Sara Terrill:  I have got room for a treat now for all those that were interested in the resources areas.  It’s actually Ian Hosking Richards, who is the Director of Rocket Property Group, who is up next and that’s exactly what he is going to be talking about.  
So just to give you a bit of a background, Ian is a successful property investor, with a multi millionaire dollar property portfolio.  He is CEO and founder of Rocket Property Group, a leading independent real estate agency and each year they help hundreds, thousands of investors, such as yourselves start or grow their investment portfolio.  He is a qualified property investment advisor, he has a Diploma in Financial Services and he holds real estate licenses in New South Wales and Queensland.  You have probably seen his face in your investment property magazine, because he is a regular contributor and just as importantly he was actually voted real estate agent of the year in the Your Investment Property’s Readers’ choice awards for the past 3 years.  So please welcome, well join me in welcoming Ian.
 
Ian Hosking Richards, Rocket Property Group
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  Thanks Sara.
Good morning!!!  Always great to be in Melbourne, came down a little bit early last night to see a show, who’s seen the Jersey Boys.  It’s fantastic isn’t it?  If you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend it. It’s just around the corner in the Princess Theatre.  It’s a really great little theatre, very intimate.  You know you don’t need binoculars to see the stage.
 
So okay today, I am talking about cashing in on Australia’s mining boom.  Who’s interested in hearing about that?  Oh, good, good.  And if you kind of read the newspapers, you could be forgiven for thinking that mining boom is already over.  But I suppose what you got to remember, is that serious investors do not get their financial information from front page of the tabloid press.  So if you want to be a successful investor, then probably you need to look elsewhere as well.  Does that make sense?  Good!
 
So I suppose investing in mining towns is not really any different from investing anywhere else.  Successful investors are going to look for kind of look for the drivers of growth in those areas.  So what are the main kind of drivers of growth?  When you are looking for property what kind of, what kind of drivers are we looking for?
 
Ian Hosking Richards: Population growth, fantastic.  So we are looking for rising population growth, we are looking for bigger than, bigger than average population growth.  What else are you looking for?
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  New infrastructure.  Absolutely, we are looking for new infrastructure, public – private infrastructure and it’s really important when you are looking at new infrastructure projects to make sure that they are actually solid projects.  I know a lot of people who jumped into Gelton 5 years ago on the back of the Murchison project which  you know is still yet to receive funding.  I know quite a few people who invested in Whyalla as well and jumped into that market based on the expansion of the Olympic Dam Project and again that was a project that was subsequently shelved.
 
So it is really really important when you are looking at planned infrastructure projects, you want to need, you want to know that at least they have got their environmental impact statement signed off, that funding is in place and they are fairly kind of sure that they are going to go ahead.  If you are making a decision based on that, you know the employment opportunities in the infrastructure development going on, you want to make sure that they are actually going to happen.  What else have you got?
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  Employment, yeah.  New employment opportunities.  There’s got to be a couple more there.
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  Resources, I’d say that’s a bit related to infrastructure. Thanks Karen.
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  Education.  
 
Ian Hosking Richards:  Yeah, that’s again kind of infrastructure, well that’s what we call community infrastructure.