I know there are plenty of overseas opportunities out there which give you 30 days free use a year, but how strong are these as investment opportunities and should you be governed by this or not?

I think the first thing to look into is what you expect to gain out of overseas property investment?

• Medium to long term capital growth
• Rental Yield
• Buy to sell opportunity
• An investment to holiday in as well

Now if your overall aim is to make money from this overseas investment then you should probably take it that if you can get an element of “free holiday” a year it will be a bonus. As far as looking into the individual overseas investment opportunities available I will not go into specific countries now.

What I will say is that I have been investing in the UK for the last 4 years and can tell you that the tried and tested methods of spotting a good opportunity are really not that different wherever you invest. Look at the historical capital growth, the comparables in the area, rental comparables, speak to rental agents about the occupancy rate for these overseas investment opportunities.

All of these are points which are very easy to do in the UK but I think a lot of investors feel it is too hard to do the same on overseas property. If you start your due diligence with a list of points that you need to satisfy before you proceed, and not stopping until you fulfil all of these points then you shouldn’t go far wrong.

English is 2nd most widely spoken language in the world so you should be able to find someone that can help you with most overseas investments. Dig as far as you can into the history of the site you are looking at, if possible look on forums where overseas investors have purchased.

You really can do the same level of due diligence on overseas property as you can in the UK, it may take longer but it is possible. Don’t take any other person of companies word on the overseas opportunity you are looking at, remember due diligence is key!

This guest post was written by Dan Chamberlain. If you have any questions or responses to this article, please post a comment below.

Various Friends and Family members have pensions through work, they pay in around £300 per month and this gives you a pension of around £108,000 of your own money if you work there 30 years. Now say the company you work for matches that money, that’s £216,000, after 30 years of work and an annual pension of just £10,800!

Ok, say I can show you how to have a decent sized pension and you needn’t put anymore than around £300 in… interested? The Answer is Property Investment, more specifically Buy to Let.

Take a £200,000 flat in Manchester. Buy at a 15% discount (lots of these deals around!)

Rent at £1000 pcm.
Management fee of £100 pcm
Take home £900 pcm.
Buy to Let Mortgage at 5.8% of £200,000 = £1,185 repayment pcm.

This will cost you £285 per month.

Say property goes up a conservative 5% per annum over the next 30 years. In 2037 that same property should be worth £864,388 and you will own it outright! As far as rental income is concerned. Taking a rental increase of 5% per annum you should receive around £4321 pcm or £51,852 per year.

Now I know that your pension scheme will also increase in value, however, the actual monthly or annual return is not what interests me. The point that interests me is that your retirement fund will decrease as time goes on. Say you manage to save up £500,000, in 20 years time, taking an annual income of £25,000 all the money is gone!

Using Buy to Let Property as your pension, the property retains its value and you get your income from the rental of that property. So not only do you have a property worth £864,388 which you can draw on whenever you need, you also have a yearly income of £51,852.

Saying that, I would like to end up with a balanced portfolio, I have some money in Shares and would like to add to my portfolio as well, perhaps the secret is not to put all of your eggs in one basket?

In conclusion, the safer bet would seem to be a pension scheme, but I will point out that over a historical average, property has doubled every seven years, this is around 5% per annum. The same goes for rentals.

A friend of mine recently bought his first house and was amazed a year later when he came to remortgage, that it had risen £30,000. He pointed out that this was more than he made in a year, to which I pointed out….imagine if you had 2!

This guest post was written by Dan Chamberlain. If you have any questions or responses to this article, please post a comment below.

Property investment

It is plain to see how just one of the above factors would be sufficient to stir great interest in property investment.

No matter what your reason is for choosing property investment, there are several crucial factors to consider before searching for the right property.

There are many methods which can be applied to property investment, dependent on your goals and what you want to achieve. Without going into further depth and variation, this can be broken down into two general aims:

1. Buy to Sell – Buying and selling investment property within the short term for profit.
2. Buy to Let – Buying and letting to achieve a rental income and accumulate equity, normally over the mid to long term.

