Property Investors School by
Dolf De Roos

The Property Investors School is actually a live recording course for investors in New Zealand back in the year 2000. Dolf De Roos, the respected investor and author of several best selling books, reveals the various aspects of property investing in much greater detail.

You'll actually listen to Dolf himself and other participants exchanging views and knowledge as well as conducting brainstorming sessions.

What does the Property Investors School covers?

This 12-cd audio set covers everything from finding potential deals to effective management.

As I went through the first session, Dolf talks about the psychology of investing. He explains how the rich have a proper mindset and the right attitude towards real estate.

He also talks about why the subject of money is both personal and sensitive to most people when discussed.

He conducted a simple test to measure exactly how much you value your money. This simple test can possibly change your way of thinking about money.

Speaking about money, the largest source of finance is from the bank.

He then explains why banks and financial institutions are willing to lend money to people buying houses and describe the role of banks in the business.

If you look at loan advertisements everywhere, it is not unusual that most of the ads are targeting homebuyers and investors to make money.

Furthermore, the Property Investors School covers about the economy and explains how the market is based on basic economics of supply and demand.

That's good news for you because the course also teaches how you can easily find and buy properties by determining the economic trends in the area, rather than the looks of the property itself.

There's even software that can analyze good deals from the bad. One such example is the REAP (Real Estate Acquisition Program) software which was used during a session in Property Investors School. You can download the demo version of REAP at www.dolfderoos.com Developed and used by Dolf himself, REAP can help analyze properties and display whether the returns are healthy or not.

He also encourages real estate investors to have a "counter cyclical" mindset. What he meant was one should not follow the crowd when making investment decisions, such as buying or selling.

I fully agree with this because a good deal must meet a combination of criteria such as price, location, and cash flow.

Simply going with the crowd is financially unwise.

Other than this, the Property Investors School also covers different types of property buying techniques as well as strategies through various participating activities and exercises.

One particular session describes about the process of applying for a mortgage. Now most people are very afraid or reluctant to go to a bank and ask for a loan. But according to Dolf, you are actually making an offer, not begging or hoping that your bank manager will lend you money.

Think from this perspective. Banks are in business too. Instead of having all the negative thoughts in your mind, why not take it as a normal business transaction.

A quote from Dolf,

"A lot of getting money from a bank is your attitude"

Attitude is key. The question now is how to turn that attitude into success?

Dolf will teach you how to develop a "proposal for finance" to get the mortgage you wanted. He covers everything from including photographs of properties to writing detailed descriptions.

He also suggests supplementing the proposal with printouts from the Real Estate Acquisition Program (REAP) software, if you have one. I'm pretty amazed with the program because of the ability to generate different types of forms, charts, reports, etc.

That way you don't have to manually prepare every financial report as it is very time consuming.

Bottom line?

The Property Investors School packs a lot of useful tips and advice from Dolf who walks the talk. Since this is a live recorded event, it is considered an alternative for those who can't attend his teachings (where he only selects a few groups of people every year and conducts brain dump and brainstorm sessions in New Zealand).

Although you can expect a lot more by attending the live event, this course is equally good. The passion and enthusiasm that Dolf de Roos shows towards real estate makes the course lively.

One thing that the course does not cover is buying and selling real estate, only wealth accumulation principles. Therefore, if your interest or main goal is capital appreciation and don't like to deal with management issues, you may not find the course helpful.

The Property Investors School now comes with a 100+ page guidebook (which is not available when I bought it) that supplements the audio version as well as free article downloads from the site.

Expect long sessions from the audio program. I suggest listening to 1 audio cd per day or spend around an hour without outside distraction. The guidebook will come in handy. (if you bought the old version of Property Investor’s School without the guidebook, you can purchase it here).

I also recommend listening to this program more than once. You may not get it the first time because of the confusing terms, but I’m a firm believer in repetition. You’ll understand better in a second or third time.

Don’t worry if you wonder whether the course is right for your country. The concepts and principles are universal and can be applied anywhere in the world.


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