Why investors should seek help from professionals instead of flying solo

Property investor Andrew Koleda, during his appearance on the Smart Property Investment Show, said that enlisting the help of professionals in the property industry was essential to the expansion of his portfolio.

“It dawned on me that essentially if a person has a legal problem, they’ll go and enlist the services of a lawyer. If they have an accounting problem or they want to do their taxes, they’ll go and enlist an accountant,” Mr Koleda said.

“But if they want to buy a $500,000 plus asset, for some reason people have the perception that they can do it themselves.”

According to Mr Koleda, putting faith in professionals, rather than flying solo and carrying all of the weight on his shoulders, was one of his biggest breakthroughs in his investing journey.

First property in Narangba

The first property Mr Koleda acquired was a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-car house in the Queensland suburb of Narangba, which he purchased 15 years ago and is still holding on to today.

The Sydney-based property investor enlisted the services of a buyer’s agent to help him buy that property, which was reportedly “a journey in itself”.

“The reason why I listed a buyer’s agent was I was in a position whereby being a little bit of an analytical person, I went out and did a lot of research. I listened to a lot of podcasts, including your own, read a lot of books,” Mr Koleda said.

“And then, I was in a position whereby I had a lot of knowledge to some degree around, I guess from a strategic standpoint, how to invest in property. But this journey took me a couple of years to actually take place.

“Then, I was in a position whereby I had too much information available to me, and I knew that there was no way, no how, that I was going to be able to make a decision.”

Second property in Southbank

Mr Koleda then acquired a one-bedroom off-the-plan apartment in the Melbourne suburb of Southbank and benefited from the assistance of a property valuation company.

Although the Sydney-based investor felt comfortable with the original price point of the property, he said it wasn’t a journey of him actually investigating one-bedroom apartments on the market at the time.

“The organisation I was dealing with there, in terms of their advice, once I actually understood they had their own in-house research team, and once I actually understood how they researched, and they offered me some comparables, I chose not to go out there and do the research myself,” Mr Koleda said.

“So, again, it comes from that mindset of I’d rather pick whom I choose to trust within the industry. And I believed that there was no way that my research was going to be better than theirs. So, providing I have that trust, that’s where that decision came from.”