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Welcome To Mike's Daily Rant About Rent Guaranteed Investment Property - And How You Can Profit From It

Investing in New Zealand property - especially fully managed, rent guaranteed investment property - has been one of the most rewarding pursuits of my life. It's also been one a lot of fun!

It only seems like yesterday when Sharon (my wife) and I stepped out of our collective comfort zones and took the plunge into the unchartered waters of the "Hackett and Hackett" investment property world".

If you can't swim, don't jump in the deep end…

We didn't just buy ONE… ohhh no… this "aging pom" doesn't do things by halves. We ended up purchasing THREE properties at once! A beautiful little four-bedder in Forrest Hill on Auckland's North Shore, and two others in Birkdale and Beachhaven

Was it a smart thing to do?

Absolutely!

Did we know what we were doing?

Absolutely not!

We had no idea how to manage investment properties. Yet we tried to cut corners and do it all ourselves. I mean, why pay a property manager to do what WE could do just as easily? Right?

WRONG!

Tenants were put on Earth to drive landlords insane…

The litany of problems we had with tenants, particularly in the Beachhaven and Birkdale properties, drove us to the brink. We didn't have any systems or processes in place to "manage" our properties efficiently. And we certainly didn't have a clue how to tell if a prospective tenant was credit-worthy or even if they were "who they said they were!"

In the end, a duodenal ulcer and one hundred and seventeen sleepless nights later, Sharon and I decided to "toss in the towel" and sell the lot. We'd had more than we could handle - even after just four short months!

That was when our "spot the property deal of a life-time" son - Richard - stepped in and said, "Dad, I'll buy the Forrest Hill property off you and Mum"… and needless to say - given how we were feeling at the time - "Mum and Dad" gladly obliged (albeit that we were silently terrified Richard would loathe us for all eternity after he assumedly discovered that property investment wasn't all it was cracked up to be).

Of course, that was back in 1993.

It's not the TIMING of the market… it's the time IN the market that counts…

Today, 14 years later, that same little reason for several litres of antacid Forrest Hill property is conservatively valued at more than $437,000…and to think we were scared we'd actually "stitched up" our own son when he bought it from us!

In so many ways, that first heart-stopping, hair-graying (see photo) nerve-fraying foray into the Auckland property market led us to where we are today… standing at the helm of one of the most promising property investment companies in New Zealand - Compass Property Investments.

Who would've thought, eh?

I guess the lessons learned from those first "ill-prepared dabblings" into the Auckland property market had a far greater impact on our investment philosophy in later years than we could've ever anticipated at the time.

If you want to make BIG PROFITS from property, leave your emotions at home…

No amount of human emotion has any part to play in the financial outcome of an investment - let alone in property. Just because WE had no idea what we were doing in those early days didn't mean the universal concept of property investment was completely null and void!

Remember - Property always trends higher over time…

If (ONLY) we'd held on to those two other properties in Beachhaven and Birkdale, we'd have more than three quarters of a million dollars in additional equity that we DON'T have now!

Bugger!

Work smarter not harder - penny pinching will get you nowhere…

If we'd stopped trying to save a few lousy dollars in management fees and handed over the property management / tenant finding side of the business to a professional property manager right from the start, we wouldn't have had anywhere near the stress we ended up with. In fact, chances are, we'd still have all three properties today!

The best locations don't give a toss what worked in grandad's day…

If only we'd managed to rise above the naive, old-fashioned belief that "one should only invest in property that one can drive past every day", we certainly wouldn't have limited our choice of locations to just the North Shore!

Ok, do you see where this is going?

Can you identity with at least some of the mistakes Sharon and I made when we first started out as property investors?

Has it dawned on you yet that "investing in property is no different to investing in your own business - no matter how much money you put in, the business will eventually fail if it's poorly managed for long enough?"

This now brings me to to the reason for this blog and why I stress the benefits of professionally managed, rent guaranteed property to everyone I talk to…

Basically, I want YOU to learn from OUR mistakes. I want to GIVE YOU the best head-start you could ever have, not just in the calibre of the properties you invest in, but in the knowledge and wisdom you gain before you ever outlay a cent.

Sure, this blog will serve to keep both our "newbie" property investors as well as our "property investment veterans" up-to-date with whatever property development project/s they're involved in. But it'll be a whole lot more than that, too…

I'm planning on treating you to:

Podcasts, streaming audio and video presentations, webinars, big-name guest bloggers, free reports in downloadable .pdf format, plus a ton of articles and resources to help you get the most out of your "investment property ventures" over the coming months and years ahead.

If you lead a busy lifestyle, why not save endless hours of time each month by simply subscribing to my RSS feed. That way you'll always receive any new "Hot Property Talk" articles, blog posts, audio and / or video links via email - without having to visit the blog each day to stay informed!

Oh, and one last thing…

Just in case you're wondering, our son Richard now owns FOUR investment properties in Auckland. He also has the "seven-figure proceeds" from the recent sale of his two London properties sitting nice and snuggly in his bank account.

Why am I telling you this?

Why do you think - I'm jealous!!!!

He's only just turned 35!