Dr Dolf de Roos on Bubbleproofing Your Real Estate Investments
Oct 27th, 2007 by Martin Lee
The first speaker of the day was Dr Dolf de Ross, chairman of Property Ventures Limited. Here are some of the points he bought up.
- Readers are leaders. He who does not read has no advantage over he who don’t know how to read.
- When you invest in property, you have to consider the global market. The best time to buy is when the market is down, not when it’s booming.
- You can buy property for a lot less than it’s worth (due to various circumstances of the owners).
- In a property auction without a reserve price, statistics have shown that you can get 40% higher than one with a reserve price.
- Dr Dolf prefers to invest in commercial property because the property taxes, insurance and maintenance are borne by the renters. The length of the lease is also longer. Once you buy a commercial property, you never have to worry about selling it.
- He wouldn’t buy leasehold property.
- There’s no capital gains tax in New Zealand.
- Property needs less monitoring compared to shares, futures and currency trading. Because Dr Dolf is going to hold it long term with no intention to sell, he doesn’t even need to monitor the valuation.
- Dr Dolf believes that real estate investing is easier to learn. Pick a random group of 100 people for him to train in real estate and another group of 100 for Warren Buffett to train in investing, he contents that his group of 100 will do better than Warren Bufett’s at the end of ten years.