It has taken a while but I finally have clearly identified my overarching philosophy for building a property portfolio.

For me the reasons why I do property are clear; it gives me lifestyle options and let's me help others to achieve the same.

Pinning down the overriding philosophy that I build my portfolio too, a philosophy that pervades everything I do, has been a 10 year quest but I recently realised that the answer has been right in front of me for so long. It can be summed up in 3 words:

Set and forget

Set & Forget is more than just a strategy for your portfolio, or a way you set up each of your properties. It is far more than a term I came up with because my marketing hat says you need to capture a buzz word.

Set & Forget is the philosophy, it is present in every transaction, in every strategy, in fact it is perhaps the most important thing I do. Without Set & Forget I would be simply working an extra well paid job.

Set & Forget as a philosophy is quite simply… everything, every little thing I do that has anything to do with property is set it up in such a way that I can forget it for a full 2 years, then l simply set it up again so l can forget it for another 2 years.

The reasons for this are simple: firstly, the biggest assumption we make in property is that it will double every 7-10 years. So if we Set and Forget 4 or 5 times our property will have doubled in value. Secondly, the other and more important reason is that I have better things to do with my time than spend it on my portfolio. I often laugh at how simple my portfolio is to manage with Set & Forget.

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Here are some practical examples of what I mean when I say Set & Forget:-

Everyone of my properties is fully managed, each property has the rent paid into my account between the 1st and 9th of the month, every property has the mortgage direct debited out between the 1st and the 6th of the month, every other direct debit from Personal loans, TV licence, Council Tax, credit cards come out between the 1st and 10th. It simply means that between the 1st and the 10th I am setting my cashflow up for the month and the 10th to the end of the month I can forget it, after all I have better things to do with my life, like getting my helicopter pilots licence.

Another is that I really don't have to know much about the state of the current property market because the only time I need to consider my property or where the market is at is once every 2 years when I want to restructure it.

I always have each property fully managed so I can forget about tenants, damage, maintenance, or anything related to the property. The property becomes nothing more than a number, numbers are easy to forget. So this means that l can forget the numbers and focus on living.

For me this is really why you build a portfolio - to give you more life not to take on a second job as a property manager.

Now I am a realist and until you build your emotional intelligence as an investor you will find it hard to forget but as time goes on you will more and more appreciate the fact that someone else is ‘doing' all the work for you. Just wait until your first remortgage, it might only be for say £20,000 but when you add the actual hours you worked on that property you will wonder why you didn't start years ago.

As with anything you just start, Set and Forget begins with faith and over time will develop into certainty. I have developed to a level of certainty now so my emotional response to any situation that arises is quite numb or downright none existent. Once you get to this level you have truly mastered the Set and Forget Philosophy.

Now please don't think that you will ever truly totally forget a property or have no emotional response at all. As a member of the human species you are an emotional being but with emotional intelligence you can control the responses through education and experience. This is my simple definition of emotional intelligence - quality education backed up with experience.

Live with passion,

Brett Wood