Investigating the Property Clubs

After reading a number of investment books and browsing the web sites we have decided to investigate buying a property through a property investment club. There are a lot of reasons NOT to do it this way, but our thinking is that if we do our due diligence on the property club then hopefully we will have to do less research in the properties they recommend

The property clubs main selling point is that they offer to do the research and due diligence to identify properties for you, that their ability to sell multiple properties allows them to negotiate a bigger discounts from developers/Solicitors/mortgage brokers/letting agents than the individual could by themselves.

The first time I was aware of the “property clubs” was a year or so ago when when I received a mailshot advert for "Inside Track" a property club advertising free seminars around the country. I booked a day off work and both Anne and I attended. It was very professionally run, very informative, in a nice hotel in Solihull and I even won a free set of Inside Track seminars on DVD! The main point of the presentation was to sign you up for their property investor course/s, The downsides for us was that there was a certain amount of pressure to sign up straight away, (which immediately puts me on the defensive), plus we thought it was quite expensive.

I did a certain amount of investigation into other property clubs myself and found a number of websites offering free advice and offering similar benefits to Inside Track without the need for the expensive upfront courses.

In the end I decided to go with my initial purchases with a company called Serliana. I read their literature on their website, I had a meeting with them at their London Offices, I went to look at some of their properties and got them to put me in touch with one of their existing clients, who I had a detailed conversation with.

I wouldn't rule out looking at other clubs, another one that has a lot of free "Investor Education" is called Your property club (see links) and when we become more use to the acquisition process then we would do it yourselves. Guess its just nice to have your hand held for the first few if it doesn't cost too much