Rohan Weerasinghe

Special Offer for April & May

Following my presenation at the Berkshire Property Meet in Maidenhead this month I have had several questions about the Coaching and Mentoring that Raj and I offer.

Visit www.propertyclinic.org

For the next two months we have reduced the price of our Property Clinic to allow a few of you who have expressed an interest to be able to plug into us. We are very excited as this is really the first time Raj and I have worked together as Mentors/Coaches.

I believe that anyone spending time with us is going to make some significant shifts and we will be bringing all our past experience both good and bad to the table to help you.

Thames Gateway Enquiry

I have been asked a lot of questions about the Thames Gateway and what the government is planning. To address this, I have included a description from a short ebook I wrote last year.

Have a read below and I hope it helps...

"The Thames Gateway area, whichspans from the Isle of Dogs in London, to Southend in Essex and the Isle of Sheppey in Kent is broadly regarded as the Government’s solution to the housing crisis in the South East. It is hoped that the area will give rise to 160,000 homes and with it creating 180,000 jobs by 2016 in one of the biggest growth initiatives undertaken in the UK.

The Thames Gateway was established as a national policy priority in 1994, with the publication of the Thames Gateway Regional Planning Guidance. The launch of the Sustainable Communities plan in February 2003 put further focus on the Thames Gateway as one of the key south east growth areas.

To help achieve these aims the Gateway has the political impetus from the highest level. The Prime Minister is the chair of the cabinet committee, charged with overseeing the development of the Thames Gateway. The governmentspledge is £446 million for the Thames Gateway to help with land assembly, remediation of brownfield land and the delivery of additional affordable housing and local infrastructure."

Even in the current climate, as investors, we must be aware of larger influences that can have a positive impact on regional markets. Certainly the Thames Gateway would fall into this category. I have mentioned previously, there are always opportunities at a regional and local town level with regeneration and local grants. Certainly, if your strategy is to look for long term capital growth this should be a part of your approach.

Heart Magic - Kevin Green Talks on Invesments & The Heart

During the wealth intelligence Academy conference last weekend, one of the speakers was Kevin Green an old friend of mine and a very successful property investor who has built a multi-million pound portfolio from nothing over a period of seven years. The reason I am sharing this is because I thought that the subject that he chose was particularly pertinent in the current climate.

Kevin talked about investing mindset and addressed this from a completely different perspective than most people were expecting. He talked about using your intuition, using your gut instinct, and more specifically following your heart when making your final decisions as a property investor.

For many this may seem like an alien approach to investing particularly as much of our teaching is about identifying the opportunity, crunching the numbers and treating it as a business rather than an emotional decision. However the point that Kevin made was that simply chasing the money is not the right approach to making a decision when reviewing, for example, a property investment. He talked about how many of his big financial decisions are based from an inner feeling, which many people may call intuition.

As most of you know this is something I am very passionate about and it was fantastic to see Kevin explaining this approach in a number of contexts. For example when viewing a property, he talked about how important it is to walk into the property and pick up on your initial reaction to the feeling you have about that property. If you have a sense that something is not quite right, you must reflect on that feeling and before making a final decision check in to see if that feeling is still strong. In some cases their can be events that happen in a property and the negative energy that is associated with that event can remain in and around the property for years to come. Kevin also eluded to this, and I have personally experienced this when viewing some properties. In fact, I've experienced in property that once lived in.

This may all sound a little outside of the normal box of thinking, however most successful people when asked about decisions that they make referr to the gut intuitive instincts that they have. Do not ignore this and if it is strong and the message is to not make the investment, then it may be better to walk away.

Wealth Angels One Day Seminar - March 2009

I'm extremely excited to announce that myself and Anton Lane have agreed a date for the wealth Angels seminar in the first half of this year. We had several people asking whether we are going to have a live event and at the beginning of this year we set a date for March which I will confirm with you over the next week.

This is going to be an intensive one-day experience with myself, Anton and a number of other speakers sharing information on subjects ranging from managing your existing debt, cash flow forecasting, property strategies, stock market trading in a sideways and bullish market, emerging markets, world economic overview and other subjects. In addition we will be bring in a number of our specialists will be available for you to talk to directly to in the course of the day should you wish to discuss any personal matters regarding your portfolio and wealth building strategies including tax.

The event will be based in London and we are just finalising the cost, however it will be somewhere around £250 per person and will include some extra goodies.

If at this stage you have an interest then I would strongly recommend you contact us directly via the wealth Angels website as I believe we will be offering a special offer to the first 25 people at register.

Go to www.wealthangels.tv or CLICK HERE and send a message expressing an interest in attending.

A Night At the Gala

Greetings on this extremely cold February morning. I have just returned from a very enjoyable weekend, part of which was spent at the wealth intelligence Academy Gala and conference in London.

On Friday night I was privileged enough to be sat with some fantastic individuals such as Gill fielding (secret millionaire), Duncan Bannatyne (Dragons Den) and some other very highly successful individuals such as Kevin Green one of Wales most successful property investors.

The Gala dinner was a thoroughly enjoyable experience where over £85,000 was raised on the evening for the Make a Wish Foundation in the form of an auction. For me the remaining part of the evening was very touching as it gave me a chance to catch up a meet many of the previous students and clients who have taught over the years as a professional speaker in the field of wealth creation.

I wanted to personally thank those of you who came up and express your gratitude for being inspired and for expressing the the life changing experiences you went through during the three or four days that you spent with me at one of my seminars. Over the years people ask me why I continue to speak in public on this subject and it is experiences such as Friday night and meeting people who I have taught that make it all worthwhile. So again, I'd like to thank each and everyone of you and your kind words.

