Remember this is not your home that you are buying.

Okay, if you are “into” property, even if you have never bought your own or an investment property before, you must have seen some of the property shows on TV.  Sarah Beeny is my all time favorite presenter of property shows, not only because she knows her stuff but also because of the slightly condescending way she goes about telling would be property investors off.

That fact that she always seemed to be 6 months pregnant is also a source for personal amusement for me and my family.

Sarah Beeny

Anyway, I digress. the point I am trying to make here is that often the people on Sarah’s shows don’t follow her advice and this invariably turns out badly for them.

One of the main reasons that these people do not follow her advice is because they they start thinking with their heart instead of their head.

If you are really interested in becoming a landlord, flipping properties for a profit or making money from property investing in some other way, then this is something you really need to understand from the outset.

You are not buying this property to live in, you are buying it as an investment. If you are looking at investment properties with the same eyes and criteria that you would look at a property that you would buy for yourself, then you are most likely going to be making some very bad mistakes.

You must know your strategy and criteria for buying investment property, before hand. Don’t just turn up on the sellers doorstep hoping for a bargain. Be clear with what you want and exactly what you are looking for.

The Figures Can Be Confusing???

The Maths Needs to Add Up

Don’t try to shuffle the figures around to make them work. Look at the maths and the facts and figures in the cold light of day and make a decision whether things add up or not.

Often it is hard to remain emotionally detached from a property investment. In fact even when we feel like we are detached, we sometimes are not.

That is why it pays to have someone independent that you can call on to look at the figures for you. This could be a friend who is good with numbers and finances or it could be your accountant or someone else.

In some respects it doesn’t really matter who it is, as long as you have someone you can trust and who can give you an independent opinion from a different perspective. This simple thing by itself could save you hundreds of thousands of pounds over the course of your property investing career.

What You Gonna Do With It Then?

Hmm, Figuring out what I should do is hard...

This comes back to your property strategy. If you don’t have one, in the words of “Woody” in Toy Story – as he explains to the other toys that they need to have a moving buddy – “GET ONE!”

Not having a strategy is a surefire way of killing your property investing dream before they even begin.

In conclusion: Try to be aware of what is motivating you to make particular decisions when it comes to buying property; however, as a back up, you should also have a trusted advisor on hand to provide a different view point.

One of the main reasons that people do not get into property investing in the first place is because they think they do not have enough money. 

This sounds logical, but when you actually take time to talk to people that have been successful and that are still successful at making money from property you begin to understand that there are actually many ways to can get into property without having lots of money and one of the best ways to do it is to partner with other like minded people and property investors.

Below are just a few things that you might want to think about that can help you on your way to becoming a  landlord. 

Use Other Peoples Money

Now, the truth is that in property you are normally using other people’s money anyway because you are probably borrowing from the bank so you are using their money.

However, this isn’t always a viable option for some people and even if it is, it is not always the best and most profitable option. 

Even if you find that you don’t have the money to buy a property but you find a really good deal, then if the deal is good enough you can still pass it on to a property investor and be paid a “finders fee”.  For more information on becoming a property finder check out our property finder page.

If you still want to keep a piece of the deal for yourself you just don’t have enough money to fund all the deal then this is possible as well.  Experienced investors can put in the remaining funds for a cut of the profit.  This is less complicated financially if you are just flipping the property or developing and then selling.  But even if you want to hold unto the property there are options there as well, if you work closely with others.

Just make sure that you get everything legal and in writing.  A good lawyer will be worth their weight in gold when partnering up with other real estate investors, like this.

Use Your Expertise

Even if you are new to property investing you might still have some skills that are worth something to experienced property investors.

Perhaps, you are from a sales background and can help them to negotiate with vendors or professionals.  Maybe you are from a secretarial background and can help them sort and and organize their paperwork. Or maybe you are a builder, estate agent, solicitor, painter and decorator or you have another role where you would naturally be working closely with property investors anyway.