It is important to decide which route to go down, as this will very much depend on the property most suitable to invest in and how best to set this up.

Property investment can be extremely rewarding but should only be entered into with due care and consideration. There are many crucial factors to consider which will determine which direction you will move in when considering the endless property investment possibilities.

Careful consideration must be given to location. You must decide if you wish to invest in your local area which you may be more familiar with, or invest in a current “hot spot” which may provide more attractive investment options.

The more adventurous investor may be interested in overseas property investment. A great deal of care and research should be given to any investment property proposition, particularly when looking overseas where the purchase process, tax liabilities, etc. could be very different to the UK.

Property price must also be considered, with widely varying properties available at all levels of investment. Investors tend to be guided by the capital they wish to invest in any one property.

A mortgage broker or lender will be able to advise you on how much you can borrow to invest in property, along with any further costs or fees involved. A Solicitor can also advise you on the legal costs, disbursements (local search fees, etc.) and stamp duty cost if applicable.

Once these factors have been considered, the next step in property investment would be to search for suitable properties and undertake the essential research to minimize risk and maximize profit.

You can never do too much research. Speak to local agents to get feedback from the perspective of property professionals.

Properties which are ideal for investment will inevitably sell quickly. Time consuming research can unfortunately result in astute investors missing out on some great investment opportunities. The internet can be a great place to carry out a large portion of the required research in a fraction of the time.

The above serves well as an introduction to property investment and the first steps which should be undertaken. By gaining a good perspective of your goals and aims and by not deviating from your chosen investment plan, you should form a solid basis for successful property investment.

This guest post was written by Dan Chamberlain. If you have any questions or responses to this article, please post a comment below.

You can now send a text message or email directly to the sales agent right away and they’ll send you back more detailed information on the spot! This company is taking advantage that everyone now carries cell phones so why not connect buyers with sellers?

It has only been 10 years since www.realtor.com became the starting place for anyone looking to buy, sell, rent, and list properties; in those years the same people began carrying a cell phone with them eighty-plus percent of the time.  Now with text messaging growing faster than any other form of communication in the world, the opportunity to capitalize has presented itself.

XAP Realty, a Los Angeles based real estate marketing company has created a lead capture solution to utilize the fact that cell phones are now carried by all buyers.  The concept is extremely simple, www.xaprealty.com provides real estate agents, individual sellers, and property management companies with interactive yard and rider signs.  The signs allow prospects to request the listing information of a particular property by sending a text message.

The prospect is immediately sent the listing details including: address, price, beds, baths, acreage, MLS#, agent’s contact information, and more.  Simultaneously, the agent or property manager is sent an email that includes the prospects phone number and the listing that he/she is interested in viewing.  The service acts like an on-site assistant, reporting full property details and taking down new lead information 24 hours a day 7 days per week.

XAP Realty benefits realtors by capturing more leads using the non-invasive communication medium of text messaging.  XAP Realty saves realtors time and money by providing prospects with the relevant information they need, and reducing materials.  Last of all XAP Realty simplifies the process by providing prospects with an effective means of saving the listing information they require, thus making the job easier the realtor.

The question of whether realtors will stay on the cutting edge of technology remains unknown, however, with regards to cell phones XAP Realty interactive signs are already being used in a city near you.

An off plan property is a property that is sold before it has been constructed and where the buyer only have the property plans provided by the architect as a guidance of how the finished property is going to be. Today off plan property refers more or less to all new developments that are sold before the termination of the construction of the property and not as it used to be only properties in the initial stage before the construction had started.

One of the biggest differences between a resale property and a property in a new development is the seller. Off plan properties or new developments are sold directly by the developer whereas traditional resale properties are normally sold by a private owner.

What are the advantages of purchasing property “Off Plan”?

Reserving a property at Off Plan stage (typically you will have just the Architects floor & site plans, elevations and specification to base your decision on) has proven popular with a variety of investors and home-buyers for many years.

Buying property Off Plan offers a number of benefits. The major benefit and attraction for potential purchasers is the capital growth which can accumulate from the Off Plan stage through to physical completion of the property.

