Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa February 2015 | Page 32

FINANCE

BY YVETTE FOURIE

Make 2015
an unusual year
Use lateral thinking to improve yor investment success

B

eing an entrepreneur all my life I have learned
a few things. Here are a few lessons I have
learned along the way:

You have to learn when to let go.
Every day we get more people contacting us to help
them with their houses as they are about to be auctioned
off. All these people have tried all kinds of avenues to
make ends meet and sometimes, as every entrepreneur
knows, things just do not work out or they take too
long. This often has a detrimental knock-on effect.
Personally, I have held on to opportunities and
properties for far too long and have ended up losing
which has caused huge losses.
It is not so bad to move on.
Unfortunately, the property market in South Africa has
not shown much promise over the last decade. To me
the so-called renewed growth in the property market
since 2008 is a hoax.
Sadly, offshore investments are giving far better
returns, which means more money is about to leave
South Africa.
Investors are even being advised to sell everything
and go for more liquid investments which are inevitably
not locally based.

“The so-called renewed growth
in the property market since
2008 is a hoax.”
I agree that sometimes you have to take your losses
to make your profits elsewhere. If you do not, you may
end up losing everything.
If you have properties that you are renting out,
chances are the rental cannot and has not increased
with inflation. The hole in yo \