Money For Nothing And Your Property For Free – In-depth Review

Is "Money for nothing and your property for free," for real? Is Andy Shaw a sincere person or is he just out to take your money and run? Read on, all will be revealed – well, our opinion anyway.

We purchased Andy’s book "Money for nothing and your property for free" just before Christmas of 2006. There was a lot of hype around it and the sales pitch was so good that we couldn’t resist. There are very few property investors who can claim to have bought £12,000 000 worth of property in their first 12 months, yet this is the claim that Andy makes.

Was it worth the price?

What did we think of the book overall?

The truth is the first time we read it we remember thinking that it was o.k. but there was nothing earth shatteringly new in it. However, before we did this review we thought we should read it again, so that is exactly what we did.

In between reading Andy’s book for the first and second time we had read many negative comments about his book, his forum and him in general. These comments where normally posted on property forums and range from people not thinking that he had delivered on what he had promised in the book to those that thought he was just out to get their money and sign them up for his passive investments company (more about this company later).

Before reading the book for a second time, we had to make a decision to do our best to be impartial and to not have our view tainted by things we have read else where.

Be Warned, Andy's style of Writing is very conversational and he goes on a bit sometimes and repeats himself (a bit like us), this leads to a book that is probably about twice as long as it needed to be, and is perhaps to personally orientated.

Our opinion of the book, on the second read through with an open mind, is that it is Excellent and well worth the read.

Is it for everyone?

Good question! Now, we come to one of the problems people probably had and still have with the book.

We would actually say yes this book can be for everyone, if and only if it is read with an open mind. The truth is the book does not give any magic formula as to how Andy obtained his wealth. Listed below are some of the things it does do instead:

• What it does instead is go into depth about why property is beyond a doubt the best way for the ordinary man on the street to become wealthy.
• It endeavours to tell you where in Andy’s opinion most so called property investors are going wrong and why this means they are missing out on thousands of pounds worth of profit.
• It gives a simple strategy to use to start making money from property quickly.

Anything Negative?

Yes there were a couple of things we thought could be better.

1. One major thing we thought was lacking was that in, “Money for nothing and your property for free,” Andy talked many times about finding BMV properties but he didn’t actually give many techniques on how to do it. The main advice given in this area seemed to be to just no your local area enough so that you can recognise when I property is undervalued and/or know you local estate agents well enough so that you can siphon out of them if someone is willing to accept a below market value offer.

   There was no helpful marketing advice on how to effectively leaflet drop, write newspaper ads, network or any other technique that most property investors writing a book would include as standard.

   Even though, because we have been around property investing for a while, we saw this as a weakness of the book. We could still understand why these things were possibly left out. Andy’s purpose in the book seemed to be to keep things simple and if he started given a lot of different techniques to do this and that then he would potentially be failing in his mission.

   Instead his message was very simple – just go out there and do some research and then start buying 1-2 bed flats BMV. In a nutshell, that was the essence and message of the book . Forget everything you have heard and this strategy and that strategy, to begin with, just buy 1-2 bed flats near where you live – simple as that.

   And also NEVER NEVER SELL!

2. The other major issue for us was Andy Shaw's forum was not as interactive, lively and useful as we had been lead to believe. When purchasing the book we automatically got 1-2 months free membership of his site, after this point it would revert to being well over £40 a month inclusive of VAT.

   WE thought this was well over priced for a forum that, even though it was made up of very nice people, is no match for other investment property forums out there.

   Andy states that his forum is not just about property investing but also about lots of different areas of wealth creation and well being in general. While we were members this simply was not the case.

Overall how would we rate Andy’s book and his forum?

When read with an open mind, “Your money for nothing and your property for free” is a fantastic and an inspirational book. There are some useful common sense tips on things like how to deal with letting agents and builders, that makes perfect sense, yet many property investors simply aren’t doing them.

The forum for us was a big let down. It was made up of a bunch of really nice helpful people, but very few experienced investors. At the time when we where members (between about Jan 2007 and March 2007) we didn’t feel that the forum was offering what we had expected. We had expected not just property info but info and advice on wealth building in general, unfortunately we felt as though neither was prevalent.

However, it was still early days and Andy and his team were still getting used to how to run a popular forum. Perhaps things have changed?

What is Andy’s company passive investments all about?

At the time of writing Andy’s passive investments company charges clients about £30,000 and then they go out and buy investment properties for them. As well as this, the company takes a share of the profits down the line as well.

To the ordinary property investor these fees seem extremely steep. And they possibly are, it all depends on how you look at it! The ordinary buy to let investor knows that all people need to do is get off their butt, learn a few things and then take action.

However, people that are involved in property investing sometimes fail to realise that not everyone wants to have to learn about property, maybe because they are scared, they don’t have the time, they lack confidence, or a host of other reasons. And know matter how many times you tell them that it is straight forward to make money from property, they simply are not going to take action and actually do it.

What Andy has done is to find a niche. He isn’t about selling courses, seminars or training like many others are. What his company appear to do is find people who have money, and want to make money from property, but don’t want to go through the hassle of learning and doing it themselves. They would rather pay an expert to do it.

So yes, to the already successful investor, anything spent on courses, seminars etc is a waste of money when all the information is out there for free, it’s just a matter of going out and finding it and putting some hard work in.

But to the scared individual who knows they need to get into property but lacks the time, ability or confidence to do it themselves. Then something like Andy’s company could fit the bill. Now whether he actually does what he promises and delivers is a totally different story but the concept is sound and the niche is definitely there. Time will tell whether passive investments have bitten off more than they can chew.

So is Andy’s book just a ploy to get you to spend money on with his passive investment company or forum?

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Well, yes and no. Andy is obviously a business man and he knows that by offering a fairly inexpensive book he can get in front of a huge amount of people, much more than if he posted the price of passive investments somewhere and waited for a bite from people eager to spend their money.

His book “Money for nothing and your property for free” is a great read in itself and worthy of a position on the bookshelf of anyone interested in making money from property.

He mentions throughout the book that to make money from property, you don’t need to be an expert and you don’t need the help of experts, not even him. He makes this very clear several times.

Before the end of the book he even advises that it would probably be best if some people didn’t read any further because to much information will probably do them more harm than good and it would be better for them to just go out and start taking action. He mentions this before he really gets into his passive investments pitch, which is at the end of the book.

The bottom line is that we felt that Andy has devised his strategy and plan with his book in a number of different ways. A few ways he has probably done this are listed below.

• He makes money from the initial sale of the book.
• He makes money and residual ongoing income from membership to his forum.
• He makes money from people reading his book and then going on to pay him through passive investments to buy property for them.

We personally don’t see anything wrong in those – AS LONG AS HE IS DELIVERING WHAT HE PROMISES. We think the book delivers and inspires well, the forum while we were members, did not live up to expectations and was far to over priced for what it was. As for passive investments? Well, only time and the profits of its clients will be able to tell that.

Our overall impression of the book and Andy was that it was written sincerely to try and help people to stop procrastinating and to get stuck into property investing. Yet, it was still written by a business man with a good brain for making money and hence there are many opportunities for him to make lots of money on the back end of the book.

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