For example, you could reserve an Off Plan property and secure a price of £200,000. If the property takes 12 months from the time of Off Plan reservation to build completion and the property market increases in value by 10% per annum, the value of this property upon completion would increase to £240,000.

Another factor to consider in this time is that no mortgage will be required until completion, so no monthly payments to make through the build process. Purchasers can benefit from substantial gains in capital growth in a buoyant market by committing only a nominal reservation fee and exchange deposit. The introduction of exchange bonds further minimizes capital outlay, where the buyer pays a bond premium which guarantees the developer a payout of the equivalent of the exchange deposit sum if the purchaser does not complete on the property.

Many property buyers will not feel comfortable to commit to buy a property which they can not physically see, inspect, etc. This provides a great benefit for astute buyers who can secure the most desired plots at Off Plan stage. For example, the plots which offer the best views (may not suffer from noise from nearby roads, trains, etc. compared to others on the same development which may). It goes without saying that the most desired plots in a development will be the ones to benefit from the greater gains in capital growth. Off Plan investors could also secure a prime plot which will maximize their rental return and minimize void periods.

Buying Off Plan can also provide investors with substantial profits on their initial capital outlay over a relatively short period. The source of profit in this instance coming from the capital growth through the build period. I refer you again to my previous example indicating the potential increase in property value in a buoyant property market.

Particularly if an investor had the opportunity to reserve a prime plot Off Plan in a development, the capital growth would be maximized in comparison to less desired properties which in turn should maximize your chance of achieving a quick sale at the market value at that time. A similar principle can be applied to completed property, but mortgage payments would have to be paid from the outset. This could potentially eat into investor profit, particularly if the property was not let or there was a shortfall in rental income in comparison to mortgage payments and associated ongoing costs.

In conclusion, buying property Off Plan can provide many benefits for the astute investor and home buyer alike. This is particularly a popular option in a property market where values are rising and buyers are confident in the rise continuing until at least completion of their chosen property.

This guest post was written by Dan Chamberlain. If you have any questions or responses to this article, please post a comment below.

Now with the increase in interest rates and the decline of many buy to let mortgages numerous investors have stopped investing in buy to let and are instead looking at other avenues like overseas, flip sales and re-possessed property.

Does this mean the end for buy to let investment? Well let’s look at the factors. The first thing you learn about in any Business Course is the simple principle of demand and supply.

Less Supply + More Demand = Increase in Prices.

More Supply + Less Demand = Decrease in Prices.

So how can we be talking about the decline of Buy to Let if demand is so high, has supply really outweighed demand?

I do not think it is as simple as that, true, there is high demand for property at the moment, and true, this has driven prices up in the last few years. This in turn has led to many properties being priced out of potential purchasers price ranges.

So with property being so expensive now it is harder to purchase a buy to let property that will guarantee you a decent yield. Is it possible to find a way to satisfy the demand for property without increasing interest rates to such a level that you create a slump in prices there by making property more affordable?

Could increasing interest rates not be a double edged sword? Let’s say we have a 1 bed flat at £150,000 that a First Time Buyer wants to purchase, on an 85% LTV mortgage he will be paying approximately £610 pcm. Say the Bank of England increases the interest rate to 6.25%, so a 0.5% increase.

Also let’s speculate that this has a detrimental effect on property prices and they fall by 10%. That same 1 bed flat is now worth £135,000, so if a First Time Buyer was to buy on an 85% LTV mortgage his monthly payments are now £597.

A £13 difference for the First Time Buyer but a nightmare for everyone who already has a variable rate mortgage!

So the problem we have in this country is that there is maybe too much demand for property, this leads to the rises in property values we have had over the past years being achievable where in many other countries a collapse may have happened a long time ago. I think that the Bank of England knows this, they realise that the situation must be monitored closely but any thought of a crash are very premature.

The future may not be rosy but it is not all doom and gloom either. I believe that the slowdown has for the main part helped the property market, stabilising prices and injecting a sense of reality into investors that were gearing themselves too highly.

This guest post was written by Dan Chamberlain. If you have any questions or responses to this article, please post a comment below.

