Yesterday I went to a Foundation 4 Success meeting. Normally this isn’t the kind of thing I’d go to but I’d been invited along by a friend and was intrigued about what was there.
This was a meeting at the NEC in Birmingham, the first thing to notice was the car park, always something thats worth thinking about when you’re attending these kinds of events. My car was typical of those in the car park, not a carpark full of aspirational brands.
The event itself was held in a room just along from the Memorabilia show, which made for a somewhat mixed crowd, with people walking past occasionally with arm-fulls of 1/12th scale model daleks and genuine lightsabres.
The day itself was structured around four main speakers, with a few odd bits of fill-in talk from others. The main thrust of the day was talking about property investment, with presentations being given by people who have done very well in that game. All of the main speakers were charismatic, natural speakers, with a disarming humour to them.
During the day there were a number of attempts to make all of us 700 attentdees introduce ourselves to new people, this involved moving around and meeting people we’d not met before, introducing ourselves and talking a bit about what we were up to.
There was quite a lot of good information in the talks from the main speakers – they were talking about how the market works, what it looks like, how to go about making money out of the market. Most of the day was spent talking about residential property, but one of the speakers (who struck me more as a TV detective rather than a chartered surveyer) was talking about commercial property.
Some observations:
– The organisers have an agenda, they want to sell their courses on property investment
– Everything the speakers described is true, they have all been very successful doing what they have been doing
– The audience is made up of people driven more by money than by anything else
– A good chunk of the audience don’t understand the market they’re dealing with, or why their plan works [0]
– It is in the interests of the speakers to generate interest in investment property to hold up the values of their own investments [1]
– The housing market in general, and the buy-to-let market in particular, is slowing at the moment
– There are something like 750000 private landlords trying to let out their properties
– If the housing market is going to go up that will likely be driven as much by current tenants buying their first property as by landlords buying more investments, reducing the value of the rental market
– There are a finite number of households that need accomodation
– Comparing stock market investment with property investment demonstrated a limited understanding of the business investment possibilities
– Using national average pricing statistics to hide the crash of the early nineties doesn’t take away the pain of a crash should one happen again now
– I don’t have much in common with the majority of the attendees
– From next year we have the ability to include residential property in SIPPs
Theres a lot more I could say about the day, if you would like to hear more about it, or if you’ve got any comments on my observations, please let me know. Some useful information in the day and, if you’re interested in what they’re about I’d suggest its worth going sometime – they run events every few months….but, for the moment at least, I don’t feel a strong desire to learn more their courses or system.
[0] I had an argument with one of the people I met about why it wasn’t a good idea to buy at the top of the market, his point being that it didn’t matter, mine being that I was holding off to see if the market softened any more, why pay more than you need to?
[1] I’m not sure they’re big enough to be able to create that much impact
2 comments