Every so often I speak to someone who already owns a few properties, but isn’t getting the results they hoped for. And, perhaps worse, they aren’t sure how to make it happen.
They want financial freedom, passive income, more free time, choices, and ideally a nice monthly income arriving as passively as possible, which I fully understand.
Then, when you gently ask what they are actually doing to make that happen, it can go a bit quiet.
Over the years I’ve seen a common pattern.
People get excited and they decide they’re going to build a portfolio. They buy one property, or maybe two, sometimes more. They hand things over to an agent and assume the machine is now running.
Then they wait.
At some point they look up and say, “Why isn’t this working? Where is my passive income?”
I totally get this. Things don’t always work out as we hope. In fact, if I had known in the earlier days what I know now, I would have done some things differently. Not because everything I did was wrong, but because hindsight gives you a different perspective.
But, of course, at the time, you don’t know that.
And so, often we just keep doing what we’re doing, hoping it’s right and waiting for things to change.We could call that persistence, and I think persistence is a top quality of a successful property investor. But persistence on its own isn’t enough.
The old line says that if you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting what you’ve always got.
In property, that is kind of right and kind of wrong.
Sometimes you don’t even keep getting what you’ve always got, because the market changes and the same actions, in different market conditions, produce worse results.
Interest rates change. Tax changes. Regulation changes. Tenant demand changes. Politics becomes less investor-friendly. Costs creep up. Lenders tighten.
But we keep doing what we’ve always done.
We notice change, we talk about change and we read about change. We nod wisely about change over coffee.
If we think about it at all, we tell ourselves things are temporary. Rates will fall. Rents will rise. The agent will sort it. The next deal will fix it.
But many of us do absolutely nothing until it hurts.
So what should we do?
Well, ironically, the first thing we need to do is recognise and accept that we need to do something, and not just drift along into the future in the hope of it all working itself out one day.
None of what follows is financial advice, of course, just some practical ideas based on what I’ve seen and experienced over the years.
But I think the important thing to understand is that whilst the world is changing around us, we must adapt.I understand the urge to ignore it all, keep your head down, and keep pressing on. But if you do that, you may well not achieve your goals at best, and may end up in all kinds of trouble, legal or financial, at worst.
The investors who do best are not usually the ones who predict the future. Most of us can’t predict next Tuesday with any accuracy.
They keep up with what’s happening, understand what it means, and adapt before they are forced to.
Wanting results is fine. We all start there.
But sitting back and wondering why hitting your goals isn’t happening is not a strategy.
It is just avoidance.
Here’s to successful property investing.
Peter Jones
Author, property investor and ex-Chartered Surveyor
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