Well that’s good news! The question you need to ask yourself is WHY?
Is it to become financially free? Is it to save for your future? Is it to just give you a little extra income each month?
Before you start jumping into buying properties right left and centre, you need to figure out your WHY.
The other question you need to ask yourself is ‘Do I Want To Be An Investor Or A Landlord?’
You may think ‘Well…both of course as I don’t want to pay someone else to manage my properties for me!’
You can be both if you like, but if you’re not a fan of dealing with tenants, changing taps, chasing people for their rent, etc, then perhaps the life of a landlord is not one for you. This is absolutely fine-you just need to be aware that investors will need to employ someone to manage their property for them. Either a property manager or estate agent. Here at Thirlmere Deacon we offer fully managed property investments to ensure a hands off solution for our clients. If you are interested in speaking to one of the team, get in touch today.
Being a landlord is a much more hands on role – you will need to keep yourself upto speed when it comes to regulation, legislation and local laws. Some councils require landlords to be licensed-if you’re not licensed you may end up with a hefty fine! The other thing to take into consideration is that you are on call 24/7 for any problems-tenant gets locked out, boiler breaks, power goes out etc. All your responsibility. You can’t ignore the calls and hope the problem will go away…it won’t!
If you are wanting to become a property investor to become financially free, then you need to do a few things before you start.
Firstly you will need to work out exactly what you need each month, in order to be financially free. Being financially free means that if you didn’t receive any income elsewhere, all your monthly outgoings would still be covered.
We would suggest having 3 phases for becoming financially free.
The first phase being enough money to replace your living costs-this could be your mortgage or rent, bills, car costs, credit cards, food, phone, gym membership etc.
The second phase would be enough money to cover everything in the first tier, plus enough to cover holidays, meals out, trips, gifts and other ‘non-essential’ living expenses.
The third phase is where you are generating enough money to do everything in tiers one and two, with additional money for further investments, luxury purchases, all bills for you and your entire family each month and year…basically you don’t need to worry about money ever again!
Of course we would all like to get to tier three quickly, but first we need to start at phase one. The reason we do this is because it is a realistic goal, and feels far less daunting! We’ve all heard the phrase ‘walk before you run‘.
Once you have worked this out, you can put an investment plan in place to make this happen.
This involves putting the right structure in place from day one to ensure everything runs smoothly going forwards. You will need to build your team. By this we don’t mean you need to employ lots of people, you need to have an accountant ready, a mortgage broker, solicitor, property manager if you are looking to build a portfolio, property sourcer, or strategy for sourcing investment properties yourself, builders, plumbers, electricians…the list goes on!
It’s not just as simple as logging onto RightMove for 5 minutes, finding the property you like, ringing the bank and signing a bit of paperwork. If it was that simple, everyone would be doing it!
As you can see, there is a lot you need to do in order to build your property business. This is why we have created a one stop shop for all your property needs.
Here at Thirlmere Deacon, we can help put this plan in place to ensure your investment funds go that little bit further… Get in touch today for a free 15 minute consultation with one of our expert property team and start building your portfolio and future freedom today.
