Property Wealth – Why

We blogged last week about property wealth and explained that the first thing you need to do, before even looking at purchasing a building is to think about why you want to invest in property and what you want to achieve from it.

Many of our clients tell us similar things; they choose to invest in property to enable them to live a certain lifestyle, to save for retirement or to pay for long-term care in later life, to form part of an inheritance plan for future generations or even to help a family member purchase their own home as part of a ‘living inheritance.’

Whatever your reason it is important to focus on your motivation for property investment and build your plan around that.

Financial Goals

Start by setting some financial goals. Look at the long-term picture and ask yourself how much you want your property investment to generate in 10 or 20 years time. This will also help you to understand how much capital you will need to invest in order to take you closer to your financial goals.

Look too at the short-term picture, make some shorter-term goals that correspond to the long-term goals and make some initial calculations for the first two years of your property investment. Don’t forget to include:

• mortgage costs
• agency fees
• insurance
• refurbishment
• maintenance and repairs
• void periods

You will come back and refine these figures later when you are considering your investment strategy.

Next week we will look at some of the strategies you might consider using in order to achieve your property investment goals.