Hi I'm Gockie

Discussion in 'Introductions' started by Gockie, 20th Jun, 2015.

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  1. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

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    Hi Everybody,
    I'm Gockie, a volleyball player in Sydney, living in the booming Epping area. Let me say, I'm so glad we bought back in 2008....

    My heritage is Southern Chinese, but I can't speak any kind of Chinese fluently. o_O
    I currently work for Commonwealth Bank in Parramatta, building Reporting Solutions in the Financial Operations team using Teradata, Excel, SQL Server, SSIS, SSRS. I love my work!

    In my spare time along with Airbnbing, (more on that in a moment) I manage a couple of Volleyball comps for Sydney North Volleyball, (I'm also a Board member of the club). I play volleyball in the Sydney League, and I'm a qualified volleyball referee too.

    Property though is what I feel will make me rich and potentially retire early ;)

    I currently have 3 IPs in Suburban Sydney, and will hopefully (touch wood) have one in Brisbane in just over a months time if all goes to plan - will find out on Tuesday if finance is approved!!.

    Back to Airbnb, I am currently Airbnbing one of my Sydney properties which is located in Darlington (near Chippendale and Redfern), and it's been going amazingly well:
    https://www.airbnb.com.au/rooms/4532525

    Always learning
    I'd like to say mindset is really important, reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad got me onto how to think - don't trade hours for money, instead, you need income producing assets

    Going to my first ever Somersoft meetup in about 2007 was fantastic - thanks Sim for organising!!! In one of the early meetups in Chatswood I met Karina who had bought all these properties over in Geraldton for about $60k each - what a bargain! But she could see that they were all undervalued. She also got me onto the book "Ordinary Millionaires". - lots of creative solutions, some people just made lots of money by sheer luck of the situation, but they were able to recognise it.

    I'd also say finding the Mr. Money Moustache Blog (pointed out to me by KathrynD) was wonderful - you can live and retire on very little if you don't spend money stupidly.

    Having the right people around you - you can learn so much and get the encouragement. Lots to learn, and lots of expertise around!

    Anyway, I'm happy to chat with any forum members, oh, and by the way, if you haven't used Airbnb before, signup with this link for a discount: https://www.airbnb.com.au/c/lgock1

    Enjoy the journey,
    Gockie.
     
    thatbum and RetireRich101 like this.
  2. RetireRich101

    RetireRich101 Well-Known Member

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    Hi Gockie,

    Thanks for sharing and congrats of your achievement.

    Regarding your airbnb in Darlington.

    How long have you been doing this?
    Does the numbers work much better than normal regular renting out?
    You live in Epping, how do you manage airbnb in terms of cleaning, greeting of guest, call outs of guest?
     
  3. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

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    Thanks RetireRich.
    I've been doing Airbnb hosting since December. Very popular from the word go! I first thought to myself to Airbnb it for Dec to Feb and have it as a regular rental for the usual uni semester, but the popularity over the summer blew me away. I pretty much instantly got a 6 week booking covering the second half of Jan and all of Feb.

    Yes, the numbers do stack up, but the rent wouldn't be too shabby either as a regular rental. It is definitely more work as an Airbnb (much more cleaning, and work to always make the place as good as it can be, so I pay attention to the quality of the items in the property), but for now, I'm continuing with it. I aim for stays of 5 nights or longer to make it easier, and will never ever accept a 1 night stay. (I've done 2 nights only to fill in gaps). It feels not locked in, lots of flexibility should I ever feel like I need the place for myself. You can also charge more for peak periods and people will pay it. You do get the odd enquiry of people wanting to do longer stays with a lower rate through the Airbnb site, (eg. Their lease is running out but the uni semester still goes for x weeks), one of these days I may just accept it just to reduce hassle.

    I clean/do the changeover when I can, (ie. If there's a night between bookings or its a weekend or the guest is checking in at a very late hour in the evening), otherwise I have people who I can text who will do it. Good thing with Airbnb is that you can charge a cleaning fee on every booking. Maybe I should outsource more of the cleaning cause my time really is precious though.

    For the greeting of guests, I have a combination lock I use, and just let the guests know the combination when they have booked. Once they have the combination, they can access the keys. So it's very flexible for checking in and out. The great thing about the location is that it's an easy walk to Redfern station, and Redfern is easily accessible from Parramatta or Epping by train. If I drive, I'm usually going against traffic between work and the property and that is unexpectedly awesome. :D
     
  4. Steven Ryan

    Steven Ryan Well-Known Member

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    You're not headed to the Airbnb open this year are you Gockie? I'll be there. The first one in San Fran was fantastic. :)

    Mister Money Mustache's posts have been amazingly helpful. I'm grateful a friend pointed the site out to me–big one. I devoured the whole site.
     
  5. Shahin_Afarin

    Shahin_Afarin Residential and Commercial Broker Business Member

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    Love the creativity with the airnbnb and the place looks very chic.

    How did you get into the whole airbnb?

    Im such a dinosaur when it comes to these things.
     
  6. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

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    Unfortunately no plans to go to the open cause I had already bought cheap Air Asia flights that is due to arrive in Aus again a couple of days earlier before the event was announced... Maybe I'll attend next year.
    Yeah, I'm sure the San Francisco one would have been fantastic, especially being Airbnb's birthplace, and it's a fabulous city to boot... Not dissimilar to Sydney. I think I could possibly live there...
     
  7. Gockie

    Gockie Life is good ☺️ Premium Member

    Joined:
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    Thanks Shahin. :)

    I first stayed at an Airbnb in Jan 2014 when visiting Christchurch. The guy owning it is an accountant, and he just rents out rooms. Cool! He also had nailed down the combination lock for keys so you could check in and out anytime. His place isn't flash, but perfectly located for what I needed.
    So, anyway, I was looking to buy someplace in Sydney, thought I'd like to buy a 2 Br unit in Parramatta as I had started working there for a ~$400k budget.
    I had picked out exactly where I wanted to buy....
    .... Turned out that wasn't really possible!
    1. Prices had already gone up about $100k more than I thought
    2. The part of Parramatta I really wanted, properties rarely come onto the market!

    So then I decided, ok, I'll look towards the city.
    Having studied at Sydney uni, I thought, I'd like to buy around there.
    I was looking for close to transport, close to uni, etc etc. low strata.

    So I saw a few. I liked this property. Not too high strata, nice looking block, great location, three balconies, great layout, no lifts, no pools, no gyms and a car space! Handy to cafe and pub too, just across the street. I had a volleyball tourney out in Penrith on for the same day of the auction though. Friend talked me into going to the volleyball...... Anyway, I missed the auction, but I followed up the agent and for some reason, it did not sell at auction! (This is October 2014). Unbelievable! So I was calm and made an offer in the following week. (I had bargaining power too) :p So I got a 1/1/1 unit that's a 4 minute walk to Redfern station, car space on separate title.... I believe it's easily worth about 100k more than I purchased it for.

    So anyway, I was thinking of what to do with it, and decided instead of doing a typical rental, why not Airbnb it over the summer.... As settlement was in early December I knew there would be huge demand over the New Years period. I would have even liked to stay there myself but the income I could get for it over that period.... The money won out. First guest wrote such a good review.... Omg.... All the reviews have been really good and it's basically all been positive!
     
    Last edited: 20th Jun, 2015