Why strategic patience is a key component of investing

Mr Kumar urged investors to recognise that while there are periods of heavy growth, there are inevitably periods of low growth, too.

“There are periods of good rents, and there are periods of OK rents. That’s part and parcel of owning a property portfolio,” he said.

Urging realistic expectations, Mr Kumar cautioned property owners against adopting a “rosy” perspective.

“There are so many different things that you can’t control.

“You can’t control your tenant paying all the time, because they’re reliant on a job to pay you. If there’s an upheaval there, it may be that they’re one, two, three weeks behind in rent and they catch up.

“You can’t control, to a degree, the maintenance of a property unless you’ve got a good maintenance plan, a good property manager that flags things ahead of time,” Mr Kumar noted.

Mr Waters agreed, advising investors to “control what you can and don’t worry about what you can’t”.

“As long as you’re well mitigated in and around your cash flow position, and hopefully the correct areas, so that they will ride those periods of time that are in flux,” Mr Waters said.

On the upside, portfolios can see great runs several years long.

“Then, yet again, you’d have a run of, as an example in my portfolio, I had a run of probably about seven, eight years of no properties requiring any major renovations,” he explained.

As for what 2021 has in store for investors, Mr Waters tipped growth akin to that witnessed in the early 2000s.

“I think it’s going to be some of the most talked about growth period of time ever. In fact, I was speaking to someone the other day and for me this has a very similar vibe to the year 2001, ’02, ’03.

“That market ran for a little bit, for all. Maybe there was some different components of the reasons such as the low-doc loan, but there was still an undersupply.”

Tune in to Investing Insights for more information on current trends.