An acquaintance or colleague tells you about a great place in an area that piques your interest in property investment. He says everything is nice, the community is great and the roads are fine. He spends five to 10 minutes talking to you just how great the property is, and you wind up going in on this investment. Turns out, your perspective is quite different than the referring acquaintance. That’s why we ponder whether it’s good to take the word of a friend, colleague or acquaintance, or if you should be the judge yourself. We’ll spoil the pondering right now and just say it: when it comes to property investment, you should be the judge yourself.
Let’s go over two bits of advice as to why you are the ultimate factor in all of this investing:
- It’s your money, not the acquaintance, colleague or friend’s. No really, think about it. The property we are talking about requires monetary investment and it’s certainly not coming from anyone other than you. We all make decisions on what to invest money, time, effort and resources into. That is of course, if you don’t have a guardian or conservator who are appointed to make such decisions for you, such as spending and household investments.
- It’s your perspective, meaning what the acquaintance, friend or colleague thinks shouldn’t affect you more than just it being a referral. Think about this. Who cares what your friend, colleague or acquaintance thinks when ultimately, it’s your opinions on the property which shape your decision on investment. In addition, this perspective you have is far more valuable than anyone else’s – likely even more valuable than the property you are debating whether to invest in or not!
It happens a lot where people never see the property, but wind up getting burned in the end. If we can do one thing for you today, it would be to make you aware of this simple, yet very important advice.