Eslam Shaaban – Take Extra Care with Illiquid Property Investments

Guest profile Eslam Shaaban Radwan is a civil construction manager with 13 years of experience in the construction field in the Middle East and Gulf Cooperation Council. He is an international real estate investor, investing in USA, Turkey, Thailand, Brazil & Caribbean. His investments including hotel apartments, single-family house, multi-family house & plots.  Currently, he is enjoying his work at Gulf together with his wife and two kids. He then dreams of managing his own business someday. In this episode, Eslam shares his worst investment story, his wrong decision of not following the right procedure when purchasing a property without visiting the location and relied only on his friends.   “Any investment has a risk but you have to reduce your risk in order to win. In order to win, you have to cover all points. Don't trust anybody. Only trust yourself and ensure everything is legal.” Eslam Shaaban Radwan   Topics Covered:  00:29 – Introduction of Eslam Shaaban Radwan 02:56 – How Eslam was trapped in his worst investment ever: buying a property from a fake property management company 10:12 – Is the company Legit or a Scam? 11:28 – Lessons he learned in order not to do the same mistake in investing on a property. 12:17 – Andrew’s takeaways from Eslam’s experience. 14:56 – Domino effect on Eslam’s other investments in Brazil, Caribbean, and Thailand, stopped. 16:48 – One actionable advice from Eslam to avoid experiencing the same investment fate:: You have to reduce your risk in order to win. Main Takeaways: Lesson 1: “Do not buy anything unless you visit, unless you checked all documents with your lawyer, your attorney at law has to check everything and if its house is in USA single or multi you have to assign a third party for an inspection. Get the Inspection Report then you get the evaluation of the price for the house from the market conditions. Check your ROI per year. Then after you purchase the house, took this decision. You have to find a strong management company from the local market with good credit.” –Eslam Shaaban Radwan Lesson 2:  “There's a higher level of due diligence. That's the first thing.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 3:  “The second thing is that what I also take away and I think it's important for everybody listening is the idea that property investing is an illiquid type of investment. It's not easy to sell. Unlike let's say a stock if you bought a stock in the stock market you don't like it. You can sell it.”– Andrew Stotz Lesson 4: “So my lesson that I always try to share is that when you're facing financial trouble at a business. You have to communicate if you do not communicate about it. You are starting to get yourself into trouble. So that's a third