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A New Way to Invest in Property
The two most frequently asked questions by investors are:What investment should I buy?
Is now the right time to buy it?Most people want to know how to spot the right investment at the right time, because they believe that is the key to successful investing. Let me tell you that is far from the truth: even if you could get the answers to those questions right, you would only have a 50% chance to make your investment successful. Let me explain.There are two key influencers that can lead to the success or failure of any investment:External factors: these are the markets and investment performance in general. For example:
The likely performance of that particular investment over time;
Whether that market will go up or down, and when it will change from one direction to another.
Internal factors: these are the investor’s own preference, experience and capacity. For example:
Which investment you have more affinity with and have a track record of making good money in;
What capacity you have to hold on to an investment during bad times;
What tax advantages do you have which can help manage cash flow;
What level of risk you can tolerate without tending to make panic decisions.When we are looking at any particular investment, we can’t simply look at the charts or research reports to decide what to invest and when to invest, we need to look at ourselves and find out what works for us as an individual.Let’s look at a few examples to demonstrate my viewpoint here. These can show you why investment theories often don’t work in real life because they are an analysis of the external factors, and investors can usually make or break these theories themselves due to their individual differences (i.e. internal factors).Example 1: Pick the best investment at the time.Most investment advisors I have seen make an assumption that if the investment performs well, then any investor can definitely make good money out of it. In other words, the external factors alone determine the return.I beg to differ. Consider these for example:Have you ever heard of an instance where two property investors bought identical properties side by side in the same street at the same time? One makes good money in rent with a good tenant and sells it at a good profit later; the other has much lower rent with a bad tenant and sells it at a loss later. They can be both using the same property management agent, the same selling agent, the same bank for finance, and getting the same advice from the same investment advisor.
You may have also seen share investors who bought the same shares at the same time, one is forced to sell theirs at a loss due to personal circumstances and the other sells them for a profit at a better time.
I have even seen the same builder building 5 identical houses side by side for 5 investors. One took 6 months longer to build than the other 4, and he ended up having to sell it at the wrong time due to personal cash flow pressures whereas others are doing much better financially.What is the sole difference in the above cases? The investors themselves (i.e. the internal factors).Over the years I have reviewed the financial positions of a few thousand investors personally. When people ask me what investment they should get into at any particular moment, they expect me to compare shares, properties, and other asset classes to advise them how to allocate their money.My answer to them is to always ask them to go back over their track record first. I would ask them to list down all the investments they have ever made: cash, shares, options, futures, properties, property development, property renovation, etc. and ask them to tell me which one made them the most money and which one didn’t. Then I suggest to them to stick to the winners and cut the losers. In other words, I tell them to invest more in what has made them good money in the past and stop investing in what has not made them any money in the past (assuming their money will get a 5% return per year sitting in the bank, they need to at least beat that when doing the comparison).If you take time to do that exercise for yourself, you will very quickly discover your favourite investment to invest in, so that you can concentrate your resources on getting the best return rather than allocating any of them to the losers.You may ask for my rationale in choosing investments this way rather than looking at the theories of diversification or portfolio management, like most others do. I simply believe the law of nature governs many things beyond our scientific understanding; and it is not smart to go against the law of nature.For example, have you ever noticed that sardines swim together in the ocean? And similarly so do the sharks. In a natural forest, similar trees grow together too. This is the idea that similar things attract each other as they have affinity with each other.You can look around at the people you know. The people you like to spend more time with are probably people who are in some ways similar to you.It seems that there is a law of affinity at work that says that similar things beget similar things; whether they are animals, trees, rocks or humans. Why do you think there would be any difference between an investor and their investments?So in my opinion, the question is not necessarily about which investment works. Rather it is about which investment works for you.If you have affinity with properties, properties are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with shares, shares are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good cash flow, good cash flow is likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good capital gain, good capital growth is likely to be attracted to you (but not necessary good cash flow ).You can improve your affinity with anything to a degree by spending more time and effort on it, but there are things that you naturally have affinity with. These are the things you should go with as they are effortless for you. Can you imagine the effort required for a shark to work on himself to become sardine-like or vice versa?One of the reasons why our company has spent a lot of time lately to work on our client’s cash flow management, is because if our clients have low affinity with their own family cash flow, they are unlikely to have good cash flow with their investment properties. Remember, it is a natural law that similar things beget similar things. Investors who have poor cash flow management at home, usually end up with investments (or businesses) with poor cash flow.Have you ever wondered why the world’s greatest investors, such as Warren Buffet, tend only to invest in a few very concentrated areas they have great affinity with? While he has more money than most of us and could afford to diversify into many different things, he sticks to only the few things that he has successfully made his money from in the past and cut off the ones which didn’t (such as the airline business).What if you haven’t done any investing and you have no track record to go by? In this case I would suggest you first look at your parents’ track record in investing. The chances are you are somehow similar to your parents (even when you don’t like to admit it ). If you think your parents never invested in anything successfully, then look at whether they have done well with their family home. Alternatively you will need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. Ultimately your results will be the only judge for what investment works for you.Example 2: Picking the bottom of the market to invest.When the news in any market is not positive, many investors automatically go into a “waiting mode”. What are they waiting for? The market to bottom out! This is because they believe investing is about buying low and selling high – pretty simple right? But why do most people fail to do even that?Here are a few reasons:When investors have the money to invest safely in a market, that market may not be at its bottom yet, so they choose to wait. By the time the market hits the bottom; their money has already been taken up by other things, as money rarely sits still. If it is not going to some sort of investment, it will tend to go to expenses or other silly things such as get-rich-quick scheme, repairs and other “life dramas”.
Investors who are used to waiting for when the market is not very positive before they act are usually driven either by a fear of losing money or the greed of gaining more. Let’s look at the impact of each of them:
If their behaviour was due to the fear of losing money, they are less likely to get into the market when it hits rock bottom as you can imagine how bad the news would be then. If they couldn’t act when the news was less negative, how do you expect them to have the courage to act when it is really negative? So usually they miss out on the bottom anyway.
If their behaviour was driven by the greed of hoping to make more money on the way up when it reaches the bottom, they are more likely to find other “get-rich-quick schemes” to put their money in before the market hits the bottom, by the time the market hits the bottom, their money won’t be around to invest. Hence you would notice that the get-rich-quick schemes are usually heavily promoted during a time of negative market sentiment as they can easily capture money from this type of investor.
