Ask Nicola

This is the page where you can ask us your most burning Wealth Creation questions – about any of the Lanes of The Wealth Highway.

• Property
• Internet
• Business
• The Stockmarket

We particularly welcome questions from women, and want to assure you that there are NO stupid questions – we all had to start somewhere with learning about making money and clever investing.

Name Email Country Burning question about wealth creation?

House Prices – Latest!

Nicola says: I dont’ really need to comment do I?  Should I email to friend’s bf or just not bother? LOL

28/07/08

The National Housing Federation have forecast that house prices in England & Wales will rise by 25% by 2013.

The federation states that while there will be a slight reduction in 2008 of 4.4% and a smaller reduction of 2.1% that house prices will quickly recover and will be rising by 9% in 2012 and 2013.

It states that one of the reasons for the growth bounce-back is that there is a great demand for housing and this demand has not diminished but in fact will grow. The demand will be partly prompted by the cutback of new houses on the market as house builders mothball and delay projects during the current housing uncertainty. People are also living longer and the high rate of divorce continues to prompt demand for even more housing as couples split up and need two homes instead of one.

The Federation predicts that the cost of an average home in England by 2013 will be £274,700.

Therefore investors need to consider 2008 as the window of opportunity to buy property as cheaply as possible. There are still a large number of motivated sellers but as soon as the market starts to recover then these sellers will be more tempted to wait or increase their prices. It is probably that the current buyer’s market will only last for another 12 months so investors should consider buying now rather than paying higher prices in future years.

http://talkbuy2let.woofti.co.uk/news/

Wealth Coach Diaries: Nicola’s Week

MYTHS

Check out the property report above from Peter Stanley which explodes some of the myths going round about property at the moment. I think I’m going to print it off and just hand it out at dinner parties when people start to talk to me about property.

I’ll just say “are you an investor then? No? Oh, well you might like to read what an ex-business bank manager and now owner of 30 plus investment properties has to say about it all. Chablis? Lovely!”

MY VIRAL SPIRAL

I’m really getting into the MyViralSpiral system having been on the Freedom weekend, talked to Steve – the expert now – and read the massive manual about five times. Talk about slow learner, which I’m not usually, but this is testing my non-detail orientated brain big time! I can see the prize though and that’s wonderfully motivating.

The principle of the system is that you create a load of free, good value reports (or use the ones supplied) and in those reports, are links to what is known as “back end products” which can be yours (if you have one) or someone else’s (for example a relevent and related product you have found on Clickbank or Paydotcom).

Those free reports are like lots of little fishing nets out on the web, and attract a zazillion potential future customers (PFCs) into one autoresponders system, which then follows up your PFCs over a period of time.

You can have unlimited reports, unlimited follow up, and unlimited backend product recommendations.

Genius bit #1

When your PFC downloads their free report, they are offered the chance to give it away from their own website or ezine, and build their own mailing list, completely free of charge, via the system. This is very attractive to people just starting out in internet marketing.

Genius bit #2

The even more genius bit of it is, that when your PFC downloads the second report, they are double opted in to your main mailing list, if you have one, and when they download the third report, they are double opted in to the mailing list of the person above you (the person who introduced you to the Viral Spiral system).

That’s it, after that they can download unlimited free reports with no more opt in.

So…..they are building their list, and every second download they are building their external list, and every third download they are building your external mailing list.

EVEN BETTER…..they get the chance to rebrand the reports so that they earn the commission from the back end products rather than you, when they give them away from their site, via a simple online rebranding process.

Read more..

4 Deadly Myths About Property

Peter Stanley, ex Business Bank Manager, professional property investor, author and great friend of The Money Gym, has written a great report that puts some perspective on the property market which by all media reports is “crashing and burning” at the moment (July 2008). We had a long chat after I read it, and he has given me permission to share it with you.

Peter says: “Regular readers will know how much I dislike media reports on the property market, as they’re often based on a single piece of data, or an opinion that’s passed off as fact, when most articles closely resemble works of fiction.

You only need to watch the evening news to realise that good news is in short supply, not because good things don’t happen, but because bad news sells. Sad but true. If you don’t believe me, next time you’re listening to the news, make a note of every good story – you won’t need a big piece of paper !

