Calling all Bird Dogs!

Nigel Kibel is another contributor to this forum, who would be worth contacting. I’ve had some dealings with Nigel recently, he is very knowledgable and a great guy.

Regards
Alistair

Hi macwa

in response to your question about he NZ market. I’ve been living in NZ for 18 months (moved over to make the most of the market and enjoy the country). Over the past 2 years i’ve bought about 25 properties in NZ for myself and about 100 for clients so i speak with a bit of experience.

The market has risen very strongly over the past 3 years especially the last 2. I feel its hard to see the market rising much more. So i urge you to dampen any expecation of quick money in NZ. However if you are prepared to take a long term view then NZ looks very attractive. I feel more so than Australia because of the higher returns available in NZ.

Personally i’ve sold about half my NZ portfolio in the past 12 months, but am not selling out completely, like i did in Australia over the past 2 years (well not quite completely, i have 4 properties left). The only reason i’m selling is to reinvest in New Markets i’m active in.

If you buy well, then NZ is a good long term investment. Just remember that with interest rates at their current levels then a 10% return isn’t cash positive, (but hey they are better than 5% in OZ).

In regards to birddogs, i see Minimogul is still finding some attractive deals. I’d love to help myself but i’m very committed on my USA bussiness at the moment.

regards westan

We find cash positive deals showing 15-25% Returns in the USA email me at [email protected] to join our database

hi everyone
thanks for that westan

All those deals Vicky found were fabulous but they are all gone now. However I will have more, if you wanted to join our list it is completely free and we pitch deals to clients on spec.

More information is available here
http://www.nzpropertytogo.com/birddogs.html

I probably sound a bit like a seminar here (steve taught me well) meaning ‘you can make money in any market if you know what you’re doing’. yes, I see yields and so on in the US and if it wasn’t for George Bush maybe I could be a bit more excited, but also I know the NZ market better than most these days after two years of
‘total immersion’ , that to me is as priceless , as I can find deals where yield plus capital gain created = the same result as a high yielding US property, and NZ has other advantages to Aussies too. So then if you force capital gains, you can do it quicker, which is another main factor. Sure
you can do that anywhere but the reason I am still in NZ is I know it and have a network, and that to me is priceless.

So, how’s the market? Basically 2 years ago we were buying things on a 20 percent yield that people said ‘you’ll never get capital gains there you know’ and they went up heaps, doubled etc.
Perhaps those people were either just concerned with cashflow, or speculating – but they made money without even necessarily doing anything, basically!

As the market started rising – yes even in the small towns – people smelt money, investors came in droves, prices rose, and all you’d do is basically buy ’em and capital gains would take care of the rest.

these days we look for a different sort of deal, one that is going to get capital gains not just because ‘the average house price in NZ is going up’ but because of A REASON. this could be area -specific…or property-specific, i.e. a deal that you can “force” capital gains to happen to, because of *doing* something.

All of our recent deals have had some sort of “double up-side” to them as a hedge to whatever the market is going to do.

I really really doubt that the cheapie deals will go down. There’s just too much demand for them, and always will be! it’s the overpriced or million dollar or brand new ones, that you buy at their peak, and you can’t do anything to raise the value to, that *might* suffer, depending on supply and demand, where they are, that sort of thing.

I am constantly surprised at the amount of cheapie deals being sold to home owners, not just being traded from investor to investor. Investors tend to think they drive the market but statistics and my experience say it’s homeowners, all the way.!

The last two properties I owned which I just sold (like Westan I sold some of the ones that had made the most capital gains and re-invested in areas that I thought still had capital gains to go – still in NZ – )
went to owner occupiers not investors, and I am hearing the same story from other investors I know selling in NZ.

There are other things we are doing now, focussing much more on, subdividing is a biggie – adding units on the back, that sort of thing – you might not be able to buy CF+ve in some towns any more but if you split the section and sell off half, you often can.

Sometimes even just selling with DA approval is enough to make 70, 100k on your deal you just bought, something that might only take you a matter of months. Something that would take you 2 years to make if you were waiting for the market to make you 10 percent capital gains a year.

So this is the kind of deals we’re moving into in the market now. We’re still buying decent buy and holds if we can find them, but really, we want a second reason as well that a deal’s a great deal.

I don’t really see prices going down. Not the sort of deals that we’re buying, anyway! Look at the same time as prices in Auckland were ‘flattening’ and the whole headline thing was looming (Auckland of course is so big that it affects the stats for the whole of NZ) – at the same time as that, Taranaki for example was going up 45 percent a year on average. That means that where you buy (my aim, anyway) is to ourperform and defy the market! We do this by specifically buying in a sector of the market, and area, etc. Or, to quote Steve, problem plus solution equals profit. Loads of towns where i thought prices might go down, they haven’t at all. Part of this is that just when you thought prices couldn’t go any higher, rents started to rise.

anyway, our system is basically a network of freelance spotters who pitch me deals and I am sort of air traffic controller, matching investors with deals. this way the investors have access to deals from all over NZ.

cheers-
Mini

Amen Don and Liz

Hi vatel,

I would take your time. There is no point rushing out to do anything. The market in NZ has slowed down, but that doesn’t mean there are no deals out there. It’s just harder to find them. I would spend a lot of time researching before you fly over there.

Regards,
Ozi

the fact that the market has slown down means that it will be far easier to fiond good deals. Currently its winter not a lot of stock. As spring approaches then you will find good deals

Nigel Kibel

http://www.propertyknowhow.com.au

Australian and New Zealand Buyers advocate
service and seminars

i COULD NOT AGREE MORE
nz IS STILL A GREAT PLACE TO BUY, ESPECIALLY IN THE MAIN CITIES WHERE YOU WILL GET GREAT RETURNS AND STRONG CAPITAL GROWTH

Nigel Kibel

http://www.propertyknowhow.com.au

Australian and New Zealand Buyers advocate
service and seminars

Good on yer Nigel!

If you don’t know the market then get advice from someone who’s out there making money and doing profitable deals. That doesn’t mean you have to use a bird dog to find such a deal, but rather than doing nothing, if you don’t have time or confidence to go over there and learn the market and do it yourself, you could do a lot worse than using a bird dog.
!

cheers-
Mini

For Aussies thinking of investing in NZ, or wondering about the current market, there’s a good article by Terry Ryder in this month’s (July’s) Australian Property Investing magazine.

kay henry