My first Real Estate Investing (REI) survey
I created a survey today using Survey Monkey. Survey Monkey is not difficult to learn. At this time I have a free account so I created a simple survey with 7 main questions. A paid account comes with more options for how the survey works. Maybe something to consider at a later date.
The survey’s purpose is to better understand what people want to see discussed during 2012 at the monthly real estate meetings I run in London (The London Real Estate Buying & Investing MeetUp Group). In November I announced that there will be 12 topics for the year and that I will bring in guest speakers for most of the topics.
For January, I have lined up an investor who operates a number of HMO properties in west London. All the properties were set up over the last year to 18 months. In none of the cases does the investor own the building. He was able to create a strong positive cash flow business with limited initial capital.
For the readers outside the UK, an HMO is a House in Multiple Occupation. Think boarding house with some shared facilities. Technically any property with more than 2 unrelated occupants is an HMO in the UK. Up to a certain point no HMO license is required. Independent of the license requirement, planning permission comes into play once the property reaches a specific size based on the number of rooms being rented.
If you have about 5 minutes, fill out the survey. Even if you have no plans to attend a physical meeting in London, the feedback will help me understand what people want to learn concerning real estate investing (REI). I am expecting to produce a number of articles plus the book mentioned yesterday will also be shaped by the survey results.
As I said, there are only 7 questions so it should be pretty quick. You can find the survey here
Welcome to 2012
The new year started today. Happy New Year!
I expect a few things to be different during 2012. Rather than spill the beans and tell you everything all at once I will be announcing things when they are ready for prime time.
What I will say right now is I am working on a book. One one level, the book is a way to collect my thoughts on real estate investing. In addition, the content which will form the book will be the starting point for courses, for monthly discussions in London and other ways to to engage with others. Thinking about it, the book is closer to a roadmap for the year and a way to make it easy to share what I know so others can benefit.
I have been using the holiday period to flush out much of the detail for the book. Progress was good up until a couple of days ago when I took off some time while visiting my sister and her family. Having just flown back earlier this evening I will be getting back to work tomorrow, Monday Jan 2nd. It will be a further week before I fly back to London. I expect to make a great deal more progress before getting on the plane.
I am targeting the 15th of this month for the completion of the first draft. Maybe draft is the wrong term as it will be an outline with all the text minus any of the editing that will make it really flow.
I am interested in sharing the main topics I expect to cover so you can let me know if there is anything else you want reviewed. The initial list of topics came from a monthly meeting I hold in London where other investors (newbies and experienced people). I created the partial list and they suggested changes and additions. I will share the list of topics tomorrow. I need to work on the formatting before posting it here.
Questions or comments?
Sale And Rent Back
The UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) has published the new rules and guidelines for what is called Sale And Rent Back (SARB).
Most any serious real estate investor in the US avoids buying from an owner occupant and then renting the property back to the same party.
For a few years the combination of SARB deals with same day refinancing produced a rapid rise in investors or firms offering SARB package deals to people under financial stress. All the cowboys piled in. Some sellers found that their tenancy was not as they had expected.
FSA press announcement
FSA advice
FSA consultation paper and request for feedback on the permanent regulations
Bubbles & Banks – Krugman
Bubbles and the Banks
January 8, 2010
NYTimes.com
Paul Krugman wrote recently that his upcoming columns in the NY Times will be focusing on banking reform. He starts by asking a question:
“What should reformers try to accomplish?”
He starts out by making an observation.
“A lot of the public debate has been about protecting borrowers.”
“But consumer protection, while it might have blocked many subprime loans, wouldn’t have prevented the sharply rising rate of delinquency on conventional, plain-vanilla mortgages. And it certainly wouldn’t have prevented the monstrous boom and bust in commercial real estate.”
“Reform, in other words, probably can’t prevent either bad loans or bubbles. But it can do a great deal to ensure that bubbles don’t collapse the financial system when they burst.”
Think about it. One of the top economists in the US is stating that you can not prevent bad loans or bubbles. We have to accept that both will happen and it is not practical to create regulations to stop either condition.
A bit later in the article Krugman compared the dot.com meltdown when the losses experienced by stock investors was largely the same in magnitude as the losses that have happened as a result of the housing meltdown. If both events were equal in magnitude why the difference in terms of the impact to the US economy?
“The short answer is that while the stock bubble created a lot of risk, that risk was fairly widely diffused across the economy. By contrast, the risks created by the housing bubble were strongly concentrated in the financial sector. As a result, the collapse of the housing bubble threatened to bring down the nation’s banks. And banks play a special role in the economy. If they can’t function, the wheels of commerce as a whole grind to a halt.”
“Why did the bankers take on so much risk? Because it was in their self-interest to do so. If the concentration of risk in the banking sector increased the danger of a systemwide financial crisis, well, that wasn’t the bankers’ problem.”
So what is the solution Krugman is proposing. He only provides the high level as the real details will be shared in future columns. Below is a quick summary of the main points.
“The test for reform, then, is whether it reduces bankers’ incentives and ability to concentrate risk going forward.”
“Transparency is part of the answer. Before the crisis, hardly anyone realized just how much risk the banks were taking on. More disclosure, especially with regard to complex financial derivatives, would clearly help.”
“Beyond that, an important aspect of reform should be new rules limiting bank leverage.”
I am not a fan of Krugman when it comes to the more populist or political points of view. I do think he clearly articulates some of the key issues using language many can grasp. As a way to get a dialog going Krugman makes it pretty easy.
-John Corey