The importance of advice for novices and how to find it

Greetings. My partner and I are planning to invest in property in SEQ the near future. As novices we are understandably nervous about making mistakes or failing to optimise our investments. I think at the very least we need someone with experience to critique (poke holes in) our draft strategy and review the pros and cons of any property prospects that I come up with.

I have two ideas and I am very interested to hear what others think.

(1) Pay someone to advise us on an informal or formal basis. This could be a professional advisor or someone with experience and success as an investor. Preferably we would pay this person on an hourly basis and access them by email or phone within a day or two when I need them to review a proposal or answer a question. It probably would not involve a lot of time.

(2) Establish or access a small network of people in a similar position to comment on each other’s strategies, proposals etc. Normally, I would be advised to go along to investor meetups in a city, but I live rurally (3.5 hours from Brisbane), so it often won’t be convenient and I may not find the personal input I am seeking.

Can anyone suggest how I can find an adviser or group? Are there people in a similar situation, living rurally and feeling the lack of a peer group? I can offer critical thinking and a bent for research. I also have interests in environmental sustainability, which I would like to apply with property investing / renovating.

Thank you in anticipation for any suggestions.

Carol

 

This forum.

 

I appreciate there is a lot of advice and information on this forum and I will be posting some questions. However, I am looking for critique and advice more specific to my circumstances than I can obtain here. I can't post a detailed strategy online or expect a detailed review.

 

People share stratergies and ask for opinions pretty regularly. It is a great starting point as it provides lots of food for thought. You don't need too share specifics.

 

You have to be very careful because some sorts of advice will need the person advising to hold a licence of some sort. Tax advice, legal advice, loan advice etc.

general property advice is not regulated, but there are associations such as PIPA where the persons who are members have certain qualifications.

 

Yes, I'm aware there are laws around the advice that can be offered in some domains. I am not too concerned about whether my prospective advisor is formally qualified as I feel competent to assess the value of advice I receive. For the sort of feedback I'm wanting, someone experienced in investing who can pick up on flaws in my thinking or suggest other approaches may be better value for me than someone qualified and doing it on a professional basis. I'm open to either. I'm sure those who have had experienced mentors to guide them when they started out know the value of such a relationship. As I said in the original post, there may also be value in having a small peer group with varying levels of experience.

 

Post your thinking or approach, loads of people will help.

all the knowledge I have of property is either from this forum or from externally researching things I have seen on this forum. Everyone on here is happy to give you 2 mins of their time to steer you on the right path. It's not a joke and there are no hidden agendas, everyone on here is really that nice (Rather weird for an internet forum I know ).

 

I think that's the problem, people wanting specific and exact instructions on what to do.
You really need to learn and understand, at least a little about what you're doing.
If you pay an advisor or one particular successful investor, you'll only get their view, or what worked for them, and it might not be right for you.
I'm with Dan, also learned everything from this forum and the previous Somersoft forum.
If you read enough posts, you will find plenty of people in similar situations as you with similar goals and patterns will emerge as to the strategies you can employ to reach these goals.
If you don't put some work in, you'll likely get poor results, no matter who the advice is coming from, in my opinion.
I stand by my sig that nobody really cares about you, so you have to care about you.

 

Hi Carol, my advice is to read plenty of magazine(your property/smart investor ect) and books on property by successful property investors (michael yardney, steve mcknight, magaret lomas ect). I have been in your position 1.5 ago. Tried getting property advice and every person we came across sounded like spruikers, digging deeper and reading on this forum i think we made the right choice. we decided to go alone by ourself with knowledge gained by reading all the material. right now we have 2 IP's and PPOR and accessible equity of around 300k for our next purchase.

 

Different approaches work for different people. I have done lots of research on my own, including by perusing this forum, reading books and magazines (I even went to a weekend forum, which was a waste of time), but I know this cannot compensate wholly for my lack of experience, hence my interest in finding someone to advise, challenge, assess and talk through my strategy/proposals on my terms and in some detail. I wouldn't slavishly follow anyone's advice.

 

Thanks for this suggestion. It's interesting to hear that you couldn't find anyone you trusted and that you feel you have done well. I am a diligent research and am reading a lot and I know we can proceed with some confidence. But I also know that expert advice could improve our decisions and help avoid mistakes. With so much hard-earned money at stake, it makes much sense to minimise the risk of mistakes.

 

What you are looking for is a Mentor, someone to take you under their wing and just "confirm" for you that you are on the right path. There are people on here who are more than perfect for that but they reach out to you, not the other way. People will be prepared to mentor and tutor you as you post more, ask the right questions, post links to your research.

start by building your team (Legal, Tax, Broker etc etc) Download and read / listen to Chris Grays Effortless Empire (from here: Download Our Free Property Investment Book - Your Empire) to gain an understanding of how important your team is, your team need to become people you trust, people you know you can rely on. Start leaning on them, they have more knowledge that you at this point as you are starting out and they have been doing it for a long time.