The point is that whatever your background, if you pitch it in the right way, then you will probably be able to use your experience that you have gained through life and work and leverage it in someway to help you to get into the property game.

By using your skills to work closely with experienced property investors and landlords you will learn the business from the inside out and you will learn how they put deals together, what they look for and how to make sure that it is a profitable deal.  At this stage you might also be able to go in on some deal with them and become their partner.

What I am trying to get across is don’t use money or something else as an excuse not to start experiencing what it is like to be a property investor.  Look at what experience you have and what you bring to the table and leverage that to get you the results you desire.

If you are going to make any kind of life saving money from property then you are going to have to get pretty good at your property market research. 

This is a topic that I touched on briefly in tip 4 of my property investing tips, but it is something that is so important that I thought I would mention it again from a slightly different angle. 

Have a Builders Mentality

Okay,what do I mean by that.  What I mean is that whether you are a builder or a painter and decorator or some other type of contractor one of the most important things you learn in the beginning is that preparation is the key and is more than half the battle.

If you get everything prepared correctly then the actual hard graft of the job becomes easy.  it doesn’t matter if you are preparing a wall for plastering, preparing wood for painting or planning an extension to a property. If you get the preparation right then you are setting yourself up for success. But if you dont’ get it right or if you don’t do it at all then you are leaving yourself wide open for failure. 

It is exactly the same when you do your property market research.  You have to be thorough or you are running the risk of losing a lot of money.

Websites That Can Help Your Property market Research

Thank god for the Internet, that is what I say.  These days your research can be done so much quicker and so much more efficiently than in the past. If you are not taking advantage of the tools and website available to you online then you are really leaving money on the table and probably wasting valuable time.  If it is not your own it is people you employ and by changing what you do to be more efficient by using the Internet for your property market research then you are making it much more likely that you will pull in more of a profit.

I am based in the UK so there are sites such as our property that can be used to find out the selling price of properties in the location you are look at.  These days you can also even go online and go directly the the land registry to find out selling prices and much more. There is also a lot of good information on government sites such as the direct gov website. 

These are just a few of the websites that I would recommend you take a look at.  For a more extensive list you can take a look at the landlord resources page on our main website.  If you are based in the USA, India, Australia or anywhere else in the World there will be  set of websites just like these that you can find and that you will find invaluable and very cheap, if not free, to use.  Do a search on Google or go the property investing forums that are specific to your country and you will soon find out the best ones.

The bottom line is that real estate can be one of the most profitable investments that you can delve into; however, it also has the ability to be one of the most devastatingly financially crippling to an individual, in the shortest amount of time.

What’s the difference between many of those that succeed and those that don’t.  Well, time and time again it comes down to the sort of property market research that they have done.  So make sure you get this part right and that will help the rest to fall into place.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a new or even experienced Real estate investor is not listening to what the market is telling you.

All to often I hear of people following some long outdated property investing plan where they are told things like if you just buy it off plan then you can’t go wrong or they are told that no matter where you buy the price of the property is always going to go up eventually so it really doesn’t make a difference.

Advice like this can kill off any hopes that a budding property investor has of becoming successful and buying rental property for any kind of a good return.  You have to understand that you need to look at where the market is at this current moment in time and you how to live with the fact that you might have to change your investment strategy to cater to what the market is telling you.

At the time of writing, pretty much, the whole World is still going through a difficult time financially.  You have countries like Greece where the people are almost in revolt because of the state of there country and because they are not happy with the measures that the government is putting in trying and get the country out of the turmoil that it is currently in. 

6 – 10 years ago, people where making an abosulte killing buying off plan propertiesand at this time it was actually quite difficult to make a bad decision.  If you could find the money to fund the purchase then all you had to do is sit back and wait until completion and you where virtually guaranteed that you would make a healthy return on you investment.

In the UK at this time, there where people, with absoultely know experience at property investing or business in general who where making and absolute killing from just doing this then they would pull out the profit and use it to invest in another two or three properties.

