Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa June 2014 | Page 14

MASTER INVESTOR
extensive understanding of wealth management. I set
up IP Global in 2005 and the goal was to help clients
invest in property in Asia, Europe, the Middle east and
the Americas. So far the business has helped clients
invest in over USD1.5 billion of real estate in 26 world
markets. Today, our investment portfolio stretches
from the UK to Malaysia and from Japan to Brazil,
and caters to a wide range of budgets, risk appetites and
investment goals.
“And I still invest in property myself. My personal
property portfolio spans 15 countries including
Australia, Brazil, Hong Kong, Japan, Malaysia, the UK
and Vietnam. That includes quite a few properties from
the IP Global portfolio that I invested in at the same
time as our clients.

“I really do believe that
property offers opportunities,
returns and reliability
levels that make it the perfect
sector in which to spread
investment risk.”
When investing in property one learns lessons along
the way that create a pathway to greater successes in the
future. For Tim, when he first started investing he was
buying domestically. “I think the biggest lesson I learnt
were to do with just how much potential there is in
well-considered property investment, and just how vital
the ‘well considered’ is in that sentence. If you want to
be successful in property investment you really do need
to know the situation inside out from the local market
to the broader economy, the developer and builders to
the best ways to secure financing.”
Tim’s experience in overseas markets was a little
different. “When I first began to invest in overseas
markets the big lesson I learnt is that there’s a reason
other investors have tended to shy away from it: It’s
very hard. As I already knew, it’s so important to know
all about the market you are investing in, and that is
so much more difficult to achieve in foreign markets
where you often won’t even speak the local language.
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June 2014 SA Real Estate Investor

That’s where the idea for IP Global came from really a recognition that there was all this potential out there
that was so difficult for people to reach without some
expert help - and there really wasn