Property investment on your own can be hard sometimes...
The plan is to build up a portfolio over time, adding a unit every year or 2, or perhaps your ambitions are much grander. Building a large residential or Commercial portfolio to look after your retirement needs and leave a significant portfolio to your children.
Or perhaps your business purchased an owner occupied property and the portfolio expanded from there.
Or maybe you were the beneficiary of your parents or spouses hard work and excellent investment decisions and you inherited property.
Wherever your portfolio begins and wherever you intend to take it, one thing is for sure. Property is not just a source of passive income.
Sure you can be passive with your portfolio. But in reality a lack of active management is simply neglecting the business that is your property portfolio.
Is it time to become a professional?
I always loved the idea of becoming a professional property investor. I loved the dream of building a portfolio of rental properties and living off the income, thereby becoming financially free.
That is precisely what I did in my early 20s, building up a portfolio of over 50 properties before I was 30 years old.
Looking back now I realise that being a professional is more about how you approach things than simply if you can live off the income.
But I soon realised that every Property investor needs a team, because things are not as simple as they seem when you start out.
The principles are simple enough:
Buy properties that have a higher income than their expenses. (Cash flow positive)
Buy in areas that have a growing population and thus rental demand.
Buy using other people's money. ( banks mostly)
Buy in areas where the values go up over time. (A hedge against inflation.)
I soon realised that I needed a good team to support me in my journey to financial freedom.
I had a whole team of experts:
Our financial advisor (The insurance guy)
Legal advisor (Legal structuring expert)
Accountant and tax advisor
Then I had a team of property managers in various areas managing many of my various properties all over the country. I fully trusted them to do all the things a property manager should do.
Place a tenant, collect the rent, handle the maintenance and let me know if there was a problem. I carefully did my due diligence to find good agents who managed other properties in the area and had been around for a long time.
The fact that they were still in business after many years was my assurance that they must be doing a good job.
I was all set to relax and enjoy my new found financial freedom.
But then something happened. Something you don't think about when you are young and naïve.
Life happened. Things went wrong! Not just wrong in one aspect but in multiple aspects at the same time.
Living expenses kept going up, interest rates went up, I had vacancies in some properties, some properties were in areas that were getting worse and prices were going down! I asked our property managers what was going on, because I never received the promised reporting via email.
What I thought would be a pleasure cruise, turned out to be a ship in a storm that was heading for the rocks!
So I did what any property professional would do. I took a deep breath, made peace with the reality that things are not quite the way I had hoped they would be, and I started to take action to fix what had been broken.
I did the work myself, because I lost trust in many of the property managers.
This started in 2010 when Grove Properties was born. It was first born out of necessity to handle the realities of property investing.
Understand the legal frameworks, fill the vacancies, sell the bad performing assets, find new high performing properties to buy, collect the rent, handle the maintenance and projects that needed to happen and so much more.
It took a long time to figure out what we needed to do exactly to be able to handle all the needs of diverse property investment clients.
The answer is that there was a piece of the puzzle missing.
That piece is the cornerstone that keeps all the other pieces in place.
I would like to introduce you to the next generation of property management services.
Property rental Asset management
We want to help you get the one service we could never find.
A partner that looks at your portfolio like you would do yourself if this was your full time profession.
Becoming your partner that is aligned with your property interests. Not just selling and renting and talking about property, but living out the services that we wish we had starting out.
When we win, we win together.
When things go wrong we find the best way to fix the problem sustainably.
Clear reporting and communication keeping you up to date monthly.
A proactive approach to maintenance, projects and unlocking value to maximizing the ROI on your portfolio.
Moving beyond the normal transactional engagement to a full service asset management solution.
I have been on this property journey for over 20 years. We would like to invite you to connect and look forward to taking your property journey to the next level.
Yours in property.
Jacques Grove
Principal and Dreamer