So, for anyone who’d like to know what’s really happening out there, here’s the most common myths;

Houses aren’t selling / people aren’t buying

Whilst there was a lull for a couple of months, houses are selling again.

That isn’t an opinion, but fact.

As you can imagine, I get to speak to a lot of estate agents and watch a lot of houses, waiting for the sellers expectations to reach mine and I’m seeing more and more houses bought between those times.

In fact, I was surprised recently (and not much surprises me these days) when I overheard a conversation between two estate agents about their sales figures. One of them had sold seven houses in ten days, which would be a good result in any market – perhaps someone should tell the Daily Mail & The Express.

It gets better though, as seven sales was for one of the estate agents in the office, not the whole office, so even if the rest of the staff had only sold another three houses, that’s a house sale a day !

No-one can get a mortgage

Whilst mortgages are harder to get than they were, there are still mortgages to be had.

If you haven’t got a deposit, or have a poor credit record, then you’re likely to struggle, but this is a knee jerk reaction to the Banks’ over eager lending policy of recent years.

I recently went to see a house where the owner was about to get repossessed, to talk about a deal……

Read more..

Property Boom Kills Entrepreneurship

Over at The Business In General Blog there is an interesting article about property booms stifling business start ups.

“The negative relationship between property investment and entrepreneurship is not immediately obvious. However, the recent property booms in Ireland and the U.K. (amongst others) helps to demonstrate this relationship. In recent years, both countries have experienced phenomenal growth in house prices. That is, until everything came grinding to a halt at the end of last year. [1]

The net effect of this boom has been one where the incentive to become truly entrepreneurial was significantly reduced – why try and create a new product or service if there was a guaranteed high return from property development? Similarly, from an investment point of view, why consider any other investment opportunity if there was a perceived guaranteed high return from property development?

In Ireland, the short-term results of the boom were a huge increase in people ‘getting into property’ and in the U.K. every second TV show on Channel 4 seemed to focus on property, e.g. Location Location Location, Property Ladder, A Place in the Sun and Grand Designs. Now all manner of problems are coming home to roost as the market collapses and the scale of consumer debt is becoming obvious. [2]

The Irish Government was happy to continue to fuel the boom, rezoning land for development, and cosying up to property developers [3], given how the huge property related taxes were contributing to their coffers. As David McWilliams, a leading Irish economist points out, a national focus on property is damaging as a ‘country which experiences a property boom turns in on itself. The reason for this is very simple, property cannot be traded. Bricks and mortar are tied to the land and the land is fixed and can’t be exported. Therefore, the discipline of international competition is lost.’

I would go further than this, it also destroys enterprise – there have been countless examples of successful businesses in Ireland shutting down because there is a greater return to be had from selling the property for redevelopment than continuing the business as a going concern. [4]

As someone passionate about entrepreneurship however, I take the view that every cloud has a silver lining, and that the property collapse could prove to be an excellent stimulus for entrepreneurship.

As Michael O’Leary, M.D of low cost European airline Ryanair recently claimed, “I love recessions,” he says. “Recessions are much more fun. Good times are a pain in the bum. Good times, any idiot can make money. In recessions, the good get up off their backsides and start doing the kind of sensible things that they should do all of the time. It’s good for business”. [5]

Now that ‘property development’ is no longer a safe bet, and the Irish and U.K Governments realise that the boom is over, it is likely that entrepreneurship, in its purist form, should take off once again. Those who stretched themselves with high mortgages will face stark options: sell up at a loss, or try to make ends meet. For some, second jobbing will be their only option and this will also help to fuel the passions of entrepreneurship in people. It is also hoped that the respective Governments will play their role, after all their taxation policies and planning policies have helped to fuel the boom in the first place.

Alan Gleeson
Palo Alto Software

Credit Repair With Rent2Own

For people who have a bad credit the rent to own home facility provides solace in the fact that they can repair their bad credit while in the process of buying the house. The rent to own home policy is a good one and helps the buyers purchase a house by renting it first.

