Investing in property is not easy — but do it right, and you’ll be able to achieve financial freedom with a portfolio of around ten properties. As an investor, there are three things you need in order to successful invest;
- Money — Enough money to buy, refurbish and maintain one of more properties — plus cover solicitor, broker, sourcer fees .etc AND have a contingency in place at all times.
- Time — Enough time to manage the entire process, and then maintain the invest, manage the tenants etc. The exact time needed depends on your strategy.
- Experience — You need the know how in order to invest right the first time, otherwise you’ll make costly mistakes that may do more than merely set you back — it could burn the majority of your original investment.
If you are missing one or more of these, then you should not start investing. Not yet. But don’t worry, because if you’re in that situation you’re certainly not alone!
I myself started with little money or experience, but I had an abundance of time. So, I teamed up with somebody who had the money, and used the time to learn to invest. Many years later, we both share a portfolio of 100 properties.
And I work with thousands of people every year who are missing one or more of those three key components. And many of them find a way around it!
You see, you can’t let a lack of one of more of the components to slow your investing goals down — and you don’t have to!
Here are the most popular and successful ways for you to either obtain the missing components.
How to get Money
My own story, of teaming up with somebody who had what I didn’t, is what is called a Joint Venture. If you lack the money to invest, but you have time, experience or both — then your solution is simple.
Find somebody who has the money, but is lacking the time or experience. Form a joint venture partnership and split the returns 50/50.
The only real other alternative to forming a JV, is to save up and wait. But this is far from ideal and I do not recommend it. The sooner you start, the sooner you can start earning great returns from your investment. So don’t waste more time and potentially years saving bit by bit — get out there, network, meet people and partner up.
How to get Time
If you lack time, but have money, experience or both — then you need to (yes, you guessed it) team up!
Take your experience and train somebody who has the time to put that experience into practice, and invest your money for you both.
An alternative to this is to make yourself more time — be really strict and dedicate 10 hours a week to your investing, even if that means working early, late or weekends. Or, take the leap and leave your job or reduce your hours to free you up.
Last but not least, you can work with a portfolio building company. There are companies out there that you can pay to invest your money for you. They use their expertise and experience, and their time, to invest for you and they get a cut or purchase fees.
I’m the owner of the biggest portfolio building company in the UK; Insight Portfolio, where we’ve bought well over 1,000 properties for clients over the last decade.
How to get Experience
If you have money, time or both, but are lacking the experience — guess who you need to find? somebody with experience!
Team up with them, they will teach you all that they know, so you can go forth and put it into practice, sharing the returns.
Alternatively you can get trained — there are so many companies out there that specialise in training people how to invest in property. I own the 3rd largest property investing educator in the UK; Insight Education.
What I’ve done, and what many other investors have done, is package my experience into live and online courses and mentorship. This is a great way of leveraging other people’s experience, and importantly their mistakes too, allowing you to use that to invest successfully for the first and subsequent times.
Last but not least — you can again use a portfolio building company. As part of the agreement, they’ll be bringing all of the experience to the table, ensuring your investment is in the safest of hands.
I hope this has been useful in identifying everything you need to invest in property successfully, and how you can get or leverage what you don’t have so you can start investing sooner rather than much, much later.
Author: Aran Curry