I was actually one of those real estate investors who purchased a single family home during the boom and rented it out for two years before having to sell at a small loss. I honestly was lucky to sell (my house was on the market for 4 months) and only did primarily because I offered seller financing. The person who ended up buying my house had poor credit and couldn’t qualify for a loan which gave me a distinct advantage over the dozens of other houses on the market. Not only that, but I had a great realtor by the name of Geri Martucci at Keller Williams who helped me market the property using many different channels and methods.

So having been a real estate investor in Las Vegas, I discovered a free site called Property Hookup that lists undervalued houses for sale in the Las Vegas area. For a property to qualify for listing on Propertyhookup.com it must be discounted a minimum of 20% off of the real market value. Their site lacks a professional look and feel but their listings seem pretty up-to-date.

You can browse their listings and even sign up for their bird-dog email which provides the latest discounted properties. I personally haven’t signed up nor am I looking to purchase another property in Las Vegas but if you’re looking for a bargain and can hold it for a few years, this might be right up your alley.

I also received a personal email from one of the employees at Property Hookup and they offered up a special deal for anyone looking to sell their property. I am happy to pass this along to our readers.

As a special attempt to help reach out to all the real estate professionals out there I would like to offer this very special deal. Send me your under value or discount real estate listings and I’ll post it them www.PropertyHookup.com absolutely free. Our www.PropertyHookup.com emails go out to over 15,000 Las Vegas active real estate agent and investor email addresses each time. That’s nearly every agent and cash buyer in town.

Email me at: Kallen [at] PropertyHookup.com. Here is what I need:

1. Please send only real discount properties. Fixer Uppers, foreclosures, and motivated sellers are exactly what we like. We’ve got to keep the deals good in order to keep the real buyers tuned in.

2. Send me the link to your listing so I can get the photos and property info. Let me know how much you think it is under value. I’ll run some comps to double check your value.

3. Let me know your thoughts about our www.PropertyHookup.com. If there is anything we can do better, I need to know.

4. Make sure your contact info is prominent. Any interested parties will be contacting you directly. Make sure you ask them where they saw the listing.

5. I’m giving you our exclusive www.PropertyHookup.com listing and audience ABSOLUTELY FREE! Just for being an existing member of our investment group. Just make sure you tell me as soon as its sold so I can pull it down.
It’s as easy as that. I’ll do the rest.

LET’S GET EM SOLD. Thanks for your time. Stay tuned! I hope to hear from you soon.

Kallen Kildea
702-499-2608

If anyone ends up using this free site and has any comments, please add them below!

Let’s assume you found a property from one of the foreclosure sites I mentioned in my previous post “How to Find Foreclosures – Where Do I Start?” or in a legal notice from your newspaper. You’re excited with the information you read about the property and you’re ready to start doing additional research. At this point it’s a good idea to go look at the property before you spend any of your time processing the legal work. Until you do that, you don’t even know what the neighborhood looks like, the condition the property is in, and if it’s vacant or not. If you don’t know these simple things about the property, you’ll never know how risky of an investment it could or could not be.

What happens if the legal description or foreclosure notice you read doesn’t list the physical address? You have a couple options like contacting the title company and asking them to lookup the street address, calling the attorney that’s managing the foreclosure, or go down to the courthouse and look it up. Once you get the address, you can continue reading below.

Once you arrive at the property you’re only able to in most cases, view the outside of the home. You really need to see the inside if you are to properly make a decision and this is always extremely difficult because it’s not like an open house. There are several options here and it really depends on your judgment and comfort to be able to have a peek inside. Your options are to walk up the steps and knock on the door and see if anybody is home, if the house looks vacant or abandoned maybe take a quick walk around the property and peek through any windows without disturbing the neighbors, or just walk away and look for a different property. Now I’m not suggesting you trespass nor illegally enter a property and that’s why I said use your judgment. If it’s nighttime and you’ve got a flashlight it’s probably not a good idea to wander around the property unless you want the local authorities coming by to meet you.

