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Asking the right questions can be the key to a bad or good property investment

The property forums this week show that vital information can be found from those living 'on the ground' especially if you are buying off-plan without visiting the property. Not only can people there give you up-to-date information, it is the kind of information you probably wouldn't get from developers or real estate agents.

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A thread on the totallyproperty.com site shows that some developments are of superior quality to others. One example is Dubai Marina. It is reported that those near the water are of excellent quality while those a few streets back may be cheaper but are not finished to the same standard.

The question of whether to buy or rent in Dubai comes up on this thread and others. Annual rents vary in Dubai depending upon the location, services, facilities and amenities, standard of finishing, age of the building, parking, owner's policy and the property market.

The dubaiforum.co.uk has a detailed analysis provided by member elitesystem giving a breakdown of figures and comparing the costs involved in renting and buying a one bedroomed apartment. But as others points out, it depends on how long you are planning to stay. General opinion seems to be that if you are staying for five years or more then buy otherwise rent.

The same forum reports that there could be changes in the residency visa system for Dubai. Regular poster Zaheer says he read that the government is considering introducing a UK style visa system which will range from days to months depending on circumstances and also will take the size of the investment you are making into account. Property buyers will no longer be able to get an automatic residency visa, it would appear.

Which brings us back to the depth of the kind of information available on the forums that can't be found elsewhere. For those venturing into the property investment market for the first time the forums can be a mine of information.

Often ideas you might not have thought of come up. A 'beginner' on the movechannel.com forum asks where she should start looking as there seems to be so many companies offering 'amazing deals' but it is not clear who offers the best service and value for money.

Reading through the obvious answers like do your own research, buy a book, go on a course, one member, prolan, suggests going into property development as an alternative to buying in someone else's development. The poster is buying land at two locations in Morocco and claims this option offers higher returns. They claim they will be looking at between 180 and 200% over three years.

But for those who take the more regular option of buying off-plan a key question is finance and how to make sure you have the money ready for staged and final payments. The issue is dealt with clearly this week on the propertysecrets.net forum. The key question is whether to arrange finance before reserving a property or wait until nearer the time when payments are due.

Most people seem to reserve the property and wait until nearer completion to apply for a mortgage especially since most off-plan purchases take a couple of years to complete and mortgage offers are generally valid for just three months.

And it is important to add on the costs of solicitor's fees, finder's fees, management fees and insurance.

However the same thread raises another vital question. What happens if you reserve a property and then can't get the finance in place for completion? Selling before completion (or flipping as it is known in the trade) can be complicated. Some contracts don't allow it. Tax and selling fees can be high. The advice is to do as much research and asks as many questions as possible before reserving a property, especially if you are a newcomer to the industry.

Quality is a major concern as a read through the forums makes clear. 'Cookie cutter' apartments are how one poster on the Channel 4 overseas forum refers to the mass blocks of apartments that are being built in places like Brazil, Panama and Venezuela.

The Natal Ocean club is, according to the forum, a cut above the rest, designed by an architect and prices already going up since the first off-plan reservations were made a year ago. So research can help with finding the right kind of property when it comes to quality.

And there is cheering hope for all property investors on the homesonsale.co.uk forum. A lighthouse at Beachy Head in East Sussex, UK, has just come on the market for £850,000 – nearly a 1,000 times more than its original price when it was built in the 19th century.

Few investors will ever be able to realise this kind of return but the post does reveal that its current owners bought it for £200,000 in 1996. So it has still been a pretty good investment even though they had the whole building moved 56 feet inland to save it from coastal erosion.

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