5 (more) property investment myths uncovered

This week we’re exploding 5 of the most common myths you’ll hear if you spend any amount of time listening to the media (or “gurus”) when it comes to property.

It’s not just an opportunity for us to get on our high horse and have a rant, fun though that is: your beliefs affect the investment decisions you make, so it’s worth critically examining the claims you hear (including ours!)

Those myths are:

• You can get started in property without any money
• “My costs have gone up – I’ll just raise the rent to compensate”
• Property prices double every 10 years (related: Episode 58 – does property value really double every 10 years?)
• The perfect investment is out there if you do enough research
• London property prices always beat the rest of the UK

There’s a lot more subtlety to most of these points than the summaries imply, so listen to the episode to get the full story – and, most importantly, why debunking each of the myths matters.

(We also examined a different 5 property myths a couple of years ago, all the way back in Episode 22. Listen to that one here.)

Elon Musk – How the billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is shaping our future (Amazon link)

If you want to see an extreme example of what you can achieve if you have a strong enough vision and desire, this is the book for you. It charts how Elon went from having no special advantages to disrupting the banking industry, then the solar power industry, then the motor industry, then the space industry…and how they’re all just steps along the way to his ultimate mission to colonise Mars.

What a guy.

And on the same subject, Wait But Why has a series of posts about Elon Musk which dig in a very accessible way into the technology of what he’s doing.

A double-whammy for the north this week:The North West is the best place to raise a family, according to The Telegraph, and Sheffield is the new gazumping capital of the UK (it’s down by over 50% in London and Brighton).

We talked in the main topic about how London doesn’t always outperform, and these may be signs that the best areas of the north are set for a bit of a run.