Thanks a lot for the answers guys. I appreciate all the comments and have taken them on board. Its good to hear some real life perspective.

@wiggles2 Thanks a lot for the link I will have a look into this and try and get in touch with Olly, his advice on the local market here in NZ would be incredibly valuable.

@scottsdale To help minimise the risk of the first property and lower the amount of initial cash outlay I have a friend/business partner who is on the same page as me and is looking to get involved in property as well. We are also looking to get the first property in either Hamilton or Tauranga (two cities outside of the Auckland region) which are both growing at a good rate and have reasonable rental returns. Thanks for the graph cycle of property over the last few decades, that was really interesting.

@pjewitt thanks for the advice. We are still contemplating how heavily geared we want to be as it is possible for us to get a 90% loan. Both of us have very secure jobs with potential to grow our salary bases over the next few years. I have been looking into the REITs as well and will put some money in them at some point.

@nigel-kibel thanks for the advice on the property types. Its definitly something which can be quite hard to figure out. One thing we have been trying to do is proper due diligence in the areas that we are looking at buying to try and find the best deal.

I do have another broad type question for you guys. I have read Steves Book and understand the principles behind him acheiving 130 properties in 3.5 years but in reality I struggle to see how he was able to show that he could service the debt required to purchase all those properties? Was it possible due to the times that he was in? Did he have more equity available than the book indicated at? Were the rental returns substantially better than what they are now? I have done the numbers for properties in Hamilton and Tauranga based on the current market and I dont understand how this is possible. If anyone could help shed some more light on the servicing of such loans that would be awesome.

Thanks again for all your time, I appreciate the comments.

Cheers