Very often, something negative begets something else negative. People who are fearful to get into the market when their capacity allows them to do so, will spend most of their time looking at all the bad news to confirm their decision. Not only they will miss the bottom, but they are likely to also miss the opportunities on the way up as well, because they see any market upward movement as a preparation for a further and bigger dive the next day.Hence it is my observation that most people who are too fearful or too greedy to get into the market during a slow market have rarely been able to benefit financially from waiting. They usually end up getting into the market after it has had its bull run for far too long when there is very little negative news left. But that is actually often the time when things are over-valued, so they get into the market then, and get slaughtered on the way down.So my advice to our clients is to first start from your internal factors, check your own track records and financial viability to invest. Decide whether you are in a position to invest safely, regardless of the external factors (i.e. the market):If the answer is yes, then go to the market and find the best value you can find at that time;
If the answer is no, then wait.Unfortunately, most investors do it the other way around. They tend to let the market (an external factor) decide what they should do, regardless of their own situation, and they end up wasting time and resources within their capacity.I hope, from the above 2 examples, that you can see that investing is not necessarily about picking the right investment and the right market timing, but it is more about picking the investment that works for you and sticking to your own investment timetable, within your own capacity.A new way to invest in propertiesDuring a consultation last month with a client who has been with us for 6 years, I suddenly realised they didn’t know anything about our Property Advisory Service which has been around since April 2010. I thought I’d better fix this oversight and explain what it is and why it is unique and unprecedented in Australia.But before I do, I would like to give you some data you simply don’t get from investment books and seminars, so you can see where I am coming from.Over the last 10 years of running a mortgage business for property investors:We have executed more than 7,000 individual investment mortgages with around 60 different lenders;
Myself and our mortgage team have reviewed the financial positions of approximately 6,000 individual property investors and developers;
I have enjoyed privileged access to vital data including the original purchase price, value of property improvements and the current valuation of close to 30,000 individual investment properties all around Australia from our considerable client base.When you have such a large sample size to do your research on and make observations, you are bound to discover something unknown to most people.I have discovered many things that may surprise you as much as they surprised me, some of which are against conventional wisdom:Paying more tax can be financially good for you.This one took me years to swallow, but I can’t deny the facts. The clients who have managed to get into a positive cashflow position have paid a lot of tax and will continue to pay a lot of tax, whether it is capital gains, income tax or stamp duty. They don’t have an issue with the tax man making some money as long as they continue to make more themselves! They regularly cash in the profits from their properties and reduce their debt, but always continue to invest and park their money where the return is best. In fact, I can almost say that the only people who enjoy positive cashflow from their investment properties are the people who have little concern about paying taxes as they treat them as the cost of doing business.Just about every property strategy works. It just depends on who does it, how it is done, when it is done and where it is done.When I first started investing, I went and read many property investment books and attended many investment educational seminars. Just about every one of them was convincing and this confused the hell out of me. Just when I was about to form an opinion against a particular property strategy, someone would show up in one of my client consultations and prove that it worked for them!After testing many of these strategies myself, I came to realise that it is not about the strategy,(which is only a tool) but rather it is about whether the person is using the tool appropriately at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.There is no such thing as the best suburb to invest in, forever.If you randomly pick a particular property in what you think is the best suburb over a 30 year window, you will find that there are periods during which this property will outperform the market average, and there are periods when this property will underperform the market average.Many property investors find themselves jumping into historically high growth suburbs at the end of the period when it is outperforming the average, and then stay there for 5-7 years during the underperforming period. (Naturally this can taint their view of property investing as a whole!)There is no such thing as the worst suburb to invest in, forever.If you pick a property in the worst suburb you can think of from 40 years ago, and pitch that against the best suburb you can think of over the same period of time, you will find they both grew at about 7-9% a year on average over the long-term.Hence in the 1960s, a median house in Melbourne and Sydney was valued at $10k. The worst property around that time may have been 30% of the median price for then, which was say about $3k. Today, the median house price in these cities is about $600k. The worst suburb you can find is still around 30% of that price which is say $200k a house. If you believe a bad suburb will never grow, then show me where you can find a house today in these cities, that is still worth around $3k.Median Price growth is very misleading.Many beginner property investors look at median price growth as the guidance for suburb selection. A few points worth mentioning on median price are:We understand the way median price is calculated as the middle price point based on the number of sales during a period. We can talk about the median price for a particular suburb on a particular day, week, month, year, or even longer. So an influx of new stocks or low sales volume can severely distort the median price.In an older suburb, median price growth tends to be higher than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the large sum of money people put into renovating their properties nor does it reflect the subdivision of large blocks of land into multiple dwellings which can be a substantial percentage of the entire suburb.In a newer suburb, median price growth tend to be lower than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the fact that the land and buildings are both getting smaller. For example, you could buy a block of land of 650 square metres for $120k in 2006 in a newer suburb of Melbourne, but 5 years later, half the size block (i.e.325 square metres) will cost you $260k. That’s a whopping 34% annual growth rate per year for 5 years, but median price growth will never reflect that, as median prices today are calculated on much smaller properties.Median price growth takes away people’s focus from looking at the cost of carrying the property. When you have a net 2-3% rental yield against interest rates of 7-8%, you are out-of-pocket by 5% a year. This is not including the money you have to put in to fix and maintain your property from time to time.Buying and holding the same property forever doesn’t give you the best returns on your money.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will achieve an average growth of 7-9%. But you will be bound to hit periods where your property outperforms the 7-9% growth and periods where it under performs the 7-9% growth.The longer you hold a property, if its growth is at or above average, the lower its rental yields will become.The longer you hold a property, the higher the capital gains tax you will need to pay when you sell, and the less likely you will be able to sell it.The longer you hold a property, the more likely there will be a need for an expensive upgrade of the property.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will forget which part of the equity actually belongs to the tax man, AND the more likely you will be to try to leverage the equity that doesn’t belong to you. This can get you into a negative equity position with a negative cashflow forever, unless you have proper financial guidance.
A New Way to Invest in Property
The two most frequently asked questions by investors are:What investment should I buy?
Is now the right time to buy it?Most people want to know how to spot the right investment at the right time, because they believe that is the key to successful investing. Let me tell you that is far from the truth: even if you could get the answers to those questions right, you would only have a 50% chance to make your investment successful. Let me explain.There are two key influencers that can lead to the success or failure of any investment:External factors: these are the markets and investment performance in general. For example:
The likely performance of that particular investment over time;
Whether that market will go up or down, and when it will change from one direction to another.
Internal factors: these are the investor’s own preference, experience and capacity. For example:
Which investment you have more affinity with and have a track record of making good money in;
What capacity you have to hold on to an investment during bad times;
What tax advantages do you have which can help manage cash flow;
What level of risk you can tolerate without tending to make panic decisions.When we are looking at any particular investment, we can’t simply look at the charts or research reports to decide what to invest and when to invest, we need to look at ourselves and find out what works for us as an individual.Let’s look at a few examples to demonstrate my viewpoint here. These can show you why investment theories often don’t work in real life because they are an analysis of the external factors, and investors can usually make or break these theories themselves due to their individual differences (i.e. internal factors).Example 1: Pick the best investment at the time.Most investment advisors I have seen make an assumption that if the investment performs well, then any investor can definitely make good money out of it. In other words, the external factors alone determine the return.I beg to differ. Consider these for example:Have you ever heard of an instance where two property investors bought identical properties side by side in the same street at the same time? One makes good money in rent with a good tenant and sells it at a good profit later; the other has much lower rent with a bad tenant and sells it at a loss later. They can be both using the same property management agent, the same selling agent, the same bank for finance, and getting the same advice from the same investment advisor.
You may have also seen share investors who bought the same shares at the same time, one is forced to sell theirs at a loss due to personal circumstances and the other sells them for a profit at a better time.
