LAST IMPRESSIONS
Warren Brusse
Chief Financial & Marketing Officer
United Kingdom Property Partners Property Investor
What makes you happy? Spending quality time with my wife and our children doing outdoor activities. I value time as the most important asset in our relationships.
What is the best book you have read and why? Secrets of the Millionaire Mind, Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth by T. Harv Eker because one needs to be constantly be aware of their feelings and how they influence your day to day life. Feelings impact our thoughts and our thoughts ultimately impact our actions. If you want to achieve massive positive actions you need to have massive positive feelings and thoughts.
What is the best advice you ever received? To invest in yourself. From reading the book Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki I realised that I needed to invest in a totally different level of financial education than what my parents, my school and my university taught me. A little bit of a wakeup call I guess …
What was your first full-time job? I was a Civil Engineer for an environmental and geotechnical engineering company called Knight Piesold in Johannesburg, South Africa. I bought my first property investment in my fourth month of employment by leveraging the banks money.
What person has made the biggest impact on your life and why? My wife, as she has always believed in my crazy and far reaching goals and ideas. She has always been there to help me, support me and PUSH me. Thank you Bron!
What makes property such a great investment? Please don’ t get me started on this question, as I will have you busy for the next few hours. Property has the unique ability to produce passive income, to allow the deduction of expenses to reduce one’ s taxes, to provide
instant equity when one purchases, to appreciate in value over a long term and is the ultimate vehicle for leverage and creative finance.
What has been your best investment? My best investment is one of my latest investments. I guess all those years of knowledge and experience have to bear their fruits. The property is a five-bedroom house of multiple occupation( high quality room rentals for working professionals) located in the heart of the city centre in Grimsby, United Kingdom, which generates in excess of 30 % cash flow return on investment per annum.
What has been your biggest lesson when investing? NEVER, I am mean NEVER,“ invest” in a negative cash flowing property. All this does is massively slow you down. Ask yourself this question, would you invest in a business that is losing money? Then why do so many people“ invest” in properties that lose money. I am still absolutely stunned by the advice shared by many property professionals that encourage people to this his very thing.
What are the one thing people don’ t know about you? Over the past fifteen years I have concluded over 40 property transactions within both the South African and United Kingdom residential property markets and been responsible for combined property developments in excess of R200 million.
If you could change one thing in the world what would it be? Property is my passion, so the one thing would need to align with my passion. Create a property investment vehicle that allows the average man on the street to be exposed to the like for like returns that professional property investors and developers are achieving.
64 NOVEMBER 2016 SA Real Estate Investor www. reimag. co. za