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So often, investors get so lost in all the detail of property, that it prevents them from seeing the big picture, and ultimately the most important concept of Property Investing.

This often leads to confusion, indecision, and a lack of taking action, the worst enemy of any investor.

Which city should I buy in?

Should I buy a house, or an apartment?

Should I buy new, or should I renovate?

Should I buy in middle ring suburbs, or on the city outskirts?

Should I buy a one bedroom or a two bedroom unit?

Are tiles or carpet better?

Gas or electric cooktop?

Ground floor apartment or top floor?

Views or no views?

North aspect or East?

Should I buy now, or wait and see?

Fixed interest rate, or variable?

Negative Gearing, or Cash flow positive?

How much rent should I charge?

A 6 month lease, or a 12 month lease?

The list goes on and on. While these are all very good questions, the answers to these questions depend on many things. The numbers will help decide the answers to most of these. This is where most amateur investors get confused, and they put it into the ‘too hard basket’.

Time passes by, and property values rise. Opportunity is lost.

The astute investor understands the big picture, and doesn’t get bogged down in the details. The importance of these topics pales into insignificance, compared to the most important topic.

They understand the most critical aspect of investing, what most investors fail to grasp, which ultimately leads to their below average results.

If you don’t get some of the details perfect, but still stick to the big picture, you will still be successful.

The most important aspect in property investing in simply this. If you follow this, you will create wealth.

“Get the size of your asset base up”

If you want more detail, then ok, I will try and expand.

Step 1- “Buy as much blue chip property, as you can safely afford, and hold”

Step 2– “When your income rises, rents increase, or you have some available equity, then refinance and repeat Step 1”

A larger asset base, will ALWAYS create more long term wealth for you, than a smaller one.

It is as simple as that.

When your asset base is growing in value, by more than your annual income, your ‘need to work’ starts to change to your ‘desire to work’.

Your properties are then working as hard, or harder, than you are.

To give an example, if you own $3m worth of property (say 5 properties at an average value of $600k) and they are growing by a conservative 5%, then your equity is growing by a compounding $150k per annum.

As long as the rents are servicing the loans and other costs, then you could have the ability to use some of that equity to fund your lifestyle.

You may choose to continue to work full time for a little longer, and expand your portfolio of properties further, but it starts to become a matter of choice after that. Once your portfolio reaches the size of the example above, then you could probably comfortably purchase another property every single year, so your portfolio would more than double in the next 4-5 years.

Compound Growth was once described by Albert Einstein as the “Eighth wonder of the world”.

The larger your asset base, the quicker it will create more equity, which will allow you to buy more property, which will increase your asset base further, etc….

It gets easier and easier once you get past the first 2-3 properties.

Most people are unaware of this simple, but powerful phenomena, and could comfortably put this plan into action. However they are busy focused on making the common mistake of paying off their good debt, and focusing far too much on the detail.

Everyone knows that once you own a large asset base of property, you don’t really have any money problems anymore.

You now have choices.

You can choose to work shorter hours, or change employment to something more fulfilling.

Successful property investing gives you choices in life……. if you understand, and focus on the big picture.