I have even seen the same builder building 5 identical houses side by side for 5 investors. One took 6 months longer to build than the other 4, and he ended up having to sell it at the wrong time due to personal cash flow pressures whereas others are doing much better financially.What is the sole difference in the above cases? The investors themselves (i.e. the internal factors).Over the years I have reviewed the financial positions of a few thousand investors personally. When people ask me what investment they should get into at any particular moment, they expect me to compare shares, properties, and other asset classes to advise them how to allocate their money.My answer to them is to always ask them to go back over their track record first. I would ask them to list down all the investments they have ever made: cash, shares, options, futures, properties, property development, property renovation, etc. and ask them to tell me which one made them the most money and which one didn’t. Then I suggest to them to stick to the winners and cut the losers. In other words, I tell them to invest more in what has made them good money in the past and stop investing in what has not made them any money in the past (assuming their money will get a 5% return per year sitting in the bank, they need to at least beat that when doing the comparison).If you take time to do that exercise for yourself, you will very quickly discover your favourite investment to invest in, so that you can concentrate your resources on getting the best return rather than allocating any of them to the losers.You may ask for my rationale in choosing investments this way rather than looking at the theories of diversification or portfolio management, like most others do. I simply believe the law of nature governs many things beyond our scientific understanding; and it is not smart to go against the law of nature.For example, have you ever noticed that sardines swim together in the ocean? And similarly so do the sharks. In a natural forest, similar trees grow together too. This is the idea that similar things attract each other as they have affinity with each other.You can look around at the people you know. The people you like to spend more time with are probably people who are in some ways similar to you.It seems that there is a law of affinity at work that says that similar things beget similar things; whether they are animals, trees, rocks or humans. Why do you think there would be any difference between an investor and their investments?So in my opinion, the question is not necessarily about which investment works. Rather it is about which investment works for you.If you have affinity with properties, properties are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with shares, shares are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good cash flow, good cash flow is likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good capital gain, good capital growth is likely to be attracted to you (but not necessary good cash flow ).You can improve your affinity with anything to a degree by spending more time and effort on it, but there are things that you naturally have affinity with. These are the things you should go with as they are effortless for you. Can you imagine the effort required for a shark to work on himself to become sardine-like or vice versa?One of the reasons why our company has spent a lot of time lately to work on our client’s cash flow management, is because if our clients have low affinity with their own family cash flow, they are unlikely to have good cash flow with their investment properties. Remember, it is a natural law that similar things beget similar things. Investors who have poor cash flow management at home, usually end up with investments (or businesses) with poor cash flow.Have you ever wondered why the world’s greatest investors, such as Warren Buffet, tend only to invest in a few very concentrated areas they have great affinity with? While he has more money than most of us and could afford to diversify into many different things, he sticks to only the few things that he has successfully made his money from in the past and cut off the ones which didn’t (such as the airline business).What if you haven’t done any investing and you have no track record to go by? In this case I would suggest you first look at your parents’ track record in investing. The chances are you are somehow similar to your parents (even when you don’t like to admit it ). If you think your parents never invested in anything successfully, then look at whether they have done well with their family home. Alternatively you will need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. Ultimately your results will be the only judge for what investment works for you.Example 2: Picking the bottom of the market to invest.When the news in any market is not positive, many investors automatically go into a “waiting mode”. What are they waiting for? The market to bottom out! This is because they believe investing is about buying low and selling high – pretty simple right? But why do most people fail to do even that?Here are a few reasons:When investors have the money to invest safely in a market, that market may not be at its bottom yet, so they choose to wait. By the time the market hits the bottom; their money has already been taken up by other things, as money rarely sits still. If it is not going to some sort of investment, it will tend to go to expenses or other silly things such as get-rich-quick scheme, repairs and other “life dramas”.
Investors who are used to waiting for when the market is not very positive before they act are usually driven either by a fear of losing money or the greed of gaining more. Let’s look at the impact of each of them:
If their behaviour was due to the fear of losing money, they are less likely to get into the market when it hits rock bottom as you can imagine how bad the news would be then. If they couldn’t act when the news was less negative, how do you expect them to have the courage to act when it is really negative? So usually they miss out on the bottom anyway.
If their behaviour was driven by the greed of hoping to make more money on the way up when it reaches the bottom, they are more likely to find other “get-rich-quick schemes” to put their money in before the market hits the bottom, by the time the market hits the bottom, their money won’t be around to invest. Hence you would notice that the get-rich-quick schemes are usually heavily promoted during a time of negative market sentiment as they can easily capture money from this type of investor.
Very often, something negative begets something else negative. People who are fearful to get into the market when their capacity allows them to do so, will spend most of their time looking at all the bad news to confirm their decision. Not only they will miss the bottom, but they are likely to also miss the opportunities on the way up as well, because they see any market upward movement as a preparation for a further and bigger dive the next day.Hence it is my observation that most people who are too fearful or too greedy to get into the market during a slow market have rarely been able to benefit financially from waiting. They usually end up getting into the market after it has had its bull run for far too long when there is very little negative news left. But that is actually often the time when things are over-valued, so they get into the market then, and get slaughtered on the way down.So my advice to our clients is to first start from your internal factors, check your own track records and financial viability to invest. Decide whether you are in a position to invest safely, regardless of the external factors (i.e. the market):If the answer is yes, then go to the market and find the best value you can find at that time;
If the answer is no, then wait.Unfortunately, most investors do it the other way around. They tend to let the market (an external factor) decide what they should do, regardless of their own situation, and they end up wasting time and resources within their capacity.I hope, from the above 2 examples, that you can see that investing is not necessarily about picking the right investment and the right market timing, but it is more about picking the investment that works for you and sticking to your own investment timetable, within your own capacity.A new way to invest in propertiesDuring a consultation last month with a client who has been with us for 6 years, I suddenly realised they didn’t know anything about our Property Advisory Service which has been around since April 2010. I thought I’d better fix this oversight and explain what it is and why it is unique and unprecedented in Australia.But before I do, I would like to give you some data you simply don’t get from investment books and seminars, so you can see where I am coming from.Over the last 10 years of running a mortgage business for property investors:We have executed more than 7,000 individual investment mortgages with around 60 different lenders;
Myself and our mortgage team have reviewed the financial positions of approximately 6,000 individual property investors and developers;
I have enjoyed privileged access to vital data including the original purchase price, value of property improvements and the current valuation of close to 30,000 individual investment properties all around Australia from our considerable client base.When you have such a large sample size to do your research on and make observations, you are bound to discover something unknown to most people.I have discovered many things that may surprise you as much as they surprised me, some of which are against conventional wisdom:Paying more tax can be financially good for you.This one took me years to swallow, but I can’t deny the facts. The clients who have managed to get into a positive cashflow position have paid a lot of tax and will continue to pay a lot of tax, whether it is capital gains, income tax or stamp duty. They don’t have an issue with the tax man making some money as long as they continue to make more themselves! They regularly cash in the profits from their properties and reduce their debt, but always continue to invest and park their money where the return is best. In fact, I can almost say that the only people who enjoy positive cashflow from their investment properties are the people who have little concern about paying taxes as they treat them as the cost of doing business.Just about every property strategy works. It just depends on who does it, how it is done, when it is done and where it is done.When I first started investing, I went and read many property investment books and attended many investment educational seminars. Just about every one of them was convincing and this confused the hell out of me. Just when I was about to form an opinion against a particular property strategy, someone would show up in one of my client consultations and prove that it worked for them!After testing many of these strategies myself, I came to realise that it is not about the strategy,(which is only a tool) but rather it is about whether the person is using the tool appropriately at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.There is no such thing as the best suburb to invest in, forever.If you randomly pick a particular property in what you think is the best suburb over a 30 year window, you will find that there are periods during which this property will outperform the market average, and there are periods when this property will underperform the market average.Many property investors find themselves jumping into historically high growth suburbs at the end of the period when it is outperforming the average, and then stay there for 5-7 years during the underperforming period. (Naturally this can taint their view of property investing as a whole!)There is no such thing as the worst suburb to invest in, forever.If you pick a property in the worst suburb you can think of from 40 years ago, and pitch that against the best suburb you can think of over the same period of time, you will find they both grew at about 7-9% a year on average over the long-term.Hence in the 1960s, a median house in Melbourne and Sydney was valued at $10k. The worst property around that time may have been 30% of the median price for then, which was say about $3k. Today, the median house price in these cities is about $600k. The worst suburb you can find is still around 30% of that price which is say $200k a house. If you believe a bad suburb will never grow, then show me where you can find a house today in these cities, that is still worth around $3k.Median Price growth is very misleading.Many beginner property investors look at median price growth as the guidance for suburb selection. A few points worth mentioning on median price are:We understand the way median price is calculated as the middle price point based on the number of sales during a period. We can talk about the median price for a particular suburb on a particular day, week, month, year, or even longer. So an influx of new stocks or low sales volume can severely distort the median price.In an older suburb, median price growth tends to be higher than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the large sum of money people put into renovating their properties nor does it reflect the subdivision of large blocks of land into multiple dwellings which can be a substantial percentage of the entire suburb.In a newer suburb, median price growth tend to be lower than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the fact that the land and buildings are both getting smaller. For example, you could buy a block of land of 650 square metres for $120k in 2006 in a newer suburb of Melbourne, but 5 years later, half the size block (i.e.325 square metres) will cost you $260k. That’s a whopping 34% annual growth rate per year for 5 years, but median price growth will never reflect that, as median prices today are calculated on much smaller properties.Median price growth takes away people’s focus from looking at the cost of carrying the property. When you have a net 2-3% rental yield against interest rates of 7-8%, you are out-of-pocket by 5% a year. This is not including the money you have to put in to fix and maintain your property from time to time.Buying and holding the same property forever doesn’t give you the best returns on your money.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will achieve an average growth of 7-9%. But you will be bound to hit periods where your property outperforms the 7-9% growth and periods where it under performs the 7-9% growth.The longer you hold a property, if its growth is at or above average, the lower its rental yields will become.The longer you hold a property, the higher the capital gains tax you will need to pay when you sell, and the less likely you will be able to sell it.The longer you hold a property, the more likely there will be a need for an expensive upgrade of the property.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will forget which part of the equity actually belongs to the tax man, AND the more likely you will be to try to leverage the equity that doesn’t belong to you. This can get you into a negative equity position with a negative cashflow forever, unless you have proper financial guidance.
