How to Survive the Property Market Crash
The King Is Dead...
Long Live The King!! Yes, the King is dead.
We all know who the King was, the King in Ireland, and pretty much the whole western world for the last twenty or maybe fifty years has been property - plain and simple.
For as long as I can remember the rationale was, if you're in property you're doing well, and if you've been in property long you're doing very well.
Like many of you I've been there, enjoyed it and didn't get out.
So, why am I writing this article then? Simply, because I realised that I needed another string to my bow.
You see the King is dead, but what happens when a King dies is that he is very rapidly replaced by someone else who assumes all his powers, and becomes known in turn as the King.
And Man is the New King powerful.
The thing about the Old King, that being the property game was that too much of the wealth was held in property assets, known as your equity.
You know, you had a property that was worth 200,000 euros with a mortgage of 100,000 euros, so theory was you had 100,000 of equity.
And the only way to turn that into cash was to sell it, and who in their right mind wanted to do that? Pay taxes, lose control of an appreciating asset, lose the future potential of that piece of property (who knew where the next shopping centre or dual carriageway was going to go) etc, etc The flipside was that there was no money in the day to day running of that same business unless you sold it, because due to superinflated property prices (unless you bought 20+ years ago), the rents and yields relative to debt (after expenses), required to purchase by and large were terrible.
So all too frequently, paper property millionaires were broke.
Hindsight is both a wonderful and a truly useless habit that we indulge in, but it can benefit us if we choose to learn the lessons.
For me one of the most obvious lessons from the property implosion has been that Cash is King, and that if you don't have a business with strong cashflows, (forget about equity) you don't really have a business, more of an obligation.
Enter the New King.
The funny thing is the New King has been on the scene for a while.
The good news is that for those who showed the initiative to set up their own property business, who researched and viewed properties, read on their subject, attended courses, advertised their properties, negotiated with tenants, estate agents, vendors, tradesmen and women, managed cashflow and a whole host of other responsibilities is that the "experience" will stand to you for the rest of your life, and that these skills are transferable to whatever else you choose to take on.
The seeds of entrepreneurialism have been sown, and although the property tide has went out, you can and will be able to apply these skills to the new opportunities that are on the horizon.
To summarise, may I suggest that what you should be looking for now is a cash business that doesn't require significant debt and represents the potential for significant expansion.
Some of you will know where I'm going with this.
The key is low overheads and a bigger market.
If you're selling luxury Rolex watches, and you're in a town that's in the midst of a localised economic downturn, then the obvious answer would be to get out of that town, and go somewhere that isn't experiencing an economic depression.
Well, what if we said "You know what, you don't even have to move.
But, what you do need to do is learn a new skill", and herein lies the key to ending the economic recession here in Ireland.
By learning how to take your business to the largest marketplace in the world, and figuring out how to sell your wares there, you can virtually recession proof your business, and rapidly accelerate your profits.
And that's it, the New King is the vast economic potential of the Internet, the World Wide Web.
Long Live The King!! Yes, the King is dead.
We all know who the King was, the King in Ireland, and pretty much the whole western world for the last twenty or maybe fifty years has been property - plain and simple.
For as long as I can remember the rationale was, if you're in property you're doing well, and if you've been in property long you're doing very well.
Like many of you I've been there, enjoyed it and didn't get out.
So, why am I writing this article then? Simply, because I realised that I needed another string to my bow.
You see the King is dead, but what happens when a King dies is that he is very rapidly replaced by someone else who assumes all his powers, and becomes known in turn as the King.
And Man is the New King powerful.
The thing about the Old King, that being the property game was that too much of the wealth was held in property assets, known as your equity.
You know, you had a property that was worth 200,000 euros with a mortgage of 100,000 euros, so theory was you had 100,000 of equity.
And the only way to turn that into cash was to sell it, and who in their right mind wanted to do that? Pay taxes, lose control of an appreciating asset, lose the future potential of that piece of property (who knew where the next shopping centre or dual carriageway was going to go) etc, etc The flipside was that there was no money in the day to day running of that same business unless you sold it, because due to superinflated property prices (unless you bought 20+ years ago), the rents and yields relative to debt (after expenses), required to purchase by and large were terrible.
So all too frequently, paper property millionaires were broke.
Hindsight is both a wonderful and a truly useless habit that we indulge in, but it can benefit us if we choose to learn the lessons.
For me one of the most obvious lessons from the property implosion has been that Cash is King, and that if you don't have a business with strong cashflows, (forget about equity) you don't really have a business, more of an obligation.
Enter the New King.
The funny thing is the New King has been on the scene for a while.
The good news is that for those who showed the initiative to set up their own property business, who researched and viewed properties, read on their subject, attended courses, advertised their properties, negotiated with tenants, estate agents, vendors, tradesmen and women, managed cashflow and a whole host of other responsibilities is that the "experience" will stand to you for the rest of your life, and that these skills are transferable to whatever else you choose to take on.
The seeds of entrepreneurialism have been sown, and although the property tide has went out, you can and will be able to apply these skills to the new opportunities that are on the horizon.
To summarise, may I suggest that what you should be looking for now is a cash business that doesn't require significant debt and represents the potential for significant expansion.
Some of you will know where I'm going with this.
The key is low overheads and a bigger market.
If you're selling luxury Rolex watches, and you're in a town that's in the midst of a localised economic downturn, then the obvious answer would be to get out of that town, and go somewhere that isn't experiencing an economic depression.
Well, what if we said "You know what, you don't even have to move.
But, what you do need to do is learn a new skill", and herein lies the key to ending the economic recession here in Ireland.
By learning how to take your business to the largest marketplace in the world, and figuring out how to sell your wares there, you can virtually recession proof your business, and rapidly accelerate your profits.
And that's it, the New King is the vast economic potential of the Internet, the World Wide Web.
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