Hi Michelle

I believe that with any deal you do you should always measure twice cut once, in other words move carefully. What's worse than what you are doing, be like most investors and buy the first piece of crap that's put to you. Because many investors do little or no due diligence. One bad investment may mean your first investment may be your last.

If you know how to do the due diligence that will give you the confidence to move ahead.

I think the important thing to do is get started

I admit I run a mentoring program however it a sideline to what I actually do

Many of these so called experts are salesman, you pay them a fee and they try and sell you a property. Now I know I am being a little unfair. What I am planning on doing is establishing a property club in most major cities and you will be able to come along and gain some knowledge from not only me but other like minded investors. I am doing this because I know that there are right and wrong ways to do things.

Many first time investors lose money because they either listen to the wrong people or do not do any due diligence

In any of these deals the commission can be as high as 8%. Now developers only pay that commission if they cannot sell the product. Often the commissions are also added to the price of the property

If I was starting from  scratch today I would rent and buy investment properties because you can normally live in a better suburb that you could afford to buy in and also buy investment properties of higher value because the banks will take the 80% of the rent into the calculation on how much you can borrow.

Hopefully if you buy in a good inner city location you will especially today get great capital growth.

My feeling is it depends on how much you want to get ahead. You basically have two choices stay where you are until your position improves or secondly sell your house rent and reinvest the money that you have in either a development project or buy a property in a high growth area.

Basically you need to decide on what your strategy is going to be. Then you need to look at the area in which you are going to invest and learn it like the back of your hand. Its called due diligence which is some many investors don't do a lot of. 

The problem with a lot of courses and mentoring programs is that they are generic they are more designed to make money for themselves rather than you. In other words in many cases they will try and sell you property. Then there are courses that promise to turn you into an expert in 4 days.

I believe it depends on how seriously you want to take things. Don't be afraid to spend money but be careful with how you invest it with

The problem with aged accommodation is that like student accommodation it is a very limited market. Yes they return more than the average however if you are still losing money on the investment and theres no growth what the point.

In my view unless you are getting great returns which seems to mainly happen in the mining areas capital growth should be why you buy in Australia. So look for suburbs around Australia that have a history of 7-10% capital grown.

I generally look at suburbs within 10km of city centers however there are exceptions.

This is a risky strategy and before you even considered it would depend on the quality of the people you were working with on the group

<moderator: delete advertising>  what Derek is saying is correct I think there will definitely be an over supply in the city itself. Stay away from high rise projects as well.

I also like inner city Brisbane I think that market is under valued by at least 10% so there are opportunities there. I am also looking for projects in inner city Brisbane at Present.

They do offer a mentoring program but it is important to remember that they are a business and do need to make money. The real questions is if you are paying for a service will you get value from it.