LITMIR.BIZ

INTRODUCTION

      This book is for first-time property investors and first home buyers and for those considering their first or next step. It will help you understand how to find your first home or investment property, how to budget for it and how to read the markets.

ON HELP — GIVING AND RECEIVING

      My role as a buyer's agent is essentially to help people, and I take this role very seriously. Yet, after many years' experience, I'm still amazed and inspired when my advice and example help give my clients a new perspective, opening up a world of opportunity they'd only dreamed about.

      The media is full of noise about high property values, and how first home buyers can never break into this ‘unaffordable’ market. But it isn't true. There are always ways to manage it. If you can't afford a property where you want to buy right now, as you'll read in Buy Now, there are all sorts of strategies you can deploy to build the equity you need to be able to buy the home you want down the track. But this doesn't mean putting things off.

      

LLOYD'S STRATEGY

      BUY NOW. I never advocate waiting to buy: I don't think anyone ever got ahead by waiting.

Of course it can be difficult initially to break into the property market, and some people find it hard to ask for help. They don't know who to believe, what advice to take and what will work for them. New clients come to me and share their frustration: they feel they've done everything they can and are still getting nowhere. They're working long hours and not spending enough time with the kids. They have a home, but they've got a big mortgage on it, and they're trying to work out how they're ever going to pay it off before retirement. Because, let's face it, if it's going to take you 30 years to pay it off, how will you ever be able to afford your dream home?

      Even clients who own a really nice property feel like they're stuck. One I recall was living in the Sydney suburb of Burraneer, quite close to where I live. He had a beautiful house, but the $1.8 million mortgage on it was killing him.

      After coming to me for advice, he sold that beautiful home and moved into a rental so he could invest his equity into doing some developments. I helped him build a duplex, which he's making a huge profit on. Now that client is looking towards his next development.

      And best of all, he's now living debt-free.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY

      At some point everyone needs a mentor — someone with hands-on experience to help them get on track. I didn't start out with a strategy. If I'd had someone to advise me from the beginning, I probably would have done better, faster. My own experiences, both positive and negative, have helped me set up my clients strategically far better than I was, and I look at some of those in chapter 6.

      At the time, I simply wanted to buy a principal place of residence, and if that's what you want as well, I cover it in chapter 4.

But if I'd had a strategy back then, I probably wouldn't have started out by buying that unit in Rockdale (more on this in chapter 1). I definitely wouldn't have lived in it. Instead, I would have ‘rentvested’ and built up a portfolio faster. And I would have started investing

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