Linz’s Friday Musings – November 1st 2019

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G’day all

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month!  Or something like that 🙂

Seems like ages since I put out a newsletter, November already here in Oz, and Halloween in the States! Wow!

Been quite a whirlwind month for us here at Star Dynamic.  Launch of our new online portal, launch of the Fix & Flip Academy course, and also our brand new Investors Inner Circle.  Been amazing the response we have been getting from everyone!  If you haven’t had a chance to get a look at with the Inner Circle can offer or the course, reach out to our team and we can let you know all about it…

With everything that’s been going on, can be very easy to get that feeling of overwhelm. 

Ever had that to-do list so large that you don’t know where to start?

Laid in bed trying to rest (coz damn, you need it…) but you head keeps running all the things you have to do, all the “overdue” tasks you haven’t done…? 

Yeah?

Can be easy to fall into this pattern.  But we must remember that the feeling of overwhelm comes from a scarcity mindset…

“There is not enough time to do everything!”  Said this to yourself once or twice yeah? 

See, even though this is the story we tell ourselves, truth is there is always time, we all have the same 24 hours.  As Einstein said, “time is relative”.  5 seconds with your hand on a hot plate, can feel like an hour! While spending an hour with a loved one, can feel like seconds.  If we can change our mindset to an abundance mindset…there is always time.  There is always more out there, more clients, more opportunities, more love… we just have to go get it.

There are 4 stages of life:

  1. Life AS me
  2. Life happens TO me
  3. Life happens BY me
  4. Life happens THROUGH me

We are born at stage one, for the first 5-7 years of our life we just are…just soaking up everything we can, working out what this wonder called life is. 

Then as we get older we move into stage 2.  This is where we can start to feel that overwhelm, that scarcity mindset.  I don’t have enough time!  There’s not enough money.  There are not enough opportunities for me.  We start blaming everything else for what is happening to us, without realising that we are actually in the driver’s seat of this thing called LIFE.

A few then can move through into stage 3, whereby they realise that we are in control of our own destiny.  The things that happen are consequences of the decisions we make and therefore we can shape this beautiful gift of life, rather than have it shape us.  We can now begin to control what happens, and certainly how we react and deal with it.  Stage 3 is where we understand, rather than fight against life, leverage it to achieve.  Abundance mindset… I have time, I have opportunities, I just need to go get them!

Finally, occasionally you might come across a person who just seems to have an aura to them.  A light, or deep sense of belonging that we can consciously feel.  Ever been at a party and suddenly someone walks in that you unconsciously stop and notice?  Talked to someone that you just get this feeling of peace and love from, like they radiate power.  This is stage 4…very rarely do we find those that manage to obtain this.

I met two such individuals last week, but I will tell you about that another time…

Have a great weekend all and Happy Investing…!!

Cheers,

Lindsay

Linz’s Friday Musings – September 13th 2019

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G’day all 

Happy Friday once again! Apart from a nice cold blast mother nature decided to hit us with last weekend in Melbourne, it is nice to see the weather starting to warm up. 

Speaking of warming up, Helen attended a brilliant weekend event last weekend in Melbourne for Grace Lever. Grace is a business coach for many entrepreneurial women (including Helen), and to see the calibre of some of the attendees, some already making 6 and 7 figure incomes through their business is mind blowing! If you haven’t heard of Grace, check her out, amazing stuff!  https://www.gracelever.com/

The things these amazing women are able to achieve (Helen included while still working full time) is more than incredible – huge shout out to all of them, including Helen. 

Speaking of time, I was reading a blog from another mentor of mine, Jon Giaan, whom I have been following for years, taking about where the heck is all our leisure time!  If you go back 50 years, everyone was saying that technology would advance so much and make everything easier, it would give us so much more time… err, but what happened?  This is so true.   

We now have phone watches (I guess we skipped the shoe-phone, sorry 99) and the internet has brought any information we require to our fingertips, but everyone is working hard (and longer) than ever… seems an oxymoron really. 

John’s point though, of the article, is that the Beastie Boys were right – we have to fight for our right to party!  We need to work harder, smarter, more efficiently for our right to enjoy ourselves, take time out and live life. 

If we are not working so hard for our lifestyle, why are we fighting?  It’s the lifestyle we want that makes all the hard work that we, and those hundreds of entrepreneurial ladies in Grace’s event last weekend work so hard.  The balance to ensure we have profitability AND lifestyle is certainly the fight worth fighting, so who is in your corner?  

Have a great weekend all, fight hard and Happy Investing!! 

Cheers, 

Lindsay 

 

Linz’s Friday Musings – September 6th 2019

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G’day all 

Happy Friday and good luck to <insert your footy team here>! 

Footy finals, warmer weather, sunshine, what’s not to like about Spring! 

I know there are certain parts of the US that have been under siege from hurricane Dorian, particularly Florida, Virginia, South Carolina etc, and by reports, appears to be a real monster.  I often do get asked how natural disasters and storms etc can affect markets, and the truth is, then can in some circumstances. 

Depending on the amount of damage caused, costs etc, economists would be looking to predict the damage to the GDP of the US economy.  In particular areas, if hit hard, the homes damaged/lost will also have a real impact on property prices in that area for a period of time afterwards. 

There would be extensive work going on afterwards to renovate, rebuild homes damaged, clear destroyed homes and rebuild and this can force pricing up for contractors and construction with so much workload.  Further, there can often be a large number of homes go on the market, damaged where the owners had no insurance, no funding to fix, and have to sell and walk away.  This can often put a glut of properties onto the market and keep housing prices low. 