These days are no longer with us and we have to be aware of that and we need to keep an eye on what is happening right now in order for us to make the right decision on what is the right investment. In fact, if you are unsure, it is sometimes better to sit it out and don’t invest in anything.  This might mean that you don’t buy any property at all for a year or so, until you have a better understanding of where the market is going and perhaps you will need to supplement your income by learning to make money in some other way.

However, this is preferable to you losing all you money and all the investment you have worked hard for a number of years for and having to declare bankruptcy. Don’t you think?

There are many investors that thought they could bully the market and that they had some sort of crystal ball so that they would always make the right decision, but this simply is not the case.  Famous UK investors such as Andy Shaw have fallen pray to not reading the market properly and to, at times, thinking they know better.

Don’t make the same mistakes.  If unsure, tread cautiously.  Don’t automatically think that the way you have always made money from property will always be profitable.

Waiting until everything is perfect is a trait that many people have.  In theory this sounds like a good trait in that you want things to be just right, however in practice this is a fatal flaw. 

The reason this is a fatal flaw is because you could do 50 property deals and not one of them fall into the category of being perfect in every single way. 

What is more important than finding the perfect property deal is just making sure it ticks a few key boxes such as the right amount of rental yield and buying it enough below market value,  and that you have your exit strategies in place and then you should really consider just taking the plunge and doing the deal. 

If you  are new to it all and you don’t have a property mentor and you still want to run the potential deal past people that are more experienced than you then I would recommend you join a top property investing forum and post details of the deal there and get advice from more experienced investors.  However, I would not post any specific details such as the area etc, instead just post the general details but make sure that nobody will be able to pin point where to deal is.  The reason I said this is that there are many very helpful property investors on these forums, but there are also, often a few unscrupulous people lurking in the back ground who will read what you have written and if they think it is a good deal, then will locate the person themselves and try and gazump you. 

One of the reasons that finding the perfect property deal is so hard is because for most people with this mindset, it is not just the property deal itself that needs to be perfect, it is also the finance, the builders, the mortgage broker, the solicitor, the plumber, everything needs to be perfect, this is what makes this goals of find the perfect deal so impossible.  There will normally be something that  isn’t 100% perfect with a deal and the truth is it will probably take you years of investing before you find what you consider to be the perfect property power team so trying to find it at the outset before you even start property investing or developing is going to drive you crazy.

You basically you have to strive to get as many things right as you can and you have to have, have certain things that are not compromiseable, but after that you need to do the best you can and get the best you can but be practical and logical in your approach and as long as the key things have their boxes ticked then go for it and learn and adjust as you go.

Okay, this is something I mention a bit about in the free property book I give away on the main section of our property investing site, but ethics and property investors haven’t historically always gone together.

In general property professionals have a bad reputation.  It doesn’t matter if you are an estate agent, property investor, property developer or even a builder, plumber or an electrician.  Historically the image of property professionals has been severely tainted by the few (or sometimes many) rogues.

The knowledge you gain and the power you have as a property professional is immense.  You are dealing with peoples lives.  Because of their financial difficulties people have mental breakdowns, commit suicide and even worse! (Worse than suicide? Yes, sometimes they take other people with them).

People are sometimes in very vulnerable situations when they come to you.  Some of them will accept ridiculously low prices for their property.  Is it right to milk a situation because you can, and because you have caught someone who is vulnerable or desperate.  I don’t think so.

Yet, you sometimes will find yourself with the power to do just that, and some property professionals (or at least that is what they call themselves – I have other words for them, but they are a little to strong to write here), will squeeze the life out of a desperate family, just to make a few thousand extra pounds.

I can’t tell you how to run you property business.  However from experience I can tell you that you might have some success squeezing the life out of people but to be really successful long term you need to concentrate on creating WIN WIN situations.

Create situations where both you and the client win.

This is how to be successful at this long term.  And this is how to stand out from the crowd and get more of your BMV offers accepted.  Really try and look at things from the perspective of the buyer and try to put a proposal to him in a way that he can see how he wins.

