Where to Co-Invest

• Register with ALL your local estate agents. It is important that you build relationships with them and establish yourselves as credible investors ready, willing and able to buy at the drop of a hat should the right property turn up. Estate agents by the very nature of their business, get to hear about great deals all the time and you want to be first on their list to call when they do, but you’ll be up against stiff established competition for that phone call.
• Scan the internet. Quickly you’ll get a feel for the market in your location of choice; property prices; market direction; the best streets to buy in. There are many tools online that can help you find and research property to determine whether it’s going to be the right investment for you.
  • Property portals are an invaluable source of information. Sites like www.propertyfinder.co.uk are dedicated to presenting a high percentage of all the properties available from all the estate agents, new home builders and developers in the country to their audience. This will show you what is available to choose from right now, but just as important for your research is to know what properties in your chosen location have sold for over the years.
  • This you can find using websites like www.houseprices.co.uk where, completely free, you can find out what any property sold for since 2000. Check it out, see what your neighbour paid for their home, see what your friends paid and soon you’ll see just how useful this tool will be when you start looking at properties from a perspective of market trend and current value for money.
• Property Finders & Investment Consultants. A whole industry has been created around finding investment property for people and giving advice on where to look for the best deals now and in the future. It is very important though that as a novice you consider every organisation that guarantees returns and huge profits with some healthy scepticism. Investing is a big financial commitment and you have to make sure that any organisation that is going to take on all or part of the responsibility of spending your money for you has the credentials to do so.
• Off-plan. This has been the property investment buzz word for some time now. The benefits of buying off plan are undisputed, the ability to gain large discounts from new home builders for buying a property some time before it’s actually built. Buying off-plan helps the builder’s cash flow and guarantees them sales before they’ve even laid the foundations in many cases, lowering their risk. You will however need a lot of patience and confidence in the builder to do this because you’ll be purchasing something you’ve not seen and you may have to wait some time before the property is ready.
• Overseas property. Once again there are hundreds of websites out there dedicated to helping you buy in Spain, in Croatia, in Dubai, wherever is the latest trend or predicted to boom market in the world. It obviously opens up far wider possibilities, but you need to be aware of the legal and financial differences in these countries before you should even consider buying abroad.
• What do others do? It is always best to learn from those with experience and the best way of doing this is to find a good investment forum and read through the experiences and questions of people who have been there. Learn from their successes and mistakes so you won't make the same ones. One of the best that we have found is www.singingpig.co.uk, check it out or simply do a web search for "property investment forums" and see what comes up.

Now we’ve taken you though "what" co-investing is and the "where" factor of co-investing. Next we should discuss "how" you might spend your investor pounds.