Daydreaming is inevitable, particularly when the pandemic still troubles the world. When I watch Simon Yam’s movies, I recall of Hong Kong news reports which covered his stories of investing in properties worldwide to earn rental income. For average Joe including me, achieving ownership of properties worldwide for rental earnings is a dream far too unreachable. We can hardly handle properties properly when we have to always travel thousands of miles to attend to management matters. In this case, the only solution is engaging a management company to handle your properties on your behalf.
Alright, put aside about making rental income from properties worldwide. If you owned properties in KL and Selangor, Penang and Johor Bahru—the three largest cities in Malaysia—for rental income, that would be a big headache in itself. Of course, some individuals in some parts of the world earn a living by utilising property ownership.
If property business became your best pastime and properties in three cities earned you rental income, you might find yourself driving and loitering in one city of your rental income source for one week for the sake of observing the market. Three weeks for three cities and the remaining week of the month would be spent in front of your computer to check how much rental you have collected, the amount to repay banks, and more importantly, your earnings for the month in your property management business.
Take the same model and apply it in Taiwan. If a multi-millionaire owns shops, apartments and factories in Taipei City, New Taipei City, Taoyuan County and City, Hsinchu County and City, their job is perhaps to drive around the places to observe the market. They are likely to buy properties in bulk when coming across some opportunities and sell them for profits after years-long ownership.
Unrestricted blabbering means this is surely a daydreaming. When writers like me talk about buying in bulk, that surely refers to spending several thousand NT dollars to bring home some books for the leisure of long reading. Impossible for me to buy a property when going to Australia for a one-week trip. As I am writing, I miss the old days before the pandemic when I visited and bought some books at a second-hand bookstore in Sydney. Those are precious collections of Australian book lovers and coming across those books is a chance that rarely comes by.
It is not necessarily all bad news amid the pandemic. Thanks to longer hours of listening to online talk shows, I heard from Alex Shiu, the author of Earning Rental Income Globally, who shared about Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). Investors can invest in an REIT and need not get involved in the trouble to invest in London and New York properties. The trust managers do all the work for investors. My understandind from Shiu’s explanation is that an REIT takes investors’ money in a pool to invest in different parts of the world. Having paid for management and administration fees, remaining profits will be disbursed to investors as dividends.
I found REIT to be very interesting as I was listening to Shiu’s stories. When I am free I might want to check out REITs in Singapore. Every investment comes with risks and it is crucial that we do our own homework to gauge how much risks we can take and to decide whether or not we want to invest.
Enough for daydreaming now. It is about time to read some UK sports reports to look at some previews before the massively important game of Manchester United VS Liverpool.
Learned some new information and enjoying good football. This is quite a good weekend, indeed.
作白日夢總是難免的，尤其是這個疫情席捲全球的時候。有些時候觀賞任達華的影片，就會想起香港新聞報導他在全世界投資有道，專門買磚頭收租。對一般人而言，全世界都有房地產收租實在是非常遙不可及，再加上山長水遠，很難將房地產管理得當，除非有管理公司專門代理。
不要說全球有房地產放租，光是馬來西亞三個最大城市的雪隆區、檳城、新山都有房地產，這也有夠頭痛了。當然，世界上有些人可以房地產為業，人生最大興趣就是房地產，若三地都有租金收，一個星期開車在自己收租的地方閒晃順便觀察市場，三個大城市用去三週，剩下一週對著電腦算帳看看這個月收了多少租金、銀行還款多少，最重要當然是自己以房地產為業的月薪是多少。以此類推，若有富豪在臺北市、新北市、桃園縣市、新竹縣市都有店舖、公寓、工廠出租，每天的工作就是開車觀察市場，哪裡有機會就出手掃貨，持貨多年出售獲利。
說得這麼過癮，絕對是作夢。我這等寫作人若說掃貨，絕對是在書局花個幾千元台幣買一堆書回家慢慢啃，怎麼可能去澳洲旅遊就可以買房子。說著說著，忽然懷念疫情前的世界在雪梨市中心的二手書店掃貨，那些是澳洲人賣出來的珍藏，實在是可遇不可求。
但有疫情也未必完全愁雲慘霧，因為聽節目的時間更長了，剛好聽到《全球有租收》的作者蕭少滔暢談不動產投資信託(REIT)的節目。原來世界上有這種信託讓投資者投資收利息，自己不需要親手投資倫敦紐約房地產，因為信託有專人打理。我理解到蕭公子的解釋就是集結投資者的錢然後在全球範圍內投資，扣除管理費、行政費，剩下的營利就分利息給投資者。
聽著聽著，我也覺得很有趣。遲些有空時大概也可以看看新加坡的不動產信託。但投資有風險，最重要自己做功課，衡量自己能承擔的風險再決定要不要投資。
作過一場美夢之後，我又要閱讀英國體育報導，因為今晚就是英超聯賽「雙紅會」曼聯對壘利物浦的星球大戰。接收新資訊之後有球賽觀賞，這個週末也算是過得不錯了。