Buying an apartment - What should you buy?

Summary:

Buying an apartment is not like buying a house as there are over 14 different types of apartments. The key factor is figure out your goal from buying this apartment. What purpose do you need this apartment for? This can be hard when there are lots of apartments on the market and it can be confusing when researcher what kind of buyer you are.

You are either an investor, where return or basically income is your main objective and capital gain is a bonus. Number two, you are an investor where capital gain is the main focus and income is the second main focus. Number three, you are an owner occupier, you have got certain criteria, like you may have pets or you may want to be in a certain part of town.

There are different kind of criteria. You are either concerned about lifestyle, so this is a purchase where it is about how you live. Capital gain is not as important, so that is where a leasehold would be very appropriate. Number five is high risk; that is where you are looking at buildings that are leaky because when they are fixed, they are going to be worth a lot more. You are looking at buying into hotel leases, because they are harder to buy into, because of your finance, but when they come out, it is going to be worth a lot more.

There are more podcasts about each type of buyer in depth, search these through the Apartment Specialists website for further detail.

TRANSCRIPTION:

Good day. What kind of apartment buyer are you? Now you go in Trademe and there are 600 to 700 apartments on the market. Are you in anyway confuse? Are you trying to figure out values? Are you finding it difficult to figure out what is a good buy and what is not a good buy?

When you buy an apartment, it is not like just buying a house. There are over 14 different types or categories of apartments, and you need to figure out which kind of apartment is going to best suit your goal. Owning an apartment is a solution to a purpose, and you have got to find out what your purpose is. Now it seems a little bit weird talking like this, but the point is, you are dealing with 700 apartments and you are shopping online.

You are going through Realestate.com, or you are going on Trademe, trying to find the apartments that suit you. You are asking all these questions. That is a lot of work and with that many on the market, that is pretty hard to figure it out. I mean I was an agent and I have been in the game for a while now.

However my first six months, I did not know what was going on and I was doing it everyday. Now the question from a buyer's perspective, how do you figure out what is best for you? You need to figure out what is best for you and you also need to find out what kind of buyer you are.

What is the purpose of the apartment you are looking for? So what I am going to do is help you figure out what kind of buyer you are. You can then go through and take those 700 apartments and get them down to about 15. Now figure which ones are listed too high, figure out the ones that are inappropriate, and make the best purchase for you. Then you will be thanking me in five years and that is for sure.

Anyway, to give you an idea I will put it in five different categories. Now you are either an investor, where return or basically income is your main objective and capital gain is a bonus. Number two, you are an investor where capital gain is the main focus and income is the second main focus. Number three, you are an owner occupier, you have got certain criteria, like you may have pets or you may want to be in a certain part of town.

There are different kind of criteria. You are either concerned about lifestyle, so this is a purchase where it is about how you live. Capital gain is not as important, so that is were a leasehold would be very appropriate. Number five is high risk; that is where you are looking at buildings that are leaky because when they are fixed, they are going to be worth a lot more. You are looking at buying into hotel leases, because they are harder to buy into, because of your finance, but when they come out, it is going to be worth a lot more.

What I am going to do is, I am going to do a forecast on each type of buyer, and go into a bit more detail on each one of those five types. You can figure out how can you best find the solution that you want. And you could be looking at the wrong category. If you are doing that, you are asking all the wrong questions.

This is about your time, and time is valuable. You have got so many listings in the market and there is a lot of, excuse my "French" - crap out there. You need to sort through it and the more education you have, the better purchase you will make. Anyway each week, one will come out, and yeah I will talk to you soon.

Cheers.