Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa March 2013 | Página 16

COVER STORY

BY MONIQUE TERRAZAS

Ensure Your Success
With lessons from real-life investors

M

ost people assume that successful
property investors are those who
were born into wealthy families,
have the right connections or simply got lucky.
The reality is quite different, judging from the
entries we received for the first annual Real
Estate Investor of the Year competition.
The entrants are all ordinary South Africans,
who have built up small, medium and large,
but profitable, portfolios of properties with
little more than sheer dedication, common
sense and hard work.
Not only are these real-life investors a source
of inspiration, they are also trailblazers who
light the way for those of us who have not yet
bought that first investment property, or the
next one.

Why a Real Estate Investor of the
Year competition?
It is an unfortunate reality that buy-to-let
property investment has yet to be recognised
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March 2013 SA Real Estate Investor

as the specialised profession that it is. Buyto-let property investors play a crucial role
in providing housing to millions of South
Africans, who cannot or do not want to buy
their own properties, whether that is because
they require temporary accommodation or
because they cannot obtain bond finance due
to the banks’ strict lending requirements.
Particularly in a country with a massive
housing backlog, such as South Africa, buyto-let property investors are essential to
ensure the supply to meet the demand for
rental properties. The Real Estate Investor of
the Year competition aims to recognise this
crucial role that buy-to-let property investors
fulfil in the economy and to acknowledge buyto-let property investment as a specialised
profession.
The competition also aims to promote
professionalism in the buy-to-let property
investment industry, creating awareness of
the fact that successful buy-to-let property

investment is based on solid fundamentals and
simple but smart investment principles.

Meet the entrants
The entrants into the Real Estate Investor
of the Year competition could not be more
diverse in terms of demographics, and their
property portfolios – in terms of size, types of
properties and the strategies employed - could
not be more varied. However, a number of
striking similarities are also evident, including
a strong emphasis on ethics and philanthropy,
as well as a general consensus that if they had
an opportunity to do it all over again, they
would have bought more properties.
Ranging in age from their late-thirties to
early-fifties, the entrants came from all races,
cultures and backgrounds. They are male and
female, as well as couples working together.
Some have impressive formal qualifications
while others have succeeded without any
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