If you’ve watched Homes under the Hammer, it can be tempting to set off for the auction room determined to snap up an absolute bargain.  However, real life is not much like you see it on TV!

To avoid ending up with a white elephant here are my top strategies for sourcing your property investments at auction.

1: Do your research first

Not just the day before, but well in advance....

When you’re getting into property investment you need one of two things:

• A reasonable cash pot as the deposit for your first property
• A means of financing the deposit for your first purchase

The days of 100% mortgages are long gone and for most people that means a 25% deposit.  If you’re in the south east, that could be a fairly big wedge of money, with property prices within...

The devil is in the detail

When I meet people who are thinking about getting into property it’s not unusual for them to come up with a list of reasons why they haven’t got started yet.  Some of these are excuses, but some are simply the result of listening to people who only have some of the information.

Even people who have been in the property business for many years believe...

Property investment is a proven way to gain a greater degree of control over your life.  This can mean different things to different people. 

• It might be that you want to create an alternative means of income to give you the freedom to leave your current job or career.
• It might be that you love what you do, but you want to create something for your own and your family’s future....

When you’ve found a property you want you’re not going to pay top dollar – especially if there are good reasons to get the price down.  To do this successfully you need to learn smart negotiation skills.

The Negotiation Transformer model uses Powerful Positioning to guide you through the negotiation process successfully.  It uses the acronym SPEECH to help you...

When I teach Ninja Investors the secrets of funding their investments intelligently there are a series of steps and Inspired Funding is the first of these.  I created the Fast Funding Formula and it’s based on two concepts:

1. Bridging finance is the key to a change of mind-set
2. Lack of provable income and/or a poor credit history are not a barrier to borrowing, nor is lack of access to...

The quality of deals you do depends on your ability to negotiate successfully.   There’s more to a deal than simply making an offer, it’s a lot to do with how you are perceived by the vendor or the estate agent.

I use a six letter acronym to help property investors to develop their ability to make better deals – with more profit in them.  This spells SPEECH.

...

Most property investors start out using mortgages to finance their property purchases, but then your capital is trapped.  That means you haven’t got spare cash to buy more properties, so you’ve got to wait until you’ve saved up enough for your next deposit.

What is a Ninja Investor?

Ninja investors can buy properties quicker with a relatively small amount of available...

Question:  

I'm new to purchasing property for investment, I've only ever bought property to live in and, while I've managed to negotiate a small discount here and there, I've never pushed things too hard as I've always really wanted to buy the place (so an emotional rather than subjective mindset).

Now that I'm looking at property as an investment I'm understanding more and more that...

There was a time when you could get into property with no money, lenders were happy to provide 100% mortgages or a version of this, then the recession came along and lenders became very cautious.

If you’re thinking of getting into property or have started to look into it, you may be looking at having to save a substantial sum in order to get started.  Buy-to-let lenders want security...