Interview with Bowie Tan: 16 Important Questions Answered and Myths About Investing in Iskandar Revealed!

We interviewed Bowie Tan, Co- Founder of the Community of Real Estate Investors (CORE) in Iskandar, CORE has amassed more than 200 properties in Iskandar alone! Personally Bowie Tan has gained more than 40 properties in Iskandar worth RM20 million in 2 years. He is currently working alongside with international investors from Thailand, Hong Kong and Malaysia.

Community Of Real Estate Investors (CORE) is a group of passionate property investors that have came together to form this Real Estate Investors Community. The community is currently based in Iskandar Malaysia. They organise UIG-Iskandar (Ultimate Investor Guide-Iskandar) tour to educate our community for the on-going projects and developments in Iskandar Malaysia. Apart from that, they organize seminars, cashflow games and fun & charity events. Their vission is to add value to other people’s lives, and mission is to affect 100,000 lives by 2025. Motto: Your Financial Freedom, Our Direction.

The Interview

1) What was your career before, and what turned you to full time investor?

I have been in IT Industry for 13 years since graduated until I became full time investor last year (2013). I started from lowest level as a programmer and I worked really extra hard (probably double the normal working hours than normal people) and the hard work did get a very good payoff which I’ve really climbed up very quickly in corporate ladder to become a country manager in a MNC company and managing for their IT business in Malaysia, Hong Kong and Taiwan, my pay was probably among the highest in Malaysia at my age range, however I have totally lost my personal life, it’s basically a 24×7 non-stop stressful job hence triggered me to turn full time investors after I have gone through fully on Freemen’s education and have built up my investment team & portfolio from there.

2) Why do you choose to invest full time in Iskandar??

3 of us (myself, Rachel and Sen) have been investing aggressively in KL and Ipoh and we realised that it’s getting harder & harder to find good investment opportunities here (with sustainable rental demand & good rental yield at the same time with excellent booming factors which could really boost the capital appreciation in shortest possible duration), doesn’t mean that there isn’t any in KL just that really uneasy to find something which matches most of our investment selection criteria.

By Oct-2012 when we started our first study trip to Iskandar Malaysia we realised the supporting factors there (based on our selection criteria) is super strong, and it was just like 2008-2009’s KL and the committed & ongoing developments there are really exciting! Not just capital appreciation but the rental demand and rental yield is also very strong and sustainable though we do agree some of the areas/ type of properties are really over-supplied and over-priced but we could still easily find something really worth investing.

Hence we just fall in love with Iskandar and have decided to move there, and of course 1 of the key reasons is that we could have better management on our properties for ourselves and our investors.

3) How do you describe your investment portfolio right now??

70% under construction project (with completion dates span across 2014/15/16/17/18) and 30% completed (which have enjoyed strong rental yield now). 70% residential and 30% commercial. This of course may not be a perfect combination for others to just follow as every person has different level of risk appetite, cash-flow and holding power.

The ideal investment portfolio differs for every different individual as we keep teaching people that apart from just learning how to buy, it’s even more important in learning how to manage the cash-flow & portfolio & risk management, and of course most importantly is to learn how to find a really good & sustainable investment instead of just blindly listen to others & blindly buy without knowing the exit plan which is extremely dangerous.

4) How do you strategise your investment?

I usually flip those which have matured as in already met my targeted capital appreciation in targeted period (to strengthen my cash in hand), and I do keep those which are generating very good rental yield (for healthy cash-flow) at the same time still have strong capital appreciation potential. My personal target is to accumulate 60mil worth of good properties in 5 years which should generate 100k of monthly positive cash-flow (8% rental yield – 6% installment/maintenance = 2% net positive cash-flow).

I’m seeing a lot of people set much lower target on monthly cash-flow but in view of the inflation speed and speed of currency depreciation I believe 100k is a very realistic target as I strongly believe that by 10-20 years later having just 10-20k of monthly income would really be suffering for the rising living cost.

5) Do you adopt any methods from successful investor that you look up to??

My personal mentors are Rachel Lim and Michael Tan (who are both my life changers and my role models), I have learned all of the fundamental knowledge from both of them and becoming who I am today. And of course I do read books from Robert Kiyosaki, Ho Chin Soon, etc which also really benefited me a lot.

And here’s my personal thoughts after all the learning & experience: ?Instead of typical Location/Location/Location and Population x3… I personally strongly believe in Education x3, Fundamental x3 and Networking x3. And a lot of people keep asking how to buy non-stop, I can definitely list out a list of methods for the sake of keep buying & getting financing but it’s extremely dangerous if it’s not supported by these 3 elements: 1. Knowledge, 2. Planning, 3. Teamwork.

6) What would be the first step for someone who is new to go into investment??

Go for proper educational seminars before buying anything (be it property, stocks, forex, commodities or anything else), be a proper educated & knowledgeable investor instead of blind-folded speculator. I see nowadays the market is really not very healthy, a lot of people hopes to get deal conveniently without willing to learn and a lot of groups also happily sell deals to these people and make lots of profits from the members, instead of training people to learn how to fish, a lot of cases are just happily feeding them fish and even worst that I have seen a lot of cases that these so-called investors have they themselves become the “fish”, this is really dangerous and extremely unhealthy.

7) Investing in Iskandar outlook sounds wonderful. Are there any risks, or losses that have been made??

So far on our own investments (be it on what we have invested in 2012 or 2013 or even recently now), we have so far enjoyed steady & fruitful return, this explains that be it in good market or bad/slow market, by spending more efforts on research and applying proper fundamental analysis, it’s always possible to find very good investment gems.