A New Way to Invest in Property
The two most frequently asked questions by investors are:What investment should I buy?
Is now the right time to buy it?Most people want to know how to spot the right investment at the right time, because they believe that is the key to successful investing. Let me tell you that is far from the truth: even if you could get the answers to those questions right, you would only have a 50% chance to make your investment successful. Let me explain.There are two key influencers that can lead to the success or failure of any investment:External factors: these are the markets and investment performance in general. For example:
The likely performance of that particular investment over time;
Whether that market will go up or down, and when it will change from one direction to another.
Internal factors: these are the investor’s own preference, experience and capacity. For example:
Which investment you have more affinity with and have a track record of making good money in;
What capacity you have to hold on to an investment during bad times;
What tax advantages do you have which can help manage cash flow;
What level of risk you can tolerate without tending to make panic decisions.When we are looking at any particular investment, we can’t simply look at the charts or research reports to decide what to invest and when to invest, we need to look at ourselves and find out what works for us as an individual.Let’s look at a few examples to demonstrate my viewpoint here. These can show you why investment theories often don’t work in real life because they are an analysis of the external factors, and investors can usually make or break these theories themselves due to their individual differences (i.e. internal factors).Example 1: Pick the best investment at the time.Most investment advisors I have seen make an assumption that if the investment performs well, then any investor can definitely make good money out of it. In other words, the external factors alone determine the return.I beg to differ. Consider these for example:Have you ever heard of an instance where two property investors bought identical properties side by side in the same street at the same time? One makes good money in rent with a good tenant and sells it at a good profit later; the other has much lower rent with a bad tenant and sells it at a loss later. They can be both using the same property management agent, the same selling agent, the same bank for finance, and getting the same advice from the same investment advisor.
You may have also seen share investors who bought the same shares at the same time, one is forced to sell theirs at a loss due to personal circumstances and the other sells them for a profit at a better time.
I have even seen the same builder building 5 identical houses side by side for 5 investors. One took 6 months longer to build than the other 4, and he ended up having to sell it at the wrong time due to personal cash flow pressures whereas others are doing much better financially.What is the sole difference in the above cases? The investors themselves (i.e. the internal factors).Over the years I have reviewed the financial positions of a few thousand investors personally. When people ask me what investment they should get into at any particular moment, they expect me to compare shares, properties, and other asset classes to advise them how to allocate their money.My answer to them is to always ask them to go back over their track record first. I would ask them to list down all the investments they have ever made: cash, shares, options, futures, properties, property development, property renovation, etc. and ask them to tell me which one made them the most money and which one didn’t. Then I suggest to them to stick to the winners and cut the losers. In other words, I tell them to invest more in what has made them good money in the past and stop investing in what has not made them any money in the past (assuming their money will get a 5% return per year sitting in the bank, they need to at least beat that when doing the comparison).If you take time to do that exercise for yourself, you will very quickly discover your favourite investment to invest in, so that you can concentrate your resources on getting the best return rather than allocating any of them to the losers.You may ask for my rationale in choosing investments this way rather than looking at the theories of diversification or portfolio management, like most others do. I simply believe the law of nature governs many things beyond our scientific understanding; and it is not smart to go against the law of nature.For example, have you ever noticed that sardines swim together in the ocean? And similarly so do the sharks. In a natural forest, similar trees grow together too. This is the idea that similar things attract each other as they have affinity with each other.You can look around at the people you know. The people you like to spend more time with are probably people who are in some ways similar to you.It seems that there is a law of affinity at work that says that similar things beget similar things; whether they are animals, trees, rocks or humans. Why do you think there would be any difference between an investor and their investments?So in my opinion, the question is not necessarily about which investment works. Rather it is about which investment works for you.If you have affinity with properties, properties are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with shares, shares are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good cash flow, good cash flow is likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good capital gain, good capital growth is likely to be attracted to you (but not necessary good cash flow ).You can improve your affinity with anything to a degree by spending more time and effort on it, but there are things that you naturally have affinity with. These are the things you should go with as they are effortless for you. Can you imagine the effort required for a shark to work on himself to become sardine-like or vice versa?One of the reasons why our company has spent a lot of time lately to work on our client’s cash flow management, is because if our clients have low affinity with their own family cash flow, they are unlikely to have good cash flow with their investment properties. Remember, it is a natural law that similar things beget similar things. Investors who have poor cash flow management at home, usually end up with investments (or businesses) with poor cash flow.Have you ever wondered why the world’s greatest investors, such as Warren Buffet, tend only to invest in a few very concentrated areas they have great affinity with? While he has more money than most of us and could afford to diversify into many different things, he sticks to only the few things that he has successfully made his money from in the past and cut off the ones which didn’t (such as the airline business).What if you haven’t done any investing and you have no track record to go by? In this case I would suggest you first look at your parents’ track record in investing. The chances are you are somehow similar to your parents (even when you don’t like to admit it ). If you think your parents never invested in anything successfully, then look at whether they have done well with their family home. Alternatively you will need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. Ultimately your results will be the only judge for what investment works for you.Example 2: Picking the bottom of the market to invest.When the news in any market is not positive, many investors automatically go into a “waiting mode”. What are they waiting for? The market to bottom out! This is because they believe investing is about buying low and selling high – pretty simple right? But why do most people fail to do even that?Here are a few reasons:When investors have the money to invest safely in a market, that market may not be at its bottom yet, so they choose to wait. By the time the market hits the bottom; their money has already been taken up by other things, as money rarely sits still. If it is not going to some sort of investment, it will tend to go to expenses or other silly things such as get-rich-quick scheme, repairs and other “life dramas”.
