How hard was it for you..??

Calling anyone who has made their first MILLION dollars from property, how hard was it for you?

Not necessarily interested in how long it took, but more about your experience if you would like to share?


Marisa

 

Easy - thank you capital growth.

 

you too

 

I'm not always either - I think it's a female thing, we love to chat lol

 

At the beginning its seems like out of reach..

We sacrifice small things like buying lunch, coffee in the first 3 years. But we stick to the bigger picture. Start saving 2007, after we lost money in share market. We bought basic normal 3BR house, do reno (painting, replace carpet with laminate floor, etc) while we live in it.

Still doing frugal and saving, 2 years after we purchase IP (don't have idea about reval and equity back then). Then start learning, convert our PPOR loan to IO, reval. Grow our portfolio..

Then suddenly reach our first mill of equity.. I realise that what seems "hard" at the beginning, once you get into the routine/discipline, its become natural. In fact you start enjoyed.
Example : I still bring my own lunch, except catch up with friends. Because healthy reason, I can control the amount oil, salt, pepper, etc. Even though I can afford to buy lunch everyday.

 

I'm hoping for some inspiration here. We are much closer to zero than 1M. :/

 

I'm looking forward to reading everyone's responses. But gosh. You really know how to write a great thread title

 

Halfway there. But working at it.

 

So you should be aiming at $5m

 

That's what she said?

 

Im not there yet, but sitting on the cusp - I can see it sitting there, like an apple on a tree. Cant quite reach it - but damn close.

I made it a lot harder than what it should have been. Mostly through poor decision making and impatience.

What worked well for me was to focus on constantly increasing my income.
What failed me, was thinking I had to always be doing 'something', rather than just letting capital growth do its thing.

Blacky

 

Ah, the joys of that first "BIG" land tax bill. There are no words that can describe it.

 

Yes Scott, still on track.. We did tweak our strategy, and combining manage funds, direct share trading with property.

I realise that I don't have enough knowledge (still learning) on the development, but I believe this will be one of the key for me.

 

I am not there yet but look forward to see what others say!

 

10k in one entity last year thanks to very poor accountant advise on one of my earlier projects.

I can think of a significant number of words, both about the land tax bill, and the accountant

 

It was both hard and easy. Easy because of CG as Xenia & wylie have said.

But hard because:

1. We only started off with 1 x deposit extracted from equity from our (at the time) one & only PPOR. The first valuer was a moose so we found another one with a brain.
   
2. We bought older properties and did renos to increase value and let us refi our deposit back out. So we had to do a lot of project management and hard labour on top of our regular jobs - lots of nights and week-ends and missed kids-things.
   
3. We had to fund renos on credit cards. We had to find willing financiers to refi to after only 2-3 months from purchase.
4. We had to deal with 9-11% mortgage interest rates (and some 17-18% IRs too for a 2 yr period).
5. We overstretched at one point and nearly came undone finance-wise.

But the moral of the story is:

1. have a vision,
   
2. know you are going to experience difficulties and so they are not a surprise,
   
3. be prepared for family opposition (you are how much in debt? )
   
4. don't overstretch but don't take the too-easy route either
   
5. don't stop
   
6. don't stick your head in the sand when the market moves against your position - always have a fall-back position
7. pace yourself - it is not a race

 

first mil from PPOR is that counted? Just bought it 9 years ago and that has been the increase, however not the plan as it was purely the home to live in. IPS after that have been a lot harder to get similar gains.