only with what I’d call pretty average guaranteed returns, but then again with no work to do or outgoings, and sometimes very little risk.
If you bypass the companies and look yourself you can often find better deals, but it takes a lot of time.
So really it all depends on whether you enjoy it and have more money than time, or more time than money.
I had more time than money so I chose to look myself.
Also I enjoy being in control of my financial decisions. I wince for a lot of people who pass their decisions to experts to make for them, who turn out to be middlemen with their own agenda (such as ANZ financial advisors.)I think you learn the most by analysing, or learning to, analyse your own deals and staying away from companies. Later on when you understand it a bit better you can tell the wolves from the lambs more easily.
Steve McKnight analysed one of those flash gold coast developments which ‘guaranteed’ a certain yield which seemed really good. Step by step he pointed out the flaws in the numbers and which bits didn’t make sense, until the true ‘yield’ was discovered which may have been about 1/2 the advertised one.
Some of those developments target their selling to people who couldn’t understand the numbers if they tried (i.e. Mr and Mrs Normal.) They bamboozle them and make it sound really great when it’s not that good.
You just need to be able to follow every single step of their figures and ask the ‘what ifs’ that they don’t count on.
cheers-
miniOK, James, I geddit. What i got from the seminar that was not just Steve talking like in the tapes and which was not in the book (bearing in mind it was a 2 day seminar) was not only the experiential part and a tape of it to go over later, but MUCH more in depth than the book. A humungous folder of notes. The notes were equivalent of a book for each speaker who spoke. Time didn’t permit the speakers to be as in depth as the notes. But you couldn’t have got the notes if you hadn’t gone. Also all the speakers were so different, it showed that there were so many styles and ways of investing, not to mention ways and styles of creating great win/win deals. Not just steve, but the Reno Kings spoke, as did Guerilla Marketing dude whasshisname, as did Tony Barton on Lease options, as did Dave Bradley on buy and hold, as did
the *special* guest who was so amazing.gotta dash
Swedes are a fine looking race of people. Great bone structure. Warriorlike and sturdy with great genes. They are amazing lovers. (Well, as anecdotal evidence based on one example, OK, take with a grain of salt. but my friend married to Swede says so too.) Very modern society and very egalitarian. All my partner’s sisters look like Julia Roberts, and all the brothers look like Mats Wilander. they have cool names like Bjorn, Gunvor, Lars, Mats, Erik, Oskar, My, Lasse, and stuff.
Yummy food, some very incredible berries over there with names like Lingon berry, Cloud berry. Cloudberry jam is quite incredible.
To sum up, if you have to have inlaws, Stockholm is as good a place as any to have them.! But visit them in Swedish summer, unless you really like -40 degrees.
The very bizarre thing is that every Swedish child I have ever seen has white blonde hair, even if they go dark later on and even if the parents have dark hair – like – black – or ginger or something. Very bizarre, there is a definite ‘Swedish gene’ and they are an incredible race. I know, I said that already…
As an english speaker if you know a bit of German you can decipher swedish as it seems a bit like combination of the two pronounced funny.
They are also very comfortable naked. I mean, really. They’re not a prudish bunch.James, explain what you mean by rah-rah merchant.
Then maybe I can get my head around what you are against exactly. I went to Steve’s seminar (twice – like I said, I wanted to take my Dad-) and I wouldn’t call him a rah-rah merchant. But I want to see what your definition is.Swedes are the best
“This also means Mini that you will have a large supply of such males to offer.”
Good point, Pisces. In fact the NZ Govt don’t want to be saddled with the burden of – ahm, ‘second rate citizens’ for want of a better term returning home to bludge there instead, so they have outsourced it to the private sector, to businesses such as Leigh and my NZBirddogs business, to attempt to relocate said SRCs exactly in the manner you suggest.
“As these types aren’t particularly good prospects (I didn’t want to use the term ‘second rate’)”
As you know, the lower down the market you go, often the better the yields. Often, NZ males can be wonderful if you are prepared to spend a little money on a cosmetic makeover, as most are structurally sound and well built, able to stand many years of…ahm….
use for their intended purpose.‘you may be able to charge the same fee as you anticipate to charge for houses Mini and still make a good profit ?’
We have decided to charge several times the amount. With our property bird-dogging service, the chance of repeat business is high. However with the NZ Male bird-dogging service, firstly the market is 50 percent smaller give or take the gay contingent, and secondly we are not expecting that much repeat business.
cheers-
Mini
*!!!!!!I^UOYTIUYIPEYURIYRUYFEVSEYRUG!!!!!!!******I don’t think everyone needs a seminar. But I did.
Although I had bought many books (and read them!) and gone to a few one-nighter seminars such as Dolf de Roos and Kiyosaki which give a general overview, I was in an industry of….*looks for an analogy*ah yes….
let’s call them ‘feral fruit-pickers’ and we’d be in the ballpark – so I was in this industry where none of my fellow feral fruit-picker friends and acquaintances had their own homes let alone IPs. So here was this feral fruit-picker (me) on whom the sky suddenly dumped quite a bit of fruit and so this feral fruit-pickers (me) suddenly realised that a term-deposit (the investment of choice for the odd feral fruit-pickers who had amassed a few thousands) – wasn’t going to cut it, and I knew from Kiyosaki that I needed to invest, but seeing as I didn’t have enough to buy the PPOR of my dreams (in my small paradigm at the time) I knew I had enough to INVEST with, but I didn’t know anything about anything.
