Now that we have completed some theory, Day 5 of the #21DayPropertyChallenge kicks off the start of us looking for some properties. We will expand this over the next few days and maybe you’ll even find your next investment property.
Finding property is always a HOT topic, because that’s what makes a property investor, actually owning property. So we are going to explore this in today’s challenge
As we aren’t able to hit the streets and search for properties, we are going to look at what we have available to us – Online Property Portals.
“But there are never any good properties online”
– Says Every Property Investor
Today’s challenge is to go and look online and find 5 properties that have potential to be an investment opportunity.
What Am I Looking For?
When we go looking for properties, we aren’t sure upfront if it is actually going to be something that will be suitable for our needs. But if we don’t look, we will never find.
Here is a short list of what to look for:
- Properties that look like they need work or renovations
- Have any properties been listed for more than 6 months
- Often agents mark the properties as reduced in price if they can’t sell
- Look for prices that are lower than the average listed price
- Sometimes the photos show very outdated bathrooms/kitchens – These need upgrading!
- Comments like “Urgent Sale”, “Priced to sell fast”, “Owner Immigrating”
How to Find Property
Here is an outline to follow for searching online for properties. You will probably find a way that suits you better or more suited for your particular situation, but we can certainly point you in the right direction.
- Go to https://www.property24.com/
- In the search box, choose an area that is close to where you live (no more than 15km). For our example, we selected “Bruma”.
- Select the type of property that you are interested in. We suggest Apartments, townhouses and houses.
- Limit the maximum price to something comfortable. We recommend R1million.
- Select Search.
- Our result returned 34 properties
- We selected the “order by” button at the top and changed it to Price – Low to High
- Now you can start browsing through the properties
- We have found something that catches our eye:
- Get out a pen and paper
- Make note of the following:
- Property reference number
- Agents Name & Contact number
- Price (R680,000)
- Brief Description (1 Bed, 75m2, Apartment, Bruma)
- Then we are on to the next property
- Nothing else looked too appealing. I expanded our search to include a surrounding area “Kensington” which increases our number of properties to 75 (Don’t get too many properties or it gets hard to search)
- We start looking again
- We find another property that catches our eye
- Make note of the following:
- Property reference number
- Agents Name & Contact number
- Price (R745,000)
- Brief Description (3 beds, 2 baths, 357m2, Kensington)
- Then we are on to the next property
- Keep expanding and refining your search.
Day 5 Challenge
Our challenge for you today is to find 5 properties. Make a list of the details of these properties, as mentioned above, on a piece of paper.
This should take you no more than 30 mins of your time. Don’t over analyse this exercise. We call this window shopping.
We hope you enjoy this exercise and like always, we would love to get some feedback about how this challenge has been for you. Jump on to the forum and drop us a note or full out the form on the Contact Us Page.
Why don’t you invite your friends to come and join the challenge. All of the challenges can be found at the #21DayPropertyChallenge Page. And the signup page is still available at #21DayPropertyChallenge Signup.
