Significant debt on IP, do we wait it out or offload?

Properties are all in Townsville, not city, but inner suburbs (Pimlico for houses and Hyde Park for Unit).

Appreciate the viewpoints to date. I was also thinking of offloading everything - its a huge kick in the guts when i think over the last 6-8 years i have not taken the time to sit down and do the numbers properly. I consider myself to be a reasonably intelligent person, however it is easy to be lulled into a false sense of security while things remain stagnant - wasn't getting ahead, but we also were coping, so i was just thinking about 'when' (????) capital value increased we could get out then. However i realise now my stupidity/naivety so i think the best course is to cut our losses, work super hard at paying off the remaining debt and starting again. The real stinker in all of this, is that we had our owner occupied home paid off 12 years ago....now we will owe over $300k on it. Very expensive lesson to learn, however better now than in another 5 or 10 years when i am 50.

 

You are right to consider holding too, of course. Maybe you can use this thread as food for thought rather than the gospel truth. In fact, I'd say there's at least one poster who doesn't even know where Townsville is.
I wonder which of the properties you like best? As I said before, nothing wrong with either price or location necessarily; just that yield isn't helping with the 'hold' with some of these.

 

At the moment, if you continue doing what you are doing, you will probably keep on mounting up losses. Where does that lead? Financial success, or financial destitution?

Maybe you hold and things improve but I am unconvinced from what you have said that you have enough resources to weather any financial or costly personal storms. I hope you do.

If you take action (and seek some professional advice, e.g. talk to broker and finance expert about what happens when you sell one of your leveraged properties given your debt)
you may walk out with a house paid off, and an opportunity to retire and spend time with your children. Maybe you can save enough money to pay for educational opportunities and other important life opportunities you want for them.

I'm not going to tell you what to do, because no one can do that, and I do not have a crystal ball. I would tread carefully and look at the likely best and worst case scenarios if you continue to bleed money. What do you do if you lose your job, rent returns reduce, interest rates go up? Have you got a plan for life hitting the fan in your current position?

 

PPOR
I once lived in a Town House in a prestige suburb of Sydney BC was $3850 per quarter.
Yes ladies and gents $15400 per annum.

I justified it because we loved the area so much but in the end I could not deal with the outgoings we sold and moved.

It was a huge weight lifted off our shoulders.
As others suggested the unit worth high Strata cost would be my first pick.

 

I saw this post in a reddit post while searching for something else and I've read through the comments, did you get much help about this from the comments?

 

With regards to Body Corporate fees, one should NOT look at the dollar amount.

One should look at them as a percentage of the gross rent.

We have an Apartment where our BC fees are similar to yours in $ terms.

Ours is 12.5% of the gross rent .

Yours is 59.8% of your gross rent

We feel ours is high but, one day, it will be come our PPOR (so it is ultimately a lifestyle choice for us) .

 

@unsure

What was the outcome?

 

Not sure the outcome, but I think he should keep things to himself personally after making up his mind using professional service or seeking advise like those replied nicely in this thread via pm.

And dump the comments on reddit, it shows the quality of the site via those comments.

 

What?

 

Wow so you have $1M+ of debt with only approx $1.25M of assets and everything on interest only...
I hope for your sake you were able to cut your losses and sell everything so you can keep your PPOR.

We all make mistakes, it's what you learn from them that makes the biggest difference.