I am A Buy To Let Investor.

I know, I am sorry, I have contributed to the current crisis, made sure that many young people can no longer afford to live anywhere and also made money from banks and run down areas.

For this I can only apologise.

But, I may only have two houses in my small portfolio of UK property, but in today’s current investment orientated world, I would be labelled a Buy to Let Investor. This term should traditionally imply someone with 20 houses all over the UK and possibly the world, with a combined worth of many millions.

Isn’t that what an investor is?

Well, these days no. Whether you put some money into a small portfolio of houses or you take chances on the stocks and shares, you will be classed as an investor.

According to Wikipedia, an investor is:

“An investor is any party that makes an investment.

The term has taken on a specific meaning in finance to describe the particular types of people and companies that regularly purchase equity or debt securities for financial gain in exchange for funding an expanding company. Less frequently, the term is applied to parties who purchase real estate, currency, commodity derivatives, personal property, or other assets.”

The question has to be, where do you stop becoming someone who has saved a little bit of money in an ISA, which is an investment of sorts, to becoming an investor? I do not think I am an investor, more someone who has a couple of houses in the North, looking to make a long term capital gain on their worth, which in one sense is an investment, but on the other is just a more secure bet of putting surplus money into something that even with the doom and gloom in the media, will make some money, especially if you are taking a 5 or 10 year plan.

Investor is a word that gets applied to anybody these days, and if you were to ask most people labelled by this term, I would guess many, if not the majority, would probably not consider themselves to be an investor. The years of having to work in London, wear a suit and carry a funky leather briefcase and laptop to be classed as an investor are long gone, and now all you need is a laptop, cup of coffee and a UK Bank Account.

So what types of Investors are there?

Well, according to Wikipedia:

* Individual investors (including trusts on behalf of individuals, and umbrella companies formed for two or more to pool investment funds)
* Collectors of art, antiques, and other things of value
* Angel investors, either individually or in groups
* Venture capital funds, which serve as investment collectives on behalf of individuals, companies, pension plans, insurance reserves, or other funds.
* Investment banks
* Businesses that make investments, either directly or via a captive fund
* Investment trusts, including real estate investment trusts
* Mutual funds, hedge funds, and other funds, ownership of which may or may not be publicly traded (these funds typically pool money raised from their owner-subscribers to invest in securities)
* Sovereign wealth funds

The question I would raise is even if you own your own house, you are an investor. You are investing in the house being worth more than you paid for it and if you are on a repayment mortgage, you are looking to slowly chip away at your repayments to eventually own something that has to be considered an investment.

The walls and barriers have come down. Buy a couple of houses, you are an investor, buy some of the Discover And Invest Stamps, you are an investor, put some money into the Discover And Invest ambulance trading, you are an investor.

These days, we are all investors, for different reasons, purposes and methods yes, but deep down, everyone is an investor.