What I learnt out of buying 7 properties

Hi all!

I've learnt so much throughout the years by reading up this forum (and Somersoft) so it's always been my goal to be able to give back and help other investors grow, minimize mistakes via sharing my own experiences and journey to-date. This is the whole reason why I started my own blog last year.

Looking back however I felt the blog was quite loosely structured, so I thought it may be better to create a thread here to consolidate, focus more on what I learnt rather than just telling the story/journey.

I've made quite a number of mistakes along the way in purchasing 7 properties and I don't mind sharing them. I still make mistakes all the time, but the important thing I learnt is not to be afraid to make them, but to understand what went wrong and how to do it better next time. Just like learning to walk, we all fall at some point and some of us fall harder than others. But what's most important is to get up again and think about how not to fall (or not to fall as hard as last time) via continuous improvement.

And the idea here is to provide the lessons learnt I can think of in my current journey so people can benefit and not "fall as hard".

Also these are just my personal opinion. Some members may disagree with what I learnt and that is perfectly normal. If it can act as a trigger for a healthy discussion to benefit remainder of the PropertChat community then this thread has served it's purpose.

Cheers,
David

Edit - thread index:

1. First lesson – why you should avoid OTP
2. Second lesson – why you should avoid buying property with a pool
3. Third lesson - do your due diligence on the team members you trust and use
4. Fourth lesson – On the ground visit is as important as ANY due diligence
5. Fifth lesson – avoid buying in areas with plenty of land
6. Sixth lesson – investing in low socio-economic areas which almost guarantee some sort of tenant issues
7. Seventh lesson – Focus on choosing IPs with value add potentials
8. Eighth Lesson - How to select a Property Manager
9. Ninth lesson - why you should be extra cautious working with cash job tradies
10. Tenth lesson - How to effectively buy sight unseen
11. Eleventh Lesson - how to develop optimal offer price and cashflow forecast via cashflow calculator
12. Twelfth Lesson- How to negotiate purchase price with Real Estate Agents
13. Thirteenth Lesson - the importance of having trusted team around you
    
14. Fourteenth Lesson- A guide for NSW/VIC/QLD Buyer: Process from making an offer to settlement
15. Fifteenth lesson – New vs Existing, which one should I choose?
16. Sixteenth lesson – type of tenant requests and how to deal with them?
17. Seventeenth Lesson - When should you build a Granny Flat?
18. Eighteenth Lesson - What types of Value Add are there in a Property? (Houses)
19. Nineteenth lesson – What types of Value Add are there in a Property? (Units)
20. Twentieth lesson - What I learnt out of buying 7 properties
21. Twenty first lesson - CG or Cashflow Properties?
22. Twenty Second Lesson – 10 key principles in Property Investment (inspired by KieranK)

Edit: 21 October 2019 - Lesson 22 added

 

1. First lesson – why you should avoid OTP

My property journey started with an OTP purchase back in 2009 at Granville in Sydney (but it’s actually closer to Merrylands). I was young, naïve and didn’t know much back then about what I really need to do to do the research required to validate the purchase. My dad found this for me and he thinks that it would be a good fit because of the 5 years rental guarantee so I don’t have to worry about it too much. Plus the glossy brochures looked really nice! And the sales agent has a whole tonnes of research materials about the area, what the future developments are (the Stocklands mall at Merrylands was being constructed at that time) and the expected population/jobs growth at Parramatta being the second CBD.

The purchase price was $360K for a brand new 2 bed 2 bath 1 garage OTP apartment in a complex of 45 and rental guarantee for 5 years is at $450 per week. I’ve been told “it’s over 5% rental yield and easy to hold”, and I’ve done my “due diligence” based on the materials he provided and they seem feasible. Plus there are probably some parental pressure on this too (yes, Asian parents are like that, don’t want me to have too much money to spend), so I signed on the dotted line. I was 25 that year.


Fast forward to 2018, this property has:

• Grown to about $500K in value, thanks to the latest Sydney boom, and allowed me to pull some equity out
• Rent to-date is at $450/week
• Strata has increased from $400/qtr to $800/qtr, plus there has been some serious issues with the building quality. My apartment is on level 1 (out of a total 3 levels) and couple years ago during a heavy rainfall the water had leak into my unit and damaging the carpet. To-date there is still an ongoing lawsuit which has been going on with the developer/builder for the last 3 years. And as you guessed, it’s costed all the landlord a gazillion on special sinking funds

So what did I learn out of this purchase?

