Dix - The complete guide to property investment: how to survive and thrive in the new world of buy-to-let

Published by Team Incredible Publishing

Copyright Team Incredible Ltd. 2016

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

GET THE EXTRAS!

Ive put together some totally free extras to cover important concepts that dont quite lend themselves to book form.

All you need to do is register (for free), and youll get access to videos showing:

• My step-by-step process for assessing a potential investment area
• How to determine the value of a property
• How to calculate the maximum price you can afford to pay for a property youre planning to refurbish and sell
• My method for setting goals, and the spreadsheet I use to do it

Its all totally free with no strings attached so for instant access, just sign up at propertygeek.net/extra.

Getting a UK-centric audience excited about property investment is about as challenging as getting YouTube views with a cute cat video. There are over a million private landlords in the UK, and millions more whove thought about it. A quick glance at any days newspaper headlines, meanwhile, will show that everyone else has a very strong opinion about it.

Technically, all thats needed to call yourself a property investor is to buy one house or flat and rent it out and if you do that well, youll have an asset that will bring in money each month and grow in value over time. Thats pretty good, and it will put you ahead of the 80% of the population who just work all their lives and retire without any real assets to show for it.

But the game is changing. As political pressure against landlords mounts and the tax regime changes, its becoming impossible to be a casual buy-any-old-house-and-watch-it-go-up-in-value investor. Strange as it may seem though, I think the coming years will be better than ever for educated and committed investors, at least. Amateurs will get squeezed out of the market, leaving opportunities wide open for those of us who are switched-on, strategic, and in it for the long haul.

Even if changes werent afoot, I still think we can indeed should aim higher than just buying the odd property when we can. After all, for most of us the ultimate dream isnt an extra couple of hundred pounds in our pocket each month or bragging rights at dinner parties. Theres some kind of goal were aiming for, like securing a comfortable retirement or being able to support our family without leaving for the office at 7am every day. Property can be the means to that end but unless were clear on what the objective actually is, it can easily just be a source of hassle and disappointment.

Over the last few years Ive spoken to hundreds of aspiring and established investors. Often, theyll ask for my advice because theyre not sure where to start or theyll be disappointed because theyve got going and bought a property, but still dont feel much closer to where they want to be. In almost every case, the problem would be solved if they just had a meaningful goal paired with a clear strategy designed to help them reach it.

But Im rarely asked about that instead the questions are about what mortgage to use, how much to pay for a specific property, whether or not to self-manage, what research to do before buying at auction, and a million other things about the procedural aspect of property investment. These are all perfectly good and valid questions but theyre all secondary concerns until a goal has been set and a strategy sketched out.

In this book, Im going to cover it all: the strategic overview, the nitty-gritty procedural details, and everything you need to know to adapt and thrive over time whatever the economy and the politicians throw your way.

By calling this the complete guide, I know Im leaving myself wide open for people to go through looking for flaws, errors and omissions. If you go in search of things to disagree with, youll find plenty: as this is a book written by one person, there will be some parts that you dont think are explained fully enough and others where you dont agree with my reasoning.

When it comes to the word complete itself, I dont mean that it will cover every situation that you could possibly encounter over a lifetime of investing in property clearly, thats not possible. What I mean is that it takes you through the entire process of becoming a successful investor. Most books focus on how to research and buy a single property, but this one starts way before the first purchase and doesnt stop until youve built a long-term portfolio.

In Part 1, I get you thinking about your goals by showing you five different investment strategies that you could follow each suitable for different objectives, financial positions and levels of involvement. The aim is to give you a vision of what you can achieve even if youre starting out with no special skills or experience.

In Part 2, well go through every step of the property investment process in order. Starting with arranging finance, well advance through deciding what to buy, assessing potential deals, getting an offer accepted, surviving the buying process, and going all the way through to managing the property and taking care of the paperwork. You can read it through to prepare yourself for exactly whats ahead, then refer back to each chapter as you progress through an actual investment to make sure youre confident at every step.

Then in Part 3, its time to look at the topics that separate the dabblers who buy a property on a whim from those who are serious about building a long-term financial future: refinancing, surviving downturns, shaping your portfolio over time and thinking about an eventual exit strategy.

Overall, everything in this book is geared towards helping you to take action. Its not telling you how I did it and giving you one model to follow, its not an inspirational story, and its not a boring list of first-do-this-then-do-that. Its designed to take you from wherever you are now to wherever you want to be, by arming you with both the procedural knowledge and the big-picture thinking you need to make smart decisions.

If property isnt your obsession yet, I hope it will be by the end of this book: not only is it one of the most profitable things you can be obsessed with, its also a whole lot of fun.

While this book is intended to serve you rather than my ego, it might be helpful to give you a bit of context so you know who I am and where Im coming from.

Property investment is the geeky hobby that took over my life.

As soon as I started researching my first investment in 2006 as a place to stash some spare cash, I was hooked. Id spend all my spare time reading books and message boards and yes, watching a fair bit of Homes Under The Hammer absorbing everything I possibly could.

I was fascinated by the number of ways in which it was possible to approach property investment, and I began to see how success involves understanding human psychology (and understanding your own abilities and motivations) in addition to knowing the cold, hard numbers.

As a happy side-effect, I loved the fact that as hobbies go it can make you seriously wealthy.

In 2012 I started my blog, Property Geek, as a place to think out loud and make contact with other investors so I could learn even more. Since then, even though my day job is technically being a copywriter, property has almost completely taken over