Day 5 - Dumping the corporate shackle

Well............ its been a while since my last post. I have been putting inplace a plan to rid myself of the corporate shackles and become a fulltime amateur proptery mogul.......

First things first....notice was handed in to my current employer. Hours have been significantly reduced and headsapce has been cleared of useless information...... particularly system passwords, IP addresses of 40 odd machines and routing configuration that was blocking my ability to think clearly and get on with my mission.

That said, and my wife has pointed this out on a few occasions.... this is scary as hell!!

I don't really have any income ( apart from about 2 dollars a month from google adsense).

As of Monday I begin what looks on the surface to be a very fruitfull career as an amateur property mogul.

Carpe Diem baby.!!!!!!

Day 4 - Back on Track

I was out of action yesterday after my first day back at the office
since the tonsilectomy. Bit underdone but managed to wade through the
day.

Back on track today though and recovery is going well. Talking
rubbish about re-aligining goals and business objectives followed by a
riveting conversation about load balancers and geo-redundancy for
most of the day with a bunch of people @ work had me feeling way
tired. Got a good nap in just after lunch in the server room. Just
my luck there was a yoga mat in the communal kitchen which made for a
comfortable 1 hour kip.

After the nap I got a phone call from Cransky @ the local council
about this idea of dual occupancy. That is I can buy a block of land,
split it in 2 and build 2 smaller houses on it. He gave me the
details of the guy that deals specifically with dual occ's in the area
but i couldn't get through to him. Will give him a go tomorrow.

There seems to be a fair few builders around that have kit homes
available to do dual occupancy. This project is looking like a pure
management task. Should be a breeze.

Thats all for now...Mogul

I think I have managed to rope my mother into getting involved in the
development. She has been looking for an investment opportunity for a
while and I thikn this will suit her really well.

Day 2 - Narrowing the search

I negelected to mention in previous posts that i am currently postop tonsilectomy and thus have been housebound for the last week. Slight madness has been creeping over me partly due to the vast quantities of codein I am forced to consume do dampen the pain.

This is essentially what has given me the time to think of an alternative career to my existing vocation asa highly paid nerd. I recently read a phsychiatrist's report about IT vocations being amongst the most stressfull of all vocations. I find this very encouraging as I have enjoyed the strsses of the IT world. I noticed property development was not even on the list of stressfull vocations so I am clearly qualified to deal with the stresses of being a property mogul.

With my new found knowledge on building townhouses and the minimum block size and restrictions imposed by council on how many and where townhouses can be built in my area I dexide to hit www.realestate.com.au and see what sort of price range a suitable block would be.

Interestingly enough there are no blocks over 1200m2 for sale in my area. The only solution would be to buy to adjoining blocks of 700m2+. It sounds kind of difficult to put together a deal like that. Presumably would require 2 existing neighbors to decide to sell their land at the same time. Not to mention that would completely be outside of my budget.

I remember now the definition of a townhouse in my area mentioned something about 3 or more dwellings with 2 or more stories. I think building 3 or more dwellings would be far to costly and complicated for me to take on as a first project. It would be a bit like getting a Uni Graduate to manage a HP Openview rollout.

Google Search Term : Local Council Divide Block in 2

Now we are getting somewhere. Aparently you can apply to council to have your block split in 2. This is called dual occupancy and you can then apply for strata title for each block. I think this is the way to go for a first timer.

Now I have direction there is no stopping me at all. Next I need to get some quotes on dual occupancy building and figure out what to do next with the council. I also need a partner to take on some of day to day management and pressures a property mogul must deal with.

I have also found a great site for budding developers or those wanting to build their own house. Check out the forums on www.homeone.com.au

Stay tuned. I am realy starting to get some traction now.

Day 1.2 - Now Where to Start

So the ebook was not my finest hour. I am not about to lose heart at
the first knock though.

I trod right back into the computer room and get right back up to that
google prompt and type in "townhouse development"

Well, now we are talking. Some real information about subdivisions and
land environemnt courts and local council authorities. This is the
stuff property developers are reading every day.

I have honed in on a few articles in the Sydney morning herald talking
about local council development plans. That leads me to my local
council website. I must say, the information is all there, you just
have to know what to look for. I find these town planners and
developers do have their own slang and abbreviations that are not
always that easy to interpret. I would imagine it would be like an
outsider listening in on an Infrastructure Architechture meeting about
DMZ's and VLANing.

So I am finding the language a bit intimidating but I glance over the
Town planners documentation and eventually discover that to build
townhouses in my area the block must be at least 1200m2 and must not
have any other townhouses or villas within a defined proximity to the
block you are proposing to build. Something like if you are building
6 townhouses then their cannot be any townhouses within 6 blocks of
land of your block of land. Something about keeping the old buggers
happy I suppose.

Well. Thats more than enough learning for 1 day. I will pick this up tomorrow.

Day 1.1 - Getting Started

Well....the decision is made. I am now officially an amateur property
mogul. So where do I begin? I have not got the slightes clue where
to begin so I go sit in front of my computer and call up google.

Search For : How to become a property developer

A whole heap of self help crap and guys with pearly white teeth show
up in the search results. Some guy that went from 0-500 properties in
3 years. "Yeah Right". Why the hell would he be selling $30 ebooks if
he had 500 properties. Who the hell buys this stuff? I had a quick
browse of this guys site and he seemed pretty certain that anyone can
do it and you don't need any money to get started so I thought what
the hell and hit the visa card up for 30 bucks to see if it's as easy
as he says.

Well, after I forked out the 30 bucks, I get sent a link in my email
to download the "ebook"........ The "ebook" is a PDF file. Since
when did PDF files become known as electronic books? The "ebook" was
65 pages in total. The first 15 pages explained how to read the ebook
and what software is required to read the ebook.

(you need the software to be able to find out what software is
required) There were 15 chapters and each had a page dedicated to the
chapter title.

(Thats half the book)

The first chapter talked about the author and his 500 properties and
how happy he was and how fullfilling life became once he reached
number 500. He then went on to talk about his jet and his skiing
holidays.....blah blah blah.....I began to grow skeptical on this guys
ability to impart the knowledge required for me to go from 0-500
properties in 3 years when I got to chapter 2.

Chapter 2 was titled "Go Get Em"

As I am fairly sure I have the motivational requirements to be an
amateur property mogul and merely require the technical skills
required to execute my new vocation I decided remind the author of the
30 day money back satisfaction guarantee.

After numerous emails back and forth he did agree to the refund and
advised it would take aproximately 12 weeks to be processed. Lesson
number 1 had been learned. The world of Property moguls is a tough
one but I will soldier on.

See you next time.

Mogul

Day 1 - The Penny Drops

I woke up this morning and decided I want to be a property developer. Why not? I have been managing fairly complicated IT projects for the last 10 or so years. I can't imagine property development is nearly as difficult.

It sounds like property developers make a lot of money too. I don't do too bad out of IT but am getting tired of working with nerds and sleeping with one eye open wondering if my exchange server is going to be running in the morning.

I have had a couple of discussions with mates in the past about another mate of ours or some guy in the paper that was having great fun demolishing old homes and "throwing" up a heap of townhouses and cashing in on "land value".

Well it's high time I gave it a crack. My thinking is that if the whole process of being a property mogul involves having loads of fun destroying old peoples houses and then simply "throwing" up a couple of "townies" then it's got to be easier than a 12 month citrix rollout project or deploying geographically redundand clustered database servers.

So, decision made.... I am no longer a 10 year veterean of the IT industry but a budding young Property Mogul on the verge of making millions "throwing" up townies.

So.....where to start.