We are pleased to share with you the following article that can be seen in full in Peter Parfait's Hot Property Alert.
Social networking for property investors?
Ok, so we’ve heard our kids or younger colleagues mention Facebook, Bebo and MySpace – and they seem to spend the best part of the day huddled away chatting to their friends online, building their social networks, forming new groups – and enjoying it. You may have looked at it, and thought it wasn’t for you, or you may have joined and are already sharing your holiday snaps and latest mood state with friends, or even dare I say poking them online, playing wall games or tagging photos.
Social networks over the last few years have rapidly emerged as a way to keep in touch with people, share your current activities, and especially catch up with people you haven’t seen in a while – they are a great way to compliment current relationships, and use downtime to keep in touch with people, as well as share those holiday snaps with all your mates on one go – and they can be pretty addictive when you engage.
That’s all well and good, but what its relevance to HPA readers I hear you say? What is interesting, is a new trend in how this type of format and technology can be applied to businesses and particularly the property industry. We’ve all heard the old adage it’s not what you know but who you know, and we know that information, and good contacts, are key to developing a good solid property portfolio, and managing those investments internationally – so this article is going to attempt to demystify the world of social networking a little, and outline how this new age of collaborative production can help property investors make better informed decision and manage their investments.
What are social networks?
Forums, groups, blogs, picture sharing, network building, polls, and the like – these are the new tools of a social networker, they allow you to post a message to a group of people interested in the same subject, you can share ideas with your contacts, you can create your own blog about, well whatever you like – you can interact on forums, and you can connect to other people, and build a network of new contacts that you might not have come into contact before. The sharing of ideas and knowledge generally helps you stay better connected to individuals and topics, and through new contacts learn about new subjects, and open up your life to potential new avenues you may not have previously encountered.
What these new tools give the property investors is ‘information’, access to information and contacts to make better informed decisions, access to a network of ideas to help you manage your property in a better way, access to a network of recommended agents / fellow investors to discuss and debate new property purchases, and the ability to talk with experts and especially in the international context finding out about new destinations and resorts, without having to visit.
In a nutshell online networking is using all these web based tools to connect with people for the purpose of reaching your career, business and property goals, and in turn helping others reach their own property related goals. It’s an important facet of any job, and none more than in the property industry where personal career management is important. Whether you attend a property investor show, or go on a social network – it’s all networking; it’s essentially the same thing with the same goals in mind. The key benefit of social networking is that your time invested can work for you 24 hours a day 365 days a year. You have reach like you have never had before – in a very short period of time you can dramatically enlarge your personal property connections and the quality of your own network. This would take you months, even years, to achieve in the ‘real’ world.
How do you get started?
Social networks alike work in similar ways. First, you type in your personal and professional information – as much or as little as you like, and set your privacy settings accordingly. Then, you then establish connections with other members on the site and invite people using existing email accounts or address books to the site, to connect with you. You build up your connections on the site and you establish your profile, which is essentially you personal home page.
It’s about building relationships, getting to know new people and exchanging information. It is for passing along leads, contacts and supporting others in their quest to build a solid property portfolio or to find out information about a new development. You can develop a large network of property contacts, with different skill sets, different expertise from agents, surveyors, contractors, builders, to a good pool guy – all contacts are important when managing your property portfolio.
You can then hook up with a long lost partner or colleagues, make new contacts on the site, make yourself heard on a subject by blogging and join various groups and forums that interest you. You can also market yourself and your company by, for example, adding your business to a directory, creating a blog about your business, adding a group about your business speciality, loading up press releases or adding video and pictures to the site about your latest project, and many other ways.
Why use them? How social networking can help my Bophut residence purchase?
Now some may have the obvious concerns, I don’t really have time to network with loads of people, and do I even want too ? With minimal investment of time, and with a small amount of managing, the returns you can yield are significant. Self managing our investments, and the time it takes, is one small area that we can potentially benefit as investors. Let’s take an example of an investment opportunity featured in HPA, the Bophut residence. I was fortunate enough to purchase one of these villas, and the experience has been great thus far. Its enjoyed good capital growth and I’m looking forward to taking my family over there for their first holiday in Thailand, everyone is very excited – I just wish I’d bought more of them! In this specific example – if investors at Bophut connect via a group allowing them to share experiences, and interact – it could prove a very useful ways to make the property experience more fulfilling, gain better information, and save a lot of time and hassle in the management of the property. Let me explain.
