Thank You and Good Night

Hello Folks.

I hope that each of you had the Christmas that suited you.

Well, here it is - the last blog in the last week of 2009. Almost time to put the chairs on the tables for the last time before I turn the sign on the door to ‘closed’ in a few days time. From next week our produce will have passed its end-of-2009 sell-by date.

Well that’s how I have been viewing this email, but I hadn’t reckoned on the sudden interest in our service - the stream of new and existing customers suddenly dropping into the shop to ask advice - even suggesting topics that I should cover in blogs. They are all very much appreciated and I will be only too pleased to help any member for the foreseeable future. I am still passionate that you invest wisely and effectively, so please feel free to knock on the side door even though the blinds are down in the widows onto the High Street.

However, the lease on the premises is paid in advance, so I have decided to freeze the website for the moment. I will be watching the market as usual and, as a consequence of your sudden interest in my offerings, I might be persuaded to update the site…so watch that space. But if not, in April I will open the doors for anyone requesting access to the training seminars. No charge. You can come in and clear the shelves of old stock. So those of you who are non-members can get access at a time when members will have taken any advantage by being early birds. That stated, I’m confident that much of information is appropriate to the market at any time. How to find a bargain; where and how to do yourresearch; how to negotiate; how to communicate with agents and builders - these are lessons that will always work.

Remember that you will have to send an email to request access - it’s not automatic.

Just as last week I reviewed the year (well, sort of) in keeping with tradition, at the end of this little era, it seems appropriate to assess my performance. To assess whether I can claim to walk the walk or did I just talk the talk. You can judge. This is my personal track record which I reduce here to the barest summary of residential properties that I have bought during the last two years.

Not spectacular by many investors’ standards, but the potential growth and rental income will provide a return that £110,000 invested in a pension could not hope to emulate. Those of you who have read my biography on the website will know the significance of that statement. It’s also a lot more than companies such as Passive Investments ever promise to do for their investors.

The longer term growth will tell whether I have bought as well as I hope. Naturally I did my homework (just as I demonstrate in Module One) to do my best to have identified safe target areas in which to invest for the long term. If that proves to be the case, projecting forward, if I let the equity grow for the next decade, the profile should look something like this:

Based on my original investment of £110K, that’s a total ROI of more than 1600%.

Naturally none of that would be possible without the original £110K, but it’s not the most important investment in that summary. My greatest investment was time. Time to study what I wanted to achieve - to define my target. Time spent at seminars trying to assess what I needed to know and who was worth listening to. Time spent meeting and speaking to people who know what they are talking about. And time spent researching the market, my target locations and the business of property investment.

It’s important for you to have the confidence that if I can do it, you can do it. I’m an amateur. This isn’t my profession so I don’t concern myself with the fine detail of processes undertaken by my mortgage advisor, solicitors, surveyors or the agents. I think I understand the bits that I need to know to assess whether or not I am getting a good service from people who I am employing to work in my interest. Each is a professional in just one of the inter-related jig-saw trades. Some are great and professional but some are lacking. I consider it my job to identify the difference; not to do their job, but only to appoint the best people do the work for me. Then I assemble the pieces of the puzzle to create the picture.

If that’s sounding familiar, so it should. At the risk of repeating myself, I will tell you that the most important thing you will bring to investment is not your money, but your brain. The processes that you will follow are not as much financial as intellectual. If you have the latter you will learn the former, but it doesn’t necessarily apply the other way around.

I know very little if anything about you, dear reader. There are some clues in some of your email addresses and from that evidence I think that the majority of you are professionals. Some from property-related companies, banking and the media. So you take your intellect to work every day. To decipher briefs, solve problems, work in teams, communicate well, meet deadlines and budgets. You just have to adapt those talents a little to do this thing called ‘property investment’.

And I can tell you something else without fear of contradiction - you will only really learn how to do it once you do it. So don’t take too long before you do it.

Have a Happy, Peaceful and Prosperous New Year.

John