• Steer away from OTP as you’ll almost guaranteed to overpay for anything brand new and shiny

I’ve paid $360K back in 2009, whereas the average price for a 2 bed apartment there was less than $300K at Granville. So I’ve bought way above market median and now I understand the extra money was to cover everyone else’s profit margin (except my own!!)

• Rental guarantee can be a double edged sword and most of the time it’s to make the OTP more attractive

I considered myself relatively lucky because the rental guarantee on this deal is at $450/week and for 5 years so I’ve recouped some cost back. In all honesty the agency company would’ve made a loss because they were never able to achieve $450/week during the first 5 years. But that was once off and I’ve never seen anyone else bold enough to do a rental guarantee this long – most of them only for 1 or 2 years max and there are conditions on top. They do this mostly to make the OTP property more attractive to investors because they know you’ll have trouble renting it out AND at the estimated rent (due to influx of units released at the same time), so it’s a bait to get your foot in and then after rental guarantee safe net…you’re on your own.

• Quality of OTP can be shabby and costing you more to hold long term

This IP was built by a relatively renowned builder who does lots of projects out at western part of Sydney so I was quite shocked in terms of their building quality on my unit. As I mentioned above, my apartment is in level 1 and during heavy rainfall the water got from wall into both bedrooms and I ended up having to re-plaster some parts of the wall and replace the whole carpet in both bedrooms. And it wasn’t just me, other units on my level is also experiencing similar issues so clearly this is a building defect. This is another huge annoyance off for me as the OTP appearance can be brand new and shiny but you never know what was actually underneath the building structure.

What also annoyed the hell out of all owners is that it’s been 3 years and we are still not getting anywhere as the lawyers from defending side keeps playing the stalling strategy. So the owners have been forking out quite a lot of funds in the last couple of years for this law case, and hopefully we’ll get a resolution towards end of this year.

• Even if you overpaid on day 1, if you hold a property long enough it will correct your mistake

Yes I’ve overpaid from day 1 on a crappy product but the silver lining is I’ve left it chugging along by itself (as rental guarantee was covering most of the outgoing expenses anyway) and thanks to the latest Sydney boom the value has gone up and I can even pull out some equity for our next purchases. I’m sure everyone makes a mistake somewhere along the line in overpaying but by holding it long term the property price will eventually catch up and correct your mistake.

 

2. Second lesson – why you should avoid buying property with a pool


Fast forward to 2015 – we’ve pulled out equity from our Sydney properties and are now ready to go again. Being priced out of Sydney with some crazy offers being thrown around, me and my partner decided to start looking at SE QLD in particular the Logan market, as the capital investment is small but yield is high so easy to hold long term.

We’ve since found our Slacks Creek property – a highset with 3 bed, 1 bath upstairs and 1 rumpus and bathroom/toilet downstairs. Now it comes with an additional feature – a pool.

Back when I was living in Auckland the first house dad bought was a house with a pool. We enjoyed dipping in for the first couple of days, and then that was it… it then started becoming a liability as we had to continuously clean up the falling leaves and put the pump on so the water doesn’t go stale and turn green. Dad used to complain a lot about it as he was always the “lucky” one who ended up cleaning the pool despite the fact no one uses the pool at all.

And I thought I learnt something out of that. Well what did I do? I went ahead and bought an IP with a pool factoring in a number of considerations after discussing with PM:

• A pool will make it more attractive for the SE QLD demographics as it’s relatively warm most of the year
• Can charge an extra $10-15 per week rent to recoup back some of the cost
• Tenant pays for the chlorine, as landlord we just need to fork out the pool service cost

All in all, it looks like we can pass over most of the cost by bumping up the rent.


So what did I learn out of this purchase?

• There is a lot more hidden maintenance cost which eats into the yield

For starters, there are a number of other costs which I was not aware of including pool compliance certificate (~$200 for 2 years), chlorinator replacement (~$1000), and if the property goes vacant for a couple of weeks the pool will turn green (couple hundred dollar to clean up everytime there is a change of tenant)! Every little bits add up, so those came in as a nasty surprise to my initial cashflow estimate when the property was going to be positive or gearing neutral from day 1.