Do remember you are not running a charity, you are running a business and obviously the more money you can get out of a property the better for your business in the here and now.  I won’t even go into Karma.  But let’s just say that in the long run from a business perspective it pays to be ethical and that might mean sometimes telling some people that their property is worth more than they think and that they could get more money for it on the open market.

A Radical thought?

Yes, maybe. But I am just letting you know how I do things in life in general; you can take the advice or leave it.  But it works well for me!

Treat people as individuals.  Personally I wouldn’t tell everyone that they could get more on the open market; I am not a saint trying to give money away.  But what about a desperate family with young kids who are about to sell you their family home for 40% below what it is worth, and put themselves through untold hardship because they want money now and think this is the only way to get it.

In this situation I personally might focus more on trying to educate this family as to their options.

In this situation the option to sell the property to me but to continue to live in it as tenants might be a good option for them.  Plus the potential to possibly buy it back off me in the future.  I would structure the deal in such a way that I am still making a good profit but also so that they are getting an incredible deal and money now when they need it.

Again – create the WIN WIN situation.  This is good business sense because they will tell others how you helped them and the word will get around the local community – and beyond.  And who do you think their friends and family are going to call first if they ever find themselves in a situation where they need to sell quickly.

WELL, IT SURE AIN’T THE GHOST BUSTERS!

Yes, you! Good business all round.

If you want to learn how to be make money from property in as risk free a way as possible then it would be best to seek out the right education and training that will propel you forward.

There are many places you can get an effective property education from.  To start with you could take a look at our popular property investing guide which has been highly rated by many of our readers or you could even look to property investing forums which are great for getting free advice and tips.

If you choose to use free methods such as learning from property investing forums you can get some really useful information; however, since these forums are open then you are also going to get information that really you should not follow. The problem comes when you don’t know how to tell the difference.

If you are new to property investing then sometimes the advice that seems like the right thing to do is actually the thing that we should avoid most.  The reason for that is that most people wanting to get into property are focused on getting rich quick and this mentality leads them to follow people that promise that they can help you to make huge amounts of money in next to know time.  Unfortunately these are normally the sorts of people that you should not be listening to .

The other problem with relying on free information to learn how to make money from property is that it takes a lot of reading and shifting through hundreds of web pages and thousands of words to actually find the few bits of nuggets of information that you need that will actually give you the right education and training.  This especially true if you are looking for up-to-date information, since many bits of advice have long since pasted their usefulness date and the techniques you read about might have worked well 10 years ago but they might be best avoided today.

If you are serious about making money from property then you have to be prepared to invest in your education.  This might mean in the short term investing a few pounds in a property guide like hours, or investing a few thousand pounds in a full blown property mentorship program.  You have to take time to consider the right course of action to get yourself educated correctly.

If you choose not to invest in your property education and training at all then you are running the risk of either making some huge financial mistakes or progressing at a snails pace.  Saving a few pounds now is often a false economy because of the loss of opportunity and financial wealth you can often have gained by making inexpensive investments into your financial future.

I am not saying that you should go out spend thousands of pounds on the first property course you come into contact with.  What I am saying is that 10 hours researching the best property course or book might be better than 10 hours spent just researching general information on how to make money from property.

“A real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action.  If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.”
-Anthony Robbins

What’s the biggest difference between the self made millionaires and the people that just dream about it?  Is it their upbringing? Is it their starting capital? Is it their education? Is it their genes?

Perhaps the biggest single factor is found in the fact that the self made millionaires are doers, where as the other people are dreamers.

If you haven’t bought your first rental property or renovatation project yet – then why haven’t you?  If you have bought five properties do you have your plan set in stone to make it 10?  If you don’t have your propert goals how are you going to achieve them?