Investors who are used to waiting for when the market is not very positive before they act are usually driven either by a fear of losing money or the greed of gaining more. Let’s look at the impact of each of them:
If their behaviour was due to the fear of losing money, they are less likely to get into the market when it hits rock bottom as you can imagine how bad the news would be then. If they couldn’t act when the news was less negative, how do you expect them to have the courage to act when it is really negative? So usually they miss out on the bottom anyway.
If their behaviour was driven by the greed of hoping to make more money on the way up when it reaches the bottom, they are more likely to find other “get-rich-quick schemes” to put their money in before the market hits the bottom, by the time the market hits the bottom, their money won’t be around to invest. Hence you would notice that the get-rich-quick schemes are usually heavily promoted during a time of negative market sentiment as they can easily capture money from this type of investor.
Very often, something negative begets something else negative. People who are fearful to get into the market when their capacity allows them to do so, will spend most of their time looking at all the bad news to confirm their decision. Not only they will miss the bottom, but they are likely to also miss the opportunities on the way up as well, because they see any market upward movement as a preparation for a further and bigger dive the next day.Hence it is my observation that most people who are too fearful or too greedy to get into the market during a slow market have rarely been able to benefit financially from waiting. They usually end up getting into the market after it has had its bull run for far too long when there is very little negative news left. But that is actually often the time when things are over-valued, so they get into the market then, and get slaughtered on the way down.So my advice to our clients is to first start from your internal factors, check your own track records and financial viability to invest. Decide whether you are in a position to invest safely, regardless of the external factors (i.e. the market):If the answer is yes, then go to the market and find the best value you can find at that time;
If the answer is no, then wait.Unfortunately, most investors do it the other way around. They tend to let the market (an external factor) decide what they should do, regardless of their own situation, and they end up wasting time and resources within their capacity.I hope, from the above 2 examples, that you can see that investing is not necessarily about picking the right investment and the right market timing, but it is more about picking the investment that works for you and sticking to your own investment timetable, within your own capacity.A new way to invest in propertiesDuring a consultation last month with a client who has been with us for 6 years, I suddenly realised they didn’t know anything about our Property Advisory Service which has been around since April 2010. I thought I’d better fix this oversight and explain what it is and why it is unique and unprecedented in Australia.But before I do, I would like to give you some data you simply don’t get from investment books and seminars, so you can see where I am coming from.Over the last 10 years of running a mortgage business for property investors:We have executed more than 7,000 individual investment mortgages with around 60 different lenders;
Myself and our mortgage team have reviewed the financial positions of approximately 6,000 individual property investors and developers;
I have enjoyed privileged access to vital data including the original purchase price, value of property improvements and the current valuation of close to 30,000 individual investment properties all around Australia from our considerable client base.When you have such a large sample size to do your research on and make observations, you are bound to discover something unknown to most people.I have discovered many things that may surprise you as much as they surprised me, some of which are against conventional wisdom:Paying more tax can be financially good for you.This one took me years to swallow, but I can’t deny the facts. The clients who have managed to get into a positive cashflow position have paid a lot of tax and will continue to pay a lot of tax, whether it is capital gains, income tax or stamp duty. They don’t have an issue with the tax man making some money as long as they continue to make more themselves! They regularly cash in the profits from their properties and reduce their debt, but always continue to invest and park their money where the return is best. In fact, I can almost say that the only people who enjoy positive cashflow from their investment properties are the people who have little concern about paying taxes as they treat them as the cost of doing business.Just about every property strategy works. It just depends on who does it, how it is done, when it is done and where it is done.When I first started investing, I went and read many property investment books and attended many investment educational seminars. Just about every one of them was convincing and this confused the hell out of me. Just when I was about to form an opinion against a particular property strategy, someone would show up in one of my client consultations and prove that it worked for them!After testing many of these strategies myself, I came to realise that it is not about the strategy,(which is only a tool) but rather it is about whether the person is using the tool appropriately at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.There is no such thing as the best suburb to invest in, forever.If you randomly pick a particular property in what you think is the best suburb over a 30 year window, you will find that there are periods during which this property will outperform the market average, and there are periods when this property will underperform the market average.Many property investors find themselves jumping into historically high growth suburbs at the end of the period when it is outperforming the average, and then stay there for 5-7 years during the underperforming period. (Naturally this can taint their view of property investing as a whole!)There is no such thing as the worst suburb to invest in, forever.If you pick a property in the worst suburb you can think of from 40 years ago, and pitch that against the best suburb you can think of over the same period of time, you will find they both grew at about 7-9% a year on average over the long-term.Hence in the 1960s, a median house in Melbourne and Sydney was valued at $10k. The worst property around that time may have been 30% of the median price for then, which was say about $3k. Today, the median house price in these cities is about $600k. The worst suburb you can find is still around 30% of that price which is say $200k a house. If you believe a bad suburb will never grow, then show me where you can find a house today in these cities, that is still worth around $3k.Median Price growth is very misleading.Many beginner property investors look at median price growth as the guidance for suburb selection. A few points worth mentioning on median price are:We understand the way median price is calculated as the middle price point based on the number of sales during a period. We can talk about the median price for a particular suburb on a particular day, week, month, year, or even longer. So an influx of new stocks or low sales volume can severely distort the median price.In an older suburb, median price growth tends to be higher than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the large sum of money people put into renovating their properties nor does it reflect the subdivision of large blocks of land into multiple dwellings which can be a substantial percentage of the entire suburb.In a newer suburb, median price growth tend to be lower than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the fact that the land and buildings are both getting smaller. For example, you could buy a block of land of 650 square metres for $120k in 2006 in a newer suburb of Melbourne, but 5 years later, half the size block (i.e.325 square metres) will cost you $260k. That’s a whopping 34% annual growth rate per year for 5 years, but median price growth will never reflect that, as median prices today are calculated on much smaller properties.Median price growth takes away people’s focus from looking at the cost of carrying the property. When you have a net 2-3% rental yield against interest rates of 7-8%, you are out-of-pocket by 5% a year. This is not including the money you have to put in to fix and maintain your property from time to time.Buying and holding the same property forever doesn’t give you the best returns on your money.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will achieve an average growth of 7-9%. But you will be bound to hit periods where your property outperforms the 7-9% growth and periods where it under performs the 7-9% growth.The longer you hold a property, if its growth is at or above average, the lower its rental yields will become.The longer you hold a property, the higher the capital gains tax you will need to pay when you sell, and the less likely you will be able to sell it.The longer you hold a property, the more likely there will be a need for an expensive upgrade of the property.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will forget which part of the equity actually belongs to the tax man, AND the more likely you will be to try to leverage the equity that doesn’t belong to you. This can get you into a negative equity position with a negative cashflow forever, unless you have proper financial guidance.
A New Way to Invest in Property
The two most frequently asked questions by investors are:What investment should I buy?
Is now the right time to buy it?Most people want to know how to spot the right investment at the right time, because they believe that is the key to successful investing. Let me tell you that is far from the truth: even if you could get the answers to those questions right, you would only have a 50% chance to make your investment successful. Let me explain.There are two key influencers that can lead to the success or failure of any investment:External factors: these are the markets and investment performance in general. For example:
The likely performance of that particular investment over time;
Whether that market will go up or down, and when it will change from one direction to another.