So for IP with a pool – always budget more maintenance cost each year, or just avoid buying IP with a pool completely. But if I was to do it again, I would never want to purchase an IP with pool. Less headache, less maintenance costs in general and more money into your own pocket.

• Demographics play a big component for properties with pool

Looking back, I would also say the house with pool would play out differently it if was in say Karina, than in Slacks Creek today. A more affluent demographics in general will look after the property better and tenant moves less frequently. Over the last 2 years we’ve had 2 tenant so that’s on average one tenant move per year, with about 2-3 weeks vacancy in between. This means everytime they move out I need to do a clean and every little thing eventually adds up to the cost base.

But bottom line I would still avoid get an IP with a pool

 

3. Third lesson - do your due diligence on the team members you trust and use

We all know to invest in property it’s a team work and not a solo show. So it’s important to choose the right team m embers around you while you’re on the property journey to ensure they help you towards moving to your goal.

The issue I had early days was that we would take other investors referral of team members without doing our due diligence. It builds on the high level of trust established between you and the investment team members you have around you. So logically you would take their referrals as granted as well.

But as some of you would know from my story earlier – we’ve experienced where a referred builder took the deposit for a piece of agreed renovation work and simply vanished. The deposit was not significant (only about $4K) but it did ruin my original plan where the property would have the work completed and ready for rent prior to X’mas.

I couldn’t find another builder to turnaround quickly, and I couldn’t secure a tenant being so close to X’mas period, so it ended up being a prolonged period of vacancy into the new year.

So what did I learn out of this experience?

• Always validate the team member’s credentials. Look them up on authorities websites to see if they’re legit

Because of the high level trust my PM has built with me back then, I took her recommendation for granted without doing my own due diligence on the builder’s licenses. Apparently this builder has been a pro fraudster for a number of times now, and was able to get away with it every time. Check, check and triple check!

• Check the referred person with other fellow investors

The referred person could have a commercial agreement with your PM, Accountant, Broker and so on so it’s best to validate from other investors who have worked with the person before. If you’re getting consistent positive feedback about the person’s work then it’ll minimize your risk of picking a dud team member.

I find Property Chat meetup really useful in this instance. Other investors are always open and willing to share who they use and what their experiences are like so if I was to do it again I would run past the Property Chat community first.

 

4. Fourth lesson – On the ground visit is as important as ANY due diligence


I’m always a firm believer of the phrase “seeing is believing”. And for the area I invest in, I would go and visit the area myself to get an in-depth understanding of the suburb as well as what sort of people lives here. (OK I’ll also admit part of me also like to explore places I haven’t been before, so…)

Initially I would do all my due diligence online, but once I nail down the suburbs then I would actually set my foot on the suburb to work out what I can’t see behind a screen. As an example, when I was purchasing Woodridge I’ve gone into the Logan Central Plaza to check out the demographics. I took my laptop with me but I have to admit, as soon as I walk in my instinct tells me it’s quite a different demographic straight away and it just feels unsafe. So I walked out, put the laptop back in the trunk, made sure it was locked up properly and then walked back in the shopping centre. It was midday but even then my sixth sense tells me it was quite a different demographics that lives here!

I like to stick around the shopping centre and have lunch so I can watch various types of people living here – type of ethnic groups, age groups, is it dominated by young family, mature family or retirees? It’s interesting to watch and by the way they dress you can also tell easily whether they are blue/white collar. But I have to admit it was very uneasy at Logan Plaza, so I walked around about twice and then decided to head out.

But instead of trusting what I saw on the ground, I still went ahead with my Woodridge IP purchase and while the yield was great on paper, the reality is tenant instability and rental arrear have been bugging me all the along and eating into a good portion of the yield. If you were to ask me again, I will not make the same purchase in such a low socio-economic suburbs anymore. I would rather forego some of the good looking yield on paper and stepping up to a slightly better suburb to balance out yield and CG.

As another example, when I was purchasing my Murrumba Downs IP I went on the ground and checked out the Kallangur train station (which was completed but is not yet open at that time), and also noticed how much infrastructure and new houses are being built around Mango Hill. Same thing with North Lakes. These you won’t see unless you’re actually on the ground, so shows the importance - nothing beats on the ground checking things out!

