the investment club

My thoughts wrt to The Investors Club are that they are not bad if you are new to investing and you don't really know what you are doing.  They have researchers who look for areas with potential capital growth potential that also have a reasonable yield.  Their research is pretty good.

However (and this is a big however) always get independent advice.  I wouldn't use their mortgage brokers or accountants and I would always get one of their recommendations independently valued.  I had friends who tried to go through them recently and the mortgage broker was useless and they missed several properties because the broker couldn't get finance together in time.  They also got the property independently valued at my recommendation and the valuation came in $60,000 under the price.

If you are careful there shouldn't be hidden costs.

Good luck

K

G'day,

Haven't bought anything through them yet but you get assigned a support member who in my case is brilliant. He has 8 IP which he has accumulated in the last 6 yrs or so. Mostly all through the club. There is NO hidden cost to you from what i understand. The club makes money through the builders who supplies them directly to the club rather than through another middle person (thus taking out the cost for the builders who in turn pays the club. The builders prob are still making more $ somehow, I presume)

I'm prepared to buy through them if I had the cash/equity right now. Also the broker that I got was brilliant compared to other we know. Again there is NO obligation to go with the brokers/lenders/solicitors etc, you can get your own. So to me all the choices are mine in that sense.

But as everyone suggests, do your homework, ask around. Our first IP which we have finally got in our hands now, our agent left us high and dry leaving the work to become a BMW sales person!! And since then we've had NO contact from another agent from the same company which I prefer not to name on here.
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G'day Glen,

First up let me say that I am involved with TIC so do what you will with my comments.

I suggest you go to a meeting in your area to sus out the situation and ask questions of the people running the workshop.  If you haven't already given your details via the web site or at a meeting already, you will be placed on the mailing list for a free newsletter (which you can unsubscribe to if you don't want to receive it) and be classed as a member.  At this stage you will be allocated a Support Member who effectively becomes your 1st point of contact and will answer any questions you have There is no charge for this and you will never be asked to pay a fee for attending meetings or be pressured to buy anything because there is nothing to buy.  (apart from properties of courYou can go to as many meetings as you like and ask as many questions as you like until you are happy to use the club's services or walk away with no obligation.  The club makes it's money when or if you buy a property, where the club receives a marketing fee by the vendor/developer; this is what happens normally where a real estate agent gets this fee.  This is explained at each workshop.
In relation to valuations of properties you may want to purchase;  TIC could not exist if the properties were over valued to include the fee paid to the club because all properties must be valued by the lenders where a buyer takes out a loan.  Obviously the lender would knock back finance where their valuations are grossly below the property buying price. 

Good luck with your property investing whichever way you go.

Pud