'Fail to Plan' : 'Plan to Fail' is a well known quotation attributed to Benjamin Franklin which applies to many aspects of our daily lives, and which can also make a huge difference in determining our success from property investing .

Many of you reading this magazine will have a reasonable size portfolio of properties, often built up over many years during which you will have had to deal with the ongoing management of property and people 'issues' i.e. difficult tenants and awkward trades.

At times it can seem like a 'hard slog' but the periods of rising property values which can considerably enhance your equity stake are the reward for ongoing perseverance in dealing with the management of your property business.

So having outlined the above I am often surprised when meeting people at various property events just how little thought some subscribers put towards long term tax planning to minimise their future tax payments relating to CGT and IHT.

Inside this edition we have (once again) an excellent article on taxation from Carl Bayley who has been contributing to PIN magazine for some ten years. This month's article on page 16 from Carl contains two particular strategies for minimising your potential tax outlay and the one focusing on CGT was prompted by a long term reader from an email I received a few months ago. (Thanks Kevin)

Regular readers will be aware that I have been suggesting for about two years that 'buy to sell' is a strategy well worth considering, alongside that of continuing to create a healthy long term rental property portfolio. So it's quite enlightening to hear inside this edition on page 24 just how another of our long term subscribers, Susannah Cole has been applying a buy to sell strategy with some success in recent years.

Is it as easy to find deals as it was five years ago? No it's not, certainly around the south east of England and increasing now in some other UK regions, a fact which is regularly reinforced to me by people I meet at events, but deals are out there as I was reminded of at an auction when a deal on my own patch in London was sold at auction a few weeks ago for a price which I believe was considerably less than its 'worth'. It came up on my EIG auction alerts but for once I was 'too busy' to find the time to do the due diligence on the lot in question and to go along on the viewing day at the property.

Ah well, who needs the approximate £60,000 which is what I think I have lost out on by not planning my time sufficiently and being more organized. Lesson learnt (yet again)….

Concluding matters, your feedback to me and my colleagues here at PIN magazine via email or telephone is really helpful for us in shaping the magazine content, so if you have any suggestions on article topics that you want to know more about, please drop me a line via email to: richard@property-investor-news.com