Let’s say you were able to see the property and got a nice glimpse of the inside. You felt it’s a good prospect to bid on. Your next step is determining what it will appraise for. I’d recommend you hire an appraiser, realtor, or another investor who has more experience to help you pin down an approximate price on what it will appraise for. There’s a good chance depending on if you were able to get a glimpse of the inside in the previous step, that the appraiser will not be able to look at the inside and only give you a rough appraisal based on what he or she can see on the outside. Of course, there are exceptions, and you might not be too disappointed if you trust just the condition of the outside.

Stay tuned for step #2 – Contacting the Trustee

The tools they are referring to are Google Base, AdWords, Maps, Earth, Local Business Center, Google Sketchup, and Google Apps. It’s actually a great idea and it shows how flexible Google’s products are that they can easily cater to specific industries like real estate. Their overall message is that Google can help generate real estate referrals and leads to help connect to home buyers and sellers since Google has more real estate searches than other search engines combined.

So are these tools actually helpful for you, the real estate professional? In short, yes but not all the tools in the suite are exactly easy to use. Here’s a quick rundown of what each tool is for and it’s ease of use.

Google Base – It’s essentially Google’s version of Craigslist.com which hasn’t quite caught on yet. It’s still another free marketing outlet so it wouldn’t hurt to post real estate for sale on it. Take a look at it here. Ease of use: Simple

Google AdWords – This is probably the best tool of the suite for driving targeted traffic and leads to your site. These are the ads you see on the right side of Google’s search results. If you aren’t already running a paid search program, I’d recommend you
(aff) now. Ease of use: Medium

Google Maps – This product is quite cool but requires a technical person to set it up on your website. I always use this product when I need to get from point A to point B. Plug in two addresses, and it creates step by step directions for you. For real estate professionals, you would display your listings on detailed maps and satellite imagery and give your users a visual, intuitive way to find the property that is right for them. You can see an example of this in the above image. Try it here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google Earth – An even cooler version of Google Maps, this product allows you to fly around the world using 3D satellite imagery. If you’ve got the technical resources and sophisticated audience, this would be a great differentiator for your website. You can download it here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google’s Local Business Center – This is Google’s version of the yellow pages but a more targeted version. When potential customers search Google Maps for local information, they’ll find your business information such as your address and hours of operation. You want your name and address to be displayed when they search, this is the tool for you. Only requires a one-time setup. Ease of use: Simple

Google SketchUp – Want to create 3D models of homes or other properties? Well then this is the tool for you. You can also enhance your website listing by using the animation capability of Google Sketchup Pro. It even allows your customers to freely explore the home, community and its surroundings in 3D. They claim it’s easy to use but if you’re not good with computers or have some experience with 3D modeling, I’d stay away from this. Download their free version here. Ease of use: Difficult

Google Apps – This is essentially MS office but an online Google version. You can collaborate on documents and spreadsheets more effectively, have shareable calendars, and even instant messaging capability. It’s a great product especially if you travel a lot and and need to share documents and spreadsheets across multiple real estate professionals. It’s all web-based so make sure you have an internet connection. The Google Apps Standard Edition is free but if you need more features you can pay $50/per user/per year for the Premier Edition. I recommend you
(aff) now. Ease of use: Medium

Overall, I’d say for the typical real estate professional you should be using Google Base, Google AdWords, and Google’s Local Business Center to increase your company awareness and drive new leads to your website. Using Google Apps would be an added bonus but not required if you aren’t ready to change your business processes. Google Maps, Earth, and Sketchup and for those with technical resources to handle the development required to make them work.

There’s a free online property analysis tool where you can create, save, and print graphical reports displaying rate of return, cash flow, expenses, and more. I use it all the time whenever I come across a potential investment property even if an APOD (Annual Property Operating Data) is provided. It’s web-based so I can input and access the data from anywhere while I travel.

Here’s a sample analysis of what you get. For example, you plug in the purchase price, closing costs, down payment, estimated expenses, market assumptions, and more. After you enter the data and save it, you’ll see if it flows. Check out Real Estate Critic and see for yourself. Did I mention it’s free? Can’t beat that.