 

5. Fifth lesson – avoid buying in areas with plenty of land

As I love exploring new places after 2 Logan IPs apart from Moreton Bay I was also considering out towards the west, in particular Goodna (thanks to Seechange for the idea). So I went on the ground and check out Goodna plus the surrounding areas.

I loved Goodna’s direct distance to CBD, but half of the suburb is flood prone so I was really only targeting the small pocket between Smiths Road and Goodna cemetery where you can still pick up a house on 600SQM block around 200 to 250K and rent high 200s. So on paper it feels worthy enough for a trip. (This is back in 2016 by the way)

But when I actually walk around the neighborhood I get similar feelings to the lower socio-economic areas of Logan. There are rubbish dumped in front of houses, lawns/gardens not maintained, and people staring at me in a funny way. So as much as it looks decent on paper I felt like it might not be the type of area I want to invest in long term, after what I’ve been through after the Woodridge IP.

Driving around Goodna, Bellbird Park, Redbank, Riverview… what really alarmed me was the amount of available land out in the west. There are lots of house and land packages available for sale and no shortage of ads around which turns me off. It reminded me back in 2009, Dad and I made a trip to Ipswich because it was advertised as the “future Parramatta of Sydney”. And when we were on ground in 09 we drove a long way out to Ipswich and saw loads and loads of available land. We knew it’ll take a while to get there but almost 10 years in we’re still seeing the same thing - lots of available land around so despite the yield stacks up I wouldn’t want to invest my money here.

Don’t get me wrong, with the amount of money government is putting in to Ipswich it will eventually have its days under the sun. But from land availability perspective, I felt the supply still far outweighs the current demand as Ipswich takes it’s time to grow to Parramatta equivalent. How long would that take? No one knows.

What did I get out of this visit?

• Avoid invest in areas that still have an abundance of land

Land value is what increases over time but there is no point buying land in middle of nowhere or where there is no demand but plenty of supply. This is why the land value is so different in the inner Brisbane ring in comparison with the outer Brisbane ring – a difference of demand and supply. Sydney is even a better example – limited in 3 direction with no further availability of land it can only extend out towards the west and that’s why land component in Sydney is just GOLD (literally!).

 

6. Sixth lesson – investing in low socio-economic areas which almost guarantee some sort of tenant issues


When I was looking at Logan back in 2015 I was really attracted by the highsets and the concept of low purchase price and high rent. The original thinking behind this is that they will provide a more robust and sustainable portfolio to hold long term, in particular when interest rate start to climb back to its historical level.

The theory is sound and cashflow is great until you hit tenant issues. This is just part of the risk investing in lower socio-economic areas. Given our Logan properties are sitting at low socio-economic areas (Slacks Creek, Woodridge and Eagleby), the challenges to-date have been:

1. Difficult to secure decent tenants with a proper job/pay/employment. In particular Woodridge seems to attract tenants on Centrelink payments

2. Tenants seem to always struggle in making rental payments on time and falls into arrears from time to time

3. In QLD you need to go through a series of processes before you can evict the tenant - Notice to remedy breach, Notice to Leave, and then QCAT to evict the tenant. Plus if they do pay up some rent during the Notice to remedy breach period, then it all resets. So it was possible for the tenant to fall into arrears, pay up a bit, and then falls into arrears again just to “reset” the notices. And then it goes into a constant cashflow arrears battle


I’m sure there are great tenants in the lower socio-economic areas too however with my experience to-date it almost doesn’t seem to be worth all the headaches. To give you a real-life example, recently my Slacks Creek property has an additional “tenant” who wasn’t on the lease. The tenant on the lease was a legit full time employee at Harvey Norman but he decided to let his “mate” move in at some point without letting the PM know. And then the saga starts from there:

· Tenant on lease decided to move out but kept paying the rent

· “Mate” wasn’t interested in providing any information or sign the lease, so after going through the QLD eviction process which took over 2 months we finally to get him out (ouch my cashflow)

· During an open inspection PM spotted meth being left on table and suspect the “mate” has been doing drugs in the house. So after we evicted him, we’ve done a test throughout the house and two rooms (lounge and rumpus area downstairs) came back positive i.e. over the normal tolerance level

· So the house cannot be advertised as it’s contaminated. And it ended up being an ongoing saga between PM, insurer and lost assessor as we go through the painful process of reviewing contamination report, organizing for de-contamination process to take place, determine what is covered as part of the claim, how much is covered etc. On top they’ve discovered asbestos on the area they needed to decontaminate, just to show how “fun” it was lol…


This saga lasted over 6 months and is probably an extreme case of what could happen but I’m sharing it so people can understand the risk of investing in these areas with tenant causing issues. It was a very painful process as I’m not in QLD, have a full time job and kept getting very little update and when I do its second hand - each party constantly pushing responsibilities to others and there was a period of time where they couldn’t agree on the next steps so further drag the timeline out.

