Property Entrepreneur E-Book

Vincent Wong

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 345

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

Property Investing the Wealth Dragon Way

Property Entrepreneur explains how anyone can make money from property, regardless of their financial situation. Author Vincent Wong is one of the UK's most dynamic and respected property entrepreneurs, and this book outlines his approach to creating wealth through property investing for both seasoned and aspiring investors. Emphasising the importance of treating property investing as a business, the author shares the wisdom of his first-hand experience and his investment techniques to help you navigate the ever-shifting property market and become a true property entrepreneur. There is more than one way to break into the property game, and it doesn't have to involve saving for one large deposit after another; this book covers tried and tested strategies beyond the traditional approaches to property investing. Whether you're contemplating your first, fifth or fifteenth property, Property Entrepreneur will help to light your entrepreneurial spark and show you how to turn property into profit.

Property entrepreneurship is like any other business: if you want to succeed, you must take the time to learn from those who have mastered the best techniques. This book gives you access to the mind, motivations and methods of a top investor to help you start and build your own property business. This book will show you:

• How to start viewing property investing as a business
• Why you need to eliminate unproductive habits and attitudes
• The best ways to maximise profits and create a secure, passive income
• How to nurture your entrepreneurial spirit and watch your business grow

Property investing can look daunting and complex to those without experience. The rules are constantly being rewritten, the goalposts are regularly shifted and the market looks like an unpredictable beast. Property Entrepreneur will challenge your preconceptions, and help you navigate the path to real, lasting wealth.

Leseprobe

Property Entrepreneur

THE WEALTH DRAGON WAY TO BUILD A SUCCESSFUL PROPERTY BUSINESS

Vincent Wong

This edition first published 2016 © 2016 Vincent Wong

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 978-1-119-32640-3 (pbk) ISBN 978-1-119-32642-7 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-119-32750-9 (ebk) ISBN 978-1-119-32751-6 (ebk)

Cover Design: Wiley Cover Image: © retrorocket/Getty Images, Inc.

For my father, who entrusted me with representing him on my first ever business trip and inspired me to follow in his footsteps.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Introduction: My Property Journey

My Property Business Niche

Lease-Option Pioneer

Property Revolution

A Unique Property Book

PART I THE OLD DEAL

Chapter 1 The History Of Property

Ownership and Control

Modern Land Law

Assured Shorthold Tenancy

Leases

Playing Monopoly For Real!

The Aftermath

Chapter 2 Traditional Property Investing

The Principle of Leverage

The Myth of Ownership

Chapter 3 Who Wants To Be A Property Investor?

The Novice

The Homeowner

The Academic

The Developer

The Speculator

The Fallen Angel

The Value Investor

The Dealmaker

PART II THE NEW DEAL

Chapter 4 What's Wrong With The Old Deal?

Chapter 5 Understanding The New Deal

Positioning

Think In Terms Of Terms!

The New Dealmaker

Entrepreneurial Qualities

A Winning Perspective

Chapter 6 Starting Your Property Business

Create Demand First

Would YOU Invest In You?

Chapter 7 A Systemized Business Is A Successful Business

The Marketing System

The Sales System

The Systems Within The System

Always Adding Value

Win-Win-Win

Chapter 8 Seven Dealmaking Strategies

Tenancy In Common

Mortgage Hosting

Options

Lease-Option Deals

Rent-To-Buy

“Bob The Builder”

Part Now, Part Later

Other Strategies

Chapter 9 Dealing With Objections

Chapter 10 The Seven Golden Rules For Property Entrepreneurs

Always Deal

Directly

With

Motivated

Sellers

Negotiate

Terms

In Addition To Price

Only Make A

Win-Win

Deal

Ensure Your Deals Are

Ethical

Always Play The

Numbers Game

Put As

Little Money Down

As Possible

Adopt An

Entrepreneurial Mindset

PART III THE REAL DEAL

Chapter 11 Probate Property In Leeds

Chapter 12 Property With Registered Charges Against It In Stanmore

Chapter 13 Urgent Sale Needed To Clear Debts In Birmingham

Chapter 14 From BMV To Lease-Option Deal In Liverpool

Chapter 15 Urgent Lease-Option Deal In Lincoln

Chapter 16 Lease-Option Deal On Dilapidated Property In Sheffield

Chapter 17 Part Now, Part Later Deal On Probate Property In Barnsley

Chapter 18 The Dutch Deals

A Bad Bank!

