Spludgey's introduction

I'm a 32 year old engineer and started investing around five years ago and have bought the following so far:

• 2010: House in Umina Beach NSW
• 2012: House with granny flat in Woy Woy NSW
• 2012: House in Rockhampton QLD
• 2013: House that's divided into two flats in Rockhampton QLD
• 2013: House in Logan QLD
• 2014: PPOR (house) in Sydney
• 2014: Semi in Elizabeth SA
• 2014: Semi in Elizabeth SA
• 2014: House in Elizabeth SA

My strategies are to focus on high cashflow but I keep in mind that I look in areas that may also have capital gains down the road and aren't reliant on just a single industry. They have to be close to cities or be a regional centre.

Other than investing, I'm very interested in anything that has to do with science and I enjoy spending time outdoors. This year I've also gotten into cycling and have now done well over 1000km so far this year, which is pretty good for a couch potato like me.

 

2014 kept you busy spuldgey!
Repeat in 2015?

 

That is quite a rate of acquisitions.

What's your portfolio cashflow look like today? Positive by 5-figures, I assume.

Didn't know you were a lover of science. I'm in good company, it seems!

 

Congrats on the cycling. I took up cycling in 2010 after losing 30kg so was also a couch potato. Ended up cycling 4000km that year. Most k's I cycled in one week was 300ish when I was trying to reach my goal of 4000km in one year. I prefer challenging bushwalking now.

 

Not a bad collection going on at all Spludgey

 

I've only lost 2kg so far, but I can tell that I've lost a lot of fat and gained a bit of muscle, especially in my legs.

We'll see, I'd like to buy at least three more this year, but it will be of much lesser value than last year if you include my PPOR.

It's just in the 5 figures, yes. The good thing is that it's still negatively geared though. Love depreciation schedules!

I'm not too much into astronomy (though I'll still read about it if there's nothing else around), but other than that I'm very interested in science and technology. Some of my regular youtube viewing are the Veritasium, Vsauce (1) and Kurzgesagt videos. So if you haven't seen those yet, they're worth checking out.

 

Adding muscle to your legs will add heaps of weight so you must be down plenty of fat from cycling.

As for YouTube, I'm a subscriber of the Vs, haven't heard of Kurzgesagt though so thanks for the tip.

 

Haha you've done very well for yourself spludgey - great work!

 

Where did you buy in Rocky mate? Have you noticed any CG?
I am building up equity/cash deposit for another purchase in the not to near future. (most likeyl in rocky)

 

Well done Spludgey! A great accumulation in such a short period of time!

Of all the properties I'm actually curious to know what growth you've seen out of your Woy Woy one. Care to share some insights on it?

 

Well done on your portfolio, and welcome to the Kiva team, too.

 

They're both in Park Avenue.
To be honest, I wouldn't buy them again. There haven't been any capital gains since I bought them, vacancy rates are fairly high, insurance and council rates are very expensive.
But the good thing is that the yield is fairly high so that they're definitely paying for themselves.

I think even though the property purchases didn't turn out perfectly, it's still better than doing nothing and I learnt through it, so I'm not regretting buying them.

This has definitely been my best purchase to date. I'd buy ten more of them, if I could.
I paid $280k for the worst house in Woy Woy and a granny flat. It's a one bedroom fibro in a pretty sad condition without an internal toilet and an outhouse in the back.
The things that it has going for itself is that it was renting for $410 per week (for the house and the granny flat) and is sitting at $425 now, plus as it's sitting on 700m2 of medium density land, it's value would be around the $400k mark now, which are great capital gains.

Thanks, let's hope my first "investment" is a good one!
I'll probably make a few more as I really like the concept.
I'm assuming that it's tax deductible as well if not paid back and you can put it under a captial loss?

 

congrats mate great read!

 

Nice work spludge! (can we call you that?)
What flavour engineer are you? What industry?

 

Okay, a little bit of an update and it's NSFF (not safe for Facebook, as it's not all exaggeratedly positive).
Two years on and in the meantime, I've had to pay for the removal and replacement of an asbestos roof ($31k out of pocket), bought another pair of semis in Elizabeth, got rid of three PMs, had my wife stop working for health reasons and had to take a pay cut myself. So for a while, we were over $80k pa down on what we were earning previously and I've had to reduce the rents on my Rockhampton properties as well.
The good news though is that my wife is doing better again and is back at work part time.
All in all, it hasn't been very smooth sailing, but I'm so very glad that I decided to focus on high cashflow properties rather than concentrating on capital gains. Had I done that and bet on the wrong horse (not Sydney or Melbourne), my situation would be a lot worse right now.

Now we're very slowly starting to save money again. While we had sufficient money in our offset to last us a while, it really stressed me seeing this money not go up (and at times even go down slightly). Hopefully the next two years will be easier financially, but all in all, I can't complain, health over money any day of the week!

 

Good on you spludgey, onwards and upwards mate

 

Sounds like you've managed a rough ride really well!

 

Glad it's working out so well for you Spludgey. Nice investing