It is a privilege to write this foreword for leading New Zealand property educator David Whitburn. I am proud to see him publish this book, and I have no doubt that Davids intellect, investment experience and fine teaching skills will ensure it is successful.
I started my own journey as a struggling dairy farmer in Burry Port, near Llanelli in Southern Wales, in 1998. After winning the Nuffield Scholarship in Agriculture I interviewed and studied the likes of Sir Richard Branson and Bill Gates. This opened my eyes to the simple secrets of success as I saw who I wanted to be and knew I needed to change. I realised I had some knowledge gaps so I enrolled in an intensive property-mentoring programme as well as a number of advanced courses similar to those offered by David. This gave me the toolkit I needed for safety, certainty and speed in the growth of my portfolio.
I know this book will help to fill in some gaps in your knowledge, and will hopefully serve as the catalyst for your property-investment journey too. After buying my first property (I put the deposit on my credit card), I quickly renovated it and sold it at a profit, and bought another. The rest is history as I then went out and bought 80 properties in my first year, and now I hold hundreds of properties across the United Kingdom, with a portfolio value of over NZ$80 million. I now have my own bank in the United Kingdom, and serve the community as an ambassador to the Make-A-Wish Foundation and patron of the Hunger Project.
David shares my passion for property education. His book gives an excellent overview of property investment in New Zealand, including why you must invest, where you should invest, and an amazing chapter on strategies for investing in property. It also contains a lot of high-quality technical and general information. The glossary and references near the very end of this book have proved extremely useful resources for me as I sought to familiarise myself with New Zealand market conditions when I spoke at two large property investment seminars there.
I love New Zealand and have visited seven times now. Its much like Wales, just with better weather! After spending some quality time with David and his business partner David Leon, whom I have known for around a decade, I took up their invitation to join the advisory board of NZ Wealth Mentor Limited. Their teachings, professionalism, integrity and events are of a quality many educators aspire to, but so few reach. The feedback and results from Davids clients has been nothing short of fantastic. I have seen Davids insights, great client service and presentation skills in action, and we have shared the stage together at large events.
This book is an invaluable resource and is a must-have for the library of all New Zealand property investors. It will serve as a very useful manual for investors for many years to come.
Kevin Green
www.kevingreen.co.uk
Kevin is one of the United Kingdoms largest private social housing providers and a leading global property educator. He has also starred in BBCs Secret Millionaire.
Kicking off a brand new residential property investment team early in 2010 was an exciting time and I was looking for experts with whom to surround myself. A suggestion was made that I chat with David Whitburn, someone who had been investing in property himself from an early age. Not only had he trained as a tax accountant, he was also a solicitor, the vice-president, and soon to be president, of the Auckland Property Investors Association and owner of a successful property investment mentoring company.
While working with David, Ive found him to be a passionate individual who loves sharing his knowledge on property investment, so when he approached me regarding his book, I was very excited. It has been some time since a book focusing on property investment in New Zealand was released.
Having had the opportunity to sneak an early read of the book, I was amazed at the breadth of content David covers; its going to be a great resource for people to refer to time and time again. Whether you are considering buying your very first investment property, or you already have several, there is something in here for every investor.
Of course, there is more to being a good property investor than just buying a good property although this is a great start! Whether it be how you structure the ownership of your property, how you maintain and develop it or even manage the tenants who live in it, David covers all these topics and a whole lot more in this book.
Here in New Zealand we have many different investment options available to us, but for one reason or another, Kiwis have a love affair with investment property that wont go away. Perhaps its the solidity of bricks and mortar, the fact a property is a tangible investment that can be seen, or is it something else?
David is the first to acknowledge that theres more to investing than property alone. However, in this book, through his respectful, expert approach, he proves that for many New Zealanders its hard to go past bricks and mortar.
Sandy Richardson
Sandy Richardson is a sales manager at Bank of New Zealand and heads a team of property investment managers who specialise in residential property investment.
How can you become wealthier? What are the right steps to take to grow your net worth and secure your financial future? I have asked myself these questions, and the answer was simple: invest in property correctly. My love of property doesnt stem from sentiment or nostalgia. Its the result of years of trial and error in the field of investing.
I began investing when I was very young, when we still had just two TV channels, the New Zealand cricket team regularly thrashed the Australians and one- and two-cent coins were legal tender. I started with savings accounts and loved seeing the interest grow each month. Next I moved on to term deposits. The returns were fine; I didnt lose anything, but I wasnt making much, and I felt disappointed with the amount of money eroded by inflation and tax. Then in the mid- and late-1990s at university, I started an event-management business with a friend. For a few good months we made plenty of money organising balls for university faculties before branching out to large corporate social clubs. However we virtually lost the lot on a disastrous event called A Night in Hawaii frankly, losing $18,000 was enough to put me off Hawaii forever.
By the time I was working in my first full-time job, at big-four chartered accountancy and consulting practice Deloitte, I was keen probably too keen to invest in a more exciting field. What could be more exciting than biotech shares in the dot-com boom of the late nineties? I was encouraged by my workplace share-club buddies, who seemed much older and wiser than me at the time. The New Zealand dollar was at 45c against the greenback and we all took a bath in the dot-bomb crash in 2000. I lost $25,000, which was just a fraction of what some of my colleagues were stung for, but I was only making a fraction of their salaries, so I guess it was all relative.
Then I read a few books about property investing, and I began to wonder if Id found an investment where I could really succeed. But I wanted to be certain; Id been burned too often to throw my money into the ring without any training. So I invested in myself by attending seminars to learn the rules (Ill admit that Im a bit of a stickler for rules), and I continued to go to those seminars for nearly a year before I put any money into a house. In hindsight, I should have paid for a decent mentor, but I couldnt have known that at the time.