And so it begins...

Probably the biggest reason I hate shopping around for property is .... ESTATE AGENTS!

Blech...

I'll be honest, they are my pet hate. Yesterday we looked at six or seven places and invariably we have to fill in the forms where estate agents take down all our details about what we are looking for.

Now obviously the majority of estate agents are not involved in the game of property investing so they don't really pay any attention to what you say when you are chatting to them. In fact... they'rea lot like telemarketers in that way.

You will say: "We're not actively looking to buy but we just want to get an idea of whats on the market"

They will phone back the next day and say:

- "When can we come get a mandate to sell the place you are living in at the moment?"

Or you will tell them - I am looking for a 3 bedroom property in Fourways for reason XYZ and I have R1m to spend

They will then circulate your details around their franchise and you will invariably get the call from another agent in their franchise saying:

- "We have this 2 bedroom place going for R1.5m in Kensington B - would that meet your requirements?"

And it just makes you wonder why the hell you bothered to discuss your requirements with them anyway....

We made it abundantly clear to the agents we visited yesterday:
- We are just looking
- We are not making any offers
- We are not making any property buying decisions in the next 2 months
- We are not selling our current place

24 hours later and we have had 3 agents phone us up to ask us:
- Are you going to make an offer on the places you looked at?
- Can we come and value your current place?

I probably don't speak estate agent lingo but bloody hell its a turnoff for looking property!

Introduction

Welcome to the Property Strategist blog.

Up front this is not a blog run by some property expert who is going to tell you how to make money out of property.

Heck I am probably the complete opposite. I know very little about the property market and how it works (my game has always been shares and the stock market), but I'm always keen to learn.

I normally get excited when markets start falling or go out of favour because I personally believe that this is when the best opportunities are.

I'm going to use this blog to try and bounce ideas off South African property investors to try and pick up some tips and tricks to getting into the property market and making a success of this investment class.