After DDR’s one nighter seminar, I was really really really excited and seriously considered trading a bit of my fruit to go to his several thousand dollar 3 day event (not the horse kind) at Jupiter’s casino – 1000 miles away.
Decided against it. Couldn’t quite justify it. Wondered if there was a cheaper less-hyped local equivalent. There was. Steve’s. As i said, it’s all relative – Steve’s seemed a real bargain.
I needed the seminar. I needed the personal development aspect (not to spoil the surprise, but think fire-walking) to conquer the fear and to realise that fear was the thing making excuses why not. I also needed the actual hard and fast mathematic deal analysis stuff.
it comes really easily to me now, but remember at the time I was just a feral fruit-picker and I hadn’t done any maths for a very long time, other than the odd bit of fruit counting. To demonstrate how bad I was, I couldn’t even remember how the hell you calculated percent – i.e. ‘what percentage is 5800 of 35000?’ but I didn’t give up and think ‘i’m bad with numbers’ or ‘my accountant does all that stuff’ or similar – just gritted my teeth, asked jeeves, surfed the web etc and found a HSC Maths coaching website which told me how. No wait, there’s more – I even had to print it out and stick it by my computer for a bit until I could remember it all by myself. I mean, DUH,
THAT is how challenged I was. Not only did I need the seminar, which admittedly went over my head a lot but luckily we got a tape recording to take away, as well as a folder of notes, but I needed to listen to it another couple of times and go through the notes again until I was confident.
Then finally, sure of my stuff, i went looking for deals, found them, crunched the numbers, was able to explain to negative gearing-paradigm doubters how it worked, and went off to buy. The buying process was the easy bit. Lawyers, offers, deals, accountants, RE agents, builder’s inspections, piece of cake.
the hard bit *for me* was the fear that I didn’t know what I was doing and would make a mistake. The seminar took care of the ‘how to’ stuff in particular the numbers, and also the ‘fear’ side.A lot of people here are cluey about numbers already and don’t have the fear factor that a feral fruit-picker who has been sequestered in a feral fruit-picker commune for several years has, and the feeling of being out of one’s depth. A lot of people could just go read a book or two, ask a couple of questions on the forum, and go forth and prosper. But not me. Cautious and plodding by nature, (taurus) I not only went to the seminar but bought a package that included email mentoring. THEN i felt I could go and do it. But the seminar was the missing link for me. books prior to the seminar helped prime me for the seminar, but the seminar was really so, so, the thing that made me actually do it.
not only that, but several feral fruit-pickers I know are hot on my heels, as I was able to bring the knowledge back into the commune.
cheers-
‘feral fruit-picker’It just depends on whether your time is worth more or less than a tradesman’s. If it’s more, then you would be silly to not hire someone, unless you thought it was fun or something.
cheers-
MiniIt’s fun throwing paint around for about 5 minutes in my opinion and then you feel sick (fumes – especially the paving paint, which btw is so brilliant looking for doorsteps, concrete patios etc and comes in groovy colours like brick red etc – but is so so so toxic and disgusting that everyone who used it felt sick. No thanks. I love hiring people.
The lady I use is 15 per hour and an amateur, but she is absolutely brilliant. And quite experienced having renovated several houses. (and we didn’t make her use the paving paint!)Another PS about the paving paint
About 15 years ago I painted the floor of a band practice room above a garage with paving paint over concrete. Visited the place again recently, it’s still a band practice room, and the paving paint is still going strong (and can guarantee that nobody’s repainted it since) despite 15 years of bodgie bands coming and going)indeed mel, due diligence on potential victims (oops, I meant partners) is not only costly but time -consuming, as time is money….
Leigh and I are therefore not intending to provide a bird-dogging service for Australian men at this time as we believe them to be overpriced at this time and therefore not cashflow positive.
Anecdotal evidence now, but personally, the best deals on partners I have found to be the ones where I threw due diligence out the window and bought on a gut instinct, with no money down. These kind of deals often turn out to be priceless, achieving infinite returns – with all the beauty of no money down deals and the magic and synergy of a successful joint venture.
cheers-
Minironulas,
this is so interesting because you are doing what I am doing now (except you did it a few years ago) and you are getting the exact same negativity from everyone that I get. Oh, *yAWN* already!
So, just can I ask you some questions, because here’s a fabulous example we can all analyse, if you are into it,
what was the price you paid? in what year? What was the rent then? What are the holding costs each year such as land rates, insurance, management?
what is the rent now? How often, when and how much did you increase the rent by to get to where it is now?
how much maintenance did you have to do in 10 years, and what was the condition of the house when you bought it? How much vacancy do you have per year, and if vacant how long does it take to get a tenant?also what would be an accurate estimate of what the house would be worth today?
then we can try and figure out, and show everyone once and for all, how good these places can be!
I forgot, borrowing costs?
cheers-
miniI agree. I mean, yeah, it’s more expensive than the movies, but then it’s all relative – if you can’t afford 1200 bucks you can’t afford property anyway.
cheers-
MiniPS I wouldn’t be here now if I hadn’t gone to Steve live. I liked it so much I shouted my Dad to go with me the following year. And now we both have IPs.