The truth is we all have goals in someway, even if we don’t speak them out loud.  Our minds race with different goals all the time (well I know I do anyway) and some goals are stored away in a special place, in our mind, in the hope that one day they will be achieved.   But if they are just stored secretly they will probably never be realised.  You have to take them out of their secret hiding place and make them known.  Write them down and let your eyes view them on a piece of paper.  Let your fingers feel a pen writing every single letter.  And let your mind imagine them complete.

“The World is changing very fast.  Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”
-Rupert Murdoch

Are you fast or are you slow?  Do you see others around you that started out at the same place in life as you, but who have far surpassed what you have accomplished?  Why is this?  What are you going to do today to change this?  NO – not what are you going to do tomorrow or next week – what are you going to do today.  In fact what are you going to do right NOW!

I am not saying you should open a newspaper and buy the first property you see.  What I am saying is right now, right in this moment what are you going to do to make your dreams come true, what action are you going to take right now?
The action could purely be a thought and decision that you are going to view five properties a week every week without fail for the next five months;  Or that on Monday you are going to join up as a member of Experian to find out why you where refused credit for you first mortgage.

The decision is the key, do not leave this moment without making it.  A thought that turns into a TRUE decision is already action.  It is just action that has been completed in the future and it is just a matter of time before you reach it but it is already set in stone just waiting for you.

“One of the biggest reasons people don’t attain their goals and dreams, isn’t because they don’t have the ability, far from it, it is because they are afraid of making mistakes.  They either want everything to be perfect before they start or they beat themselves up to the point where they give up at the slightest failure.”
-    Carlton Johnson (me )

Are you afraid to fail?  Are you a perfectionist paralysed by their own perfectionism to the point where they don’t take action?

The key to failing but still succeeding is to fail small.  Let me repeat that.  IF YOU ARE GOING TO FAIL – FAIL SMALL! Don’t put your entire life savings into one make or break property deal.  Yes some people do this and succeed.  But many more fail and are wiped out to a point where they never try again.

You need to take some risk and you need to fail sometimes, failing is one of the best ways to learn. But don’t get knocked out in the first round.  Build up your knowledge; learn about your opponents and where to hit to get the best results.

Learn when to duck parts of the property market, such as new builds, and hold onto your cash for a little while and learn how to analyse so that when you do go in for the kill you have a better chance of succeeding, getting stronger and building your confidence; instead, of being knocked out cold and unconscious on the floor in the first round with no hope for a rematch.

What decisions are you going to make RIGHT NOW, which are going to propel you towards your goal?  If you don’t make the decisions right now, will you ever make them?   Or are you going to be one of the slow ones off the mark, who watches as others pass them by.

What sort of life do you want to be living in 1 year from now, in 3 years from now, in 10 years from now?  Are the actions you have taken up until this point driving you towards this dream?  If there not, then now is the time to rethink, make TRUE decisions and take massive action.

You need to mingle with likeminded people as much as you can. Join a network of others who are interested in property investing, just make sure that the group contains a wide variety of people. The last thing you want to do is to join a property network where everyone is a novice investor. You need to find networks that have a good mix of people of all different experiences.

One easy way to network with like minded people is to join a property forum. Property forums are great because they are huge resources of information and they normally have a search function, so if you have a specific question all you have to do is type it into the search function and you might be surprised at how many times they will have been discussed already, on the popular property forums.

Below is a list of two investment property forums that I recommend that I have personally used and have found the most useful. The first forum is what I consider to be the creme da la crème of the current UK Property Investing forums. It is a forum that is filled with some of the most experience property investors in the UK. It is a forum that you would have to pay to be a member of and it is the only paid forum I have ever recommended. I have tried other paid forum sites but I didn’t think they were worth the money; this one is more than worth the money.

At the time of writing they also offer a free trial period so that you can sample the forum and decide whether it is for you before you part with you hard earned cash.

1. http://www.property-system.com (Property Tycoon Forum)
2. http://www.singingpig.co.uk

If you want to attend networking events and meet people face to fact there are a number of good networking events in the UK and the number seems to be growing month by month. Below are links to two of the better known networking groups and events that you might want to try out.