Most importantly, be a member of this forum, post your research and findings, post your questions, play around with figures, yields, rates and post questions. The only stupid question is the one that gets left unasked.

You're not being very forthcoming with your strategy or any information pertaining to it which will not inspire people to come to your aid. Post specific questions or even an outline of your thoughts and strategy, people will critique it and help you.

Strategy doesn't need to be secret, maybe area if you are overly worried about someone looking to steal from under you (although I have seen no evidence on here to support that happening and quite frankly there is enough property to go around and I personally wouldn't rush to buy in an area just because someone I don't know said they were going to on a forum) but strategy no, no bad can come from you sharing it.

Mine is buy and hold for the next Sydney property cycle with assets in SEQ and Western Syd. I would like to build my base at the rate of 1 per year but i think I will run out of serviceability before I can achieve that. IP2 will be this year but I don't think I will manage IP3 next year. Posting that information on here can not in any way change the outcome BUT, someone on here with a better fitting strategy may offer a few ideas for me to go and research and maybe modify my plans.

 

Great advice from @Dan Donoghue and @Ace in the Hole

Read this forum - there is wealth of information. Also read up the old Somersoft forum.

The more ownership you take, better the results. One cannot outsource the end to end process to a third party (not that you are looking to do that).

 

I appreciate you taking the time to respond in detail about what has worked for you, Dan. I will be making some additional posts in the near future asking for feedback about certain parts of my strategy, but as you can tell from my responses here I don’t think it will be sufficiently detailed for my purposes.

While an expert mentor would be ideal, I don’t expect someone to offer detailed ongoing advice to a stranger without receiving compensation. They would usually have to feel some sort of personal connection to offer that. So, I’m seeking something less than that but on terms I think will work for me. Based on replies so far, I may not find what I am looking for.

I have a broker and an accountant. I think it goes beyond their role to provide the sort of service I am talking about here.

Many thanks again to you and others for taking the time to reply. I’m glad to hear the forum has worked well for you, and I will certainly give it a go for some questions.

 

I would suggest a combination of the two.

1. read and post on this forum. not sure how much you have read on here but the quality of information here is pretty amazing. I would say that you can actually go a lot of the way to getting help/information by reading and posting here - including posting detailed plans asking for criticism or possible changes that people would suggest.

2. once you have most of the information, you can then hire people to help you with some of the specifics (where, what, and how to buy).

It may sound like if you are hiring someone, why bother with all the work of the first part? Well, there are a lot of dodgy people dressing themselves up as advisers (lots and lots and lots of terrible stories) and the only way to minimise the risk of being sold a dud property (costing you hundreds of thousands of dollars) is to avoid going in blind, and instead understand a fair bit of it yourself so that when someone tells you something, you are able to see if there are some holes and have a better chance of being able to tell if they have no idea what they are talking about (or if something smells fishy) and should move on.

 

I don't see why you'd pay anyone on an informal basis, that doesn't make a lot of sense.
If you want to pay someone to review your personal circumstances and strategy.. there are a few business members on PC that appear to offer this service.

@Rolf Latham @Corey Batt come to mind, @euro73 also, though he appears to have a particular strategy focus. I haven't used any of these guys, but you can look them up and see if they offer what you're looking for. There are probably some others' I've missed, but keep searching..

Welcome to PC btw.

 

Just post your questions here and see what comes back.

 

Sounds like analysis paralysis to me. Not saying you should rush into buying, though.
I would say you need to take action without spending money. Time for you to look at 100 properties. Then short-list 10 of them. Make lowish offers and see what happens.
The antidote to fear is action!
That's how I start. I've never made it to 100. The process itself should ideally cause emotional and intellectual exhaustion leading to an openess to reality (humility) and a refinement of your own principles (strategy).

 

One of the things I have seen a lot with people who are starting off is paralysis by analysis.
This forum will give you every single bit of info you need to start - and for free.
Once you have the info from here, you can then formulate your plan, your selected area, your buying criteria, your preferred rent returns and so on.
Then you can narrow down the area to preferred streets, preferred properties (based on demographic rental demands for that area - no good buying an apartment if everyone wants house and a back yard, for example), then select one of the terrific MB's here on this site.
The hard part is then pulling the trigger.
Don't wait until every light down the road is green before you start.

 

Such a good point! I have friends who were well equipped to take advantage of the rising Sydney market and heaps of equity in their PPOR who over analysed and kept on maligning to the stage that they left it too late. They had pre-approval to buy up to a $1 million if they wish to use to the maximum but kept on researching Sydney market, Adelaide market, Queensland market and still researching after 3 years!! Not saying it's a bad thing because at the end of the day you have to be able to live with the choices and decisions you make but they missed out on some good bargains in my view and didn't maximise the opportunities on offer.