One of the things that you will find when you start investigating property investment is that there is a huge amount of information out there for you to digest. A lot of it is good and it’s great to know that there really are people willing to share their own knowledge to help you learn, alternatively there are also people willing to put out information that can unfortunately be misleading or are trying to make a quick dollar from the uninformed. The only way to know what to do is to learn it and frustratingly this takes patience. I’m a big believer that property investment is a journey and that it takes time, a lot of time. If you’re expecting to make big money quickly through buying and selling property for a profit then you’re heading more along the lines of property speculating rather than property investing. Some people may argue with me and that’s OK, I certainly won’t disagree that some people have made their fortunes out of speculating, but it’s not what this blog is about. This blog is about discussing the elements that you need to invest for the long term and to set yourself up for a prosperous future. The first step for most of us will be to accept that to do it we’ll need to ‘become a student’ again and go back to the books.

When I started out thinking about buying a property for investment I can freely admit that I knew absolutely nothing about what to do or how to go about it. Years later I’d like to think that I know a whole lot more and that this knowledge has put me in a much better position to manage and continue to improve my portfolio. That being said I’ve also come to understand that I will never know it all nor should I expect to. The property investor that thinks they know everything that there is to know is entering dangerous territory. So I guess you could say that the first lesson I learnt is that to do it well I needed to learn how to do it. If you are starting the journey then you’ll also need to figure out how to learn more about the ins and outs of investing. Being well informed is the best tool that you can have when starting out and you need to commit to developing this knowledge. As they say – A fool and his money are soon parted – becoming informed will make property investing an enjoyable and much less stressful pursuit and will hopefully help you avoid becoming the proverbial ‘fool’.

Once you start on your path to learning all about it you’ll quickly realise that there are huge amount of resources out there to digest and that it can be confusing. You’ll come across books, magazines, websites, blogs, conferences, seminars, clubs and organisations just to name a few. One of the ways I tend to approach all of this information is to sift it out by asking myself “What’s in it for the person giving me this advice?”. I started off by reading books, lots of books. Whilst some of the information was confusing and contradictory, I felt that for the most part, all the author of the book had to gain was the money from me buying the book. On the other hand, it takes a lot to get me to sign up for a seminar being run by a business spruiking the wonders of property investing. yes I’m cynical but I think a healthy dose of it in investing is a good thing. Also realise that you’ll be learning a new language. It took me a long time to start to understand the words and phrases used in property and I’m still learning. Try not to be put off by this however, it comes with time.

So if you’re just starting out, start out by becoming informed. Commit yourself to learning as much as you can and you’ll be giving yourself a great footing for a rewarding journey in property investing. If you are not willing to put in the time to learn about the ‘how to’ then I’d suggest that you might consider something else, as I’m sure that for every successful and well informed investor there are as many, if not more, that went into things uninformed and have come off second best. One useful place to start is to investigate the resources page where I’ll highlight some of the things that helped me start my journey. Whilst I found many of them useful you may not, keep looking and you’ll be sure to find the information that works for you.