Some people choose the option of a rent to own home in order to check out the neighborhood, before committing to the property. But there are other cash strapped people with bad credit for whom the rent to own home is the only way to buy their dream homes, because of the fact that they are unable to get home loans because of their bad credit.

There are a huge number of home owners who have found the home of their choice by the process of rent to own. Leasing the house before practically owning it is fast becoming the preferred choice of transaction among most people.

Suppose you have a bad credit history, then it is really hard to get finance from the banks to buy a house, under such a scenario the only option left is to go through the process of rent to own. In the process of rent to own contrary to the outright sales the buyer does not need to make a huge down payment at first, in fact the down payments are very small indeed. This makes it easier on the pocket for the first time investors as well, and the other fact that bout fifty percent of the rent paid by the prospective buyer is accredited to the rent credit account lowers the price of the house substantially.

People who have bad credit can always choose a leasing option where they have a longer option period , making it easier for them to repair their credit while being in the process of buying the house.

Courtesy :  Century 21 /HT Brown Realty

The good news is that Rent To Own (Rent2Own) is becoming more common in the UK, with a network of property investors who offer properties under this scheme growing all the time. 

Rick Otton, who pioneered the system in the USA and then Australia, mentored David Lee in the UK, and having got the process right over the last three years, David and Rick are now rolling out a tuition programme which is very exciting, and just right for the current market conditions.  First time buyers and novice property investors are struggling to get mortgages, and the Rent To Own / House For A Pound techniques are allowing investors to turn negative cashflow properties into positive cashflow, and allowing first time buyers and aspiring property investors with no deposit and no credit rating to find out how to buy a property (or several) for next to nothing.  This is not “no money down” but damn close to it!

The Money Gym sees this as a perfect complement to long term investing, and so we will be presenting the concept at our next Property workshop on 14th June.  Find out more here http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/mgpresents/property2.htm

Property: Top 3 Ways?

When I first started the Money Gym, and wrote the “Financial Intelligence 101″ tips, that grew into The Money Gym ebook, one of the most popular sections was the Property Investing Section.  Everyone wanted to know about investing in, and making money from property.

In the early days, when we used to host the Money Gym workshops at The Acacia, my much loved boutique hotel and my latest venture into property investing, we used to cover “The Top 10 Ways To Make Money In Property” and we used to simply tell people about them, they used to go off and investigate the one they liked the sound of, then we would coach them from there.

However, one day, a couple of guys came along who blew most of our “Top 10″ out of the water. 

Out of “Top 10 Ways To Make Money In Property” only three of them remain.  Which ones?  Aha, you will have to wait for the next few days to find out that!

After we heard about how these guys invested in property, we simply couldn’t, in all good conscience, just tell folks how they COULD invest in property, but we felt we then had to share how we felt people SHOULD invest in property.

Now this went right against all accepted coaching law and wisdom, I can tell you!

But hey ho!  Wealth coaching has always been different – a mix of training, mentoring and coaching, rather than pure coaching itself.

At The Money Gym, we aim to save you time, money, and stop you making expensive mistakes.

Mistakes like I made with buying that hotel in the first place.  If these two guys, my mates Greg and Andy, had been around in 2003, there is NO WAY they would have let me buy it.  They would have stopped me making THAT half million pound mistake.

Side note:  You will see in this week’s ezine, I talk about the difference between “failure” and a “mistake” and it’s an important distinction to make if you are an entrepreneur.  Essentially, a failure is something that can bury you but you can learn from your mistakes.

That hotel was a mistake – some would definately see it as a failure – but I choose now to see it as a mistake.  A very large one true….. 

One that taught me a VERY LARGE LESSON!  In fact, SEVERAL very large lessons.

I will never forget the moment in the garden of The Acacia, when Greg or Andy uttered the immortal words that made me realise that buying it had been a mistake and told me why.

1.  This hotel will never make you the amount of profit that would make all the work you put into it, worth it.
2.  You have a lot of your own money in this business and you will struggle to ever get it out.
3.  When you have had enough and you do want to sell it, nobody will buy it, unless you find someone as daft as you were, to buy it in the first place.

Hmmmmm…..

