written by
Matthew Moody

Should I invest in property?

Property Investment 14 min read

It’s a curious question isn’t it.

I mean, have you ever read or seen the “Sunday Times Rich List”?

The Sunday Times Rich List

Its awash with people who are so rich they can’t even count their money.

And whilst I’m guessing you may not have any aspirations to be on this list, I’m also going to assume that you’re reading this because you’re not quite sure.

In this article I’m going to share four reasons why you should invest in property and what to consider next.

If you like what you hear, remember please hit subscribe and like this article.

So property.

Is it for me.

Isn’t it for me?

Well, here is one thing a lot of the entries on the Sunday Times Rich List have in common.

You guessed it.

Property.

So while the simple answer may be yes, it’s a little more complicated than that and I want to break it down for you into a few simple ideas based on over 25 years in business and property investment.

Let’s kick off with

The Doctrine of Self

Now when I say self, I mean this in the sense of the understanding that you have, of you the person, the mind, the connection, with everybody and everything on our planet.

Yama
Photographer: Jr Korpa | Source: Unsplash

Now this is not about some hokey pokey religion or trying to convert you to new age thinking .

No, this is much more important than this; this is about you truly understanding yourself, what it is you want, what it is you’re prepared to do for it, how you are prepared to live your life and finally how are you going to execute on this; your life, your one shot, your chance.

So the doctrine of self is very much about the starting point of your understanding.

Because I can tell you property strategies, I can share tactics, I can give you tools, I can show you codes, I can break this all down for you and show you how easy investing in property can be.

But if you do not embrace this, does not understand it, is not willing to be open to new ways of thinking, new ways of doing then my work here is in vain.

And your time spent taking this information in is wasted.

Perhaps it is enough for now to believe in and trust in me when I say yes you should invest in property and I'm gonna show you why right now

But please be aware when I'm sharing this information, you will find what some call the monkey or the ego will be in the back of your head saying ‘well this isn't right’ or ‘you can't do this’ or ‘that doesn't make sense’ or ‘some people can do it but not you’.

Ignore this put it to one side and be focused on the message try and understand the words at the same time .

Our next idea for you to contemplate is what I call

The Planning Code

Now you may have heard the term planning in many different guises, from preparing a project plan to planning what you will be doing this weekend, to applying for planning permission to build something.

The Centre Pompidou calendar
Photographer: Curtis MacNewton | Source: Unsplash

The planning code is all around your ability and your understanding to take control and the plan because if you don't, let me tell you this is what will happen .

  • Regret
  • Unhappiness
  • Wasted opportunities
  • Melancholy
  • Sadness
  • and a 100 what ifs .

It is imperative that you plan But most humans try to avoid this .

You've probably got that friend that says to you ‘I don't like to plan anything I just like to go with the flow’.

Now that can work in certain circumstances and if you are leaving this aspect of your life down to luck, then Good Luck (no pun intended) but is that really what you want to chose for yourself when you get to the end of your life, you're looking back and reminiscing what you have and haven't done

Maybe or maybe not?

I'll put it to you that the greatest thing you can do for yourself, for your family, for your future legacy is to plan the **** out of your life .

Now if you don't want to do that, that's fine and probably property investment is not for you because if you want to invest in property, you have to plan at some level because it's not just going to happen

But if you don't want to, that's fine, I don't judge you, I don't blame you, I just accept that that's what it is .

This is where planning gets exciting though, if you can imagine that you can dream what it is you would like and once you've dreamt what it is that you would like; you can then create a plan around how you'd like to get it.

Photographer: Masaaki Komori | Source: Unsplash

How exciting is that I mean seriously everything you see around you has been planned.

And whether you believe in God or universal being or anything of that nature all you need to do is look up and take in everything that you can see that was planned that came from someone dreaming and then created it.

  • the cup
  • the pen
  • the pad of paper
  • the tablet
  • the laptop
  • the phone
  • the radiator
  • the window
  • the tray
  • the bench
  • the bird
  • the house

Everything you see someone dreamed and planned and then it was created

Now some people say ‘I don't believe that I can't do this’ or ‘it never happens to me’ but the thing is these things do take time, and you can plan something and it may not happen for 10, 15 or 25 years!

In fact sometimes it may never happen, but if you've got a firm plan in place then surely just the joy of the journey along that path to try to get to that goal, is going to be a heck of a lot more interesting than wandering around aimlessly from day to day, week to week, with no real intention or direction on where your life is going.

So the fundamental core behind having a plan is this

  1. it gives you clarity
  2. it gives you direction

I always liken it to if I'm going to go right now leave my house and go to Frankfurt how would I get there?

Would I just get my car and start driving?

Of course not, I'd want to plan out how exactly I'm going to get there

Am I going to take a train, am I going to take an aeroplane, how am I going to get to the airport?

From going to the airport; am I getting a taxi or a train to the airport or drive myself? Then parking up, what do I want to do when I get there, where am I going to stay and how long for?

This is a plan. Now this is a mini-plan for sure but in your life you need a plan too and this doesn't necessarily need to be pages upon pages but it does need to be a plan.

And if anything you take away from this, it's if you're going to be successful, you want to take control of your life you need a plan.

You need a plan.

Now we're going to look at another idea and whilst planning is fundamentally important and there are dozens of tools and strategies and techniques and tips that I can give you on this topic, now I want to cover another one which is equally important.

But before we do this, if you’ve liked this episode so far, remember please hit subscribe and also like my channel. It really helps more people benefit from hearing this highly valuable information.

So here we go the next one is this:

The Survival Code

Why is this important?