Turkish Delight!

Final Word: The Future Of The Property Business – Your Role

Index

EULA

List of Illustrations

Chapter 7

Figure 7.1

A Well-Balanced Value System

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Preface

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Preface

Whether you've been investing in property for years, or you are a complete newbie, eager to learn and frustrated by not having the money or credentials to get on the property ladder in the traditional way, this book contains some of the most important information you need to know. I wanted to write this book because, when it comes to finding and buying property, I have a wealth of knowledge I want to share. The methods I will be discussing are not those generally talked about. Why? Because none of them benefit the middlemen … the banks, the government and the estate agents! Whether you decide to use any of these methods or not, I believe you have a right to know about them, to have all this information at your disposal.

I think anyone who is serious about investing in today's property market should have access to this information. Everyone deserves to know all the potential options. I'm not suggesting that these new types of property deals are easy, and this is not the “one-size-fits-all” approach that is usually taken in traditional property purchasing. Indeed, some types of deals are only applicable in certain specific circumstances. However, if you want to be in the property business, I believe you have to think like an entrepreneur. And as an entrepreneur, you need to gather all the information you can lay your hands on so that you can always make an informed business decision.

The information in this book is based on all my years and extensive experience in the property business; I believe I have an obligation to share that with you. Every method I describe in detail in this book I have tried and tested myself. Knowledge is power and, for too long now, the balance of power has been in the hands of the people who are feeding you information based on what is best for them, not you. The estate agents, the lawyers, the lawmakers, the government and the media are not thinking of your best interests when they advise you, no matter how they dress it up. Do not let them convince you otherwise! My advice, to anyone on any issue is get informed, and then make the best decision for YOU!

I hope you enjoy this book, I look forward to meeting some of you some day and I wish you all the best on your journey through the property business!

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to so many people for helping to make this book happen. Firstly, thanks to everyone at John Wiley & Sons, especially Thomas Hyrkiel, Jeremy Chia, Gladys Ganaden, Tessa Allen and Caroline McPherson. Thanks also to Miranda Leslau for all her ongoing hard work and expertise in PR. My deep gratitude goes to my family and friends, for your love and support. I wouldn't be where I am today without the support and guidance of all my mentors; your wisdom has helped me become a proud mentor to others who are starting out or re-establishing their property businesses. We all learn from each other; the learning process never stops. I want to thank everyone who works within my property team for helping to run a smooth and successful business, especially my Dutch partner and dear friend, Marina de Haan, and my sister, Florence, for expertly doing so many deals on my behalf. But mostly I am hugely grateful to all the sellers who have ever put their trust in me; whether or not we made a deal, we worked tirelessly together towards a win-win situation. I am always honoured and often humbled to learn about your lives and the circumstances under which you become motivated sellers. You are the ones who drive my passion for the property business … which, for me, will always be a people business.

About the Author

Vincent Wong is co-founder and Executive Chairman of Wealth Dragons Plc. An internationally recognized and respected property entrepreneur, Vincent has generated over 100,000 motivated seller leads to date and has helped hundreds of investors acquire properties with little or no money down. In addition to building his own multimillion pound property portfolio, Vincent has taught dealmaking strategies, including lease-option deals – on which he is a world-renowned expert – to investors throughout the world. As an internationally-recognized public speaker and expert in the property industry, Vincent is regularly invited to speak to audiences of 1,000+ delegates at the prestigious Property Outlook Conference in Kuala Lumpur (the biggest property conference in Asia). Vincent is a graduate of The University of London's School of Pharmacy and holds an MBA from Cass Business School.

