I heard about a welfare conman today who had been getting about 250K a year fraudulently for several years. He only got caught because he confided in a family member and that family members jealousy caused him or her to go to the Police.

When we heard about it my wife commented that we are so wired for relationship that this is almost inevitable.
She said: “When we succeed there is no greater joy than to share that with another and when we fail there is no greater comfort than to share that with another”.

Profound and true. I guess in a way I live that out right here in my blogs. I love “talking” to you about my life, successes and failures because it connects me to you. I often picture many of you who I know reading my blogs and I wonder what you think. And I really miss not seeing some of you for extended periods.
I was just thinking today how long since I’d seen Oopsick and Essence and a couple of other friends and I feel incomplete almost in a way as a result.

So today’s fraudster reminded me once again to live your life as transparently as possible.
I try and use a test I was taught years ago. Imagine you are standing up on a stage talking to a large group of people. Start to put faces to the crowd of everybody you have met or worked with. Then consider what comments or heckling might come out of that crowd of people. What would people say about you? What accusations could be levelled at you, what secrets exposed?

None of us will be perfect, but let’s aim for a clean slate!!

I have over recent weeks had a large number of consults and emails form people struggling to know how to take advantage of the current property market and even more people who can’t believe that it is OK to make low offers or to ask for creative deals to be presented etc.

Such has been the volume of requests that I have decided to run an event on it in October. As you know I am not an event company, I only run something if I perceive a need that I think I can fill. So if you’d like help to buy a real bargain in the next few months, or need help with financing in this environment, or just want to spend a day getting equipped and inspired to keep movin on up then please join me. Book NOW and it’ll only cost you $199, virtually FREE!!

If you have friends looking at getting into investing or looking for their first or second deal they will REALLY get ENORMOUS benefit from it.

We only have till April 1 to purchase without tainting so I am determined to help as many of you as possible to retire in the next boom.

Hope to see you there!! More info HERE

Property is a small industry when you get to freaks like myself who buy a lot of properties habitually. I often feel we need an anonymous group where we can stand up and say “Hello my name is Dean and I haven’t signed a sale and purchase agreement for 3 days 4 hours and 25 minutes”. The room cheers and claps except for the half the room who were making offers on their way to the meeting.

Anyway I digress. My point about the industry being small was that I had a meeting with a man yesterday who had been told to contact me by 2 different property people in 3 days in addition to my pastor also recommending me.

One of the people who recommended me is a mentor and also a friend of mine.
It was interesting to hear some of the things this guy had learned from my friend because whilst we are both very good at what we do, we have quite different “philosophies” in terms of our investing.

My idea of investing is to accumulate property until you have enough so that you can sell some down and freehold the rest. And if you get enough cashflow so that you don’t have to sell the n keep everything. Trading is simply a means of getting more deposits to buy more property.

My friend however said in his mentoring group that he is a trader because he considers buying and holding to be “accumulating” and NOT investing.

Now neither of us is right or wrong even though we are doing the opposite almost.

So on the same day as I was hearing this the very same mentor rung me with a deal he wanted to trade. To him trading this deal is investing. To me keeping the deal is investing.

What would you do:
Option 1: Trade the deal and make somewhere between 50 and 200K or
Option 2: Keep the property. Discount is 47%,, yield is around 14%.

It took me about .0001 seconds to decide what I’d do, how about you??

Stay safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

It appears that things are starting to recover even faster than I predicted.
I was talking to a mate yesterday who had a multiple offer on a section in Dunedin.
I had a poster in my forum complaining about the prices being achieved in Nelson and good stock is starting to move fast in Auckland.

Now it will take several months before the media shows any signs of changing probably but I can only reiterate what I have said repeatedly and that is don’t sit there on your hands waiting for the bottom too long. It may have already passed.

Property is never an exact science and we have to look at the available information and make decision based on highest probability. There are no guarantees, however it is highly probable that property prices will continue to increase over time. It is highly probable that prices will not fall much further than they have. You can’t sell below replacement cost for ever. And it is highly probable that interest rates will continue to fall making any good deal now, even better going forward.

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

Well sometimes it does. I had seen a photo in a promo book of 2 people. 1 I knew quite well and the other I had never met. All I knew about the guy I hadn’t met was that he was from Dunedin.

His picture looked perfectly “normal” and I guess our brains can’t help themselves, they just automatically build up an image of what this person should be like, if you know what I mean.

So today I met this guy and he was totally not what I was expecting. Now I didn’t realise that I was expecting anything until we shook hands and he started talking and I thought, “Wow he is so not what I expected!”

Hopefully I’m making some sense here, my point is that in every property deal, every agent or vendor we meet, we will be making assumptions and putting expectation on those people that may be totally inappropriate and kill the deal.

Think about it for a minute, if you meet a dreadlocked tattoo’d person you will not expect them to be the same as a white collar worker. Whether you consciously think it or not you will treat the two people very differently, which is sometimes a mistake. And it’s only if we consciously look for our preconceptions that we can catch them and not let them influence our relationship.

