Property Investment is like studying for a PhD

Today, I have achieved a major milestone in my life. After years of studying, faced many hardships and sometimes almost gave up to continue, I finally submitted my PhD thesis on the last day of submission dateline.It was a series of hardworks and still continuing do so. The journey to PhD is still in progress until after the Viva correction. The hardest part in doing PhD is to come up with ideas how to contribute, and how to proceed with related activities. But, the most critical part is do you dare to begin your journey in pursuing PhD.

For people who have not invest in property but thinking to do so, they will face with the same questions. Some people already bought their home. Since their purpose to buy is for personal use, it does not come along with the questions above. When you buy a house for a personal use, most of the questions in your head is does the new house suitable for your lifestyle. For an investor, the house should be bought and hold for a specific time period. Upon achieving the investment goal parameters, the house should be let go. It is the same when I study for my PhD. There is always a time limit in achieving your goals. But it does not mean everybody can or must achieve their goals at the same time period.

Some people decided to pursuing their PhD without thinking it through. Due to their job functions, or jobless or whatever reason, they started to study PhD. This is like buying a property without thinking thoroughly what to do with the property, how to maintain the property and how to prosper with the property. Surprisingly there are still many people who furthering study or buying property with the same mindset. Many of them will be trapped in a situation where they have difficulty to end the situation. This is especially true if they only think to be a property investor after bought and live in the house.In summary, they fail to have multiple plans.

For inexperience people, the most difficult part is to find the best ideas which suite best for them. Simply following other people's ideas or strategy is like repeating previous research works without finding the improvement or contribution which deserve a reward for yourself. Ideas and strategies must be modified whether minor or major to make them suitable for your specific situation. To make it worst, you have to pay a huge price for this common mistake where in both fields you will lose a lot of time. And time is really gold in both of them.

One of the simple way to compensate for your inexperience is to mix with people with similar dreams, wavelength or situation. The more people you can get together, the more probability for success. But as in any field, it is also important to filter out ideas which are not yet ready for you. Ideas can come in many places at weirdest time or while exchanging information with people with similar goals.

There are still many similarity between pursuing PhD and property investment. Since both of them have many similarities, is it possible to achieve both of them at the same time. For me, my property investment really take off after I started continue my study in PhD. Towards the middle of PhD and despite the hardship, I managed to grow my property investment. Hopefully, I can successfully defend my PhD thesis which means I can also reap the benefit from my property investment!

It is always rewarding to do both of them. Why not you?

Items for Clearence Sale

One of my tenant had a peculiar attitude. They have not paid the rent for more than five months, said want to quit rent my shop, but they never return the shop's keys. I tried to contact them through any mean but there was no response. Even my other tenant was puzzled by them because for months they have not entered the premise. To make thing worst, their belonging was still in the office.

I had enough with their attitude and decided to make matter in my own hands. I made a police report as detail as possible to show the problems the tenant imposed on me, their dues on the monthly rent. and my difficulty to get back the office. After I made the police report a few weeks ago, I still wait for the tenants if they will appear. Finally, I cannot wait any longer. I had to break into the office by breaking the door's locks. Now, all the items in the office are on sale as shown in the pictures below:

York Air Condition, 2 Hp, ceiling mounted: Estimate price: RM1,800

LG 32 liter, 900 watt, Microwave Oven: RM850

Refrigerator: RM150

Electric Cattle: RM80

Generator Set: RM1,200

Sofa single seater: RM300

Sofa double seater: RM500

Steamer: RM250

For the subsequent items, give me your best quote...I want to quickly get rid of them.

My target is to sell all as many items as possible so that I can recover the rent as much as possible. I hope I can clear all the items so that it is easier for me to look for any new tenant. If you are interested to buy, you can contact me via email and quote your best price.

