Paul Glossop: Yeah, we get the question a lot. And we also get a lot of investors come to us who’ve already bought one, maybe two, investment properties, but they get to the point of hitting a ceiling. Now, that might be just a ceiling that they perceive to be an issue that they can’t buy another property, or they don’t know where to buy next.

Or secondly, it might actually be that they’ve cashed themselves or priced themselves out of the market. Or, they don’t necessarily know the levers that they can pull to, therefore, re-enter the investment property markets, buy that next property and their further investment properties to achieve their objectives.

Things that we try to talk about when we first sit down with clients who are probably at the point of having already bought one, maybe two, properties, but feel like they don’t know what, where or how for the next property is. Again, going back to – what are you buying these properties for? What is the goal? And when we get to the point of saying, if we get a blank look, they kind of say, “Look, I just want to buy property to build wealth”. Well, for me, that’s not really a reason. It’s an aspiration, but it’s not a reason. 

And what we want to understand is if we’re working towards a 15-year plan, or a 25-year plan, and we want a have a 100,000 dollar-a-year passive income, which will equate to after a five percent gross return on that amount, you’re probably talking two million dollars in assets. So, if we say, I guess if we’re talking about hypothetically speaking, that’s what we want to achieve, then we need to say here’s what we’re trying to get to, here’s when we need to get to that point, so let’s work backwards and say, “Here’s where your one or two investment properties sit right now, let’s understand your cash flow, let’s understand your borrowing capacity, let’s understand your equity position, and then let’s talk about what asset really needs to be the right asset to buy as that next investment.

And it’s not until we’ve gone through that background work that that should really dictate what property should be the next property, how that fits into your larger, and probably more broader objectives. And once we understand that, our job as buyers’ agents is also to go to those markets, source and secure those properties, which are going to fit that portion of your portfolio, and ultimately allow you to achieve those objectives.