Introduction: My Property Journey

The first flat I bought was a beautiful Victorian conversion. It was a one-bedroom garden flat in Clapham, in south London, and I paid £73,000 for it in early 1998. At that time I was working as a pharmacist and earning around £32,000 a year, so the flat cost just over twice my annual salary. To put this into context, a similar flat in Clapham now, at the time of writing (February 2016), would cost you upwards of £500,000 and the top pay rate for a pharmacist is around £55,000; so, while the top pay for a pharmacist probably hasn't even doubled, property prices have more than quadrupled; the price of that Clapham flat is almost ten times what a pharmacist can earn today. This is a staggering gulf and does make you wonder who on earth can afford to buy property in London these days!

Of course, I bought my flat at the bottom of the market and we were about to watch prices soar like never before. Indeed, when I decided to sell the flat in 1999 in order to finance a business idea I'd had, I made a total profit of £36,000. The impact of making so much money in such a short space of time stayed with me and resonated with me for a long time.

For a while my life was full of ups and downs. I trained and worked as a pharmacist and, while I enjoyed the contact with customers and felt I had a good “bedside manner”, I'd become frustrated with the glass ceiling in terms of pay. I had decided to study for an MBA, believing it would be my ticket into a fancy high-paid city job. However, I'd failed to get so much as a second interview for a single job. “Over-qualified and under-experienced” was how I was described over and over again. My next move was to set up a website. This was during the height of the dot-com boom and I seriously believed I was going to make millions from it. The idea was great; it was a dating website for Asian people. I thought I'd have a huge market considering the population of China and how difficult I assumed it must be for men and women to meet. However, I'd failed to take into consideration the fact that China was way behind the Western world in terms of the Internet and, in reality, my potential customers had no way of using my service. I had to close it down with losses of over £300,000, and to make matters worse, I'd raised all that money through my parents and parents’ friends, i.e. within a very close-knit Chinese community – not the most forgiving of people when it comes to losing face!

Finally I sat down and looked at everything I'd experienced. It was like seeing the pieces of a jigsaw finally come together in the right order. I merged the results of all my experiences together and finally made sense of them. First of all I noted that the most money I'd ever made was not by working a set number of hours for anyone (myself or an employer); it was by buying and selling property at the right time. Secondly, although my website had failed because I didn't have the customers to populate it, I knew it had been a good site and I'd gained a great deal of experience in developing it; given the right product and audience, I was sure I could still have a successful Internet-based business. Finally I thought about what a good “people person” I had learnt to be, after all my days working in the pharmacy business. What if, I thought to myself, I could build a website to help people sell their houses quickly and without hassle by connecting them to investors. And thus my business idea for NetworkPropertyBuyers.co.uk was born. I later went on to build NetworkPropertyInvestments.co.uk to attract investors for the sellers.

My website was a database of property leads. I basically “match-made” investors and sellers who were particularly motivated to sell their properties. People were able to make direct deals, cutting out the estate agent middleman. Of course, these deals were struck at a lower price than the seller might have received on the open market with an estate agent pushing up the price, but they gladly paid that price for a direct and fast sale. These were people for whom a quick sale, for whatever reason, was paramount.

As the business grew, I began to build my own property portfolio by making deals with some of the leads I found. I also started to come up with more and more inventive ways of doing property deals, so much so that my name became quite well known in the property business and I was sought after by various organizations to speak at conferences and teach what I knew to other property investors. I'll never forget the moment I believed I'd really made it; it was when the BBC asked me for an interview. The BBC wanted my opinion. I was understandably flattered!

My Property Business Niche

I think I was the first person to hone in on Below Market Value (BMV) deals, and actually systemize the process. Nowadays everyone knows about BMV deals, but back then no one had heard of them. I used my networking skills to find cash-rich investors who were looking for property deals; then I used my marketing skills to find the people who were particularly keen to sell their properties quickly. I introduced them and took a fee for it. In effect I became the middleman myself, but I took my cut from the investor, not the seller. And the sellers always got what they most wanted: a quick sale.