They like straight talking, those two.  And that is one of the things I most value about Greg & Andy. So many people won’t tell you what you need to hear.  Nobody around me in those days did, that’s for sure.  Hence the mistakes.

So, five years on, here we are, still making mistakes but not so many, and certainly not failing, and together with Steve and Judith, two more straight talkers, they are still two of my closest friends and mentors.  Whenever I want some advice about business and life, I go straight to Greg, and to Andy for property market / business marketing / creative / internet input.

So you can imagine how thrilled I am that Greg still comes to London, to present for The Money Gym on property investing.

I can’t imagine how much longer he will do that, as we are pretty much the only presenting he does outside their own Open Days.

He’s coming to the Southwark Rose on 14th June and really, you should be there. 

* If you have questions about the current property market, you should be there.

* If you have questions about your business proposition, you should be there.

* If you just want to see a down to earth, authentic, funny, FANTASTIC speaker, you should be there.

* If you want to recharge your wealth creation batteries, and hang out with some like minded people, you should be there.

That’s five “shoulds” in five lines, I’m about to get struck off the Eurocoach List!

Book your place here – still some Early Birds left as I’m late promoting this due to half term.

http://www.TheMoneyGym.com/MGPresents/property2.htm

See you there!

Nicola

p.s.  Greg always sells out fast so get your space booked now.

Playing Property Snakes & Ladders

The rather interesting headline in todays Worthing Property Weekly was…”A Return To A More Steady Market”

Damn, damn, damn!  We all wanted another year of doom and gloom about house prices – never have there been so many empty houses with motivated sellers and prices being slashed.

The article goes on to say “The property market is correcting itself rather than heading for a spectacular crash, according to the National Association of Estate Agents.  It based it’s claims on information contained in the latest report by the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors…….The house price falls are modest and the picture is still patchy with some areas of the country finding it tougher than others….credit crunch affected confidence….underlying factors that support property market remain:  low unemployment, historically low interest rates and a pent up demand for houses.”

As I say, Damn, Damn, Damn!  I was rather hoping for those 15-30% drops my friends (non-property investing) boyfriend is confidently predicting and I told you about last week.  On her usual entertaining note, Judith has written about her personal rather up and down property investing story here.

“My history with property investing is somewhat checkered to say the least. In 1979 my Dad lent me £500 towards buying my first home which cost £9,000 and on which Ken Livingstone, then Leader of the GLC, gave me a 100% mortgage. I sold the flat in 1983 for £21,000 and bought a house costing £43,000. I sold that in a sealed bid in 1987 for about £85,000 and bought a house for £125,000 and then rented it out in 1990 as an HMO (house of multiple occupancy) even before we knew what such a thing was, and bought a flat to live in costing another £125,000. So at that point I owned two properties worth a quarter of a million, following nothing better than instinct, naivete and native cunning.

And then interest rates went to 18% and I struggled manfully with the cashflow of my business in difficult market conditions and to pay both mortgages for about three years until I finally caved in and in 1992 both my homes were re-possessed and I found myself in debt to the tune of about £300,000 and facing bankruptcy. Snakes and Ladders. Back to Zero. Er, make that £300k below zero.

So, if I suffered so badly in the last “crash”, how are things different now?  Why am I buying, buying, buying and more to the point, how am I doing it?”

(Nicola’s note:  Our next Money Gym Presents day is on Property, and not only will the best thing since vienetta Ice Cream be presenting there – Greg Ballard – but Judith and myself will be sharing the “Top Five All Time Ways To Make Money From Property” – find out more here.) 

Judith says:  One of those ways is something we only came across this year, but has blown us – and many of our Money Gym clients – away.  Dave & Rick’s Cashflow Investor plan means you don’t acquire more assets – or “slumbering giants” as I call them – and don’t get me wrong… you do need some slumbering giants.

But what if you have no equity to leverage, no inheritance to invest, no savings deposits and no good credit rating? How are YOU going to make large lumps of cash in the property lane of the Wealth Highway?

Read more..

Despair Of Ever Investing In Property?

