Goal setting and investment

Wow! Another week gone already…I have been reading a lot about success and property investment this week, and so I thought I would share some of the insights I have gained. You never know, they might just be the push you need to take control of your financial future.

First things first, if you are going to be successful, you have to set goals. How will you know if you have succeeded without goals? Goals achieved are the benchmark for how successful you are. “A goal is a dream with a deadline,” says Napoleon Hill. If your goal is to own your own home or a profitable property business, then if you don’t set a timeline for this, you are only a dreamer. Life passes dreamers by. The first thing you need to do, is decide on your dream, however frivolous it may seem to you, and then set a deadline to achieve it. This could be relatively short (say 6 months) or long term (10 years.)

This next part applies primarily to those people who would like to invest in property as a business, but the choices you make when buying a family home should also be based on these points.

Ok, so now you know you want to invest in property, ask yourself why you want this. There could be any number of reasons. Being rich, is not a good enough one, by the way, so get creative. It could be security in your old age, a family home for each of your kids, or more philanthropic, like helping the homeless with low cost housing. Knowing why you want something, makes it easier to stick to your goals when the going gets tough, which it will, I promise.

Now, the hard part starts; do some research, in fact do lots and lots of research. Find out which parts of the country or town are going to be most sought after in the near future. These suburbs or areas will have cheaper houses than the current favourites. For example all the areas just outside the “golden triangle” will become more popular as the population grows and when all the professionals in the diaspora return. There are not enough properties in the upmarket areas to service the growing needs of Zimbabweans. Greystone Park, Chisipite, Alex Park, and Mt Pleasant are all areas that have fantastic growth potential.

Find out which areas are good “water” areas, as some properties are priced below value as there is no borehole, but if you were to sink a borehole and get water the value of the property would increase immediately.

 Find out what the market is looking for. Do people want to live in cluster developments or large properties with their own gardens and extras, like a pool and a tennis court? I have found quite a shift recently towards cluster or closed community developments, probably because of the security which these types of property offer. Zimbabwe does not have enough cluster developments to meet demand, and this fuels the ever increasing prices of such developments.

Remember as a property investor it is your job to try and predict the future growth of the property market. We all know that property is a great investment and that in the long term prices will continue to go up. But the rate of this escalation is not so easy to predict, and different areas grow in value faster than others. Research is the only way to make an informed investment decision. Remember property investment should not be made with the heart, but clearly with the head and a little bit of gut instinct. And always buy with the profit already in the investment, in other words if you were to put the same property on the market the next day, without doing anything to it, you need to know that you will be able to sell it for more than you bought it for.

 Of course, the points above are not exhaustive, and I am sure you could all think of many other points to add, but I wanted to get your minds thinking about property investment in Zimbabwe and how to achieve your goals.

OUR NEWS…

Last Thursday we had the pleasure of attending Sabre Business World’s Seminar on the 25 Secrets of Business Success at the Meikles. It was a fantastic day and I think we all left feeling highly motivated and ready to take the Zimbabwean business world by storm.

Thank you to Sally and Brendan Palmer for this inspirational seminar. For more information about Sabre Business World, visit www.sabrebusinessworld.com

And always keep in mind :

“ People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well neither does bathing…that’s why we recommend it daily.” Zig Ziglar

 Keep yourself motivated and keep improving yourself, and you will achieve everything you have ever dreamed you could have or be!

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Rethinking the title of your property...

Back in the infamous Zim dollar days, everyone wanted to put their property into company names. This way, the buyers avoided transfer fees and the sellers avoided paying capital gains tax. There were other reasons too, but these are probably too shady for a reputable agent such as myself to know about...

It now seems that there are more disadvantages to owning a property in a company name than the financial advantages of transfer fee avoidance for your future, potential buyers. I have listed some of the points below, but by no means is the list comprehensive:

1. The myth of not having to pay capital gains tax on the sale of a property owned by a company OR TRUST needs to be debunked as soon as possible. The sale of shares of any description is liable for a 20% capital gains tax. You may be able to find a clever account to perform some creative accounting to avoid the tax, but somewhere down the line these loop holes will be closed and you will be liable for the tax.

2. If you are over 55 years old and the property you are selling is your principal primary residence (your home, in layman's terms!), then you may apply to ZIMRA for Capital Gains Tax exemption. If the property is in your name, then it is much easier to explain to ZIMRA that it is in deed your home and you are eligible for the exemption. If it is in a company name, then there will be all sorts of questions and at the end of the day, you may not get the exemption, as a company can't have a home, because although a company may be a legal entity: it does not need to sleep somewhere!!!!

3. If the owner of the house was to die, the family would not have to pay death duties on the principal primary residence (yes, the home), but only if the property is in the deceased person's name. If it is in a company name, the Master of the High Court will demand his pound of flesh, at the most vulnerable time in the grieving family's life. The last thing you need is trying to find money for the death duties on your home when you have lost a loved one.

4. There is the ever present fear of the 51% indigenisation bill. Personally, I don't see this reaching as far a shelf companies which own houses, but then I am the eternal optimist and this is Zimbabwe, so anything goes, and generally the more unexpected the more likely the event will occur. (What a conundrum that is!)

5. The last point, which comes to mind is the fact that most banks will not loan you money to buy a house in a company name, and so as a buyer you will still have to pay transfer fees to put the property in your name. This whole process thus defeats the reason for the company name and the proposed transfer fee avoidance.  Banks are also reluctant to lend you money against a property in a company name. This is because ownership of the company can be transferred without it affecting the change of ownership on the title deeds.

My advice therefore, is to put your own home in your personal name. If you buy and sell properties as investments then I don't think it matters which way you choose as you will be selling it on. But remember even if you put it in a company name, you will still have to pay tax on the sale of the shares.