In the couple of years before the Global Economic Crash of 2008/09, my business was booming. I had really carved out a great little niche for myself. However, with my knowledge of economics and general instincts about the way things felt in the property business and other related industries, I could tell a couple of years before the crash happened that the bubble was going to burst, as bubbles always do. We had been watching the subprime mortgage business get quite out of control. It was clearly only a matter of time before it all imploded. In any case, the whole credit/debt culture couldn't last forever. And, unfortunately, the higher you climb, the further you have to fall!

As devastating as the crash was for some people, any savvy entrepreneur knows that in times of economic instability there is always plenty of money to be made. As I saw the crunch coming, I realized that this was going to mean some pretty desperate home owners were going to be needing to offload their properties, some of them might even find themselves in negative equity. The traditional methods of selling through estate agents were not going to help these people, and investors were going to find it harder and harder to get the financing that, to be honest had been a bit of a walk in the park to get up to that point.

This is the Chinese word for crisis:

I love it because it is made up of two characters. The first character means “danger” and the second character means “opportunity”.

As the property market started to collapse, I worked harder than ever, coming up with ever-more inventive ways of structuring deals. As a result I, and the many others who followed my lead, survived the crash and actually thrived during these so-called bleak economic times. So I feel I am living proof of the fact that there is opportunity within every crisis.

Lease-Option Pioneer

Of all the strategies I have developed to structure property deals, the most pioneering was the lease-option deal structure. Lease-option deals had been used in commercial property but, before I tried it, no one had used such a deal in the purchase of residential property. To me it seemed like a very viable – if unconventional – way of structuring a residential property deal. Working with my lawyers, I set the precedent for using lease-option deals for residential property. I ensured the first deal I did was legally sound and paved the way for any other investor/buyer to use this method.

I like to think I had a small hand in revolutionizing the way property is bought and sold using this particular deal structure! I certainly found myself in great demand after I'd started using this method regularly. People came to me, eager to learn how to structure deals this way. It was a method that allowed me, and many other investors, to carry on investing in property through the credit crunch because it cut out the need for a conventional mortgage. I was soon being invited to speak at international property conferences and receiving more requests for interviews from national television channels. I have continued to teach my unique methods (including lease-option deals and others) to this day, and these strategies form the heart of this book.

Property Revolution

If you can read this book with an open mind, if you can put aside all your preconditioned thoughts about property – what your parents told you, what your bank manager told you, what estate agents have told you – then you stand a good chance of becoming a highly-successful property entrepreneur. This book will change the way you think about property forever.

I believe we are on the brink of a property revolution. All the goalposts have moved. Nothing is as it was, and nothing will stay the same as we move forward. The way people own, sell and buy property in the digital age is fundamentally changing. You must expand your thinking; you must keep up with all the relevant government legislation because it will change in the blink of an eye. These days you must be on your toes, you must be adaptable. In many ways it's harder than ever to be successful in the property business, but if you stick with it, you keep learning and you stay flexible, the rewards are better than ever.

A Unique Property Book

Books on property investing are literally two-a-penny. You have probably read some of them, as have I. Indeed, if you are serious about being a property investor, you should read some of these books to give you a foundation of knowledge, especially if you're completely new to the game. But, no matter what you've read in the past, you've never read a book like this before. Because there isn't one!

What you won't be reading in this book is how to manage your property as a landlord, a comparison of available mortgage products, specific tax laws or regulations about buying and selling property related to specific countries or time periods.

What you will be reading about in this book is:

How to make money from property in any market condition, i.e. regardless of how the economy is doing.

How to get into the property business if you don't have the money for a traditional deposit or the credentials to qualify for a mortgage.

Again, I want to emphasize that, apart from a couple of exceptions that I clearly point out, I have direct experience of every single strategy I outline in this book. What I'm teaching you is not theory but practical solutions so that you can physically go and use these strategies. In most cases I would advise you to learn alongside someone practised in these methods, but there are no barriers to entry. The information is available to you; run with it!

I started my property business with next to nothing, and you can too. The secret to my success is that I've learnt to think outside of the box. That's what every successful entrepreneur has had to do!

