Investing in property is made a lot easier once you’ve got a team of a-grade advisors assembled. This video discusses the types of people that you might need as you build out your portfolio.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT
In order to be a successful property investor, one of the things you need to get right really early on is picking your team. You need to be surrounded by good people. You can’t do it all yourself. So in my team, the people that I lean on to help me out as I go along, I’ve got a mortgage broker who specialises in investment property, so anytime I’m sort of looking at a property I’m sort of thinking two or three steps ahead, and I need my broker to also be doing the same thing. So if we’re looking at one particular property, I might say to him, “Look, you know we’re looking at this one, “but then in a year’s time “or two year’s time or something, “I’m thinking about doing x, y and z.” And that’s important to do that because you don’t want to have any sort of secrets with these guys, right? They’re helping you manage your portfolio, and ultimately helping you grow wealth. So you’ve gotta be pretty up front with them and tell them exactly what you’re thinking. So plans don’t need to be set in stone, but it’s very important that you do tell them because they might have some really good ideas about how to structure that, which line of products to use, which line of products not to use, right? So that’s a mortgage broker. The other one is obviously an accountant. You certainly need that. I mean, Australia’s tax laws, I have heard, are the most complex in the world. So you certainly want to lean on somebody who’s across property investing. Ideally they’re an investor themselves and they need to really be able to go on that journey with you because some accountants aren’t as across property as perhaps they should be So pretty much any time you’re looking at a potential property, you want to be looping in your accountant as soon as you can. It’s really important to understand things about how that impacts your negative gearing position or your land tax position, structuring it from sort of asset protection and income distribution and all these things into the future. That’s one that I lean on really heavily. I encourage you to do so as well. Who else do you need? When you’re actually purchasing the property, obviously you’re going to need the help of a solicitor or a conveyancer who’s licensed in that particular state, so for myself, it’s not the case that I just have one solicitor I go to. I need to know conveyancers or solicitors in each state that I’m considering buying in, so you want to sort that out beforehand as well so they can review contracts for you, look at certain things for you, and then obviously help you through that settlement or that property purchase process. Also once you are sort of looking at purchasing, then you’re going to need somebody to do the pest and building inspection, any other inspections you’re looking at doing. Ideally, they’re local specialists as well, so who I might use in Brisbane is obviously going to be very different to somebody I would use in Sydney, so again make sure you tee those guys up ahead of time, give them plenty of opportunity, or plenty of lead time I should say, when you’re looking to get them through to inspect a property for you. And then obviously as early as you can, you want to be speaking to a trusted property manager. So maybe interview two or three of those, make sure you’re comfortable with how they operate their office, their systems, their software, their approach to property management. And get some good rental appraisals on what you’re looking at. And once you’ve purchased the asset, then you’re going to lean on them pretty heavily as you go through, so they’re obviously a very integral part of your team. There’s other professionals you will need potentially as you go along, people like town planners, builders, and all these other things, just depending on your strategy. But as a sort of a long-term buy and hold investor myself, the key part of my team is those guys I mentioned, so mortgage broker, property-savvy accountant, obviously property managers for each of the properties, conveyancers, solicitor, and then again building and pest inspectors as you go along.