Of course we do keep highlighting to our members and investment partners, all investments do come with certain level of risks and we are not here looking for 100% risk-free perfect investment but anything matches 80-90% of our selection criteria we are good enough to proceed and of course on the other hand our property management division is hence being setup to minimise the risk at the same time maximising our return of investment.

8) What inspires you to start CORE?

CORE Investors stands for Community Of Real Estate Investors, it’s meant for creating a healthy community here so that the like-minded investors can have a space for gathering, learning, growing, investing together, and achieving financial freedom together through property investment, and most importantly, to have fun together and contributing to society & charity together. We are also working closely with Freemen & RTC (Real Estate Tycoon Club) and its family communities in KL, Penang, Johor, Hong Kong, Thailand as a bigger family community.

Another inspiring reason is that, ever since we started exploring Iskandar in 2012 and investing heavily here, we definitely think that we need to have a base here in order to provide better management to our investments as well as our community members who invest along with us. And we also feel that as a Malaysian, we don’t want to miss this probably once in a lifetime opportunity to witness the making process of a world class metropolitan for Iskandar Malaysia.

9) Going forward to touch 100k lives by 2025. How is CORE progressing towards its mission?

To be honest this is really a big & challenging mission… However looking at our current progress being a just few months company, I believe we are in our very good progress, so far through different events & activities (thanks to your online Webinar, our own events and Freemen/RTC’s events, iProperty talk, property magazine interview, blogs, referrals and etc), we have reached at least 8-10k people who got a chance to listen to our message, and have attracted more than 1k people to join our further seminars & trips, hence we are very happy with our achievement so far and will continue to deliver our very best service and help more lives.

10) Can you share with us a success story so that it will inspire other readers too.

I would usually use my own personal story as that’s my real life experience at Ordinary Guy, my partner Rachel too has her own real life experience, both stories are currently posted under Freemen’s blog site.

There are many more success stories we have seen under our community just that not everyone is willing to publish their story openly to inspire others. For me, my life has changed drastically after meeting Michael Tan & Rachel Lim who are the life changers in my entire life, and really helped me to release myself from the ridiculous working life & manage to get out from the Forever Rat Race. I can see there are many more people out there who are really stuck in their life like I did, hence I’m now carrying the same mission as Michael & Rachel to really help more people out there

11) What will be the misconception about investment generally and investing in Iskandar specifically?

A lot of people is nowadays blind-folded by the negative news such as over-supply, over-price, market slow-down, etc which have shut them down in further exploring the great opportunities around. Yes I do agree that in certain extent & certain areas it does happen, however never generalise the entire market, even though there could be 70% of bad investment there are still 30% of good investment opportunities, the question is whether we have the sufficient knowledge and have spent necessary efforts to find the gems.

This does not apply to only Iskandar but same for many other places as well, as vice-versa even though in a so-called non over-supply area there are still so-so properties being snapped up by speculators either because of the packaging (high rebate, no money down, dibs, etc) or over-speculation, which is extremely unhealthy and dangerous.

The biggest misconception for a lot of people nowadays is probably “Investment = Buying” or “Investment = Get Rich Quick” whereby it’s really causing lots & lots of people becoming speculators instead of proper investors. For me, Investment means knowledge, strategy, study, research, planning, management, and, managing the investment is exactly like managing the business, Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail.

12) What will be the ‘right’ time to invest in Iskandar?

Now. At any point of time majority of people would never realised “Now” is always the best timing to take action, a lot of people will either choose to enjoy the victim feeling of “Ai yah… I missed the opportunity, if I’ve bought it 3 years ago I would have been millionaire now…” or forever waiting for the crisis to come and hope that property price will drop drastically.

Another reason why I said “Now” it’s also because for a proper fundamental investor, anytime is the “right” time to investment regardless in the good or bad market so long we invest on the “right” properties. Same for Iskandar, despite of lots of general negative perception, there are still plenty of opportunities around as entire Iskandar is still at its very early stage towards its target in 2025, there are seriously plenty of good opportunities if we know how to manage the investment, and of course there are also many “wrong” properties (from investment point of view) there hence we keep telling people “don’t simply buy, learn first”.

13) What is the startup capital, for initial investment to invest in Iskandar?

Depends on one’s investment target, the starting capital can be as low as less than 10k, be it on project or subsale, and at the same time the positive cash-flow generated by the right property could hold the property itself while enjoying the steady capital gain, provided we invest on the right properties. For those who has limited or very low capital, I would seriously advise them to attend Freemen’s “Getting Started in Property Investment with No Money Down” seminar before putting in their limited cash in any property purchase.

14) How government policy; i.e GST and etc will affect investing in Iskandar?

In general the GST effect will just cause the property price even higher, be it commercial or residential because it would be generating a chain effect on the rising of material cost. Based on our discussion with many developers, the overall construction cost has already increased by the main-con & sub-con now especially in Johor/Iskandar even before the GST kicks in hence in general we would expect the property price to be higher and higher. And of course this would not be the sole factor for our investment consideration, we always buy something that is really worth investing, and whatever external pushing factors will just cause our investment return even better.

15) What are current or near future investment trips that you organize?

We are having our “Ultimate Investor Guide – Iskandar” trip once every 1 to 1.5 months, the coming one would be on 7-8/Jun and every trip we could only accommodate 1 bus load which is around 35 people max.

16) What are the keys principal in investing, in Iskandar specifically

Fundamental, Fundamental, Fundamental… This has always been our investment principal in any of the places apart from just Iskandar. And always learn first before invest, investing is not gambling, it really takes time to learn, study, research, practise, with proper management in terms of cash-flow, holding power, property & risk management.

Find out more information at FREE WEBINAR, on 3rd June 2014 at 10am.

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