Whoever you are, whatever background you are coming from, I hope you learn a great deal from this book. And remember, I want to hear from you and learn from you. I am still on my journey. I never stop learning. I sometimes feel my students teach me as much as I teach them in the long run. So, stay in touch and let me know how you're getting along. The property world is your oyster; don't let anyone else tell you otherwise!

PART ITHE OLD DEAL

CHAPTER 1The History Of Property

Land ownership has always been a complex and complicated issue. The history of organized land ownership in England really started with the Domesday Book, established in 1086 during the reign of William the Conqueror. This publication was an extensive list of all landholders that outlined all the taxes they owed to the King, who technically owned all the land in England. Under the feudal system, lords controlled their allotted land and granted rights to vassals and serfs who could live on and work the land in exchange for allegiance to the lord (i.e. the promise that they would fight to defend their lord if he came under attack in any way, as well as the obligation to serve that lord in whichever way he pleased). Basically it was a form of slavery; those in service to the lord had few rights.

The English Civil War, that saw Charles I executed and the establishment of the Commonwealth under Oliver Cromwell, also brought about the formal end of feudal land tenure. Even after the restoration of the monarchy, it was established (and has been held ever since) that the English monarch could only govern with the consent of Parliament. And thus began common law and the democracy under which we live today.

So what did this mean for land law?

Basically, it led to the establishment of “freeholders” of land. The monarch became formally obliged to acknowledge your land rights, i.e. your right to live on the land you “own” as long as you paid your taxes due. From this point, as a freeholder, you were entitled to live on your land free from the obligation of “serving” your lord. Basically you owned the “estate” (which is where the term “real estate” comes from) as opposed to the land, and you were entitled to sell that real estate or pass it on to your heirs. By contrast, leaseholders were limited to “owning” the estate for a given lease term, paying a rent to the owner of the land. Typically lease lengths were extensive and these days are usually around 99 years. (In modern times leasehold properties have become increasingly common where multiple dwellings exist on the same piece of land; for example, purpose-built blocks of flats. If you have 50 flats within a building, it would be a logistical nightmare for all the “owners” to share the freehold, so one landlord usually owns the land and leases it to the owners. If you've ever bought a leasehold flat you'll know that you have to pay “ground rent” to the freeholder, even though you technically own your flat. At the end of a lease, the legal deeds to the property pass back to the freeholder, which is why you should always seriously consider the length of a lease before buying property!)

Common law aside, it was still a long time before ordinary people could buy and sell property because most land was still “owned” by the ruling classes. The working classes still lived in privately owned accommodation and then paid rent to their landlord.

Ownership and Control

The above is an extremely abbreviated account of how property works and scholarly historians would probably baulk at its simplicity, but my objective is to get you to understand what I call the MYTH OF OWNERSHIP. Whether we are talking about the land that you “own” – on which you still pay a tax to Her Majesty's Government for the right to live on – or the house you live in – which you probably have a sizeable mortgage on – you do not physically have total ownership of your land.

What you do have, to an extent, is CONTROL. But even then you are limited. If you want to add an extension to your property, or turn your front garden into a driveway, you must ask permission from the local government. If you live in a listed property, you may have further restrictions on what you can do inside. If there is a seventeenth-century oak staircase in your Grade II listed fourteenth-century manor house, chances are you can't just rip it out and replace it with a modern glass and steel version!

Many people who are in rented accommodation long for their own place specifically because they want more control. They imagine how good it will feel when they can paint the living room to their taste, or install a new power shower, without always having to go to their landlord to ask permission. And buying rather than renting your property does give you a huge increase in control. You can more or less decorate as you like, and as long as you keep paying your mortgage you can stay in your property for as long as you like without the threat of eviction … you basically have more rights. But it's all still relative.

Remember this concept of CONTROL rather than OWNERSHIP as it will really help you to understand some of the concepts and “buying” strategies in future chapters.

Modern Land Law

The big reforms in land law in England took place during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. These reforms, both in terms of their fiscal and social implications, widened the scope of ownership and control of property. For example, the Naturalization Act of 1870 gave aliens the right to own and transfer land in England for the first time. The Housing Act of 1919 gave rise to the building of new homes. Many of these first dwellings were built under a scheme called “Homes fit for Heroes” after the First World War. This started a long tradition of building state-owned housing in England, which gave rise to the many council estates that still stand today.