Internal factors: these are the investor’s own preference, experience and capacity. For example:
Which investment you have more affinity with and have a track record of making good money in;
What capacity you have to hold on to an investment during bad times;
What tax advantages do you have which can help manage cash flow;
What level of risk you can tolerate without tending to make panic decisions.When we are looking at any particular investment, we can’t simply look at the charts or research reports to decide what to invest and when to invest, we need to look at ourselves and find out what works for us as an individual.Let’s look at a few examples to demonstrate my viewpoint here. These can show you why investment theories often don’t work in real life because they are an analysis of the external factors, and investors can usually make or break these theories themselves due to their individual differences (i.e. internal factors).Example 1: Pick the best investment at the time.Most investment advisors I have seen make an assumption that if the investment performs well, then any investor can definitely make good money out of it. In other words, the external factors alone determine the return.I beg to differ. Consider these for example:Have you ever heard of an instance where two property investors bought identical properties side by side in the same street at the same time? One makes good money in rent with a good tenant and sells it at a good profit later; the other has much lower rent with a bad tenant and sells it at a loss later. They can be both using the same property management agent, the same selling agent, the same bank for finance, and getting the same advice from the same investment advisor.
You may have also seen share investors who bought the same shares at the same time, one is forced to sell theirs at a loss due to personal circumstances and the other sells them for a profit at a better time.
I have even seen the same builder building 5 identical houses side by side for 5 investors. One took 6 months longer to build than the other 4, and he ended up having to sell it at the wrong time due to personal cash flow pressures whereas others are doing much better financially.What is the sole difference in the above cases? The investors themselves (i.e. the internal factors).Over the years I have reviewed the financial positions of a few thousand investors personally. When people ask me what investment they should get into at any particular moment, they expect me to compare shares, properties, and other asset classes to advise them how to allocate their money.My answer to them is to always ask them to go back over their track record first. I would ask them to list down all the investments they have ever made: cash, shares, options, futures, properties, property development, property renovation, etc. and ask them to tell me which one made them the most money and which one didn’t. Then I suggest to them to stick to the winners and cut the losers. In other words, I tell them to invest more in what has made them good money in the past and stop investing in what has not made them any money in the past (assuming their money will get a 5% return per year sitting in the bank, they need to at least beat that when doing the comparison).If you take time to do that exercise for yourself, you will very quickly discover your favourite investment to invest in, so that you can concentrate your resources on getting the best return rather than allocating any of them to the losers.You may ask for my rationale in choosing investments this way rather than looking at the theories of diversification or portfolio management, like most others do. I simply believe the law of nature governs many things beyond our scientific understanding; and it is not smart to go against the law of nature.For example, have you ever noticed that sardines swim together in the ocean? And similarly so do the sharks. In a natural forest, similar trees grow together too. This is the idea that similar things attract each other as they have affinity with each other.You can look around at the people you know. The people you like to spend more time with are probably people who are in some ways similar to you.It seems that there is a law of affinity at work that says that similar things beget similar things; whether they are animals, trees, rocks or humans. Why do you think there would be any difference between an investor and their investments?So in my opinion, the question is not necessarily about which investment works. Rather it is about which investment works for you.If you have affinity with properties, properties are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with shares, shares are likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good cash flow, good cash flow is likely to be attracted to you. If you have affinity with good capital gain, good capital growth is likely to be attracted to you (but not necessary good cash flow ).You can improve your affinity with anything to a degree by spending more time and effort on it, but there are things that you naturally have affinity with. These are the things you should go with as they are effortless for you. Can you imagine the effort required for a shark to work on himself to become sardine-like or vice versa?One of the reasons why our company has spent a lot of time lately to work on our client’s cash flow management, is because if our clients have low affinity with their own family cash flow, they are unlikely to have good cash flow with their investment properties. Remember, it is a natural law that similar things beget similar things. Investors who have poor cash flow management at home, usually end up with investments (or businesses) with poor cash flow.Have you ever wondered why the world’s greatest investors, such as Warren Buffet, tend only to invest in a few very concentrated areas they have great affinity with? While he has more money than most of us and could afford to diversify into many different things, he sticks to only the few things that he has successfully made his money from in the past and cut off the ones which didn’t (such as the airline business).What if you haven’t done any investing and you have no track record to go by? In this case I would suggest you first look at your parents’ track record in investing. The chances are you are somehow similar to your parents (even when you don’t like to admit it ). If you think your parents never invested in anything successfully, then look at whether they have done well with their family home. Alternatively you will need to do your own testing to find out what works for you.Obviously there will be exceptions to this rule. Ultimately your results will be the only judge for what investment works for you.Example 2: Picking the bottom of the market to invest.When the news in any market is not positive, many investors automatically go into a “waiting mode”. What are they waiting for? The market to bottom out! This is because they believe investing is about buying low and selling high – pretty simple right? But why do most people fail to do even that?Here are a few reasons:When investors have the money to invest safely in a market, that market may not be at its bottom yet, so they choose to wait. By the time the market hits the bottom; their money has already been taken up by other things, as money rarely sits still. If it is not going to some sort of investment, it will tend to go to expenses or other silly things such as get-rich-quick scheme, repairs and other “life dramas”.
Investors who are used to waiting for when the market is not very positive before they act are usually driven either by a fear of losing money or the greed of gaining more. Let’s look at the impact of each of them:
If their behaviour was due to the fear of losing money, they are less likely to get into the market when it hits rock bottom as you can imagine how bad the news would be then. If they couldn’t act when the news was less negative, how do you expect them to have the courage to act when it is really negative? So usually they miss out on the bottom anyway.
If their behaviour was driven by the greed of hoping to make more money on the way up when it reaches the bottom, they are more likely to find other “get-rich-quick schemes” to put their money in before the market hits the bottom, by the time the market hits the bottom, their money won’t be around to invest. Hence you would notice that the get-rich-quick schemes are usually heavily promoted during a time of negative market sentiment as they can easily capture money from this type of investor.
