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Services that can help you

Introduction

While it can be argued that anything that could be provided for you you could do yourself, most people just don't have the time to spend a number of years researching what is available, markets and the whole property, construction, self build, overseas property, funding, and associated areas. Even if they did the knowledge they would have gained would become quickly out of date unless they got to constantly look at different propositions and situations.

The answer through a local group or local club could be to share information so one member studies a country or a specific aspect and another member another area, and this will work quite well as long as you are able to recruit enough people prepared to put in the time and effort into their specialty, they have the ability and get enough practice to gain experience.

A secondary problem all involved in property are aware of is the learning curve, as a person gets more experience they don't make as many mistakes, spot opportunities faster and gain the confidence to actually jump fast when necessary. Most people if not loosing money to start with, don't make as much as they could have, although this can become camouflaged by the ever rising prices we have become accustomed to in the UK. If however they had bought at a better price or chosen better options for the development, or marketing and made everything happen faster then they could often have doubled their return. Particularly with property improvers its not unusual for them to put in a lot of expenditure, time and effort and end up with less than they would have done had they just bought, held the property and sold it again, without doing anything to it.

A third problem is time, few people who have the earning potential to support a mortgage, also have the time to go hunting for the best property buys, let alone do the research to find out the ideal area in which to buy, the local market in the selected area, and the possibilities with each type of property. Often they end up making wild bids at auctions and buying less than the ideal property. However as doing anything has been far more profitable than doing nothing at all, most have done well whatever they have done, although taking more risks and not getting as good a return as possible. Allowing more time to pass in a rising market often means that they are loosing far more than the cost would have been in using someone else who could have found the property for you.

So what about using other services

The TV schedules are full of programmes showing relocation people, property developers, holiday property agents and others helping people and following the profits that they make. Clearly there are some who are providing finding and relocation services, as well as estate agents who want to sell you properties for as high a price as they can screw out of you. 

Many of these people come from the estate agency industry and are easy to spot, they ask you what your budget is and then immediately start showing you properties just above the budget you set. Ok they are used to selling property, and have the mindset that says the more you spend the more commission they earn and normally structure their fees as a percentage of what you spend. It is therefore in their interest that you spend as much as possible. not an ideal situation you will agree.

Against this there are a few people who are coming from the property finding, dealing, and investing background, who act as buyers as opposed to sellers. So they will spot the problems, list faults that can be used to negotiate the price down, start from a completely different viewpoint of asking you what it is that you want and what it is to be used for, before of course also as a nearly passing comment asking what the maximum you can go to is. Their objective is to meet your needs as best suits your needs, which can often mean at a lower figure than you would have paid using an estate agent to sell up the property. Of course they still have to find a way to charge you and may charge on the basis of maximum budget or time used.

Club services

The role of the Property Pension Club started out to provide information, and it had originally no services at all, and we started out with the idea that like local clubs we could use a pool of membership skills to help each other.

It soon became apparent that expecting the few with the real knowledge to make a real difference to help the world for free was not a practical route, and instead we devised to start just a small number of very basic finding services.

Over time this has grown to a full range of services and more services will be added as time goes on and new expertise or needs come up. 

The ranges of services the club has to offer meets a number of specific needs, and many are unique.

Handholding services is the first example of unique services in that these rather then selling you a consultancy service, attempts to empower you to do more yourself. In this way you get to do what you want to, learn new skills and can still call on help when you want it. This means that to start you can draw upon experience available so make less mistakes, gain skills that over time you need to use the services less and know you have backup when you need it. These handholding services have been extended so that there is one that is right for just about any situation, even one that will help you with business administration and the formalities of running a company. As you are doing some task yourself it also makes it practical to use the highest quality of director level assistance when necessary without breaking the budget.

The clubs services fall into families of services, similar in some ways within a family and allowing further developments to occur.

The very best of the clubs finding services is the H3 service, this covers finding property at about half what you would expect in the USA and getting real good buys in the UK. The service provider that provides this service in the UK is H3 Search Ltd, and its MD and executive director of the clubs search services has experience of property and much more in both the UK and USA. This service uses a combination of a lot of experience, ability and a lot of technology, for example he has a laser surveying tool that he can point at locations to get accurate measurements, using a built in computer this instrument can even measure the size of things in the air while standing on the ground some way away the accuracy he can work to with this is a sixteenth of an inch in 300 yards. He also has a camera arrangement that takes photographs so wide that he can stand in  even the smallest room and get the whole room in, and further process this picture through a notebook computer to make it look as if a wall had been removed to allow the photo to have been taken. Using the same techniques he can photograph the full front of any house from the front garden even if the garden is tiny. On his computer he can imput the measurements taken and other observations on the scene to create a 3D interpretation, with furniture added that you can walk through and look at the use of space, experiment with removing or adding walls etc. While on USA property finding expeditions members get a private website and he constantly updates the finds so they can see progress being made, photographs and details of properties etc. There is nothing else anywhere near to the quality of this  service offered by anyone else.

The services section of the clubs website gives details on all the many services available and on some pages there are additional comparisons and advice as to which service might be ideal to meet different needs. For example at the end of the UK property finding service page is a list of other services that could also be used to achieve this need with a further list of how different types of members might choose to use some of the services.

Overseas property services extends further the range of people who can benefit from this club, to include as well as pension fund and wealth builders, those who are interested in holiday properties and those who just cannot get into the high priced UK property market. With quality homes selling from only £5,000 in the USA, it offers the person unable to enter the property market in the UK a way to get involved, multiply their wealth and one day perhaps then be able to also enter the UK market as well.

Self build services likewise may appeal to the home hunter or anyone who fancies a UK property from about half the normal price.

Why the club can produce more powerful solutions

The service providers who work through the club have all agreed to a different set of business formulas:- 

• Out has gone the concept that the more we can make you spend the more you pay us, and in has come the concept that if we help you to profit faster the faster you can come back and use the services again.
• Out has gone the concept of keeping the knowledge to ourselves so you are dependent upon us for ever and in has come the concept of empowering you through handholding services, so you get to chose to use more services and to grow faster rather then being held to ransom into the future.
• Out has gone the concept of only selling services and in has come the concept of providing you with information, so you have more knowledge and more people can become involved.
• Out has gone the estate agents jargon and guestimates of measurements and in has come accurate description, measurements, often scale computer models, unbelievable photographs and more.
• Out has gone the concept that if you don't have wealth already you can't play and in has come the concept of looking for low cost entry routes for everyone.
• Out has gone the concept that  a large percentage of the amount you pay is necessary to fund advertising to get new clients and in has come the concept that it can all be spent to your benefit, even to the point that if you are not already a  club member the first service provider you use pays your membership fee for you in full.
• Out has gone the need for sales people to sell you a service and we have moved over to people who can get straight into helping you to get benefits.

The overall effect of these changes combined also makes it cost effective to run, so that services well above the standard you could find elsewhere are able to be provided within a sensible budget and will allow you to see that by reducing risk, improving margin, better buying and moving faster you are able to recover many times what it costs you.

It also makes it possible for far more people to become involved, who by traditional routes would not have had the confidence and knowledge. Particularly the idea of the handholding services is a great step towards empowering far more people to become involved.

Getting started yourself

In this series we hope we have been able to explain enough for you to see that 'buy to let' and other property investments are a practical and enjoyable way to create a pension fund, or build wealth.