I have a friend who helps me, (and others), with finding property and processing subdivisions in Wellington and the lower north island. He has been involved in a large town recently and was assisting the owner in getting things moving forward as it was taking longer than originally anticipated.

That is par for the course in Auckland but apparently in this town things normally go more according to plan.

Anyway things had ground to a halt with the driveway crossing so my mate set out to discover why.

It transpires that when the contractors went to break out the berm to put the driveway crossing in they discovered wires. Further investigation made it apparent that they were live wires!!

Turns out the council contractors had basically laid live wires to either a traffic light or a street light by running them straight under the berm concrete, no protection, no correct installation, just lie them on the ground and concrete over them ~ she’ll be right!!

So the council has stopped all work on the site till they decide what to do!!

What can we learn from this??

1. Councils apparently don’t have any inspections for their own work and employees
2. Never assume anything is so stupid or dangerous that no one could possibly have done it.
3. Councils can cause you excessive costs and delays even when the problem has been caused by them.

I can see it now, 5 guys leaning on shovels and 1 guy standing with a reel of cable.
“Where shall I put this?” he asks.
“Aw just shove it on there man and we’ll get the 9 guys who turn up in the concrete truck just to pour over it”
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?”
“Man it’s 8:35, we’re late for smoko. It’ll be fine, who will ever know once the concrete hardens”

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

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I’ve had my most clear lesson in the importance of being educated in property recently.
I have begun working with an elderly lady who has several properties that she has inherited over the years and is now looking to sell down. She knows nothing about property and therefore has taken no action or done anything with any of these properties to maximise her return. Sadly this has cost her dearly in terms of potential.

The first 3 properties I have examined for her are all bare land. 1 is a 9 unit site in a great suburb BUT she made 2 very costly mistakes through not knowing any rules about land banking.
Firstly the specific location of the land is very poor. In a suburb with lots of water views and only 1 small bad area, this land is in the middle of the bad bit. Had the owner sold it when she inherited it 30 years ago and bought anywhere else in the same area she would be at least 500K better off.
Secondly she has never visited or maintained the property in 30 years so it is now full of huge trees requiring consent to remove. By not keeping the site mowed she has devalued the land by around 300K because of the exorbitant costs associated with site prep and consents etc.

The next 2 projects are vacant sites on an island. Once again they are in a position that almost couldn’t be worse. In this case had they been sold and sites with views purchased she could be nearly 2 million dollars better off!! And once again the sites are covered with huge trees and this makes the sites almost worthless to a developer as you need to buy them for almost nothing to recoup the costs of site prep.

Now the owner will be happy when she sells because they don’t owe her anything and compared with what they were worth when she inherited them it’s all good.

But it has been a great exercise for me to understand how not to land bank. This vendors results could have been approximately 1000% better with a Little bit of education her part to ensure she was holding the right property in the right location.
Thats a LOT of lost opportunity!!

So think about that when you are investing. Make sure you know what you are doing and why. Beating the average investor’s return can make a huge difference to your financial position in the medium term.

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

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I have observed a fascinating phenomenon over the last few weeks. As the market has slowed it has really begun to sort out the serious agents from those who got into property because they were at a loose end.

I have never seen so many agents vanish almost overnight. In addition many of the “husband and wife” teams are suddenly solo acts as the partner goes and gets a real job.

One of my mates in the industry said their office had 2 new listings last month, last year they had 35.

I guess it goes to prove my oft mentioned point that being a real estate agent is hard work. No listings no pay, but the costs keep on going.

It will be interesting to see if we end up with a shortage of agents as the market recovers.

Anyway thought for the day. As you and I are out hunting bargains understand that many of the agents you are dealing with will be in difficult financial positions so……
1. Be nice to them, they are stressed and
2. You will never have a better time to practise being assertive and getting your offers presented!

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

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I have a friend who sends me daily texts with inspirational thoughts on it and today’s was great.
It basically said “There is no right way to do a wrong thing”.

I see this happen a lot, especially in business. Some people change their standards or opinions purely to fit in with whatever they are currently marketing. One day this is good, the next day the same thing is bad. Something is “right” or “wrong” based on my marketing strategy, needs or wants.

There is a move internationally towards businesses having a social conscience and I think that is a great thing. We are yet to see much of it here but the fact is that companies that uphold and pursue genuine values outperform all the slick marketing systems every time.

