Should you ever pay for property investment mentoring or property investment coaching? What are the best ways to learn about property investment in the UK? If you’re a well versed investor with over 20 years of experience, then you are in a better position than a newbie investor as to whether a particular property investment  is a good deal or not? So, as someone with limited experience or understanding of the UK property investment market, where do you begin?

Property Meetings & Property Seminars

 We have addressed the delicacy around property investment seminars and how you should be on guard when attending such meetings. Usually requiring a nominal cost for attending, a lot of these seminars and property meets do come with a further upsell, so a budding investor should leave their credit card at home! On the plus side, the variety of people you can meet from the property investment industry is huge and there is a lot to be gained from having normal conversations, directly or indirectly related to property.

Property Investment books

The obvious source for property investment books is via Amazon and eBay. You can also download a plentiful supply of electronic books via the Amazon Kindle store or other online links. A point to note here is that information that was relevant in 2004 may not be relevant in 2014. The principles of investing in property may be the same, but key legal terms and information about the latest property hotspots may have changed.

Property investment forums online

These can be brilliant, educational and sometimes amusing! The wealth and diversity of the information provided in online property forums can be a gold mine, but this same benefit is a double edged sword. The disadvantage to having such a vast wealth of opinions on property investing is just that: opinions. Some of the things said on forums can be so wide off the mark and incorrect, either due to miseducation or ignorance. For this reason, you should always be wary in taking the varying opinions of a collective with a pinch of salt, especially when it comes to legal matters. The amusing part mentioned earlier is that every forum online, property investment related or not, can sometimes descend into bickering, random tangents and the forming of cliques. That’s just the way things are, and there’s nothing one can do but to step aside and let the drama sort itself out. The best property investment forum out there used to be the Singing Pig, but that died a slow death in the late 2000’s. The only property forum that we find quite useful these days is a facebook property investment forum for UK investors that has over 5000 members registered.

Property investment coaching

Some people opt for property investment coaching or a property mentor to further their property education. After all, hogging onto the coattails of a learned investor who has gone through the trials and tribulations of investing in property has a lot of benefits; the advantages are obvious. Working with the right property investment coaching or property mentor can bring you up to speed with the current ongoings and in some cases, give you the edge on off market deals. However, this property coaching does come at a significant cost running into the thousands and sometimes, tens of thousands.

Some of the greatest achievers in history have gone down this route of opting to associate themselves with mentors and coaches and it can pay dividends. It is up to you, as the student to decide where to put your money in educating yourself and if you are going to take this step then we offer one tip:

These individuals go by a few different terms: property mentor, property coach, property investment trainers and so on. Do your due diligence – spend hours, days and even weeks on researching the property mentor or coach. Search every available piece of information, good and bad, and weigh up whether your investment aims lie along the same lines as the teacher. For example, you could unknowingly hand over your life savings to then find out further down the line that the mentor or coach has a history of indecorous dealings and a negative history. You are then tarred with the same brush and it will be quite difficult to disassociate yourself from that if you want to stay in the industry.

Property Sourcing Companies

Very similar to what we do i.e. either developing out their own products and then selling on or working with developers/asset management companies to sell on ready made investments. This, to be fair, isn’t really part of the property education process but it can end up being an education – an expensive one, if you’re not careful (!) Some of us at Aston Eaves have, unfortunately, became the victims of unscrupulous property sourcing companies in our early days in property and part of the reason Aston Eaves was created was to offer an alternative, ethical approach to property sourcing. However, only clients can be the judge of that, so we stop the self promotion here. Back to the point, property sourcing companies can and certainly do offer discounted property that may not be available elsewhere, but we are always wary of entire apartment blocks being sold off to investors only. For example, if a development in Liverpool was released with 150 apartments and all 150 apartments were sold to investors, then it surely creates difficulties for the future, immediate and long term? Will banks lend against the apartment, knowing that every leaseholder is an investor? Will the building be looked after properly, knowing that all the tenants residing there are on 6 month AST rental contracts?

Again, this section on property sourcing companies has been put in as a side reference as the education obtained from them either via the telephone sales pitch, property investment seminar or an actual purchase can be educational and not always for the betterment!

This is our sales pitch: We can source asylum seeker property investments and have done so for over 10 years.

So, we hope we’ve given you some food for thought on whether it’s worth paying for property investment coaching. The old adage of learning from your mistakes is certainly true, but one can say that paying to learn from someone else’s mistakes can be a fast-track to the the path you want to get to, but at what cost?