As the demand for social housing grew after the Second World War left over 1.4 million people homeless in England's major cities, new initiatives were started, and eventually the first New Towns Act of 1946 led to the establishment of whole new communities. Entire towns, with all the necessary infrastructure and facilities, were planned. Places like Milton Keynes, Telford, Harlow and Basildon were planned from scratch to cope with the impact of the post-war population boom.

The strain of owning and managing such a large housing stock put huge pressure on local government. In general, the 1960s and 1970s in the UK were years of massive economic unrest and instability. The pound was devalued, economic decline led to trade union strikes and unemployment rose dramatically. The welfare state was stretched and local government coffers were running dry.

Margaret Thatcher's solution, when she became Prime Minister in 1979, was dramatic. She implemented widespread deregulation and privatization in order to boost the economy and undermine the powers of the unions. But by far the greatest impact on the UK's property market came with the Housing Act of 1980, which gave council tenants the “legal right to buy their homes”. Tenants were entitled to apply for a mortgage from their local authority. At this time, mortgage interest relief at source (MIRAS) was also in effect, allowing people a certain amount of tax relief on the interest payments on their mortgage. A subsequent act dealt with the problems that many new homeowners faced due to the substandard quality of housing stock. The Housing Defects Act of 1984 gave former council tenants who had unsuspectingly bought their homes only to find major structural problems, the right to apply for local authority grants.

A key feature of the Housing Act 1980 was that council tenants could pay a deposit of £100 for the right to buy their home at a fixed price for the following two years. If the tenant then went on to sell that house within five years of purchasing it, they had to share the capital gain with the local authority. (Remember this feature when we come on to talk about options!)

But it was the Housing Act 1988 that brought about the most significant shift of control in favour of private landlords.

Assured Shorthold Tenancy

Until the Housing Act 1988, tenants had significant rights in the properties they rented. If they continued to pay the rent, they couldn't be evicted. But if they didn't pay the rent, it was difficult to evict them.

The Assured Shorthold Tenancy gave landlords the right to give tenants two months notice to leave the property (after the first six months of the tenancy). This differs significantly from the Assured Tenancy, which gave the tenants the right to remain in the property unless the landlord was able to obtain an Order of Possession to evict the tenants. Any rent increases were also subject to review by a Rent Assessment Committee, as opposed to the ability, under the Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreement, of landlords to make whatever rent increases they want (although a tenant does have a legal right to challenge any increase they deem unreasonable).

Obviously, most landlords chose to use the Assured Shorthold Tenancy agreement, even though this often meant a high turnover of tenants. Again, remember this point for later, when we come on to discuss tenant responsibility.

Leases

Although this may seem like it should come before discussion of the Assured and Assured Shorthold tenancies, I've left it until last because it's the most significant concept I want you to remember. It will help you to understand the rest of this book, because it underpins many of the strategies I will be discussing.

Any tenancy is, by nature, a lease. A lease is simply a contractual agreement that is made between a lessor (the legal owner of an asset) and a lessee, which grants rights to the lessee to use that asset. Significantly, the terms of a lease can be whatever the lessor and lessee agree on. You could lease someone a tangible asset (such as a car, a phone or a property) or an intangible asset (such as a licence to use a software program or a radio frequency).

You can agree on a fixed-term lease or a periodic lease. You can agree that rental payments are to be made weekly, monthly or annually. But whatever you decide and agree on is fixed. You cannot change the terms of the lease unless both parties are willing to make a new agreement.

When a landlord and rental tenant sign an Assured Shorthold Tenancy (AST) agreement, they are bound by the terms of that standard agreement. But no one is obliged to offer or accept this type of agreement. Again, remember this … it will become significant anon!

Playing Monopoly For Real!

In the 1980s and 1990s, private ownership of property sky-rocketed. The rise of the “professional landlord” was a hot topic, and lenders even introduced the “buy-to-let” mortgage in 1996. Being in the property business as all this was happening, as investors were snapping up properties left, right and centre, must have been like seeing a game of Monopoly come to life! The recession of the early 1990s only gave savvy investors the ability to snap up more properties at reduced prices.

