In This Issue:

- A Note from John:

Welcome to our first edition!

- Feature Article:

What's Your 2008 Sourcing Strategy?

- John Recommends:

Google Desktop - save yourself hours each month!

A Note From John

Welcome to the first edition of our regular newsletter, which aims to give tips, advice, help and information to those interested in the BMV Property Investing Market. Whether you are a past, present or future client doesn’t matter – we just hope to add a short burst of information and energy to your inbox once or twice a month – we’ll see how it goes with the number of issues to begin with, but I realise how irritating it can be to be spammed so we’ll try to avoid that, especially as I’m sure you are busy.

This month has also seen us just launch our brand new website at The Property Investor PA and apart from a very dodgy video message from me on the homepage, Anna & I are delighted with it and hope you will be too. We have another phase of exciting website improvements in the pipeline too which we’ll keep you informed about in these newsletters.

Until next time... hope you find the newsletter useful and all feedback is very welcome.
JR

Feature Article

What's Your 2008 Sourcing Strategy?

This section will be a short article around a topical issue that has come up whilst at Property networking meetings or online at PIPA 300 that many of you are members of.

This issue I ask: What’s Your 2008 Sourcing Strategy?

More investors than ever seem to be in the market and competition is fierce. The era of leads being passed on for free or very low up front fees appears well and truly over. You only have to look on your own doormat or local paper to see how many people are targeting your own area through these mediums. And estate agents are inundated with the "I've seen Property Ladder and am now a property Investor" brigade.

So what should your sourcing strategy be for 2008?

Well I once heard the negotiation expert Mark Harrison (YourPropertyExpert.com) speak on this topic and he wisely said that he would no more dream of dropping his leafleting or his classified ad, than he would his estate agent contacts or his networking sources or his website. In other words, we all know it’s a numbers game so have as many sources as you can to maximise your chances of success. I tend to agree.

Another Mr Harrison, Phil Harrison this time, spoke about his experience of auctions at the recent Milton Keynes networking meeting. Many investors are suspicious of any property that is being sold at auction, which is understandable. Phil has bought 6 properties at auction in recent years with a large degree of success. He summarised that whilst there are lemons waiting to be bought for sure, there are still bargains to be had if you look properly and proceed with caution. The downside for most investors these days is that they are looking for No Money Down (NMD) deals and auctions don’t provide that route… unless you can use somebody else’s money of course! For PIPA members there is a recent thread about auction financing

Another sourcing route of interest is Radio advertising. The general feedback I hear is that the cost is high and the results disappointing. Although I did know one investor who said it worked for him – but wouldn’t disclose what his secret was! There was an interesting discussion on this on PIPA recently which had a surprising result for one lucky investor!

John Recommends

My tip this time is very, very simple and absolutely FREE. It’s for you if you sit in front of your computer thinking things like:

• Where did I save that offer letter for the smith case?

• Why can’t I find that deal spreadsheet that I downloaded from the forum?

• I’m sure I had a really useful email about helping vendors in debt but can’t find it now!

Well just download Google Desktop and your problems will be over. After a one-off set up process you just search your computer for whatever it is you are looking for and it will come up with a list of results exactly like it does when you use Google on the internet. You can search by file name, file content, file type and more. It’s saves me hours per month. And it’s FREE!

About The Property Investor PA

www.ThePropertyInvestorPA.com is a dedicated UK support service for Below Market Value Property Investors. Established in 2006, we specialize in helping you with the time consuming parts of your property business – leaving YOU to get on with doing the deals and running the business. Visit our website to read case studies and testimonials plus download our free brochure.