I signed on a property investment course way back in Oct 2010. In the course, one of the goal setting is to buy at least one below market value property each year. I am so enthusiasms after the course and work so hard to find below market value properties.

When I said “work hard” really means that everyday looking for the good deals.

How do I look for the good deals?
Since I am an salaried employed, I only able to do my homework during night time. I spend about 2 to 3 hours browsing in the website on the property listing portal. I have to search for the criteria I wanted such as below:

Property price : Below $300,000
Rental return : Above 7% (remember, that is in year 2010)
Occupancy rate : Above 90%

Every night, what I did is after the dinner, I will first look through the classified section in the newspaper to find the good value property. After that I will search through few property portal in the website. Then make call and arrangement to view the desired property which fulfill my requirements.

There is one evening that I conduct routine search on the newspaper classified and saw a title sound like this “Desa Permai Indah for Sale at $180,000”. It caught my attention and my adrenalin pump up very high at that moment. I shouted to myself that I had found a “Below Market Value” property! I quickly made a phone call and arrange the viewing timing. You may ask, how long I took to find this piece of below Market value property? The answer is two weeks since I back from the property investment boot camp training.

Just to recap that the market price in 2010 is about $250000. This ads only wanted to sell at $180,000, which is almost 30% below market value! I know I have to act fast because everyone have the copy of The Star newspaper will able to see it. This include the property buyers, real estate negotiators, bankers etc. Bear in mind that, after finding the good property, we need to act fast.

This article just the first step on how to find the below market value property. I will continue to write on the rest on how to land the deal by beating others in next post.