Archive for Christian property Investor
Don’t forget……
Posted by: | Commentswhat this weekend is really all about!
Stay Inspired and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus
Permanent decisions
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Thought for today:
Never make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions. We can;t control our emotions, they just happen to us don;t they. And most of the time we are being influenced by them because that is part of being a thinking feeling being.
Yet we often make decisions we later regret because those decisions are permanent and not what we would have done if we were less angry/sad/happy.
Think about it for a minute, from unwanted pregnancies to destroyed marriages and financial ruin. Permanent decisions made under the influence of a temporary emotion.
To stop this damage I am learning how to make temporary decisions so that I can check my emotions out. In stead of !$^&$^%#&$^ and ^%$#*!%&#)* to you too I now say:
“Let’s discuss this later on when I can think more clearly about it”.
Recognising our emotional barometer is a great place to start. None of us are going to make rational decisions in the heat of an emotional meltdown so once we establish that as a fact in our lives we can learn to say to ourselves I must not make any decisions right now until I am calmed down, sober, whatever it may be.
This has been quite a revelation to me today, not sure why.
I guess as I get older I understand the word permanent a bit better 
A Championship Team will always beat a team of champions.
Join our championship team HERE
People are finally getting it :-)
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My life, like yours, was, is and will be an adventure. Since entering the property world it has been quite a ride but it is never dull.
I have spent a lot of my time over the last few years looking for answers. Whether it’s how to help someone maximise their returns or how to dig someone out of a hole it is a constant search for solutions.
The recession pushed me into looking at things that I now regret, trying to solve the cashflow drama. The strategies were not necessarily bad ideas but the people attached to them in some cases were.
The one shining light in all of that however has been the US property market. Many clients and friends are now reinvesting again because the numbers work, the problems are manageable and the results are better than anything to be found elsewhere. 2 years on it simply works!
Recently I discovered a legit way to basically 100% finance ongoing purchases by recycling the initial property purchase money over and over.
And being non guaranteed bank lending with high yield makes it, well as close to risk free as I have ever seen anything.
And the overseas fear of the market is finally giving way to an understanding that the Americans problems are our solution, providing you know what you are doing.
So with my clients it has taken 2 years of education and enough proof from third parties to shift the “culture” if you like. End result is more and more people are solving their cash flow issues.
Now your problem might not be cashflow, but whatever it is, the answer may be found in exposing yourself to something outside your comfort zone.
I have often said you need to get out of your comfort zone because that’s where all the money is but the truth is that answers are often found in areas we have historically avoided.
It has been amazing to see people who would never invest in the US ringing me excitedly to add to their portfolios 2 years later.
So what keeps you awake at night and what have you overlooked/ignored/run away from that may hold the answers to your questions??
Now there’s a question
Dean
“A champion team will always beat a team of champions”,
We’d love you to be on our US champion team, next US investing Webinar HERE
Hubble, bubble, toil and trouble
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Interesting times here in New Zealand. We can see the beginnings of a bubble in Auckland and Christchurch as the Auckland rental market is under supplied, caused in part by so many Mainlanders joining the JAFA brigade.
And in Christchurch the beginning of the rebuild plus all the vultures and speculators looking for how to profit from the rebuild are fueling extraordinary interest there.
Of course this is in stark contrast to the ever deepening recessionary pressures both here and globally which begs the question:
What exactly will happen if one market is so called booming while the country is going backwards. Is it possible for these 2 cities to be leaping ahead property wise defying the rest of the nation?
I guess the simple answer is yes it can happen as we are already seeing it happen in suburbs like Grey Lynn where houses are fetching mad money and competition is fierce at auctions.
But as investors what should we do?
Let’s take a pessimistic view that the country/world is going to be a mess for another 5 to 10 years. If we have a bubble in Auckland and prices increase we can potentially profit by trading in a rising market. That is childs play. But the enormous risk is that the bubble bursts driven by banks not lending to the levels properties are selling for in Auckland or an ever worsening economic outlook causing lending to tighten again.
Most active investors seem to be doing one of the following two:
Running around in Manurewa and Otara and other very low socio economic areas buying and renoing or buying and holding.
I think this will ultimately be a disaster for most of them. We sold out of South Auckland as soon as we could and would never go back there. Maintenance, rental issues and most importantly sliding values make it a very bad idea. (NOTE: I do not include Papakura in South Auckland, that market has consistently performed amazingly well.)
OR they are basically doing nothing. I think this is quite a good strategy right now. Sit out things in NZ or look offshore is not a bad idea. I talk to agents daily and professional finders around the country and the overall outlook is somewhere between muted and terrible so we can’t afford to get bullish yet.
