Learning how to learn is life’s most important skill said Tony Buzan, an educational author and consultant.
Is that so relevant for us as a property investor?
Probably yes to any one who belongs to the bracket of an entrepreneur.
So:
Jumping straight into the topic. What are the key property skills that builds up a persona of a property investor?
There may be many, but we identified seven of them that we consider are absolute must for a start.
Knowing Your Numbers
The biggest reason why this features first in the list of property skills is simply because any business and specifically property, lives and dies by its numbers.
While there is a lot of work that we do as property investors like property viewings, raising funds, building our core teams, assessing business risks and lot more…..
Everything in the end is meaningless if the deal hasn’t got us the value we perceived at a profit margin that we expect.
The only known way to improve on your numbers on a property deal and arrive at what works for you and what does not, is by practising them for as many times on a paper.
Just like how you do a paper trade within stock trading, doing the deal on a paper repeatedly does the trick.
Here are three posts that you don’t want to miss to help you bring in more context to this among the property skills.
Expertise On Your Location
Your returns within your property portfolio are as strong as the strength of your location you chose to invest in.
It only makes sense that investors gain expertise on the area they invest in owing to the fact that property prices vary from street to street within the same city.
The simplest way, at least what we have done, is to visit our investment area a number of times and keeping a track of property prices and tenant community whilst viewing properties.
Letting agents and estate agents are your best friends to talk to learning about an area where you would love to invest.
Below are few links that will help you in assessing areas to invest in as an investor.
- How to choose your property investment area?
- UK house price index
- An ultimate guide to assess crime rate in any area.
Negotiation Skills
Negotiation is often described as the art of letting the other side have your way. You have to give the other side a chance to put stuff on the table voluntarily, said Christopher Voss, an author and a businessman.
In other words:
Being able to listen to what your counterpart has to say and almost let them arrive at what your position is. You are merely there to support your counterpart in negotiations to arrive at your position.
If that is too much of fancy strategy for you then here is are three simple things that you and me must know before we kick off any kind of negotiations with anyone, let alone property.
- A bird’s eye view of what you are trying to achieve
- How much are you willing to compromise
- What is your acceptable position with and without compromise
Having a view with above three points clear in your mind, positions yourself to be able to have an exact point at which you will do a deal or walkway if it isn’t for you.
Further, below posts will be useful reads that can assist in preparing yourself for negotiating on property offers.
- How to get your property offers accepted?
- How to work with your estate agents?
- Understanding you via your core values.
Able to Identify Right Teams
When I started within property, one thing that I have been told is that there is no property investor who have not lost money building their portfolio.
And:
One of the common mistake is not doing enough due-diligence on the teams we engage to get our work done and hence end up losing on time, money and sleep.
The summary of whatever experiences we have gone through are well documented in below posts. These would help you in identifying your team who can help your journey of building a property portfolio.
- How to choose your letting agents?
- How to choose your builder for your property refurbs?
- 5 best platforms to find the best trades people.
Manage My Accounts Efficient Way
The word accounting comes from the word accountability. If you are going to be rich, you need to be accountable for your money.
That’s not me saying but the man himself, Robert Kiyosaki.
My personal experience has been more than revolutionary trying to get to grips with this one out of all property skills i.e. learning accounting and putting a system in place once I realised the importance of it.
It’s one thing earning money, but if we can’t arrest the leaks then we are never going to be able to make it. A hard lesson that I learnt a little late in all honesty but am just glad I did.
If you are a beginner or struggling with accounts, then you certainly will save a lot of time and money just by reading below.
- How to reduce your accounting time by 50%
- Zero VAT, Reduced Rate and VAT Exempt scenarios in Property.
- Must answer questions when crisis hits your business.
Being Able To Raise Funds As And When
Someone said, an entrepreneur without funding is like a musician without an instrument. Whilst property investment is very much a people business, money stands pretty much at every corner as a requirement to progress ahead.
There is no way one can rise and shine building their own property portfolio unless he/she learns this one out of all the property skills. That is, to be able to raise funds when needed.
This may sound very generic solution but it just works. Talk to people as much as you can and build the trust through the journey of building your portfolio.
Being able to clearly articulate what is in it for anyone who wants to invest and safeguarding the investment goes a long way to secure funds from fellow investor community.
Alternatively, below are few useful posts that gives out over 10+ ways to fund your property business for starters and associated regulations.
- 3 part series on raising funds for your property purchases.
- Raising Angel Investment or Loan.
- Money laundering regulations and your responsibilities.
Problem Solving Mindset
Any business is rooted on solving a problem that public at large are facing with the entrepreneur providing the solution to resolve it.
And:
Property as a domain is full of those problems for you and me to solve them.
Be it space challenges, refurb challenges, tenancy challenges, legal litigations, building reliable teams, mastering accounts, design challenges providing a win-win solution to sellers problems, property industry is full of it.
If you are able to think and develop a solution mindset to resolve all such problems that are thrown at you as an investor, you would certainly thrive within the industry.
Here are few pointers to start developing this as one of the property skills based on what we have been doing at Limitless Monks since last two decades.
- Active listening before questioning
- Asking right and relevant questions
- Able to be analytical
- Research on unknowns and knowns to best of your ability
- Make retrospection a habit
- Keep track of your solutions to map against future scenarios
- Try and think systems as much as you can
Below are few posts that could help give you a start on problem solving mindset
- Thinking creative refurbishing a property
- How to structure your refurbishment work
- Developing property mindset habits
Concluding On Property Skills
There are more property skills that probably one needs to be able to thrive in the property business without a shadow of doubt. We probably are not going to master all of them.
However, the ones listed are certainly a good start point to build an investor personality and improve further as and when.
It sure is a journey to master these property skills at multiple levels of complexity and at a pace that is individually suitable to each one of us.
Ultimate Property Viewings System For Serious Investors
A cool guide that will give you a property viewings system that just works and a handy checklist of what you need to view in a property to assess your refurbishment properly.