Managing Your Own Renovation

When my contractor ran away, I decided not to wait for long (after more than a month). I decided to complete the renovation on my own. The problem is there is not much money left to complete the renovation. Thus, I have to do almost everything on my own. I have to:
1. Find my own workers
2. Plan what to do, estimate the time and material to use
3. Buy materials on my own, sourcing is a pain especially when you have limited budget, have to make sure buy the same factory batch and brand, correct timing
4. Managing limited resources such as tools and equipment to be used
5. Make sure what to be installed are using the correct items and correct technique

I have to find or buy hand drill, grinder and electric hammer. I also decided to ask other contractors to quote the best price to complete my house's renovation. Based on the quotation, I should be able to estimate the fund needed to complete the renovation. Once the work restarted, the most difficult part is to ensure the work is within the limited budget (no cost over run), getting the best quality as originally intended, tasks planning so that no task have to be postponed while waiting other tasks being completed. It was painful, consume a lot of time, stress, and learning new knowledge almost everyday.

                        

Finishing is time consuming, especially when I do not want to compromise on the quality of the house.
Patient is important because you need to learn fast what are the working is doing, going to do next, and overall steps to be done. But the most difficult thing is to continue other people works without the detail knowledge of the current progress such as where are the supply were bought, any material were ordered before the job was abandoned and etc..

                       

            


Initially, I spent a lot of money to buy the materials to do the renovation. As the work progress towards the end of the renovation, the manpower cost is higher than the material cost. In the final week, I almost did not need to buy anything. It is human creativity and ingenuity versus material cost. To monitor the cost and work in progress, all transaction must have written document, key in into a spreadsheet, and salary must be paid within the week the works work. Most of the time, I paid every two or three working days.

     

Installing tiles are difficult and need a lot of patient. If it is done quickly, there are many possibility of errors such as the the tiles are not slanting to the edges to ensure water can easily flow to the drain. The tiling also depends on the creativity of the workers. I purposely bought tiles with difficult patterns to make them looks natural. This made the installation more difficult.

Some of the things to be done may be new to you and the hired workers for example installing the balcony wall glass. I have to seek for different quotation while learning how it should be built. I have to choose to appoint outside specialist to do it which will cost me more than RM3,000 or do it on my own. I was lucky to find a hardware supply who was willing to teach me a bit how it should be done. After discussing with my workers, two of them have a little experience to install the wall glass. It will cost me only about RM1,000 to buy the material. Finally, I decided to let my workers do the installation. It was really difficult and time consuming. I have also to make sure the glass being ordered are the correct size and quality. It cannot be modified at site. It must be tailored made by the manufacturer. The whole installation process took more than a day with four workers. I was really satisfied with the installation quality as shown in the picture.

After almost all internal tasks were completed, most of the tasks are the outside of the house.

The renovation work was restarted the week before Ramadhan. And almost all of the work were completed three days before Hari Raya. It was really a huge challenge to monitor a project during ramadhan especially the travel time, food arrangement, planning for the day and the following day, ordering materials and etc.. To make thing worst, I have to go to work at UMP Pekan Pahang on Friday during the month.

           

       

Three days before Hari Raya, my family moved into the house although there are still a few tasks need to be done such as one window installation need to be corrected, drainage, restrooms' door etc. But the hardest task was to clean the house. Due to limited time, the house was not 100% clean especially the floors were full with tapes, glue, outside tiles, table top etc. Anyway, the house is already a nice place to live in!

Cleaning the new house at night on 1st July 2016.

YES, finally, we moved in into the new house! It was a huge challenge to move in during Ramadhan because the moving process must be done during the day while muslims were fasting. Luckly, I managed to hire three people help me clean and carry many heavy furniture and equipment. I hired a 3 tonne lorry to carry the furniture and equipment. It took two trips to do it until the night of 2nd July 2016. My family moved in in the afternoon.

Although one of the windows was not installed, four bathrooms have no door and the painting was not completed, we happily live in the house and go back for Hari Raya three days later.