The Benefit Of Technology When Investing

For far too many potentially successful property investors, lack of actionable market knowledge is a huge stumbling block that they never really overcome. A quite staggering amount of people spend literally years considering a property investment, but never actually pull the trigger.

The reasons why aren’t hard to see. Finding your feet in a sea of wildly conflicting and often deliberately misleading information and opinion can be intimidating. For newer investors, it can be far from simple working out who you can actually trust.

In order to have the confidence to actually take the plunge with a purchase, you need to be able to quickly ramp up your learning, and take advantage of as much genuinely expert knowledge as you can as quickly as possible. Particularly at the beginning of your investment journey, your core task is empowering yourself with knowledge — making the most of appropriate research, data, and informed opinion to give yourself a solid springboard for action.

The long-term investment goals will, of course, be an essential part of working out your overall investment strategy. Your short-term focus, however, is going to be on the nuts and bolts of actually locking down your first successful purchase, and taking those first crucial steps that open the door to a long and profitable investing career.

There are three key elements you’re trying to hone in on here to give yourself the best possible chance of success, and technology will play a crucial role in each of them:

1.    Being able to learn quickly: Many first-time investors are coming to the world of property relatively cold, and need to be able to get up to speed quickly. Having access to the right strategies, educational resources, and support networks will allow you to radically shorten the amount of time required to get comfortable with the essentials of investing.

2.   Building your confidence to act: As your knowledge grows, so does your confidence about actually being able to take action. A supportive environment that gives you access to expert research, opinion, and real-time data means you’re building that confidence on extremely firm foundations.

3.    Acquiring the ability to make clear, concise investment decisions: With access to the right tools and an informed community of peers and expert advisors, your ability to independently rate and compare individual investment opportunities is significantly enhanced. You’ll find yourself being able to sift through potential opportunities with confidence, and quickly narrow them down to the ones that match your precise personal goals and aspirations.

Making the most of technology is the key that unlocks these three doors. In an ever-changing market, you’ll use these skills repeatedly, leaning on your continually expanding pool of knowledge to drive smart, decisive action as you do so.

Technology is also a powerful shield against the less savoury elements of the property industry, many of whom who are explicitly trying to mislead you. As an inexperienced or first-time investor, there are two minefields you need to be actively steering clear of at all times:

1.    Wasting your time and money on expensive, misleading advice: Sad to say, there is a wide array of ridiculously overpriced property “advice” out there, much of which is little more than a thinly veiled sales pitch for specific investment schemes. It’s not unusual for 10-15% of an individual property purchase price to be made up of cuts and commissions to the alleged “experts” who are pushing it, and it’s far from easy for inexperienced investors to spot these scenarios on their own.

2.   Falling foul of spruikers and scams: Moving one step up on the risk scale, there’s also an element in the industry that is actively trying to part you from your cash in a variety of downright dubious manners. Again, these can be hard for inexperienced investors to spot without assistance, and it can often take years for the full extent of a scam to become apparent.

Spruikers prey on people’s fears with a combination of misleading facts and figures and scare-based tactics in order to force hasty, ill-considered investment decisions. Classically, you’ll see them masquerading as experts by piggy-backing on wider (often out of date) market trends, while offering no real actionable insight of their own.

This type of advice is typically characterised by an almost entirely invisible track record of successful investment from the people offering it, and a complete inability to scale as a strategy. You’ll hear grand sweeping statements such as “the market is looking towards Brisbane”, with virtually zero useful detail on how to execute on the street or property level where it actually counts.

Technology and ongoing education are the twin tools which help you steer clear of this danger and minimise your investment risk. With a little learning under your belt and some help from the right data-driven tools such as investment scorecards, you’ll be able to elegantly sidestep the parade of charlatans trying to lead you astray, and empower yourself to move towards your goals with confidence.