Completely green investor from Brisbane

Hi,
As the thread suggests - I am completely green at this. I am yet to acquire my first investment. I've been standing on the sidelines watching the game for at least 2 years now.
I listen to a few different podcasts on property investing and have read a lot of books. About the only thing I haven't done is trudged along to all of the free seminars every Saturday because I believe that if you don't have to pay for something it is because *you* are the product.

So, a little about me:
Early 30s, married with 1 child. Both my wife and I work full time in the human services field. We both have decent wages and we save some cash, but I feel like we both work way harder than our bank accounts suggest. I also feel like I am missing my daughter growing up. So my why is, like most people - I want to be in control of my time and I just don't believe we're meant to spend 5/7ths of our lives away from our families in order to be able to afford to spend the remaining 2/7ths with them (which you also don't do because you have to do all the admin and domestic stuff during that 2/7ths as well).

We purchased our PPR in 2012 in the Bayside area and really enjoy living there although that house is not going to be our forever home. We bought it with the plan to do a renovation but life got in the way. Finally, we started the renovation in August 2017 and I thought we had finished in October, but the wife has decided that we just need plantation shutters. So they should be on by the end of the month and then we're done.

Our plan is to have the place revalued, draw the equity and purchase IP1. We intend to acquire a number of properties over the next few years and draw on some of the passive income to replace our wages so we can both drop back to part time work. I also own a small business which currently generates $0 in revenue as I just don't have the time to devote to it, so in the future, I plan to leave my safe office job and run my small business as my only source of PAYG income. At this early stage, my 'phase 1' goal is to build a portfolio of $5m in purchase price. I think aiming for 10 or 20 houses or '10 million in assets' is a bit distracting as any portfolio should eventually be worth 10mil, but I don't want to wait 60 years for that and I don't want 20 houses in a portfolio when I could have 10 and the same net worth. So, 5mil in purchase price is my measure. In the last five years, we've been to New York twice and love it there, so a stretch goal for us is to buy a 2 bedroom, full kitchen apartment in Manhattan that we can rent out most of the year, but have access to for our holidays. I'm not sure just how much of a pipe dream that is.

So one of the things I have joined this forum for is to find an investing companion. Not a business partner (although that isn't out of the question down the line). I'm looking to develop a relationship with someone in a similar position to me - around the same age and family situation, preferably in Brisbane and set to acquire their first property this year and plans for many more. What I am looking for in this relationship is friendly competition and accountability and I will offer the same. We'll discuss our short/medium/long term goals, compare our business plans, maybe even throw each other options if we're looking at different asset classes - but what I really want is someone to drive me on when I am being lazy, remind me of my goals and rub my face in it a little when they move ahead of me. So if you're reading this, fit the profile and think you have the type of personality that would also benefit from this type of relationship - get in contact and we can share some pms to see if we get along and think we're the right fit for each other.

 

I agree that it is a big goal. At the moment, that is the end of my 'acquisition phase' but it is just something to aim for at this stage. I agree it is simplistic, but then, I am starting out with a simple plan - buy and hold or buy renovate and hold. Down the line I may cut some blocks or knock a house down to build something else - these things would result in a more evolved 'finish line.' But, for the next 2 or 3 years, I have my simple target to aim for.

 

One of the things you could do is go to the Brisbane Property Networking Group (meetup.com) group run by Matt Jones, held at the Brisbane Broncos club monthly. Brisbane Property Networking Group (Brisbane, Australia)

 

Welcome. Us Brisbane Property Chatters get together once a month or so to catch up in person. The Gold Coast one is pretty regular and was a great group the one time I made the trip down the motorway to meet them.

 

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Have you spoken to a broker yet? Please do so as your very first step as your simple goal may prove not so simple. Best to change course early if need be than finding out too late that you haven't pushed your advantage by tweaking the strategy early.

You'll have to be on a very high income indeed to purchase $5M worth in 3 years in a buy and hold strategy.

 

Hi Brad

Welcome to the forum and hope you enjoy your time with us.

Congratulations on setting your investment goals but understand an element of discipline is required.

I was fortunate enough to have built a multi million dollar unencumbered portfolio at the end of the 90's and retired in 2004 at the age of 40.

The strategies that worked 15 years ago will not work now so you need to be adaptive and creative.

Happy to email you over a couple of the PDF articles i wrote for the API magazine on how i built my portfolio.

Cheers


Richard

 

Welcome. Based on your opening post you still have a lot to learn but your in the right place for that. Try to network with other successful investors on here and also attend your local meet up. Meeting with a savvy broker can also help you clarify things from a numbers perspective. You actually have some conflicting goals which you probably don't dully realize atm. Learn from other successful people In this industry and enjoy the journey.

 

Welcome!

Great to see more locals. Fantastic first post with all the essentials;

- Baseline knowledge.
- Goals.
- Reasons why.

Bayside is lovely as well, and values are doing well so you should be pleasantly surprised about drawing equity from your PPOR.

 

Also, we don't judge anybody on their colour.



lol.

 

I laughed more than was warranted.

 

Apparently he lived here:


By the way, this house at Colyton sold for only 700K 2 years ago. A bargain I think. From memory it had 8 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms. It was repainted grey prior to sale.

 

when did you get that suit @datto ?

 

welcome to PC @Brad-corp, like the way how you describe things and pro active approach.

 

I got it when I used to work as a nose cleaner.

I've got a brown coloured suit as well.

 

Thanks for the laughs people. We've re-painted now!
Thanks for the advice on the Brokers! We thought we had found a decent broker when we bought our PPOR. However, when we went back to re-draw on the loan to do our reno we got chatting quite a bit and found he greatly disagrees with owning multiple properties as a strategy and had a very traditional view of buying, paying off your mortgage and freeing up your PAYG cash. So we're not going to use him again. I've spoken to a few different brokers and a few all-in-one type firms but just feel lost with that side of things.
I can see the value in having a professional help find my investment, manage a cosmetic reno and then act as the tenant, but paying a firm like this 10k means I have 10k less of a deposit which means I'm buying a totally different class of asset!
@Leo2413 I assume when you talk about conflicting goals you mean about wanting to grow an asset base quickly but also step out of full time employment at the same time? This is what I am grappling with at the moment. I just feel like I am missing my own life the way things are at the moment and want to change that as quickly as possible. I know that my work-related goals are really something that I shouldn't be thinking about for a decade or so while I do the other stuff, but I just don't think I can stick it out for that long. I also know that diving head first in to my business would mean it would be impossible to get funding from a bank for property, so if that happened I'd need to find funding from other sources - something I know nothing about.

 

Yeah bloke is absolutely clueless. Wouldn't ever use him again for anything tbh.

Yes, pretty much. At the end of the day I think you just need to find a balance of what suits your personal life and investment goals as well. It is more than likely though that you will need to sacrifice in certain places for awhile. Its not really possible to have everything you would like at the same time.

 

Yeah, I agree that it's not possible to do everything at the same time. A compromise I've been toying with is to either take a pay reduction at work and cut back to being .8FTE rather than FT, or jump to a new organisation at a higher level but on a PT basis, so in real terms, my income won't increase but I would work less days.
While that festers away in the back of my head, I need to stay focused on getting my first IP.

We had the local REA come out to talk to us about selling (something we have no intention of doing, just wanted to get an idea of the market value of our place). His number came in about 30-40k less than I was expecting and I assume a bank valuer is likely to be more harsh, so I think this is going to change our strategy somewhat since "wait 2 more years" is not an acceptable strategy anymore!

 

when is the next brisbane meet up!?! I’d love to come