Investing

Overseas Property Investment and Tax Deductions

Last year in September I had gone to India to meet and greet my family and friends, also to attend a family wedding. It was also an opportunity for us to introduce my daughter and celebrate her first birthday there.

I have been to India many times, almost every year but this time it was different financially. My long-term plans have always been to go back to India and live there for rest of my life.

Part of the plan was to buy a home and be mortgage free before I go back. If I want to maintain same lifestyle and standard of living, if not same at least to a comfortable extent then cost of living in India is not that cheap.

Even though I always wanted to buy a home in India, but never had I planned to buy one at this time of my life. Especially when I have two houses on mortgage that I need to repay, I don’t believe I am over exposed but I am stretched financially.

My intention of buying a property overseas has led to maintaining keen interest on the property market in Hyderabad, even more after the state got partitioned.

Are Self-storage Units a Good Investment?

For the past few weeks I have been on lookout for my next investment, that’s when self-storage investment caught my attention. I had been curious and been doing lot of research on this, I haven’t yet decided though to invest my money on these eggs or not.

I have almost paid off my mortgage, which means there is a whole set of equity sitting with the bank and doing nothing. I would like to use this equity on home as surety and purchase an investment property without laying any cash on the table.

I have purchased properties before but all of them being residential, its challenging to buy a commercial property as banks don’t lend as much as they would on a residential property (let’s say they see residential property more bank friendly) and the rules of investing is a bit different from that of residential property….

6 most important lessons that i have learnt hard way while buying property in Melbourne Photo: Mikael Miettinen

If you take into account the wealth of all Australians, majority of that wealth is in property segment. Ironically the reason is not because properties perform better than other investments but rather most of us (including me) invest with the belief that properties are safe bet and will always win in long run.

Most of us invest our hard-earned money into properties because we don’t know anything else that is less risky than property and return mediocre (compared to other investments) returns.

I am not saying money can’t be made in property market, I think the dynamics have shifted quite a bit since 2008 global financial crisis. Pre GFC you could throw a dart, buy a property and potentially double it in 7 years.

Property investment in Melbourne has changed significantly, there are suburbs that have doubled and suburbs that have barely moved, and I believe it has a lot to do with Chinese investors.

I am one of those investors who have purchased property in no growth suburb in 2010. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have done things differently if I knew what I know now.

I have learnt lessons hard way, I have put together the list of things that I think we need to be aware of before buying a property. The following are the observations from my experience and feel would have done lot better if I were to know these before….

How to prepare your business for sale- by owner

No matter how much you love your business, there might be a day when you want to either pass this to your successor or put it on sale.

Everyday grinding might place the owner to be complacent at what the buyer needs or looks for in a business. Owners might not actually look into preparing business for sale until they have engaged with buyers, most of the time this will make the owner leaving large amount of money on the table.

If running day-to-day business is one thing then preparing it for sale is whole new art. There are many strategies you could use to sell your business like you could use Family succession, Management buy out, franchise or you could find a potential internal manager to buy it from you. No matter what strategy you use, to get the best out of this deal you need to prepare your business for sale.

Executive Management Team

Significant amount of time is required to build a team, in the initial stages of establishing company, you might go across teams, that are difficult to manage, non-collaborative and non-accountable to business. Over a period of trial and error, you have built a management team that’s effective at doing what they do. You have invested significant amount of time and effort in building this profitable team, buyers prefer to have a business that runs on its, demanding minimum time from the owner….

Complete review on Steve McKnight’s RESULTS mentoring program -Part 2

If you have come to this review post from Google or other sources I suggest read Part1 of this review before this post. I would also request reader to pardon me if I have miss quoted the dates or any other info. I have gone through my emails, journal and all RESULTS documentation that i hold, in order to give you as much accurate information as I can, it’s been more than 5 years that I have joined this course, my memory has faded a bit since then.

If you read the book “From 0 to 130 Properties in 3.5 Years” by Steve McKnight he has been famous for finding properties that are positive in cash flow. The book documented his real life examples accumulating 130 properties, going forward there was one more book released later called “From 0 to 260+ Properties in 7 Years”. If you haven’t read those two books I strongly recommend them they are good books to read.

Positive cash flow strategy

The strategy he used to build his 130/260 properties is by identifying and buying only properties that are positive in cash flow. Positive cash flow is the strategy where in your property returns cash to your pocket from day one after deducting interest and other expenses.

There is quick 11 second formula that he introduces to decide if a property is a positive cash flow or not.

Purchase price of positive cash property= (Weekly Rent/2)* 1000

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