Your Life in Property - Introduction

What will you get out of reading this?

I pride myself in aiming to be the best landlord in the business, having bought the most profitable properties on the market, after having undertaken the most comprehensive research possible. Of course, there is always room to improve your performance in such a fluid business but I am always striving to minimise risk and maximise profit from property in the most professional and, dare I say, ethical, manner. If you are the sort of person who sees potential in making money from property but is reluctant to take the 'gambler's' approach in the capital growth speculation game, then read on. I like hard, logical facts and figures but like to keep things simple; I need steady, significant monthly income to feed my family and keep my wife in shoes, and the capital growth comes as a pleasant addition, and my strategy works. Let's hope it will work for you.

Thank you for setting your valuable time aside to read this book. I intend to repay your investment of your time by discussing in-depth every aspect of property investment. This book has been written to investigate:

• What makes property special as an investment class.
• What kind of Investor you are and what you want to achieve.
• Techniques to locate great property that fits your objectives.
• The tools used to make sure an investment will make you money, now and in the future.
• Why people are so important in a business involving bricks and mortar.
• Getting your finances and tax positions right to maximise your return.
• How to sell your property, eventually, for the maximum gain.

That's a lot of subjects to cover, so I will get to the point very quickly in each chapter but develop the ideas in a logical way. Of crucial importance are the exercises at the end of each chapter. Please try to do this in full or at least consider the exercise in your mind before moving onto the next chapter. In this way, you should arrive at a plan of action at the end of the book to go forward into or continue your property career.

Why I Wrote This Book

In the last 10 years how many books and ebooks do you think have been published regarding property investment? Quite a few! How many were written during the 10 years before that? Very few, and I know because I was looking for books to read around 16 years ago on the topic of property investment. Now why is that? Well across the world during the last 10 years we have experienced an abundance of easily-accessible credit that just had to go somewhere. Books on all aspects of property development and investment were written (and indeed countless others on a range of subjects on how we could spend our hard-earned cash or our unearned money from our property appreciating in value). Of the property investment books issued in the last 10 years, most (not all) focused on building portfolios of property by a system of re-financing current mortgages in order to take on new mortgages. They focused on capitalising on the new freedom with which the banks had with the money which they lent. I remember calling a mortgage broker in 2005 to apply for finance (on bended-knee) for a property in Scotland. The response, on the telephone after 5 minutes, was :

Interesting times over the past few years! Great times if you bought things that went up in value with the bank's money, not so good if the things you bought has gone down.

The more recent tomes on property investment, now this glut of "free money" has dried up, focus on the ability to buy "Below Market Value" if there is such a thing. The story goes that if you can buy from someone stupid (or desperate) enough to sell their home to you for up to 50% of what its worth, then you can present the property to a bank, gain a mortgage, and not need to provide a deposit as you bought it so cheap. I am not going to even get started on this topic which is questionable in logic and also in ethics. If you make money in this area then I wish you luck.

So what's this book going to do for you that all the others haven't managed? Well, I will be honest, possibly nothing. You may have built up experience in business and investment to a point where you will find the ideas of this book of vague interest but perhaps not compelling enough to change your own investment behaviour. In this case, I am sharing my stories and ideas in business with you and I would love to hear yours. This is not a vague statement – I mean it! There are people reading this book that know far more than me regarding property investment, perhaps its just that I have the time and inclination to put finger to keyboard. Well let me know your stories and ideas and the good ones will be included in the next edition, with your permission.

For others however, this book will hopefully prove of value at your stage of your personal and business life. If it hits you at the right time in your life then some of the ideas that I have collected in this book could be of great value. And it is to you whom I am writing. I am writing to the person I was 16 years ago who was looking for some guidance but found very little available that I found relevant or that I could understand. I would like to collect my experiences of the last 16 years (not all positive!), mix them with some of the very best ideas and approaches to investment that are out there, and come up with some easy-to-read chapters on the topic of property investment. The chapters are designed to be read in order, with a logical story developing through each chapter. At the end are some case studies on some markets around the world, taken in context of the ideas within this book. Hopefully, if I get it right, the book will be of equal relevance to the person I was 16 years ago, to all investors since this time and for all property investors in the future. The ideas therefore, do not rely on particularly favourable market conditions but just sound principles that you will hopefully find compelling enough to take with you in your investment future.