1. http://www.propertynetworkingclub.com
2. http://www.berkshirepropertymeet.com

Finding a network of property professional that you can mingle with can be crucial to your overall success. If you are just mingling with the same people that you have previously then you will probably get the same results. You need to network with people, both online and offline, that have the same vision or a similar vision as you. These are the people that will help push you forward towards your goals.

You can have your goals and plans written down and have a strong belief system that you are going to be a successful property investor in place, but if you don’t know how to attract those motivated sellers, then you are going to be struggling to be successful.

We have all had them through our door.  The A4 leaflet telling us about how www.we-buy-your-property-quickly-and-easily.com (this is a made up company by the way), will buy your property within 7 days for cash.

Leafleting is one of the standard ways that is taught these days to find BMV properties.  It is still taught because it is still very effective.  The beauty of something like leafleting is that you can pin point your target very specifically, whereas if you put an advert in a local paper you can get allsorts of people calling you from anywhere locally – and beyond.

But when you leaflet you can choose to just leaflet drop 10 streets that are your preferred streets to buy in.  This is good targeted marketing and it doesn’t get much better.

However just like when dealing with potentially motivated sellers it would be wise to set yourself apart from the crowd of other investors.  This is especially true in this day and age when the seller most likely has a negative view of property investors in general.

Imagine every month getting 5 different leaflets through your door from property professionals saying how they can buy your property in 7 days for cash and how there might be an option for you to still live there as a tenant – blah blah blah.

Normally the only major distinguishing factor between these leaflets is that one might be on coloured paper to make it stand out more.

If you’re the property investor dropping these leaflets, you are leaving it to chance that when the time comes they will choose to do business with you.  It maybe the case that they will do business with whichever leaflet happens to drop through the door at the time they are looking at selling.

It’s a percentage game and that is why people are still successful at it.  The cost of producing the leaflets and distributing them is worth it in comparison to the regular deals they get from it.

Yet, if you could just be different in someway then your conversion rate could potentially go through the roof.  Let me give you a simple example of what I mean:

In Cornwall, just like everywhere else, people probably get A4 leaflets through the door on a regular basis from estate agents saying that they have sold a property recently on their street and they have people interested in buying on that specific street and for a free valuation call 0800 052xxxx.  People get used to this and immune to it.  Unless they really need the service at that specific time they will throw it in the bin.

But in Kensington, West London, estate agents do it slightly differently.  In Kensington you get a sealed letter through your door in a windowed envelope saying something like “For the attention of the Property Owner.”  Then there will be a typed out letter on headed paper saying a similar thing to what the leaflet in Hull says, but in a neat letter format.

Now do you think if the estate agents in Cornwall changed what they where doing and did it the way they do it in Kensington, that it would make a positive difference to their conversion rate? Yes, it most likely would. They would be distinguishing themselves from the crowd, in a positive way.

Remember, what do you think happens in Cornwall to most leaflets that come through the door?  Yep, a quick glance (if your lucky) and straight in the bin.  But, if they got a letter through the door addressed to the property owner, then they might be more likely to read it and if they are planning on selling sometime in the near future, they are much more likely to hold on to it, instead of the other leaflets that all look the same.

Be different.  Be unique. Find your own voice in the location you are targeting.  Be the most prominent at what you do so that you are the first names on people’s lips if they are looking for the sort of service you can offer.

Don’t just settle for the same old ways of doing things.

Now, if you live in Kensington you come to recognise the official looking letters coming through the door and you can tell straight away which ones are from estate agents.  So what do you think happens to these letters in Kensington?  Yep, they go the same way as the leaflets in Cornwall, straight in the bin without being read.

So what do the estate agents in Kensington have to do?  Well, If they are good business people, they will spend some time thinking how to be different from the crowd.

You see, it doesn’t matter where your business is based or where you operate.  It pays to understand which techniques are working well for everyone else, to implement them, in your own style, and then to try to improve on them and be unique.