Don't be a ‘seminar junkie’

Mr Kumar said property investing and identifying good potential properties, is a learned skill rather than something you are born with.

“It all comes back to basic fundamentals. All the books and seminars teach the same things, they are all just dressed up differently," he said.

“In the initial years we went out there and educated ourselves, reading books and attending seminars, both high-end and introductory, just to get all the information.”

He said he and his wife made a point of educating themselves in everything about property and business when they first arrived in Australia, to be “well-armed before actually rolling the dice to start investing”.

“In the first three years we spent in the region of $80,000 in educating ourselves,” Mr Kumar said.

Did it pay dividends? “Yes. Just one deal paid double that in our portfolio. So it was well worth it,” he said.

While Mr Kumar would encourage people to get a paid education, he also makes the point that when he started out Google wasn’t as prevalent as it is today.

“Now I would say that you should Google everything first,” he said.

“There is a lot of free information out there, a lot of YouTube videos and other free online material like The Smart Property Investment Show podcast.”

Mr Kumar also highly recommended Jan Somers’ More Wealth from Residential Property.

“Even though it is 20 years old now, read it for the fundamentals,” he says, “which are still very relevant today.”

Listen to Victor Kumar's full property investment story on The Smart Property Investment Show podcast:

Episode 14: How I turned $4,500 into a multimillion-dollar portfolio
Episode 19: ‘How I built a multimillion-dollar portfolio even though I bought the wrong properties’

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