New Labour capitalized on the economic strength of Conservative policies while promising better management of spending. When Tony Blair took over as Prime Minister in 1997, the country was already fast climbing out of recession – indeed the economy grew fairly steadily until the big crash that began at the end of 2007, which was precipitated by the undermining of real assets by the subprime mortgage market.

The Aftermath

The aftermath of the global financial crisis was ugly in the property investment world. The collapse of some of the world's biggest banks and financial institutions, such as Lehman Brothers, and major US mortgage companies (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac), completely destabilized the global economy.

Until this point, we had seen years of hay-making for property investors, as lenders fell over themselves to offer mortgages at ridiculously low rates; everywhere you looked, people were buying properties at inflated prices (speculating they would rise even further) and taking on huge mortgages. Ordinary people were able to invest in property. Never before in the history of Britain had so many people of every social class been able to own property. Teachers, doctors, window cleaners, plumbers and builders were becoming so-called “property millionaires” alongside the traditional wealthy classes.

The problem was that many investors soon found themselves mortgaged up to the hilt with what turned out to be toxic debts. When the housing market collapsed, many people found themselves trapped in negative equity (meaning that their mortgages became greater than the actual value of their properties). The debts were called in and many properties were repossessed. People learned the hard way that being a “property millionaire on paper” wasn't even worth the sheet of paper!

Put it this way: if you had 10 properties each worth £500,000 before the crash, and you had £100,000 of equity in each, you were, at that point, a “property millionaire” (i.e. you owned £1,000,000 of equity). When the property market crashed and each of your £500,000 properties collapsed in price to £400,000, you were suddenly worth nothing (and with £4 million worth of mortgage debt in your name). If those properties slipped even further down to £350,000 each, you now technically owed the bank £500,000 on top of the mortgage debt, i.e. you were in a negative equity situation. In commercial property, the bank does not allow you to be in negative equity (in fact you can only be in mortgaged debt up to an agreed loan-to-value, so you always have to make up the shortfall if the value of the property falls); in residential property, you don't have to give the bank anything as long as you keep servicing the mortgage. If you are unable to pay the mortgage on any property, the bank will repossess your property and come after you for any shortfall if they don't recover enough to pay off the entire mortgage; i.e. once they repossess, they can claim any shortfall from you. (NB: This only applies in the UK. In the US they cannot come after you for this shortfall, which is why so many people walked away from properties when they fell into negative equity and were unable to keep servicing the mortgage.) If you owe the bank money, you will end up getting a bad credit rating.

This process happened rapidly and left many people reeling. In fact it might be more accurate to call the “aftermath” a “bloodbath”!

If you want a really eye-opening and fascinating account of what led to the global economic crisis, watch Charles Ferguson's Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job. Also, Jacques Peretti's brilliant documentary for the BBC, The Super-Rich and Us, investigates the rise of the “super-rich” as a result of the crisis and challenges the theory of “trickle-down economics”.

But what we were left with (after the aftermath) was actually a potential goldmine for any investor left standing. All the people who'd bought their portfolios when the property market was on the rise, i.e. at the “top of the bubble”, had ignored the cardinal rule of value investing as decreed by the man known as “the most successful investor in the world”, Warren Buffett, who said you should always “buy low, sell high”. It was the savvy investor who knew this, that profited in the aftermath of the crisis by scooping up under-valued properties.

CHAPTER 2Traditional Property Investing

Until recently, everyone seemed to accept that there were only two ways to become a property owner, which in turn was believed to be the necessary first step towards becoming a property investor. Either you inherited property or you applied for a mortgage and bought it yourself.

When you inherit property from an elderly relative, there is a good chance that the mortgage has been paid off and you will own it outright. Even if there is still a mortgage on it, it's likely that the mortgage is small and there's a sizeable chunk of equity in the property. Either way, as long as you make smart decisions, you've got a good chance of becoming a successful property investor … if that's what you want!