I attended a property investment seminar last week. I have been a property investor for many years and reached a portfolio of 5 rental properties and sold a few to buy our retirement home on retirement. I now have a new job with more income than I had before and want to get back into buying investment properties – hence the attendance at the seminar.

I started out into investment properties without any advice and after I had two properties I bought Jan Somers' first book on "Creating Wealth". This put into context what I was trying to do and after reading it from front to back used the guidance and Property Investment Analysis tools to more fully understand how to assess a property before you buy and during ownership.

The seminar I recently attended did not tell me anything I didn't already know and there were some exaggerations and unsubstantiated 'facts' that contradicted the most recent media comment of Australia's housing affordability ranking with the rest of the world. Some key points such as having equity in your own home to get loans above 80% were not mentioned. The key thrust of this seminar was to offer properties, finance and management with rental guarantees as a package. Judging from the comments in this forum, this is a standard approach.

The value in the seminar to me was to re-ignite my enthusiasm for property investment. I am not sure of the value of the seminar to the other attendees but most seemed to provide their names for later interviews. The seminar was useful to wet your appetite but lacked the substance of the real usable information that was provided to me in Jan Somers' book.

Tackers.