Because humans have a set of needs and these were described in Maslow's hierarchy of needs and one of them is our ability to want to and have to survive; so if we are approaching this from the perspective of building this up, creating this, then it's important for us to push this through in a way that allows us to create a plan.

The first thing we need to do is to survive, and this is the first step along the way so to speak of the grand idea; should you invest in property, why yes you should but be aware that to begin with you will be investing to survive.

Let's put it this way if you're in a job right now and you’re earning £40,000 pounds per year, most investors will start off with the idea of replacing the income with income from property, and the ultimate aim to as we say in the UK ‘jacking the job in’ and live off the proceeds of your rental income.

To invest in property is not just about putting money into property, it is also about providing lifestyle and choice and freedom.

But for now the best thing is understand what your plan needs to be.

Write down on the back of an envelope or a post it note or whatever the answers to these questions.

  1. What are your monthly expenses right now?
  2. How much is your rent or mortgage?
  3. What are you paying for utilities?
  4. How much you spending on entertainment, car or commuting?
  5. How much do you put into insurance and savings accounts?
  6. What do you spend on going out, hobbies, clothes?

So pretty much everything you spend in a month but you need to know how much it is right now because that is the survival code.

Let’s say your take home after tax is £1800 pounds a month, and you've worked out that your current bills or expenses amount to £1200 pounds per month.

This is the survival code or what I call your survival financial freedom; that's the number to which you have to get to in order to not have to work if that's what you wish to do.

Photographer: MChe Lee | Source: Unsplash

It's also the number you need to get to if you wish to have alternates and choice.

Let's say that you actually pretty much like your job but you do want to create an additional income stream because this is about creating constructs for the next idea.

Now if you've managed to create income so that you don’t need to pay your expenses anymore from your salary, this means you can utilise the salary to do other things which could be stuff that maybe you've always wanted to do but have been pulling off.

Things such as that grand holiday or an amazing bit of kit that you've wanted such as a car, home hifi or gym equipment.

With the extra income coming in you can afford to do that, but you can also move forward to consider the next idea which is this :

The Wealthy Construct

This idea is all around the creation of legacy and the creation of building up assets for future generations.

This is not something you should enter into lightly, it's not something you should just choose one day to do and the next day decide not to, because this will take planning, it will take living frugally for a period of time, it will take discipline, dedication, certainty, tenacity but the end result will be a wealth beyond your imagination and by that I mean this.

We talk about millionaires and billionaires all the time but have you ever truly really sat down and considered what does that actually look like, what does it actually mean, how does it impact me and how do I make this a reality for myself?

There's a reason why most lottery winners who win millions of pounds very rapidly go broke and end up being exactly where they were and sometimes in a worse case scenario 2, 3, 4 five years later.

A lot of this comes down to the first idea I showed which is this whole concept of the doctrine of self.

In order to embrace and take up on new ideas, we need to embrace and take upon our own self

We need to be open to those new ideas and new ways of learning and changing in order to develop ourselves better.

Now not everyone is able to do this quickly, it does require work and effort, it does require sacrifice but if you're able to do it, if you're able to set out this plan, if you’re prepared to live in a very frugal manner; you can build enormous wealth.

This may not happen overnight and could take 10-20 years but you can still live a very nice life along the way and enjoy all of the creature comforts that come with this.

But it is about creating that plan, focusing on the survival element of replacing the tyranny of paying bills every month and then building up your wealth on a consistent basis.

What are the options if you're not going to invest in property; what else are you going to do?

The typical person will do this. They'll join a company, join the pension scheme (but they may not do this straight away, it might take a little while to get up and running, there may even be barriers to entry) and then you start paying some money into the pension and the company matches with their own contributions and you think it's going to be hunky-dory!

Then you look at your pension pot few years later and think ‘well that doesn't look very good’ and ‘it's not really making very much every year’ and ‘what's this large management charge for’ and before you know it, you are considering ‘how do I take control of this pot of money and do something better with it?’

It's one of the main reasons why people invest in property because the control is down to you; the upside or the downside is down to you.

Too many people are very keen to mitigate responsibility, abdicate responsibility and pass on responsibility to other people and then blame them when it all goes wrong.

But you're not one of those kind of people are you?

No no no, you are someone that's going to take control and make this happen for yourself so why should you invest in property?

Three reasons

Firstly, property is the only asset that you can leverage against and borrow money against sometimes depending on how it's done up to 100% of the value of the property.

Secondly, property gives you cashflow from day one if you set it up property

Thirdly, property gives you something that stocks and shares can never give you which is capital appreciation.

So it's commonly agreed that property generally doubles in value every decade or so; so if you bought a property for £100,000, in 10 years time it should be worth £200,000.

I hope you enjoyed this article and that you took some learning points away from it and remember; when you're considering the question, should I invest in property, I would leave you with this question back to you.

Why shouldn't you invest in property?

If you can come up with a list of 10+ reasons why you shouldn't do this then send it to me because I feel confident that I can batter down those obstacles and show exactly why that thinking is potentially wrong and potentially going to impact your wealth significantly.

Most importantly; the real reason to invest in property is to take control back and to allow yourself to build up your wealth not hand it to governments or tax officials wherever you may be in the world.

If you enjoyed this session please do subscribe, show some love maybe even like this episode.

If you have comment or a question, I would love to hear it drop it below or wherever you are able to put comments or questions and I’ll happily answer them until next time.

divitiae in conspectu bonis, legatum cum viventem.

Matthew Moody
Grand Master

League of Extraordinary Investors.

property investment investor skills property investment Life Issues