Very often, something negative begets something else negative. People who are fearful to get into the market when their capacity allows them to do so, will spend most of their time looking at all the bad news to confirm their decision. Not only they will miss the bottom, but they are likely to also miss the opportunities on the way up as well, because they see any market upward movement as a preparation for a further and bigger dive the next day.Hence it is my observation that most people who are too fearful or too greedy to get into the market during a slow market have rarely been able to benefit financially from waiting. They usually end up getting into the market after it has had its bull run for far too long when there is very little negative news left. But that is actually often the time when things are over-valued, so they get into the market then, and get slaughtered on the way down.So my advice to our clients is to first start from your internal factors, check your own track records and financial viability to invest. Decide whether you are in a position to invest safely, regardless of the external factors (i.e. the market):If the answer is yes, then go to the market and find the best value you can find at that time;
If the answer is no, then wait.Unfortunately, most investors do it the other way around. They tend to let the market (an external factor) decide what they should do, regardless of their own situation, and they end up wasting time and resources within their capacity.I hope, from the above 2 examples, that you can see that investing is not necessarily about picking the right investment and the right market timing, but it is more about picking the investment that works for you and sticking to your own investment timetable, within your own capacity.A new way to invest in propertiesDuring a consultation last month with a client who has been with us for 6 years, I suddenly realised they didn’t know anything about our Property Advisory Service which has been around since April 2010. I thought I’d better fix this oversight and explain what it is and why it is unique and unprecedented in Australia.But before I do, I would like to give you some data you simply don’t get from investment books and seminars, so you can see where I am coming from.Over the last 10 years of running a mortgage business for property investors:We have executed more than 7,000 individual investment mortgages with around 60 different lenders;
Myself and our mortgage team have reviewed the financial positions of approximately 6,000 individual property investors and developers;
I have enjoyed privileged access to vital data including the original purchase price, value of property improvements and the current valuation of close to 30,000 individual investment properties all around Australia from our considerable client base.When you have such a large sample size to do your research on and make observations, you are bound to discover something unknown to most people.I have discovered many things that may surprise you as much as they surprised me, some of which are against conventional wisdom:Paying more tax can be financially good for you.This one took me years to swallow, but I can’t deny the facts. The clients who have managed to get into a positive cashflow position have paid a lot of tax and will continue to pay a lot of tax, whether it is capital gains, income tax or stamp duty. They don’t have an issue with the tax man making some money as long as they continue to make more themselves! They regularly cash in the profits from their properties and reduce their debt, but always continue to invest and park their money where the return is best. In fact, I can almost say that the only people who enjoy positive cashflow from their investment properties are the people who have little concern about paying taxes as they treat them as the cost of doing business.Just about every property strategy works. It just depends on who does it, how it is done, when it is done and where it is done.When I first started investing, I went and read many property investment books and attended many investment educational seminars. Just about every one of them was convincing and this confused the hell out of me. Just when I was about to form an opinion against a particular property strategy, someone would show up in one of my client consultations and prove that it worked for them!After testing many of these strategies myself, I came to realise that it is not about the strategy,(which is only a tool) but rather it is about whether the person is using the tool appropriately at the right time, in the right place and in the right way.There is no such thing as the best suburb to invest in, forever.If you randomly pick a particular property in what you think is the best suburb over a 30 year window, you will find that there are periods during which this property will outperform the market average, and there are periods when this property will underperform the market average.Many property investors find themselves jumping into historically high growth suburbs at the end of the period when it is outperforming the average, and then stay there for 5-7 years during the underperforming period. (Naturally this can taint their view of property investing as a whole!)There is no such thing as the worst suburb to invest in, forever.If you pick a property in the worst suburb you can think of from 40 years ago, and pitch that against the best suburb you can think of over the same period of time, you will find they both grew at about 7-9% a year on average over the long-term.Hence in the 1960s, a median house in Melbourne and Sydney was valued at $10k. The worst property around that time may have been 30% of the median price for then, which was say about $3k. Today, the median house price in these cities is about $600k. The worst suburb you can find is still around 30% of that price which is say $200k a house. If you believe a bad suburb will never grow, then show me where you can find a house today in these cities, that is still worth around $3k.Median Price growth is very misleading.Many beginner property investors look at median price growth as the guidance for suburb selection. A few points worth mentioning on median price are:We understand the way median price is calculated as the middle price point based on the number of sales during a period. We can talk about the median price for a particular suburb on a particular day, week, month, year, or even longer. So an influx of new stocks or low sales volume can severely distort the median price.In an older suburb, median price growth tends to be higher than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the large sum of money people put into renovating their properties nor does it reflect the subdivision of large blocks of land into multiple dwellings which can be a substantial percentage of the entire suburb.In a newer suburb, median price growth tend to be lower than it really is. This is because it does not reflect the fact that the land and buildings are both getting smaller. For example, you could buy a block of land of 650 square metres for $120k in 2006 in a newer suburb of Melbourne, but 5 years later, half the size block (i.e.325 square metres) will cost you $260k. That’s a whopping 34% annual growth rate per year for 5 years, but median price growth will never reflect that, as median prices today are calculated on much smaller properties.Median price growth takes away people’s focus from looking at the cost of carrying the property. When you have a net 2-3% rental yield against interest rates of 7-8%, you are out-of-pocket by 5% a year. This is not including the money you have to put in to fix and maintain your property from time to time.Buying and holding the same property forever doesn’t give you the best returns on your money.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will achieve an average growth of 7-9%. But you will be bound to hit periods where your property outperforms the 7-9% growth and periods where it under performs the 7-9% growth.The longer you hold a property, if its growth is at or above average, the lower its rental yields will become.The longer you hold a property, the higher the capital gains tax you will need to pay when you sell, and the less likely you will be able to sell it.The longer you hold a property, the more likely there will be a need for an expensive upgrade of the property.The longer you hold a property, the more likely you will forget which part of the equity actually belongs to the tax man, AND the more likely you will be to try to leverage the equity that doesn’t belong to you. This can get you into a negative equity position with a negative cashflow forever, unless you have proper financial guidance.
Keep These 5 Rules in Mind for Successful Commercial Designing
Who doesn’t want an excellent commercial design? Excellent commercial design is important to maintain the reputation and brand image of the company. As it is said, the first impression is the last impression, a good impression always attracts potential customers. It’s obvious no one would ever love to walk in a congested environment with bad lighting.
Bad design and interiors deteriorate the productivity of the employees. It can be a confusing task when planning a commercial designing project for the first time, hiring expert Commercial Architects Melbourne can be the best option to know about the latest trends and perfect matching designs.
This blog is about some basic rules to consider for making the commercial project successful.
Keep structures versatile
When it comes to transforming any commercial space, focusing on convertibility and keeping office interior decor versatile can be the best option. It can be done by implementing a versatile structure to spaces such as cafeterias, offices, and many more. Everyone gives preference to comfort hence, focusing on spatial and versatile design will help to complete commercial designing projects in an optimal way.
Consider the latest technology implementations
Technology plays a supportive role to enhance the commercial designing project. Moving forward with the latest technology is important to execute any business smoothly because technologies make the work much easier and comfortable for the employee as well as organizations. Implementing centralized and decentralized digital control is much needed in any commercial design.
Keep office aesthetics updated
Good aesthetics and interiors impact the overall representation of the office and make the place functional and attractive. Hire a reputed designer for modern décor and furniture ideas. Hiring a designer reduces half of the project stress and helps to meet the contemporary fashion and latest trends. They can help to choose the perfect theme that blends well with the office decor, atmosphere, and colour.
Provide personalized space to prevent congestion
Majority of customer prefers personalized space such as different seating to seat comfortably and do the personal work. Personalized space is one of the crucial factors for customer-based service offices such as hotels and cafeterias to provide an ambient and comfortable place.
Always keep safety first
Safety is the central feature of every construction and designing project. Hence, it’s the high-priority factor to keep the aesthetic and functional safety at the working place. It can be compromised for interior decoration and design purposes but it’s not at all affordable to compromise for safety purposes.
Following the above useful ideas can easily help in the successful completion of a commercial designing project in a safe and pleasing way. In today’s, modern construction, reliability, and comfort is also an equally important factor.
Final words,
It’s important to hire the experienced Building designer Melbourne to make the commercial designing project worthy. Hope the above rules helped you to scale up your interior designing projects with a better outcome. Follow the above tips for any renovation or remodelling project and surely you will get award-winning and achieve a better office experience.
How Long Should A Laptop Battery Last And How To Increase the Battery Life
No matter how expensive your laptop is, its battery won’t last more than four years. According to experts, a new laptop battery gives you as many as 1,000 cycles. In other words, you can charge and recharge the battery up to 1000 times. However, many factors play their role to increase or decrease the lifespan of a laptop battery. For instance, the material used for producing the battery substance. So, if you want to ensure that your battery stands the test of time, given below are some of the tips that can help.