Truth is though, this is all relatively localised where areas were effected and doesn’t really affect the market as a whole.  As I was discussing last week, we are never really looking for signs to be all perfect, no “storms on the horizon” before investing.  Within every adversity can be a real opportunity if we look for it 

When you change how you see things, the things you see change… 

In the meantime, we pray for the residents on the east coast of the US and the Bahamas to stay safe and hope that Dorian heads back off shore. 

Have a great weekend all, and happy investing!! 

Cheers, 

Lindsay 

4 Common Real Estate Mistakes that can cost you Money

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On the surface, real estate investing seems so easy. Passive income, property appreciation, tax benefits and more. What’s not to like?

But the reality of life as a landlord isn’t so rosy. It’s hard work. It takes time, research and careful study to understand the business. It’s far easier to lose money on rental property than to make money.

In fact, anyone can do it! All it takes is some short-sighted business moves, inexperience, and greed, and you, too, can lose thousands on an investment property. Of course, no one sets out to lose money. But having some guideposts about what you’re doing helps. So here are some of the most common mistakes to avoid when getting into the rental property business:

1. Looking for a home instead of an investment property

Shopping for property as a real estate investor is different than going out and choosing a home to live in. Finding the greatest, most beautiful house on the market or the most gorgeous vacant lot isn’t the aim. You aren’t looking for a house you would live in, you’re looking for something that the average family would rent.

This works on the flipside as well. Something like a distressed house might seem perfect to fix up as a rental but remember, structures like that can turn into money pits. They often need lots of time, investment and permits to go through the remodelling process. Good for a buy, fix and hold strategy, where you are not after instant cashflow. But for a buy and hold strategy, investment properties need to be able to rent as soon as possible.

2. Betting too much on long-term value appreciation

One of the advantages of real estate investing, in general, is that landlords can profit in many ways. First, in the form of monthly rent payments, but again later in the appreciation of the underlying asset.

But it’s a mistake to put too much weight on the latter. Yes, appreciation is a nice bonus when a property sells, but investment properties should be paying for themselves from day one. If it can’t, then it’s not an investment property. I love the quote from Robert Kiyosaki – “an investment is something that puts money INTO your pocket…a liability is something that takes money OUT of your pocket”

In fact, high-priced homes and high-end condos often don’t pay for themselves because it’s difficult to find tenants who are willing to pay that much rent. Instead, smart investors should look for the average home in an average neighbourhood because it will have the most demand, rent the fastest and pay for itself right away. Condo’s in the US particular can be bad investments as you must take into account ALL costs. Very high Home Owner Association fees (HOA’s – read body corporate fees) can make these very bad investments, regardless of how good the view is…

3. Constantly raising the rent

A lot of landlords think that by continuously raising their rents they’ll be able to make more money, even if it means more tenant turnover. But, in fact, the opposite is true. Think about the costs that go into vacancies, from fix-up repairs to updates, to marketing and more. These costs can outweigh any small gains in higher rent. All that raising the rent on a current tenant does is force them to consider what else might be out there and make them more demanding.

Keeping rent the same gives the tenant an incentive to stay and keeps them happy.

The longer they stay, the lower maintenance they are, because they’ll be less likely to call you to fix something for fear that you’ll raise the rent. As long as you start off at a fair, market rate you shouldn’t need to increase it constantly to make money.

4. Only renting to people you like

In my experience, emotion has no place in the rental business, or investments at all for that matter. It’s important to always think about the worst-case scenario: having to evict a tenant. Things happen, and sometimes a landlord has to take action. But can you?

Many people buy an investment property with their first tenant in mind being a friend or their brother. But things happen to everyone and even the best of friends can fall on hard times. Suddenly, what started as an investment property has turned into a messy situation. By renting to people you don’t have that kind of emotional attachment to, it’s much easier to take action when necessary. Now, given that we are investing half way across the world, this can often not be as much an issue, but even for here in Australia, we need to be mindful of this.

All that said, real estate investing isn’t rocket science. By going in eyes-open and avoiding some of the more common pitfalls of novice investors, your chances of success will increase exponentially.

Linz’s Friday Musings – August 16th 2019

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G’day all
Happy Friday! It’s your friendly neighbourhood Aussie here with another blog on US Property and all that’s (not particularly) relevant to investing! (that reminds me, I must go and see Spiderman… when I get time…)

Actually on that note, what are you trying to “get around” to? What is it that you want to do but something is holding you back? Not enough time? Not enough funds? Not enough information? The time isn’t “right” yet?

When do you think it will be right? Next week; next month; this time next year? When you finally quit that job you hate, or get that job you love?

The real issue is that we are all often waiting for the “right time” to do something we know we need to do, but somewhere, somehow, we always manage to find a reason not to do it NOW…

When you really break it down, is this just an excuse, a reason our mind is making up, because we know the thing we need to do is hard…and we don’t want to step out of that comfort zone. “The couch is comfortable, Lindsay, I don’t need to move just yet…”

So then if not yet…when? We all know nothing grows in the comfort zone. It is the challenges we face “out there” that make us stronger, faster, better than before. Its tackling the obstacles that will allow us to move forward and make steps towards the goals we know we need to get.

I am reminded by a fabulous quote from Denzel Washington, and I am sure he nabbed it from a 1st century Jewish scholar – “If not now…when? If not you…who?”

And for 8 small words, this is profound. If not now, then when are we going to take control of our future? MAKE stuff happen, rather than LET stuff happen? And if not YOU, then who is going to make that change in our lives that we need to make?

No one else will do it for us, that’s for sure. We are all on the couch thinking…not now, later…

So I ask you…if not now, then when? If not you, then who?

Happy Investing all! And have a great weekend!!

Cheers

Lindsay