Keep your powder dry!! Don’t be rushing in in New Zealand, there is much uncertainty ahead!
Dean
PS: Our next training webinar is going to be “HOW to research a property/area in the USA”. Book HERE
One thing that never changes is the fact that everything changes
Posted by: | CommentsI am sitting looking outside at the rain and wind and thinking, it is February, we haven’t had a summer in NZ and it is going to be autumn in 4 days, what the $)@!&$(_&$_ is up with our weather.
Well we can be sure it isn’t global warming. In fact I think it is very “funny” that the GW theorists have had to rename it climate change because people are freezing to death on several continents right now.
Anyway I wasn’t going to talk about the weather but the fact that our lives, like our weather, can and will change.
The Bible talks about there being a time for every purpose under heaven. Now our actions will impact our experience no doubt but we do need to understand that our life will be a series of cycles.
I have been from zero to hero and back again several times in my life and I am not 50 yet. I am learning that sometimes you just have to hang on for the ride, knowing that this valley will eventually turn into another mountain.
And you know sometimes IN SPITE of our efforts and starategising and goal setting and hard work, life just comes along and says “Suck on this for a while”. And that’s because sometimes life knows better than we do.
The only people I could never learn anything from were those people who had led charmed lives. They had 1 years life experience repeated 20, 30 or 50 times. They knew nothing much about anything except having a good time.
As I grow older I find myself drawn to those with more scars. There is something comforting about someone who walks with a limp, because you get to learn what they discovered in the process of that failure and how they recovered.
In it after all has been my favourite song for nearly 30 years. It sums up the above perfectly.
Enjoy………….
PS: Don’t forget our next USA CASHFLOW Webinar next week!
Perspective
Posted by: | CommentsI have always been fascinated with perspective in art and life.
Whether it’s something like this:
which is funny and clever, well brilliant actually, right through to people’s perspective on life and how that affects them.
For example it has taken me 2 years to change my perspective fully on property investing because I had to reframe my world view to allow for the US market. Even though I have done a lot of investing in New Zealand it has taken me a lot of “work” to stop being surprised at being able to buy houses for only 50K instead of 300K. And to stop looking at 10 to 15% net returns with a “too good to be true” attitude.
I have been amazed at how long it has taken me and just how hard it was to reprogramme myself so that I could look at this new market and learn to benefit from it without being starry eyed. And what I also learned was that cliche’s can be dangerous programming also.
I have often said and heard it quoted ten gazillion times: “If it sounds too good to be true it probably is”.
And in many ways that statement is absolutely true. HOWEVER it is true positionally but not situationally. What do I mean? Well avoiding shonky deals by applying this principle will keep you out of a lot of trouble, but if you uplift a set of rules from one country and drop them down in another country, change the situation in other words, then this principle itself becomes silly.
For example if you were offered a twenty five percent return property today in Auckland you would know immediately that there was an error in somebody’s numbers or there was something seriously weird/dodgy going on. But that very level of return is on offer every day of the week in the USA so it is no longer too good to be true, it is situation normal.
I have used the US example because it has been my recent journey but you will have mindsets and stories embedded in your mind that affect/protect and limit you everyday.
My encouragement to you this morning is to stretch yourself mentally. What is your biggest worry or daily issue, your reprogramming needs to start right there. What are you believing about yourself that is a lie??
Discover it, expose it, and then start changing it!!
Get Going and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus!!
The hype has started, DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE
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The media is full of good news this week regarding housing recovery. Which is nice and warm and fuzzy for realtors but doesn’t match up with reality much. I know this is my pet “hate” but it is so prevalent I think we need to keep battling it.
You see the people making these comments are looking at data, not talking to buyers, sellers and agents. And the problem with data, especially in a depressed market, is it can and does lie. I covered this in some detail HERE and yet we still get swayed when we see this stuff in the paper.
I currently am involved in 2 sales of properties in Auckland and the agents are struggling to get anything on paper at any level. I have friends with a gorgeous new build in Palmy who can;t even get an insulting offer on paper. Agents are leaving the industry in droves in Auckland and sales are still very, very bad, except for certain specific property types in very specific areas.
So don’t panic, you are not out of time to be bargain hunting, just keep looking and be patient. Articles written by coal face investors are worth taking notice of, journos, economists and marketers can and should be ignored. We are about to see a whole lot more pain in the USA and China is going to join the party, Australia is finally popping and ALL THAT will keep things down here for some time.
So be patient, stick to your rules but also……
Get Going and Stay Safe ~ Dean Letfus
