Hi All, My name is Shawn and I'm new to the forum and real estate investing. My family consisting of myself, my wife and 2 ankle biters live in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. I run an IT consulting firm and a martial arts school. I've been looking into investing for quite some time. I love audio books so that has been my main method of study. I'm now at a point I'm analysing deals and looking to buy my first investment property. My strategy is to look at a very small/cheap place to start as I figure I'll make mistakes on the first one. I'm currently looking at 2 bedroom units and 3 bedroom semi-detached with some deferred maintenence issues to resolve and rent. I have the skills to do pretty much any renovations myself (having sold my last home which I renovated throughout myself), but will look to use contractors for most of it. I've had some challenges in moving forward, which I'll post in the relevant forum areas. Why I'm doing this.... well, it's really about building wealth long-term for myself and my kids. I'm now in my mid-30's and I don't think there will be pensions by the time I retire, so I need to make sure we are financially free by then. Ideally, I'm aiming to do that a lot sooner though. Other than that, I would love to tour and I would love to spend more time giving to others such as charity work and coaching. I look forward to chatting with you. Cheers, Shawn
Welcome! I don't see an issue buying cheaper end properties. I know a few who've made a fortune with this strategy. Mine are mostly cheapies and I only work part of the year thanks to the modest cashflow, if at all. My honest advice from experience would be don't go too cheap. You can have a less desirable tenant pool which can take alot of energy to manage and cost more in time, money and stress (general comment). You sound like you have enough going on as it is. You need to accumulate more of the real cheapies to create the growth to move forward e.g 20%increase on a $150k property vs $400k property over same period. I'd tend to favour stand alone houses, but depends on the local market. Watch for apartment oversupply and strata costs that suck back most of the profit. All my comments are general, depends on the local market at the time. Buy what you can afford though. Better to do something than nothing at all.
Forgot to say, you should maybe talk to @D.T. on this forum who is a bit of an Adelaide expert and always generous in sharing info.
Hi Shawn and welcome. Given your skills I'd probably skip those markets. You can get 3 bed houses cheaply enough when they need a bit of work - they typically scare the FHBs away and revalue / rent much better once brought up to standard.
Hey Shawn I'm from Adelaide too. what marital arts school do you run? I've done akido for several years - brilliant form
Welcome Shawn. Reading your first post the unit/semi preference jumped out - and I can see DT and Brady picked up the same thing I was thinking. Much better to stick to 3+ bedroom homes in metro Adelaide - the price differential isn't that large that you may as well have your preferences towards the most sought after common stock in the same price range. Being Northern based will certainly be in your favour as any familiarity will help as there's a plethora of cheapy/cash flow property areas from the Salisbury council onwards.
@ellejay, @D.T., @Brady, @Corey Batt thank you for the advice. This is precisely why I joined the forum. All I know is theory and that's not even close to the value of experience, so I really appreciate the advice. The challenge will be for me to stretch the budget a little further for a house. I'll be keen to pick your brains some more, thank you. @Xenia - I run DENSHINKAN (www.martialartsadelaide.com).... am I allowed to post that here? Anyway, I teach Kenpo and JuJutsu. Ah yes, Aikido is great. I used to teach Hapkido which is similar in a lot of ways to Aikido (Hapkido is just the Korean pronunciation of 合気道 ...Aikido), but also different in several ways. All arts have something to offer I think.
