Getting emotional about your investment property

Posted by Fiona McGovern

If you’ve been to one of our events, you’ve heard Tony say you shouldn’t get emotional about your property, it’s an investment. When you meet with our Investment Property Specialists and buy an investment property, they’ll tell you it’s a business transaction and will also recommend you not to get emotional.

I have a different perspective.

I’m an emotional person. I cry watching tv shows and movies, I get excited watching the footy (as I yell at the TV) and don’t even get me started on when my kids graduated from year 12, I really helped boost the shares of Kleenex! You’d think that after 13 years of schooling, I would have worked out that the school years would eventually end, but from the moment I got the email with the graduation schedule for my daughter, I felt teary. It felt like it was only last month I was holding my firstborn, and only last week, I held her hand walking into “big” school for the first time. It didn’t get better with my second, as I went through it all again. He had navigated the final two years of high school in the midst of a global pandemic, and while his graduation celebrations were different when the time came, the tissues were definitely required again.

So, when bought my first investment property, I admit it, I got emotional. For me, it felt like such a huge milestone to achieve and one that, in my younger years, I had thought was out of reach. And yes, I was excited. It was around this time that my husband survived a heart attack, so there was also an element of fear and nerves, but we knew we were doing the right thing for our future. Watching the project under construction and come to life was as exciting as when we built our current home, and then when we settled, I felt so proud of what we’d achieved, what it meant for our future, and the lessons we were teaching our children.

Contrary to how I was told to feel, I was very emotional about it.

But how can we have such different views and both be right? When is it right to get emotional?

First, let’s remind ourselves why we’re buying investment properties – the long-term goal of creating wealth. To get there, we need to have a tenant pay rent which in turn pays our mortgage. You need to remember you’re not buying a home to live in, which is probably the biggest emotional decision you’ll ever make. The size of the kitchen sink or the position of the loo roll holder won’t make any difference, so definitely not worth getting emotional over.

But buying an investment property is exciting and is something you should be really proud of achieving. Excitement and pride are both emotions, emotions you should share with your family and friends; you should definitely allow yourself to feel them the same way that I did when I settled on my first investment property!

The best part of my job at Blue Wealth is that I get to share these emotions with you as you go on the journey of buying an investment property.

Remember, owning an investment property is a business. You are buying a product in order to provide a service that you are paid for – owning a business means you need to take the emotions out of the decision-making process. Buy based on the property research and consider the product that will earn you the best return without adding your personal preferences for where you’d want to live. But enjoy the process, and be proud of your achievement, as we are every time we help a Blue Wealth client create opportunities for their future.

Posted by Fiona McGovern, on 18th Oct 2022