The Chains That Bind Us

For all these comments we have evidence-backed responses that can explain why these are NOT REAL barriers for you succeeding in the property market. Your greatest challenge in this field is not any of the above, or any of the property catch phrases thrown about news headlines  or the myriad of property myths we’ve debunked.

The greatest challenge to success in property investing is not what most people tend to focus on – individual property like it’s the end goal (and to be clear – it’s not, more on that later) – it’s that we are chained to conditioned thoughts, anchored to our past by invisible shackles that have been formed out of our experience (or lack of it) and our penchant to accept mass opinion (consensus view) and its genocide of independent thought and action.

Some challenging words and concepts in here so let me simplify.

Why do you think the way you do about property investment?

If you’re making small talk with anyone at a BBQ regarding the property market, you’ll soon find everyone has an opinion and many consider themselves experts on what’s going on, how some people can get lucky and make money and what makes a good investment property.

Unless all these people you BBQ with are outrageously successful with healthy property portfolios, be careful of the advice you take.

Without possibly realising it, you too will have a pre-conceived idea of what the property market is and how you want to interact with it. From stories you’ve heard of other people’s success, failures or unfair circumstances, to your own relationship with money, you will have decided at some point what you think property is to you.

Working in this industry and being incredibly passionate about it, the Investor Property team regularly perform deep research activities, analyse situations and keep abreast of many circumstances that can influence future prospects for specific markets. We’re confident we see what others don’t.

With all the knowledge and insight, we can also see how so many people’s thought-process has been polluted by the information environment we live in.

Our brains are obese, our minds gorged on erroneous information and our logic has cancer as a result.

There is so much information available nowadays and yet there is so little time to consume it. We have too much to take-in on any given day, so we tend to skim everything – our emails, our social feeds, the news headlines. Plus, we’re doing all this while multitasking at least 4 other things.

It’s rare for people to have in-depth conversations about meaningful topics, instead chatter flitters around easy topics that don’t require much thought or background reading. When was the last time you read an (entire) good book?

With time so scarce and precious, convenience reigns supreme and we may take any information as truth if it means we can get it and use it quickly and easily. If it’s too hard, and not immediately exciting or entertaining (whether it’s positive or negative) it hardly gets a second look, let alone a proper first look. This is recognised by media and so their headlines become more outrageous to entice your ‘click’ and mere seconds of attention so they can record a win and charge advertising. That’s their game, and so of course the content is only going to focus on extremes.

Plus, anyone and everyone can share their 2 cents worth on the Internet without any requirement of fact. Because of this people can either be fooled into believing fake news, or on the flip side become suspicious of any piece of information that scrolls by their screen.

I’m sure you’re getting our point here in that despite the abundance of information, the quality and retention of important facts and the desire to understand and form unique thoughts is often lost. Instead of making us more informed, the information overload is creating a society of people who know a little about everything but not a great deal about anything.

Living amongst all this, whether you’re keenly aware of it or not, all the messages surrounding property and your past experiences or stories of others influences your current thoughts on this topic.

Clear the information clutter and focus on your strategy

There is a great quote in reference to travel that ‘the destination won’t get you there, the journey will’. Well the same is true of property investing when we look at the strategy vs the product.

In any type of investment, it’s the strategy that underpins success, not the individual asset. Set the strategy and then pursue the assets that galvanise the outcomes you are seeking.

In property there are enablers and inhibitors, focus on the wrong type of property or skip the whole strategy session and you’re probably going to find yourself inhibited from moving forward. And this isn’t a black and white statement on property versus property, it is exceptionally personal. What is an enabler for one person might be an inhibitor for you. It’s not about the property, it’s how it fits in with your circumstances, goals and capacity (which notably includes mindset) and how that might help you achieve your outcomes.

This means that the right advice and a solid strategy are essential to help you identify the properties to enable your continued success with property investment and develop a large and successful property portfolio.

There’s not a magic formula or code that you need to crack, successful strategies are those that are personalised.

We don’t expect everyone to read all the reports in detail, that’s our job.

The end game, the outcomes we are looking for, are in a future we cannot see. Interestingly in property, and how we live as Australians, this is a metamorphic time.

Economically, socially, demographically, we are entering a time unlike any other causing a structural change in how, where and why we live. In some regions (noting there is no such thing as the ‘Australian Property Market’, rather thousands of micro markets) this is more pronounced creating significant investment opportunity.

Yet, our predisposition to think we ‘know’ property based on our past experience, how we have lived and want to live ourselves and the ever-present rearward looking data forms the basis of a consensus view that is rapidly losing relevance. In doing so, those that subscribe and are unable to release these invisible shackles are increasing their risks by continuing to ‘do what has been done’.

There is a better way.

Time to revisit how you think about property, and want to map out a strategy for success? Talk to one of our Property Coaches.