Surviving the downturn

The August issue of the NZ Property Investor magazine takes an in-depth look at what Kiwi investors can do to ride this current storm out. I say co-incidentally, but in reality the aim of the magazine is to help investors manage their properties successfully.

What surprised me a little with this article is how many different things investors can do to ride out the storm.

Sure, one is to sell up and maybe take a loss, therefore limiting future losses. However, I reckon there is a good argument for trying to hold on. Over the years of publishing the NZ Property Investor I have heard plenty of stories where people have toughed it out through difficult markets and been thankful they have done so.

We know markets go in cycles and once we get through this part of the cycle, things will be on the up again.

When that will happen I don’t know – and it would be foolish to predict. As readers of my Blogs will know I am cautiously optimistic for the medium term, which is very different to the heavily bearish comments often published in the media.

Another reason to be weary of selling up is simply the supply and demand equation. Figures I have seen show that there is an increasing number of rental properties being put on the market for sale. Thinking back to the basic rules about supply and demand, I would suggest that selling into this market could end up with a pretty poor result. (If you are on the other side of the deal and buying, it’s a totally different story.)

If you want to find out some ideas on how to survive this downturn then make sure you pick up the latest copy of the NZ Property Investor magazine.