When to buy property - for the first time.

Which do you think is harder? Knowing HOW to begin a property portfolio? Or knowing WHEN to begin your portfolio?

I would say the latter, and it's becoming more and more difficult to start. Entering the investment market means you need money and you either get that by saving for a deposit and buying a house as you normally would. Or if you already have a home, leveraging the equity in the property as a deposit. To leverage your own property, then you need to have paid some or all of the original loan, or the property has to have increased in value. 

Both of these options take time, especially if you are waiting for your owner-occupied property to be completely paid off before you begin investing. At which point you may jeopardize your portfolio's full potential.

So what do you do? It depends on your situation. Getting advice from a qualified and knowledgable property investment expert is the way to go.

If you are an owner-occupier, rather than waiting for the whole mortgage to be paid, leverage what you can and possibly buy in a regional areas where positively geared properties are more plentiful. Yes, there is always the fear that you'll lose your money, but that is inherent to any investment. Unfortunately that fear has stopped many, many people from taking the plunge into property. The way around that is knowledge and a team of people that you trust. Also remember that the Australian market is different to other international markets, each of our regions move at different times. Each city and suburb experience growth at a different pace, this is due to the local economies. This is good news, because once you get really good at investing, you can always be working on a deal in different regions.

Educating yourself is the best investment you can make. There are many, many resources online that will help you understand how it works, what to look for and lots of success stories to inspire you.

Only you can figure the best time to invest, but the bottom line is you do need funds to do it, there's no way around it. It can be either yours or someone else's.

So how did you kick off your property portfolio?