1. Install a good battery monitor
If you are looking for an alternative, you can choose from tons of third-party utilities. Basically, the software programs help you monitor your laptop battery. These programs have no compatibility issues with any type of laptop.
Using these tools, you can find out which programs are using most of the battery power. You can then close the unwanted programs to save battery power.
2. Install maintenance apps
You can use some manufacturer-recommended maintenance tools for maintaining your laptop battery. Based on the type of your battery, you will receive different suggestions. Apart from this, your operating system will come with a built-in utility that can help you keep an eye on your battery condition.
3. Maintain your device temperature
You should try your level best to ensure your laptop maintains its temperature. In summer, electronic devices tend to heat up, which negatively impacts the life of the battery packs.
Therefore, you should make sure that there is a little bit of space between the bottom of the device and the table you have placed your device on. Besides, the ventilation system of your device should be working properly. For this purpose, regular cleaning of your device is quite important.
4. Don’t use maximum brightness
When your screen brightness is at maximum level, your device will use the maximum power. So, turning down the brightness is the first thing you can do to save power. Also, it is not a good idea to keep the brightness at max level as it can have a negative impact on your eyesight.
So, by following these simple tips, it will be easier for you to extend the life of your laptop battery.
5. Change the power-saving settings
Before you do anything, go into the power options of your laptop. If you are using Windows operating system, you can go to the control panel to access the power options. The control panel can be accessed from the Start Menu.
Some users have MacOS. If you are one of them, you need to access Energy Saver, which is found in the System Preferences. If these values are set to default, your computer will use the least amount of power.
So, what you need to do is make small changes to the settings so that you achieve a balance between power and performance. For best performance, there is always the choice to connect your device to the AC outlet.
The Best Ways I’ve Found To Make Money Online From Home
Have you been looking for a way to make money online without having to know much of the internet stuff? Wanting to work at home but don’t know how to do it? Here is the key gem: Between all the tricks on joining the craft beer movement, opening a gallery or being a tour operator, you will find clever advice that anybody can apply to make money online quickly.
The most basic way to make money online is through affiliate marketing. It is really easy. Basically you set up an ad for someone she is selling something and when they click through and buy it, you make money! Simple enough if you have no technical skill at all. Here are some simple tips on how to earn using affiliate marketing:
Drop-shipping is one of the most useful methods. You select a product in which you believe there is a demand and then drop-ship it to your customers in small quantities. You make money from the difference between what the stock costs and what you sell it for. For this method, it is important to note that you may need to make space for your inventory on your premises or perhaps wait until you have a build of an inventory before you can start drop-shipping; but the advantages make it a good choice for those seeking to make money online from their spare time.
Paid surveys are a great way to earn some extra cash. These can be accessed easily and there are many sites where you can get paid from spending your spare time. There is one site, though, which is said to pay $200 a week for twelve weeks straight – you can’t beat that kind of money making potential. With paid surveys, it is important to note that the sites are generally scams, and that you need to do some research to ensure you are making good money making opportunities.
Finally, a passive income generating method that can bring in money on autopilot is eToro’s Forex trading. This works by allowing you to invest on a demo account and earn money from the performance of the currencies being exchanged. The best thing about this system is that it allows you to do virtually anything and still see profits coming in. eToro has an average starting price of less than $50 and can generate an income of five figures in just a few months.
These are the best things I have found for making money online from your home. Though none of them are as good as, say, a paid-online course, they are much more affordable and can provide a valuable education to start earning money immediately online. With just a little research, you should be able to find a legitimate opportunity to get paid to learn the basics of making money in the currency markets. This is a truly remarkable opportunity.
Finding the Best Business Idea For Your Home Based Business
How many home based business opportunities are available to you? If you want to make money online at home, you really have many options to choose from. The big question is – which one will give you the biggest chance of success? Is there a ‘one size fits all’ answer? The simple truth is that not every opportunity is right for everyone, and not every opportunity will bring you the greatest amount of profit.
So, what are some home business ideas that can make money online for you? The quick and dirty answer is: the one that best suits your particular set of needs. Make a list of your priorities, including a high income; a low-risk schedule; freedom; flexibility; work-life balance; independence; something in your range of skills and expertise; and interesting work that you have an interest in… You can take this list with you and talk to people who are working from home on the same things that you would be considering. Chances are that you will find some great niches that fit your standards and your desires.
But what if you want to get started right away? It’s easy to think that you can jump into a new business idea and be successful immediately, but this often isn’t the case. It takes many different things to make sure that you will be able to get through the hurdles and actually make it to a point where you are seeing profit. If you don’t work at it slowly, you will be setting yourself up for failure. Here’s the lowdown on some different things that you should consider as you create your own business idea:
First, you need to think about what you have to offer. If you don’t have any ideas as to what to do as a freelance writer, a lowdown on finding a niche is very important. Many beginners go into this completely clueless. But if you know that you have a skill that others are desperately seeking, you may be able to provide them with the service they are looking for without having to spend much time building up a website or getting traffic to it.
Another thing to consider is what kinds of products or services would best fit a niche that you would like to get started in. In this case, the lowdown on finding the best business idea for you would include taking a look at what you love to do and what you can offer others. If writing is not your strongest point, but you love to get creative, consider freelance data entry. Freelance data entry does not require a lot of startup capital, but you still need to have the skills that will allow you to be successful in this area. The best lowdown on finding the best business idea for you is to simply start looking at what you like to do and what you can offer others.
There are many other areas of freelance writing that you can explore in order to make the most out of your home based online business. Freelance writers are in high demand online. If you have the skills that are needed to do well in this field, there is no reason that you should not be able to find a great home-based online business that will give you the income that you want.
Earn Money Writing From Home And Never Run Out of Ideas
Is it your dream to work from home as a writer and earn money from everything you write? That was my dream for years, and 20 years ago it became my reality.
One of the hardest things at first was to come up with ideas of what to write about. I started by doing freelance writing and I also set up my own website and I wanted to write and publish books. It was all a great plan, but it meant coming up with thousands of ideas.
At first I didn’t think it was possible, but it turned out that not only was it possible to come up with endless ideas for writing, but I ended up with notebooks full of ideas because I had more than I could ever use at once.
And I’ll tell you 3 things that helped.
1. I write fast. Once I’m into writing an addictive story or an interesting article – or series of articles, I get into a writing ‘flow’ and can write for hours. I never stop and second-guess myself. I just keep writing because fast writers are mega producers and never have time for writers’ block.
2. The more I write and the faster I write, the more writing ideas I have. Productive writers always get an abundance of ideas as they write. When I’m immersed in my writing, my creative mind goes into hyper-drive. Even if I started with only one or two ideas, once I sit down and start writing the ideas start flowing. And it doesn’t matter what I write. Even if I’m journaling or copying out someone else’s writing by hand (just for practice), it inspires ideas.
3. I love to write. Most days I’m excited and motivated to sit down and write. I hurry through other chores I have to do so that I can get to my desk and write.
At first, being a writer was hard because it’s not easy to work from home with no boss, no set hours and too many distractions. But once I got a writing routine, I found that once I sat my backside in my chair and started writing, it was easy to ignore everything and motivation arrived and kept me going.
So if you find yourself longing to write but stuck for ideas, just sit down and start writing. Write anything even if it’s just nursery rhymes you were taught as a kid, or open a book and start handwriting it out.
And if you’re like me you’ll find that even on days when you think you don’t feel like writing and the ideas just won’t come, sit down and write anyway, and before you know it you’ll be overloaded with ideas.