Ian Ugarte Small is the New Big

Hi

I believe we have some students of Ian Ugarte on this forum. His HiRES course is something I'm looking to do this year. Anyone doing it or has done it that can shed some light on whether they found it helpful? Or not?

 

Communal living - Small is the new big

check this thread

 

Just check before enrolment exactly what you get for the money.

 

Design and own multiple income property..Premise is 3 bedrooms are spacious and building more 2 bedders etc = better yield. .In the current finance climate its harder. And it really is a case of going all in quite often with 6-8 on the one lot. Often in specified areas that arent always high growth land value. Due your own work on those areas as when you go "all in" its make or break.

I have a client who tried this and found their coastal (mining town) values collapsed all while the build was approaching completion. Cant afford to sell but is riding the storm and earnings are well below expected returns due to collapsed rents. No idea if its same "system" but its similar

Nothing wrong with chasing yield. But watch growth

 

Thanks! Did you end up taking the course? Are you still interested?

 

It's not just about owning these properties either. It's also about renting some other people IPs and setting up rent by rooms in those properties.
Hard to setup, But if you can make it work....

 

Have you see that in action Gockie? Did you happen to attend his course?

 

Yep. And this is partly how it's sold too. People setting up HMO's (houses of multiple occupancies) and then doing enough of them that you can replace your income. Can be very profitable, but also there are a lot of things to watch out for. Ian's course helps support people undertaking this strategy.

 

Okay first of all, what have you NOT done! Second do you mind giving me your opinion on the course, have you tried it in action for yourself? did you find the community helpful? did you find it worth the 5k they are asking? what did you struggle with?

 

Ok. I'm one of those who did the education but haven't put it into practise. So.... better to ask someone else. But I do get all the Facebook posts from the "HI RES" community and invites to their meetups. I think the hurdle for this is actually taking action. It takes a certain personality I think for someone to start renting rooms on other people's houses. You'll get a lot of "nos" before you'll get a "yes".

 

Yes I remember someone saying it's a fairly active strategy not a very passive one.. still that's good knowledge! Did you find that your own properties were not feasible to convert? I'm not to keen on getting other people's homes managed that way.. was looking more to see the options around my own ip..

 

Yes sure. I think you'd need at least 4 bedrooms in a property for it to be feasible. And it needs to permitted in that council area. You can build auxiliary dwellings and design it in a smart way...
My own places wouldn't be good candidates unless it's one in Qld but that's too far away for me to manage.

 

So its proposed to be self managed? Not by a property manager which I would expect is one of his contacts?

 

From the people I know, they are the managers of their own properties themselves.

 

I've done lots of talks with Ian and spoken to lots of the members of his group. They all seem to be raving fans.

 

Yes done it, along with a lot of other education courses over the last 12-18 months.
Personal opinion, worth every cent.

However it comes down to your own ability to take action.
Just like school, or more accurately university, they can say all they want, unless you hit the books, and network like crazy, it's just throwing your money into the wind.

I did a couple of HMO's before ever hearing of or attending Ian Ugartes or other such courses. That stated, I learnt a lot of very useful tips that I would definitely say has augmented my investment skill-set. The courses are quite structured, and updated regularly.

The network, and general community is absolutely amazing. That said, the action takers tend to gravitate together, and the rest are more like screaming fans. It's up to you who you want to be.

I now have multiple HMO's, though that comes with a lot of independent learning. The real benefit of the course, other than the networking, is seeing useful, up-to-date examples of boarding houses, and more creative ways of creating a floor plan for a new home.

HMO's are a cash-flow strategy that has its limitations. I'm capping mine to 6 properties with a 90%-tenanted income of $150k, I am pretty much there, looking at developments now. To take that very specific strategy into a multi million dollar business requires serious-serious work.

 

$150K per property??

 

No, total.
Though an aquaintance who seems to have had a similar idea to me and has executed way earlier setup his first hotel, leveraging his own HMO income.

Instead of $20k setup, $40k income, his latest setup is $400k rent (about $1M setup), $700k income.

It's about scalability. Gta get the systems right first.

I was a lot more aggressive at the start before realising I still had a lot to learn. I was targeting 20+ unit apartment blocks, and was accepted. Often. Had this vision of taking a few on and renaming them after my partner/fam.

That was my biggest shift, realising how many of the large apartment buildings in inner Sydney are owned entirely by one person.

Fortunately didn't go with it at the time. I lost a lot at the start due to my systems being insufficient for the tasks at hand. Slow and steady.

 

Thanks that's super helpful.

I'm getting some mixed reviews.. it looks like you earn your place in that community by being active, contacts are not automatically available just because you paid 5k. I'm very busy so the other part of it is judging how active this needs to be for me to really get benefit worth 5k.. so the first is being able to get to contacts Ian's saying he provides as I think you have to pass through his qualification to get that and second how hands off you can be with property mgt.

Have you turned your own properties into HMO as well? Or others only? I believe you shared before that your average cost came to be about 50k per property? Who do you get to manage them for you? How many have you had to convert to get to 150k? Is that on top of a day job? Pretty good work btw.

 

Re: community, everybody in the HI RES community is welcome and its very supportive. From the community, info and learning is shared. But as it has been said, there's an active population and a population of lookers/people who have done the education but haven't done anything much with it.