Why property chat ?

Rather than take a thread off topic , I thought I'd post my reply to @emza on this thread here

If you'd been around here for any length of time , you'd know there are many people who consistently get their timing correct , and personally I don't think it's a matter of survivorship bias .

One on the best decisions I've made was not to invest in shares in the period leading up to the GFC and put our money into a boring savings account . Along with property , I've spent time studying the share market , we'd sold a house in Sydney and had the cash I needed to invest in shares. A fairly basic trend analysis showed the market was trending down so we put the money in an account and not in the market .

There are lots of people out there who don't know what they're doing and make uninformed or risky investment decisions and as a result loose money . Most of the time people like that become actively involved in this forum is after the event .

My observation is that people who join this forum , become actively involved , listen to the advice of people who have been doing it for a while , and subsequentally make informed investments , do well . I was in that situation in 2001 and part of my reason for continuing to post here is to help pay back the benifit I received from members like , The Wife , Gee Cee Cee , Micheal Croft , Ross V , Paul Zag and many others who helped me when I started . The first real life forum gathering was in 2001 in Canberra . I " won " an award for analysis paralysis . I'd been asking questions for around a year and hadn't bought anything . That changed ....

If you feel you need to get up on a soap box and preach about the evils and perils of property investing you've come to the wrong place . Maybe you should check out to see if there's a property forum in Ireland you can preach too.

We all know property can go down in value and markets can crash .We've seen it happen first hand . I know more people who've gone bankrupt than doing anything else . Every time I've seen that happen , I can look at what they did and see obvious errors they've made , and it always revolves around getting their timing wrong or making higher risk investments with inadequate reserves .

If you've been reading posts in the last year or two , you'll have noticed many long term members advising people not to buy in Sydney and many members selling in. Sydney .

The reason some people don't comment on posts like the Gladstone post is there isn't much to say .

There are times when the best thing to do is to sit on the side lines . There are places where I wouldn't buy.

I looked at all the Queensland coastal towns in the early 2000's . Gladstone had a whole pile of projects being lined up but a fairly basic review showed a significant number of jobs being created during the construction phase with a significantly lower number of jobs during the production phase . Given the amount of residential development that was starting to happen , IMHO any investment in Gladstone was associated with a high degree of risk . I didn't buy there . I bought in Rockhampton instead but sold a long time ago .

Why should I post on that thread when the main thing I'd say is " I wouldn't have bought there ..."

The reason for this forum to exist is to share experiences and to help people who want to invest in property , do that as safely as possible . Nothing is risk free , but when the main options is " saving in superannuation " and relying on what many people will find out in years to come is a completely inadequately funded retirement , I know what I'd prefer . Currently we have gone long on property , but have multiple buffers , good jobs and sickness disability insurance ... if we have problems there will be millions of other people in Australia in a worse situation .

Many of the people who get caught out with property investing are following the advice of some "guru " or marketing company who's sole purpose is to sell property . If they'd spent some time educating themselves here before buying they might not have got into their current troubles .

Cliff

 

The community on PC provides a wide range of 'not advice' and experience you just can't get elsewhere. I'm investing in property and shares and would like to make steps towards development. It's an early retirement strategy for me and a productive hobby.

 

Thanks I realky appreciate you being here and the other dozen or so members who constantly keep giving advice.

 

It's the members that really make this forum such a great place to be. So many people that are so giving and provide so many good advice out of the goodness of their heart.

But attitude is so important because even if some people have all the information in the world, they do nothing, achieve nothing and play the blame game.

 

Just had a quick look nothing in Ireland,but there is a property site in the UK ,..

 

I appreciate having a lot of experienced investors here on PC and @See Change you are one of those I have looked up to

 

Great post @See Change ...

On Gladstone, I did the same. Considered it before the boom, did my DD & concluded it was an unsustainable market due to the same reasons. I recall many Gladstone threads on SS at the time... some people were so bedazzled by potential $$$ that their DD was rather short-sighted & now the high risk associated with the high return at the time, has become reality. I empathize with those that got caught up in the histeria but have nothing to offer today as "I told you so" or "that's why I didn't invest there" is not value adding to their current predicament.

Actually, most mining town booms are either identical or very similar.... so I steer clear as it doesn't suite my risk profile at all.

 

I picked up some API type mags in 2013 and these people who had built their portfolio based on mining towns saying how they were going to retire in a few years.... just glad I had no plans to do the same (buy in mining towns). Seeing the great returns is one thing, but getting $1000 or more a week for a 300k property just cannot be sustainable.

 

As @See Change points out, the need for housing is short term for the fifo construction workers not the long term operations crew.

I recently inspected part of the Keiwa Valley Hydro scheme in Victoria. There were hundreds employed building the last of the power stations, pumping stations and tunnels at Bogong Village. The entire scheme is unmanned and controlled by computer in Melbourne.

There is a need to understand the nature of the activity which affects the asset price and if necessary steer clear or have a well established exit strategy for longer-term projects ie dump some other bunny in the deep (& listen to the tales of woe afterwards).

 

I joined here because my family needed a house.

Fairly basic...but I quickly realised how little I knew and the chances of me making a bad decision were pretty good.

So I read this forum for a year, and was able to use what I had learned to buy well and about 100k cheaper.

The property could still fall in value or do nothing for a while...or it might go up....but by learning here I have been made aware of the risks and are now safely able to take them into account.

Anyway...The point of this post is that my family is in a much better position, thanks to the discussions on this forum. For that I shall be forever grateful.

 

Amen to that.....you can't pontificate and do nothing......you have to get in and do it and be a persistent bugger.

The other thing is contrary to belief no person can get every investment or timing right...it is about all about "time in the market" not "timing"...though I acknowledge that it helps to be informed and you can get some timing right but not all. Just like you get some investments right but not all.

The other thing is experience is the best teacher.....l see people make a killing in on cycle and get hammered when the cycle turns as they hold all their properties in one area.

I saw this in Sydney in post 2003 and again in Port Hedland.

The ability to process all the different strategies and tailor it to what works for you.

 

Agree sash .

No one will pick the top and bottom every time they buy and anyone who expects to is fooling them selves , but there are some times when it's obviously high risk and the most important thing is too avoid buying in those and having plenty in reserve .

Cliff

 

There is a huge space between being fantastically right & horrifically wrong and whilst no-one may be able to be fantastically right all the time, learning as much as possible via PC can hopefully save people from getting things horrifically wrong and steer them closer to the other end of the spectrum.

 

hahaha
We don't say much on those threads because people don't need their mistakes rubbed in their faces. We want them to hang around and be honest. To sell or hold - what else can you say?
I really want to know what happened to all the rent they earned though. It would've gone a long way to paying the properties off, wouldn't it? I'd love to ask them that.
And a bit of Perth versus the world rivalry but I won't go there.

 

Syphoned off into the offset account on the ppor.

 

To lump proprtey into a good or bad investment pile is rudementery.

Just like the millions of cars for sale, you might get a lemon or you might get lucky. A person educated AND experienced in cars will mitigate that risk.

Property is no different and thanks to PC people have the option to remain uneducated or not. 100% your choice.

 

Baahahaha
I hadn't noticed but i do understand their country more after going

 

+1

I watch this boy grow from an Apprentice Timing Lord to a Timing Lord.
Time will tell. If he gets timing correct about Brisbane, upgrading his title to Master Timing Lord is inevitable

 

@See Change the claims you are responding to are nothing new. We have had a number of posters running exactly these same arguments over and over. Something you will notice is many of the claims in the post you responded to simply aren't true. I tend to assume I won't be able to have an honest conversation with these types.