One initial challenge with an investment like this, is getting there, let’s face it were all not fortunate enough to travel to Thailand a few times a year. You’d wouldn’t need to necessarily visit the development to find out how it is progressing, if there were say 15 owners of villas in this ‘group’, and someone happened to visit the development, they could load up their pictures, tell others how the site is developing, and give feedback to the other investors.
Members of this group could share information and use this network to help find a good handy person there, get some pictures of the latest development phase, find out how someone solved an important issue in their villa, and find details of a great beach to visit. Now this would save me money, time and increased my enjoyment – all for the investment of a small amount of time. This could be the morning train journey, or waiting for a friend, or in the airport once a month.
Meeting new people, enjoying your holiday more
One of the main reasons we buy a property is we really like the city or country, its culture and a different climate, we want to visit there, get new experiences and meet new people. Taking our above Thailand example again, if there was a good beach that someone found, a good trek, someone who does a great fishing trip for tourists, island tour, a good method of transport – this can all be shared within the group. We again learn from others’ experiences, and can have a better visit on the basis of this information. I’ve always fancied fishing there myself, my friend has tried it, and the pictures he showed me were excellent – now this type of information can make your trip and holiday more useful – and it’s a form of value add to our investment.
These types of relationships are important, if fellow network members come up with a good way to increase rental on their property, or a good local site that get a lot of potential tenants in, he can share this with other villa owners. The tasks associated with investing internationally can be numerous, but through joining up and sharing information, they can be vastly reduced in time consumption.
I’m going to Thailand this Christmas, so I can certainly take pictures, check on a few of the other villas, etc and give reports back to the group. A common snagging problem may start to appear, I’ve noticed my villa has a minor default – quickly others can be informed, and all investors benefit from this kind of timely information about their investment.
Personal development - Building knowledge through collaboration
These types of social networks can be with us throughout our career development. If you want to land yourself in a new job, in a new location around the world, different facets of the property market, or you are just new to the industry, social networks are a great place to make new contacts with potential employers.
Inspection trips also become more interesting – currently I really am very curious about Albania and the potential it may yield. Now I don’t have the time to go over there, and examine the possibilities, but I would be interested in maybe teaming up on costs with someone who is planning an inspection trip to get information, and look at new opportunities there. Property clubs can form groups online, and all members can benefit in this way.
Hundreds of millions of people are networking online every day; they are getting to know people all round the globe without having to leave the comfort of their own home or office. Face to face networking will always be important, but online networking is a convenient and powerful compliment and a great timesaver.
Marketing Yourself
One last area is the ability to use networks to market ‘you’. If you’re an agent, you can build your profile – the best way to sell yourself I’ve always thought is to provide credible information, information that helps, and information that really helps an investor make decisions. It’s the detailed information and analysis that helps you make more informed decisions.
For an agent you can build credibility by writing in detail about a subject sharing your knowledge, and in turn building others trust in you to recommend them a good purchase decision. It is also a powerful springboard to offline meetings and appointments and a catalyst to relationship building.
Social networks can help property investors in a number of ways – better information, from reliable sources, timely information from fellow investors who may have been to a development and seen firsthand the current state of affairs, building your network, growing new contacts from recommended sources.
In summary, social networks give you 24/7 networking with fellow property professionals, it gives you access to a lot of materials at your convenience and allows rapid interactions with many fellow international investors. It’s a tool to find out about potential developers and investment before you decide to take the plunge, you can select suppliers and agents through referrals, it’s easier than face to face networking that many people find difficult, and it gives you a platform to network and communicate who you are and what you are looking for.
Further Information:
Ian Johnson, runs a property investment business, and has recently started the Property Network, a social network for property investors and professionals alike – the web site is www.property-networks.net