At Massive Action we try to bring you the best advice we can and it is always based on our personal experience. We want you to succeed, not line our pockets.

So what about you??
Do you rules for life change depending on your circumstances??
Do you have things that are not negotiable??

Don’t get me wrong I’m not saying it is easy to live your life this way, but having principles will give you a life that you can never achieve any other way.
I pass up on opportunities to make more money almost daily. I could look at those opportunities and total the profits I haven’t made and get all bitter and twisted about what I haven’t got.
However I know that many of the things I do have are because I can say no to the things that would compromise my life.

We spend more money on catering and preparation for our events than anyone els in our industry. This reduces our profit considerably but it means our events are the best in NZ so people keep coming in their droves. I’m currently editing a recent event video and Raewyn’s content is just incredibly amazing. That is because she spent hundreds of hours preparing for it. If she worked that out on an hourly rate she probably earned about $1.53 an hour.

But the feedback she has had from attendees and the changed lives has blessed Raewyn and “paid” her in ways money could never have achieved.

So here is to a principled life full of passion and integrity. Make it a priority in your life today!!

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

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Those of you who are into shares will be well aware that the last 14 days has devastated share markets world wide.

Like property, share prices in the future can only be predicted, and certainly no one could have predicted the current carnage.

However UNLIKE property, shares may take a long long time to recover and many companies may vanish meaning people’s losses are never recoverable.

I looked at shares before property and the current situation is exactly why I chose property and have avoided shares. This is small comfort to the many mum’s and dad’s who follow the advice of uninformed advisers and journalists but should be an encouragement to those of you who are in property.

Things are a bit quiet in the property market currently and it may take a few months or a couple of years to get going again.

So we can jump into another hot market like Oz for a year or two and keep investing, knowing that our NZ portfolio may drop slightly but in reality will simply keep going up, doubling every ten years.
However with shares being globally linked now when it is raining the entire planet gets wet.

This is a great reason to stick with property over shares. Less volatility and the ability to move into different markets that are in different phases.

So for those of you caught in the share market I trust you are not overly exposed and that you have a strategy to recover.

And for those of you in property, keep going. There are bargains around in NZ and OZ is truly a breathtaking opportunity for the next couple of years.

It’s interesting for me that when I looked at shares it stuck out like the proverbial sore thumb that it was a risky volatile playing field compared with property. Maybe it was just God warning me however I think it is simply is riskier, so why do it when you can get such great results with a more solid medium??

I was going to say a more “blue chip” medium but that reminded me of the current BlueChip disaster that people are currently facing.

And BlueChip is a good reminder of
A: Get a good education
B: Do your own due diligence
C: Don’t pay retail for property and
D: IF you opt for a passive investment option make sure you look at the company and be certain you can trust the principals and that they live by their stated principles.

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

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Sometimes we meet and have to deal with “interesting” people. On the weekend we looked at a property that I had enquired about late last year. The vendor was an agent and came across as quite officious. I had lost his info and his trademe ad had vanished so I had not been able to pursue the deal earlier. When we were in the area there was a private sale sign on the property with a phone number so I immediately rung to continue with the purchase.

Well the vendor was deliberately sarcastic and rude on the phone. Then I emailed him a contract which he replied to again being deliberately difficult and rude. You would think that someone wanting to sell a property. especially when they were in the industry would understand things like being nice to buyers and common decency??

Now I have no idea what might be going on in the mans life so i am not judging him personally, he may have had a recent death or be seriously ill, who knows.

But it does make it difficult to buy from people who are like this.

My solution is to either go on to the next deal or get someone else to come in as a buyer and see if they have better luck. It can be helpful to have someone willing to negotiate on your behalf sometimes just to see if the vendor is really difficult or whether they just reacted to you or something you said. I often get a good friend of mine to follow up deals that I haven’t clicked with a vendor. My friend is female and I find often a vendor will treat a member of the opposite sex much better.

So thought for the day, if you find an awkward vendor on a great deal, try getting someone else to feel out the vendor for you, and if they get on better, let them buy the deal and assign it to you.

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz (AKA Dean Leftus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz)

PS: Did you know you can receive email notifications whenever I post a new blog?? Tick the email notification HERE

PPS: For those of you who don’t get my newsletters you can subscribe HERE