This post was written before the demise of Passive Investments.  Read The Latest Money Gym Statement Here>>>>

Every so often a wealth creation concept or different way of doing things comes along, that just blows my mind.

A few years ago, when I came across the way my mates Greg & Andy invest in property, my head nearly exploded with excitement, and I couldn’t wait to share their ideas with my readers.

However, Greg & Andy’s way of doing things does depend on three things

1.  A good credit rating
2.  A pot of cash to use over and over again for deposits / refurb
3.  Ability to get a mortgage (lots of “buy to let” mortgages still ask for proof of earnings)

Now this is great for a large majority of our Money Gym members and hundreds of them have availed themselves of Greg & Andy’s services, via Passive Investments or learned how to do it themselves, via Andy’s book.

BUT………..

I knew there was about 30% of our subscribers who couldn’t “do property” the Passive way, or even buy their own home, due to

1.  No pot of cash
2.  No credit rating
3.  No proof of earnings

Now, I know that there are several other ways to make money from property, without having to buy any yourself, but sadly people just seem to give up at that point, and don’t go on learning about what makes a good property deal, if they haven’t got even one of the above three things in place.

So you can imagine how delighted I was when I met David Lee, via Tamkin Riaz, at the last World Internet Summit.  I really think that the heavens were conspiring that night, because I had met David several times before, but never really fully grasped what he did.

On this occasion, I ended up sitting next to him, his wife and son, in the pub, and out of politeness really, asked him again to tell me what he does…..an hour or so later, I still didn’t really get it, but dimly grasped enough to realise that it was a totally different way of making money from property, and to tell Judith we should invite David to speak for The Money Gym.

In January David did a VERY powerful presentation – and he would be the first to admit he’s quite new to public speaking – and his concept and content blew us away.

Can you imagine being able to make money from property without needing a deposit, a mortgage or a good credit rating?  Where you are not competing with all the “below market value” boys, and where you are not only making big chunks of cash, but helping two sets of people?

Let me repeat that……where you are making what we in the Money Gym call “life changing sums of money” while helping two sets of people.

A geniune win/win/win situation.  It takes a bit of a mind-shift, a bit of a leap of faith, and access to some minor cojones to get started, but if you are open-minded and determined…….

I tell you now, this is dynamite stuff.  Judith and I both love it!

Several Money Gym clients signed up on the spot and we have all been working our way through the materials – the detailed “how to” workbook, the many hours of audio with real people, case studies, and student stories.  I have rarely seen a better put together home study course and the backup support from David is superb.

David is doing a presentation soon, and there will be a very special guest there – Rick Otton.

Rick is the guy who learned how to utilise this way of making money from property, firstly in the USA, then Australia, and he mentored David to make it work here.

I have no idea where Maidenhead is, but, if you have despaired of every becoming a property investor, but you want to be, I suggest you get your map out and make your way there pronto!

http://tinyurl.com/574rzb

Don’t delay, places are limited and David’s last events in Ealing and Manchester sold out very quickly.

Take action now and I personally promise you, you will be amazed!

http://tinyurl.com/574rzb

How To Choose A Red Hot Accountant For Property Investors

Judith says:  If you are a Gold or Silver member of The Money Gym and you attended our “First Wednesday” webinar yesterday (or listened again) you will have heard one of our clients volunteering to let us know about a new, shit-hot accountant she had met who gave her a definitive list of what she could and could not deduct from her tax as a property investor.   If you would like that man’s contact details, please contact me.

Our client is already a very successful professional property investor and she reminded me that this accountant works with one of the large property mentoring groups who have hundreds of clients and so he may be a busy man.   Just a warning, for what that’s worth and also a reminder from me that if you are a pro in property like our client, then this is just the sort of guy you need.

However, my own accountant, who is by no means either an investor in property himself or an “expert” in this sort of thing, quickly, easily and cheaply munched up the financial reports provided to me by Passive Investments who are building my property portfolio for me and added in my own spreadsheet for my single BTL which I manage myself and was able to produce timely and accurate information for my tax return.   Horses for courses.

So how do you choose an accountant who is right for you, your investments and your business?   A few pointers from me and I speak as an ex-accountant.

You want an accountant who ….

Read more..

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