Think Like A Tycoon

The book I read to research this post was Think Like A Tycoon by W G Hill which is an excellent book which I bought by mail order a long time ago. When I bought this book new, it was £60.00 but Amazon does have it for sale secondhand for a lot cheaper. I think it has been out of print for a long time. The premise to this book is becoming a millionaire in 3 years or less. You should save as much as possible and the idea is to put very low bids on property that you will subsequently either resell or rent out and of course some of the bids are bound to be accepted reducing your risk. You should use commercial loans which have more paperwork but lower interest and obviously with the bids being very low the banks risk is minimal. You should have at least 25% of what you borrow available in savings. You should look for properties that haven't been advertised for sale and deal directly with the seller who will often be flattered you are taking an interest in the property. The usual system in this book is to fund 80% of the purchase with a loan and get the seller to agree to a 20% promisory note at 10% interest per year over several years. If you don't pay the seller that money though they can subsequently resell the property again though. Bear in mind any property deal isn't going to be perfect and you just have to make the best of it. Auctions are a good source of cheap property and it is often possible to do a deal with the owner and have it withdrawn from the auction. Some properties also have no minimum sale price which is great if there aren't many bidders. Prior to buying a property for the first time you should look at, at least 100 similar properties to get experiences although that is only a general guideline and you may have to see a lot more. This book is part of a set which also includes getting dual citizenship to avoid taxes and buying a car abroad for a lower buying price than what you sell it for. Most countries require you to be resident there for a set number of months to become eligible to pay taxes and if you keep moving you should avoid paying most taxes. Equally if you purchase a car and keep it a set period you can sell it in another country at a profit without having to pay duty. Most of these books are a bit out of date but the general idea is sound. I really enjoyed this book and it's only around 160 pages and is quite succinct. This is the kind of topic I hope to do more blog posts about.