What was more inspiring than anything for me was to hear some of the stories of people who have started with nothing gone to achieve great levels of success. The tales of success have been anything from simply adding an additional income to the household to completely becoming free of their own personal rat race. Others include overcoming major health challenges and losses in the family and with negative surroundings have still achieved their dream of replacing their income or helping other people within the family.

The message is clear each everyone of us have the ability to achieve the dreams we set out as long as we are persistent and surround ourselves with the right people.

Who owns that vacant property?

I just wanted to share a quick tip with you about how to find the owner of a property that appear to be vacant

. Using a word document create a one page a four flyer that basically is bright and bold stating that you buy houses the cash. It needs to have big capital letters with your phone number and clearly stated that you can complete on the property very quickly. You can also indicate that you pay a finders fee for anyone finds you a property that is vacant and that completes.

Get 100 of these printed on bright pink or yellow or green paper and then every time you find a property that is vacant plaster the Windows and the front of the house with these flyers. Put them on the gateposts much free outside so the house becomes extremely noticeable.

Intention here is to attract the nosy neighbour

or one of the local neighbours who should know who owns the property. The likelihood is they will do one of two things. They will either call you directly and tell you who owns the property or they will call your own and say that there are a bunch of flyers outside their house and the person is offering to buy the house cash. With any luck the nosy neighbour will pass on your number to the owner and hey presto you've opened up the line of communication.

A Visit to Canada

I have just returned from a trip to Canada where I was teaching for the Rich Dad organisation on a three day seminar. This was a thoroughly enjoyable experience and one of the things I found quite overwhelming was the enthusiasm and passion that those people attending the seminar had for the property market. I wanted to take a moment just to share with you one of the strategies that works very well over in Canada. In a way it is similar to the sourcing business that we have here in the UK except their contracts make the process much easier and in some ways more profitable.

In the USA and Canada is called The Wholesale strategy. Essentially it involves you identifying a property that is being sold by distressed seller and negotiating with them a price that is below the market value. At this point must get the property under contract. In fact in Canada and the USA controlling the contract means controlling the money. Their contracts are much more open and we as the investor have the ability to write clauses into the contracts that make it much more favourable for us should we wish to get out of the deal before completing. For example they have what is called a " suitable and user "  clause which can support terms means is that if I cannot find a suitable buyer for the property that I want to pass it onto then I can walk away from the contract.

Having established a good price for the property which is below market value and at the same time works for the seller I then need to identify my buyer. Like most property markets there are several ways to identify buyer. One simple strategy is to advertise the property through newspapers and then have a single viewing date to allow people to come and look at the property at the same time. From this viewing you would take offers on the property which had to be submitted to you within a certain period time.

Should these offers be below the price that you have agreed with the seller then your best option is to go back to the seller and renegotiate the price down to a level where it is below the highest bid that you received. This will enable you to walk away with a profit of say $10,000. This level of flexibility is excellent and create opportunities to source several properties in a month and produce a healthy profit.

Mortgage Holidays

A week or so back I created a video update for you but for some reason it did not upload. Hopefully this time it will. The following is my commentary for the Wealth Angels on the recent announcements by the Government regarding Mortgage Holidays.

Interest rate drops - Don't Get Complacent

I wanted to add to my last BLOG about interest rates. I spoke to an investor this week who was overjoyed that his mortgage payments had come down by about £1,000 per months meaning that he was approximately cashflow neutral. I could sense in him that he was relaxing back in the fact that he would not have to support the properties now.

The point I want to make here, at it applies to all of us, myself included is that we can't get complacent. If you have a portfolio that is not cashflowing or is now neutral as a result of recent Bank of England Base Rate cuts then you MUST start considering your 6 ro 12 month plan.

1. What will happen when rates do eventually go back up (agreed there is a chance they will drop further). However, in the long run, what plans can you put in place now to avoid the negative cashflow situation in the future.
2. What rate would it need to go back up to before it goes negative?
3. Talk to your broker
4. Can you reduce the LTV such that you will always be able to keep the portfolio in a positive cashflow?
5. What amount would you need to put in to reduce the mortgage to the positive situation?
6. How can you raise that? (sell some, flip some deals etc)?

The bottom line is plan now for the next 2 years ! 

Interest Rate Cuts - Call your lender

With a budget review pending and recent slashes in base rate cuts, I felt compelled to pass on a personal message. In recent months the media coverage of the "Credit Crunch" and the "Property bubble burst" and the property market crash the mood of the nation has been somewhat subdued.

The recent cuts in bank of england base rate have without doubt had an impact on many landlords. The question was, would the mortgage lenders pass on the cuts. Lenders like Northern Rock, Bank of Scotland Birmingham midshires have show a positive action to do so.

A number of people have emailed and asked me how they can find out whether the rate cut will be passed on. Well, as a matter of course, mortgage companies will write and inform you of any changes. For example, Birmingham Midshire are writing out in December to advise of their recent changes to certain products. In their case, the initial correspondence relate to the 0.5% cut and the changes for the 1.5% base rate cut will follow.

The most proactive thing you can do is to call your lender and ask them specifically what the changes are to your mortgage payments. They should be able to give you an indication. Also remember to ask them when this will take effect. Remember there will be difference depending on if you are on a Tracker or a fixed. Fixed rate mortgages won't change. Variables mortgages will but maybe not as much as a Tracker.

So give them a call.