Perp

Hi, I'm Perp. (Not Prep. Like short for "perpetrator", but no, that's not where it comes from. It was my brother's name for me when he was a baby.) Despite popular misconception, I'm female.

We've bought and sold a handful of houses, then put all the equity we'd accumulated from those properties into one large investment - 16 rooms of student accommodation in the CBD - that went horribly wrong, starting with a conveyancing error, and from which we never recovered. :/ Simultaneously, we had our home flooded twice - in '09 and '11 - and spent several years fighting our insurer - argh! - and only recently moved back into our sparkly new PPOR (high set) after more than 4 years as refugee tenants. We also got rid of our albatross student accommodation recently.

We're now in our 40s and starting over, with only our PPOR. I'm not planning to invest in more property in the near future. I don't think the future for property (other than some niches) is that great, though I'm not predicting armageddon either; just prolonged stagnation.

Fortunately hubby has a strong income and I'm ploughing through a law degree - initiated as a result of what I learned fighting our insurer, and my profound rage and sense of injustice - that I hope will allow me to help us re-build, too.

Whilst not planning any property investments, I'm here because 1) I have lots of friends here, I've been here 8 years, and 2) I have lots of experiences that I hope are valuable. I can serve as a reminder that it can go wrong!

 

Wow, good for you for staying on the forums, even though you've had such a journey.

And.... I am one of the many who wouldn't have picked you as being female based on your username.

 

It's even more important for those of us with other-than-success-only journeys to stay, or it can appear deceptively easy.

It never occurred to me that "Perp" sounded male, but I would've thought my profile pic was a bit girlie...

 

Mind blown. I don't know why I assumed otherwise - I guess it was the username I link perp with perpetrator....and only dudes commit crime. Right?

Cheers

Jamie

 

So pleased you are finally back in your own home. What an incredible ordeal it has been for your family, and sadly the effects will probably continue for some time.

Like Perp, our property investments are behind us as we embark on retirement. The journey has been one of swings and roundabouts, but overall we made substantial gains to our asset base.

I enjoy following the discussions and marvel at how much things have changed since we started property investment in the 1980s, a time of 80% maximum finance (accompanied by a subservient approach to an all-powerful bank manager!) and 16% interest rates, offset by an average 10% rental yield on property value.
Marg.

 

Yes, we too have had our share of hard earned lessons in investing. And now we are trying to diversify our investments and not solely on the super. So glad to hear that you are doing something positive after all that. Cheers.

 

Hi Perp, tough journey! Glad to see things are looking up for you guys!
Would you mind perhaps sharing what your investing focus will be moving forward? It's always interesting to see what others are doing.

Cheers

 

Some people assumed I was a guy too so I figured I'd put a profile pic up showing my face. It wasn't for the sake of vanity.

 

Thanks. We're all happy and healthy and united as a family, and that's more than many can say, and is particularly pleasing after what we've been through the past few years. I hadn't yet mentioned that the kids had post-flood PTSD. And the bank threatened to foreclose our mortgage during our insurance fight - even though we remained current on payments whilst paying rent elsewhere - because the house wasn't habitable, and thus there was no asset securing our mortgage and we were > 100% LVR.

I learned that I, and we as a family, had more resilience than I'd ever suspected!

Even from a material perspective, we now have a gorgeous new PPOR, near-zero stress, and pretty decent earning capacity, so things could definitely be a lot worse. It's not a sob story, but it's definitely "not how we'd planned things to turn out".

Pending forthcoming financial and tax advice, we plan to focus on a mix of:

1. In lieu of paying down PPOR debt, for at least as long as we think we can earn better than the interest we're paying on our PPOR, we'll plough most of our excess funds into our discretionary trust and use that to invest in shares or managed funds. We have a few hundred $K of losses we can soak up there. The earnings on those investments become "tax-free" income [OK, I know not strictly tax-free, but "can be offset against already-incurred losses"] that we can use to also reduce PPOR debt. (By which I mean we won't actually put it into the loan, but the plan is to ultimately get enough saved and earned in the DT to pay out our PPOR debt at some point in the next 15 years or so.)
2. Accumulating more super. (Mine has been non-contributory for some years whilst I've been out of the paid workforce, so it's not enough to maintain our lifestyle in retirement unless we ramp it up.)

More property? Possible, but I think it's some years down the track, if ever. I just want a few years of soaking up the bliss of never having a call from a PM or commercial banker.

 

Oh, and if anybody's interested in US property, I'm by no means an expert, but I went and spent a month living in Dallas-Fort Worth in 2009 - just before the first flood - with the intention of buying multi-family property there. I made a load of contacts that I've kept in touch with. I'd love to know how the complex I came *this* close to buying is doing now... but it might make me even more ****** off about what the floods have cost me!

 

Thanks for the detailed relpy, looks like a good plan There are many ways to skin a cat as the saying goes.
All the best!

 

Well done Perp.... it's the mark of true grit to keep bouncing back when you get knocked over

 

Good to hear you're in your new house perp, which suburb are you in now?
The floods were pretty full on, not good how many stories there were of people who had insurance but weren't covered.
And good on you for studying something as substantial as law after all that, very impressive.

 

Thanks for your kind words. You guys are the best. This is (mainly) why I stick around.

We were and remain in Kenmore. We had, and still have, flood insurance. That wasn't the issue, in our case. Our insurer was happy to pay for all the superficial expenses - plasterboard, electrics, lost contents, etc. - but the structural damage that cost twice as much again, well, that wasn't due to the flood, apparently, but just happened gradually over the lifespan of the building.

A bunch of structural engineers disagreed, as did the Ombudsman. The knockout blow was when we remembered that we'd laid self-levelling compound in one room, 14 months prior to the flood, in preparation for laying tiles. The floor in that room, immediately after the flood, was 7cm higher in the middle than the edge, 1.5m away! You could see the visible bulge in the floor. Suck on that, insurer.

 

I always thought that you'd been given a 'get out of gaol' card.

 

Hi Perp,
Did you manage the student accommodation yourself or use a manager?

Love,
Sarah

 

Hi Sarah, we had management. That aspect actually went fairly smoothly.

 

Any managers you can recommend?

 

Damian Haber's team at The Pad: http://www.thepad.com.au/