Knowing what you know now...

In that case... my parents should have bought the Cliff Rd House in Epping back in the 1990's and they should not have sold the Dundas Valley house.

 

A Bentley for 65K???? Sold!

 

Of course. I don't have any other.

 

Something that is underperforming if you use those monies elsewhere. If you are happy with 0% growth and 5% yield - good for you. Every investor has their own guidelines.

 

Should have purchased that short term motel accom for $0...30 rooms... previous owner went bust with the pub ! The motel re opened... and running at 80% occupancy... bringing in a cool $9000 net income a month...for little effort.

 

Other mistake..selling a property in north ryde for $675,000 just before the recent sydney boom...it was sold again 2 months ago for 1.5m (duplex site 20m frontage) 5 min walk from school.

 

If we're talking "knowing what you know now", I would analyse the data for all of the houses I've looked at, identify the one that has performed the best, and go back in time to buy it.
But I'd probably also put some money on a Melbourne Cup or 2 as well.

 

I know the feeling. I also should have bought a block of land I looked at Rosebud. Asking price was $26,000.

 

Tough one - there's a few things I'd like to change.

But maybe the biggest one of them all is time. Start doing anything earlier, whether it's buying a house, getting married, having kids, starting a hedge fund etc.

 

Yep. It also means I would have started investing about 12 yrs earlier, so would have been well ahead in equity stakes.

 

Back in the mid '90s, would have found an accountant who was familiar with family trusts, rather than putting capital assets into a company. Admittedly, that was a couple of years before the 50% CGT discount was introduced (so an accountant with foresight as well!), but all the extra tax that's cost me... oh the pain, the pain...

 

Should have started building my cash buffer a few years earlier

 

As a young first time investor this thread is bloody useful! thanks guys

 

8 years ago, when we moved to Australia, we were at a cross roads. We really wanted to start our investing journey but also wanted to build what we "thought" was our dream home, (a big shiny McMansion), as that's something that is not easily achievable in the UK and certainly not on the budget we had.

We met with a broker, formulated an investment plan, worked out what we could borrow and how to start purchasing investments.

Then, we promptly turned around bought a block of land on a whim instead and instead of buying our first IP sank everything into over-speccing a ridiculous glass and steel box in an outer suburb land release.

Took a year for the land to title, a further year to build and within 6 months of moving in we knew it wasn't for us and sold up.

So, three years after formulating "the plan" we came out with precisely what we had when we started (not very much) and in the mean time the suburbs we would have targeted for investment performed very well.

That three year delay "cost" us dearly. I reckon if we'd have stuck to the original plan and started investing instead we'd have been sitting pretty now.

Having said that, it was the whole debacle of trying to sell that house that really helped focus us on making our initial investments in 2013 and trying to get somewhere. If we hadn't done what we did by building "the dream" back then, then there's every chance we'd still be renting and simply talking about when we are going to start investing, sure, might have had a few more quid in the bank but may not have had any IP's and could easily have become one of the side-liners whinging about "it's too late for me to start now, not fair all you guys got sooooo lucky buying when you did...blah blah blah...).

 

That was the intention of the thread. Glad you found it useful @eskander

 

So buy as soon as you can, and don't sell, seems to be the rule of thumb here.

 

.. Agree with the start as soon as your ready... not so sure about the 'don't sell' part though. Its never black or white.

 

So in the theme of don't sell, does that mean we should focus more on the income side of investing as opposed to capital gain? Or do we like the idea of our capital gain on paper but if we sell it will go up in another 10 years so make us all feel like we should have kept everything but then we never realise the gain?

 

Capital growth is what will make you wealthy. Income from the property is what sustains the property while it grows in value.

Investing purely for cashflow and not caring about any CG is a big mistake imo. Same as only investing in 'CG properties' and accepting a very poor yield, absorbing loses year after year is a mistake.

The answer? Its never an easy or straightforward one but..

..a balanced portfolio is important, but the trick is to try and make sure all the properties you buy, medium to long term will have good - great CG.

Thats my take,

 

Started sooner like when I was 18/19 & had deposit from casual work through school, prices were cheaper then also...
I feel like I wasted a whole decade of my life....