How to Invest in Commercial Property?
In time we will be writing in more detail about how we invest in commercial property ourselves.
For now though, we have decided to make this section about showing you how to learn how to invest in commercial property, ie. by showing you exactly what resources you need to use in order to get educated on commercial property investing.
This will help you develop a foundation of knowledge and understanding that will allow you to get started on investing in commercial property straight away, and which we will help build upon further in time as we write more content on this topic.
That being said, sometimes the best way of learning is by doing and actively looking for commercial properties on the market, speaking to real estate agents, speaking to property valuers, reading contract of sales and lease documents and getting out and about and driving by and inspecting properties and attending any auctions.
Notwithstanding this, it helps to have some basic knowledge and understanding of how this asset class works before doing this, and as such this section is directed towards arming you with enough insight to make this active learning process less daunting and more worthwhile.
So, lets get started… !
These days it’s very hard to beat reading a really good book that you can easily purchase cheaply on an online bookstore like Amazon.com (or similar) to give you immediate knowledge on a topic in an organised manner.
Here are three books that we suggest you buy and read to get you started:
How Investing In Commercial Property Really Works by Martin Roth and Chris Lang
Good Commercial Sense by Karina Barrymore
Commercial Real Estate Investing by Dolf de Roos
There are not many books written dedicated to commercial property investing in the Australian market, but the first two books listed above are two that are, and are well worth a read.
The third book by Dolf de Roos is not specifically written for Australian investors, but the basic principles and techniques involved are applicable regardless of where you are investing from.
This book is particularly good in that it goes into some detail about more advanced and creative commercial property investing strategies, showing you how powerful investing in this asset class can really be.
In addition to these books, there are a number of courses on commercial property investing that we think are useful, though these do come at a cost, and it is up to you to weigh up whether this will be worthwhile for you.
Michael McCombie’s DVD course is one that is relatively affordable and well worth considering.
James Dawson’s home study course is much pricier, and could be considered too as it does have some very useful information; though we generally wouldn’t encourage paying this sort price for a course unless you can really afford it.
You can also keep track of James Dawson’s thoughts by following the free blog posts and videos on his website and reading the posts on his Facebook page.
Chris Lang, whose book we mentioned above, also has a few websites that have some free content that are worth reading and following: Commercial Property Made Easy, Property Edge and Property Briefings.
Following on from these websites, another great resource is the Somersoft Property Investors Commercial Property Forum.
There are hundreds of posts on this online discussion forum from investors who are interested in commercial property investing as well as from those who have invested in commercial property for many years.
This is simply a gold-mine of on-the-ground and practical information on commercial property investing.
We suggest you sign up to this forum and read as many of the posts here as you possibly can; starting off by reading the most highly rated, most viewed and most replied to posts is a good approach.
Once you’ve been through all of these resources, it’s time to get your hands dirty!
And the best place to do this by far is at a commercial property search engine like realcommercial.com.au.
Start looking for properties and contact real estate agents to request contract of sales and lease documents which will help develop your knowledge and understanding further.
The Burgess Rawson Investment Portfolio Auction website is a real estate agency website that is also useful to get a general idea of current asking and sale prices and yields on certain properties.
We hope this provides you with a good starting point on your path to learning how to invest in commercial property.
As mentioned earlier, we will be adding more content and providing more specific and detailed guidance to you on this topic later on as this website develops, so stay tuned!
Read How to Invest in Bonds? next…
warren king - December 16, 2016, 11:28 AM
Good information ,thank you!
Editor - May 11, 2017, 7:19 PM
Thanks Warren!
Amanda J GarlandHunt - December 31, 2016, 6:36 PM
This is very useful information, thank you
Editor - May 11, 2017, 7:20 PM
Thanks for the feedback Amanda!
commercial property | 滄海一粟 - June 19, 2017, 2:33 PM
[…] http://www.thepassiveinvestor.com.au/the-passive-philosophy/how-to-invest/how-to-invest-in-commercia… […]
realestate - November 13, 2018, 4:17 PM
Thanks for updating us about commercial real estate. I hope it would be helpful for all the entire user.The term commercial real estate is a broad term. It generally refers to any property other than a single family home or a residential lot in a neighborhood.