Thankfully the silver lining is the insurer finally agreed to reimburse all the rental loss throughout the whole period as the place is deemed uninhabitable and covered all for all expenses including de-contamination plus removal of asbestos. But I certainly hoped this would not happen to any other investors.

So what can we do to avoid making the same mistakes?

• To invest in low socio-economic areas you need to have a gun PM who takes ownership

Engaging a gun PM is a must to minimize the risk of getting crappy tenants into your house. In this instance the tenant is legit but his mate who moved in by himself is not. The PM needs to be proactive and come in strong and take action to get rid off the mate asap who doesn’t want to sign the lease. These are early indicators but because they were still paying rent so I let it slip – so it was partly my mistake as well, but the PM also wasn’t taking much ownership in advising next steps.

Always make sure your PM is on top of who is living in your IP and take action as soon as unwanted guest starts to linger around. And again good PM selection is just paramount - check with fellow investors for their recommendations!

• Having insurance is a must, and the cheapest insurer may not always be the best

I consider myself very lucky in this scenario. Just imagine if I didn’t have insurance in place – then I would probably be forking out close to $35 to $40K myself in getting rid of the contamination plus the rental loss across this period. In comparison the yearly insurance premium is nothing. So I’m grateful I’ve always had insurance across all my properties for this kind of rainy days.

Also I know some investors would just pick the cheapest insurer with the idea to minimize cost. What I find is cheapest isn’t usually the best as they have a lot of fine prints. Drug contamination case has been a rare instance even for my insurer too so they weren’t too sure initially if it was covered but we’ve got all the historical records and evidence so after reviewing them they have accepted as a legitimate claim.

I could easily imagine some other insurer may not be as generous/fair as this, as I have heard some insurer could even take up 6 months for a small amount of rental reimbursement. In my scenario I have requested an interim rental reimbursement around March (and got paid out within 2 weeks) and a final pay out just couple of weeks ago as case is finalized, at last. So having an insurer that actually reimburse on time does help.

P.S. total payout from insurer was about $35K across two transfers.

 

7. Seventh lesson – Focus on choosing IPs with value add potentials

When I started looking at investing in QLD I have been focusing on selecting IPs that have good value-add potentials. Truth to be told, I didn’t have this mindset when I was buying back in Sydney. So what leads to this realization?

To start off, when looking around Logan in 2015 I learnt about the concept of “Highset” – where I can buy such asset and potentially utilize downstairs to maximize my rental return up to a gross yield of 7%+. I thought to myself, if I was able to get these type of properties then it’ll be easy to hold and could even help replacing my income!

So that’s where the concept started and investors targeting Highsets in SE QLD has been a popular value-add strategy to the point where you can even see ads now saying “this is a Highset with lots of room improvement/blank canvas downstairs!”.

So after acquiring two highsets in Logan that’s where I sat down and ask myself what would the savvy investors be targeting to buy? And that’s when I started to develop my own list of potential value add checklist as part of my DD, which consists of:
1. Good Yield – Gross yield of 6.5% or more
2. Excellent Location – close to good school/public transport/major shopping centre hug/major upcoming infrastructure such as new hospitals or university
3. Contains scope for value add – such as cosmetic renovation, granny flat potential, build out downstairs for highsets
4. Contains future development/subdivision potential – allows the block to be developed or subdivided at a later stage

What I would do as a deal comes up I would assess it first against these 4 criteria and for me to consider the next level of DD it must meet at least 2 criteria out of the 4. But in general the more the better…if you can find something that ticks all 4 then it’s a cracking deal!

So for the Logan IPs at Slacks Creek and Woodridge, they both tick 1 and 3 – good yield and contains scope for value add. Murrumba Downs ticks point 2 (new train station & uni) and 3 (potential GF at the back), and Eagleby ticks point 1 and point 4 (corner block over 750SQM is sub-dividable).