So back to my meeting today, I guess that maybe because I knew this guy was from Dunedin that I was expecting Joe average. As I said I wasn’t thinking this way but it was the fact that he wasn’t what I was expecting that made me realise I was expecting something different.

So as soon as he opened his mouth it became obvious that this guy was highly intelligent, had a strong business ethic and was very “likable”.

So as I have learned to observe my own behaviour I realised that I instantly “stepped up” my game in terms of really listening to what these guys were saying. It changed from “another meeting” to a meaningful interaction between people who were connecting at a deeper level.

I wonder if I used to do this intuitively and now I know how to listen to myself but it is definitely a skill we can cultivate. try it tomorrow. At work or where ever, look for someone you don’t know well and observe them for a bit. Decide what they will sound like, whether they are clever or thick, sophisticated or simple, nasty or kind.
Then strike up a conversation and see how low your preconception score might be.

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

Well yesterdays blog created a lot of emails from people sharing their view on things. You all seem averse to using the comments button on the blog but that’s ok.

Anyway Shane sent me a story too good to not share with you, it si incredibly accurately sums up our kiwi mindset!!

Be responsible for yourself!

MODERN VERSION:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.

TV1, TV3 and Maori TV show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. New Zealand is stunned by the sharp contrast.

How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?

Kermit the Frog appears on Good Morning with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’

Sue Bradford stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’

Gordon Copeland then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.

Michael Cullen exclaims in an interview with John Campbell that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share as the ant is too much of a “Rich Prick.”

Finally, the Labour Party drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

Winston gets his old law firm to represent the grasshopper in a defamation suit against the ant, and the case is tried before a panel of judges that Helen appointed from a list of single-parent welfare recipients.

The ant loses the case.

The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.

The ant has disappeared in the snow.

The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighbourhood.

MORAL OF THE STORY:

Be VERY careful how you vote in 2008!!

Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

My apologies for being blogless for a few days.
if The Gold coast has 1 fault it is that the wireless internet in some of the buildings is terrible, so it got too hard to get things posted.

Anyway back to the cold and wet of home.

I met some amazing individuals on this trip, many of them ex kiwi’s. And not one of them would ever come back to NZ.
Not because of the weather, not because of the money, but because of the attitude of the media, the government and a lot of people.

This is of course what I keep saying but I did think how sad it was that so many good people leave our shores unnecessarily. And these are clever entrepreneurial, job creating types that we desperately need.

I know how hard it is to influence a culture. My years in Fiji has taught me that it takes a whole generation to begin to impact a culture and in many ways you can’t shift a mindset nationally. It just doesn’t happen.
In the Bible there is a verse that talked about “All Cretans being liars” 200 years ago.
We talk about Japanese being inscrutable, Fijians being friendly, Germans being industrious etc. etc.

Think of the thousands and thousands of people who have done Anthony Robbins or other NLP type programmes. You would think with so much “happy happy joy joy” floating around we would have achieved Utopia.

No the fact is that we can only change or control ourselves. I can stay in New Zealand and be positive because I choose to be positive and not allow the culture to dictate my thought process or my life. Is it easier to be like that in Australia?, absolutely. Would it be even easier in America?? Absolutely!

But that is not a reason to become negative while I am in New Zealand. And I do notice that people comment on my attitude a lot because it is different. But in many small ways it rubs offf on to others. I find now that my immediate circle of associates is 99% positive inspired motivated people.

So remember when you are tempted to give up or become a whiner that others a re looking AT you and looking TO you. They look at you to see if you have anything they don’t and when they see that you have joy, or happiness or a positive outlook they then look TO you for hope that they can achieve the same state.

So YOU are in control of how YOU will talk, act and treat others.
We are all witnesses and testimonies of what is inside of us.
Make yourself someone worth watching and following.

Stay safe ~ Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz

A 3 hour plane ride and the difference in attitude is incredible.
In the local papers on the Coast this morning some of the headlines are…..

More people (308 per week) call the coast home.
Fastest growing CBD in Queensland, Springfield, has 3 families a DAY moving to the area.
Growing confidence in the region by developers.
Value hunters pounce in current market.
Fantastic opportunities for investors in the current market.

I could go on but the point is the media here and people generally CHOOSE to focus on the positives and look to the future and how to benefit from it.

It’s like having a hot shower after 3 days without water opening the papers here.
I doubt I will ever be able to change the kiwi knocking mentality but I’m going to try by continuing to encourage you guys to be inspired, be encouraging, look for the good.

Because right now in NZ is an enormous opportunity for investors too!!
You only have 6 months to build an untainted buy and hold portfolio, that’s it.
So in September, October and November while things are still doom and gloom and vendors are being smacked around IS THE TIME TO BUY PROPERTY.
And if you wait till after April then you have just created a ten year tax barrier for yourself. But it’s optional!! Get out there today and start looking for your next opportunity!!

Don’t know where to start?? Well have I got a deal for you!!
I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow!!

Stay Safe Dean Letfus @ www.massiveaction.co.nz