How to Choose Property Training: Questions to Ask Before You Buy

There are dozens of property trainers in the market – and getting some training to help you avoid some of the common mistakes, is a good thing.  ‘Standing on the shoulders of giants’ as learning from others past mistakes so you don’t make the same mistakes yourself is sometimes called. BUT not all the training is good and a lot of it can be very costly, so you want to be sure you’ll get a good return on your investment.

The content of training varies enormously, from deep dives into specific subjects like sourcing or serviced accommodation, to wide-ranging but more superficial overviews of a range of strategies.  But how do you know if the content is what you need before you part with your hard-earned cash?

The answer is to ask good questions.  These are a few of the ones that I’ve collected over my years in property, talking to people who have invested in training programmes and said ‘I wish I’d known [information] before I decided to buy.’

Exactly what is included in the training?

Some trainers do what I refer to as ‘transactional property training’ - pay, learn, leave, i.e. you pay for and receive the training, but the training is pretty much all you get – there’s little or no follow up or support.

If your training includes access to digital resources, is there a cut-off point or is it for life?  – or will you have to pay extra for continued access to that digital training?

Sometimes there is a support option – but you have to pay for it.

There may be a mentorship, but is it included or extra.  How long does it go on for?

If there is support, what does that consist of?  An unmoderated WhatsApp group doesn’t really qualify as support – and is often more like the Wild West!! 

What are the qualifications of the trainers?

The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) have been clear in stating they have no intention to regulate property training. It falls wide of their remit to protect the general public, or their term, ‘retail customers’. In the absence of that level of regulation, there are two forms of qualifications for property trainers to attain (a) Continued Professional Development (CPD) from a number of providers and (b) the Property Investor Bureau’s Property Education Accreditation Scheme (PEAS).

There may be a ‘name’ on the advertising, but who exactly will carry out the training?  When property trainers are popular, they often start to elevate themselves to working ‘on’ their training business and no longer ‘in’ it. This will mean delivering the training is delegated to people who have previously completed their course. Taking that course of scaling their business is not intrinsically bad thing, but the focus is then very much on the people designated to deliver the training – to what degree are they a pale shadow if the originator? Ideally these delegates trainer will be experienced themselves in what they are teaching but this is where gaps can occur and the quality of the training begin to falter.  ‘Knowing how’ and ‘having done it’ are two different things.

There is also an indecent haste by some to get into training. There are some inexperienced trainers who did the course one year and, having had little experience of putting it into practice themselves, are teaching it the following year.

It’s important you find out about the trainer’s track record – not just as a trainer, but as an expert in the field they’re teaching.  It doesn’t mean that you should always expect the figurehead to be your trainer, but you should find out about who will be delivering the information you’ve paid for.

Can I talk to some of your alumni?

This isn’t just about testimonials that are on their website, but actually having a chat with people who have completed the training.  What did they like, what did they feel was missed out – or not dug deep enough into?  And, most importantly, what results have they got from applying their learning?

I’ve talked to people who paid many thousands for property training only to discover that some of the content was lightweight or missing critical information.

Talking to people who have invested in the training, directly, will give you a better idea of the value of the training and effectiveness of it.

How up-to-date are digital resources?

If your chosen programme has digital resources – video or audio training modules, AI tools, etc. – how recently were they created?  And how often are they updated?

As I know only too well, recording video modules professionally costs a lot of money, so it’s reasonable for materials to be up to 2-3 years old, providing the content is generic.  However, videos that are more than 5 years old are far more likely to be out-of-date and anything that relates to legislation that has changed, will need to have been updated much more recently.

Are there guarantees?

Guarantees can be widely diverse.  It’s realistic, ethical even, for trainers to offer guarantees providing you can give them the evidence that you’ve followed their advice first.  Otherwise, there will be people who attended the course, can’t be bothered to take action and then demand their money back. 

However, understand exactly what is being guaranteed.  If it’s just that you’ll have a good time on the training programme, that’s not guaranteeing any return on your investment. Guarantees on results are few and far between, largely because the trainer cannot be responsible for the effort, or lack of, that a student devotes to making a success of what they have learned.

*****

You’ll probably have a few questions of your own to ask, but the above will give you a good insight into the value of the training.  Never be afraid to ask questions, if you’re going to invest a few thousand pounds, you’re entitled to ALL the information.  After all, you wouldn’t buy a property, unseen, with no information about the state of repair it’s in and take the seller’s word for it that it’s in pristine condition. 

Actually, you probably wouldn’t want to buy a property that is in pristine condition – but that’s a whole other subject!

And, if you want to ask these questions about my training, I’d be delighted to answer them – and you’ll always find people who have completed my training to talk to at the Recycle Your Cash Property Chats meetings across the country on the first Thursday evening of the month.