Not to mention the latest IP in Newcomb – this is a classic example of simple value add of adding an extra bedroom by a wall and then catching the upswing Geelong property wave. I was lucky to make easy 100K equity in the last 12 months.

So what’s the lesson learnt out of this?

· Always select an IP based on having an X factor

Having something unique about the property will allow an investor to manufacture equity when the property market goes flat into a prolonged period. Keeping in mind property market doesn’t always just trend up, it can go down as well (like what’s happening now in Sydney/Melbourne) and most of the time sideways. So in that sense you can add value when you’re ready, independent of the market condition, and manufacture equity to continue leaping forward towards your financial goal.

 

Wow awesome posts. Thank you @David Shih
Looking forward to next updates

 

Excellent post so far! Thanks

 

Thank you for sharing, and I agree with the lessons you presented....
Friends bought is Sydney LNS OTP at the peak and even though the units look nice the poor quality for workmanship and furnishes would worry me. I a brand new built requires maintenance already imagine down the track?
Other friend bought OTP many years ago and just rented did not sell, so no loss there but the Strata fee went 100% extra the next following year after the built, as you pointed out.
I agree with you the most important lesson is to learn and to make sure we don't make similar mistakes again but also important to continue to duplicate! Most don't realise we don't make the best deals all the time but hopefully better deals make it worthwhile in the long term?

 

Thanks David for someone like me starting out with only a few properties into my journey this detailed info will help alot with my future purchases, looking foward to the next posts

 

Yes that seems to be the common trend with OTP nowadays:
- They all look good on glossy brochures, on display suites, and on surface
- Few years down the track various issues will start to arise (due to lots of cutting corners on build quality)
- Strata fee rises significantly as a result of this, as they need to bump up the sinking fund or emergency fund to fix all the unexpected issues as a result of poor workmanship

We can only try grab a deal based on our own DD and totally agree, it may not be a cracking deal but at least we are trying and better than those who are not trying. And over long term property cycle will correct our mistakes anyway, that's the beauty of it

Cheers,
David

 

David, you're da man! Excellent stuff.

Sometimes I think it's better to hold on the IPs and never sell.

 

Good on you for sharing some of the missteps along the way. If your not making mistakes your not trying hard enough!

 

Rookie error, replace “laptop” with “taser and pepper spray” to be better prepared in the future.

 

Ive also checked out the logan central shopping centre earlier this year when purchasing, the demographics are quite bad still, by your knowledge have they improved over the years? and do you see more improvement in the quality of tenants

 

Awesome thread David! Definitely going to be sharing this around - lots of good lessons already Keep them coming!

Cheers,
Michael

 

Spot on. We have all been there. The vendor just wants another $2K....You cant afford it. But you dont want to miss the property. The $2K may avoid more weekends searching for the next "perfect" property. and avoid more inspection costs etc. Thats logical.

However my greater concern is those cashed up with equity who dont have the nagging voice in their ear that a lender valuation cap provides. They overbid endlessly at auction. They pay way above market for something merely because they can borrow the money.

Thats illogical - Using equity to buy a loss on day one is not a great investment strategy. It just depends how much.

That said, all property is bought at a loss. I tell clients this all the time. eg stamp duty, legals, inspections etc will always mean you pay a price above "market". And I dont think you can count distressed sellers etc into that and argue you bought under market. Most people who say that actually just found the true market or the pain point where a motivated vendor has to sell. Thats the market if they are the winning bidder.

Adding value by a new reno, facelift etc just offsets the loss and is smart investing. Polishing the hidden gem. That something I always look for. And for those who do it well it can mean a reval above the total cost paid.

 

Thanks David for sharing.

Wholeheartedly agree re: IP (with pool).
Purchased land (800sqm block) at Wonga Beach FNQ in 2003. Had NQ Homes build the house and a local pool builder put in a 8m by 3m saltwater pool. The house was initially to be our winter escape destination. Stupidly we planted palms around the pool surrounds and that was the start to many of our problems. Piping issues from tree roots, continual bird droppings on glazed pool surround and of course the continual pool maintenance costs.
Had all trees removed in 2007 and a shade structure installed covering half the pool.
Unfortunately never had the opportunity to use the house for what it was purchased for due to my late wife's ill health, so have held it as an IP. I am now under 2 years from owning this IP.
Without the pool I would own it already; they certainly eat into yield!