Hey Recoveryman,

Just catching up on this thread after another trip to Geraldton, this one may have been fruitful, we shall see, if not, then I’ll start looking elsewhere. Anyway, just noticed you said you were driving up there, do you realise it’s a 5 to 6 hour drive (depending what suburb you’re starting from) with not much in between Perth and Geraldton. Better get your boy something to do on the way up so he doesn’t get bored.

Anyway, have a good trip up, hope it’s not too hot.

Purple Kiss

Fortune Favours the Bold.

Well, I’m in the middle of getting our investment properties revalued, finance pre-approval is subject to this and then off to find the next IP (although I’ve been looking anyway). Doesn’t worry me if it happens in 2 days, 2 weeks or two months, so long as it happens this year.

Recoveryman, you must have invested in Geraldton just in time. Was up there first weekend in January and +ve geared properties were nearly non-exisitant, prices have increased steadily since September. So it means I’m still looking, the hardest bit seems to be finding a town where the population isn’t going backwards! Even Geraldton’s population has decreased but I had thought it was big enough to whether it out. But unless a +ve IP appears up there will have to consider other towns.

Regards
Purple Kiss

Hi Happy Bandit,

If you think about it, they had 130 properties between 4 of them really as the book does state that Steve’s wife was still working (don’t know about Dave’s) and so he was living off her income while they invested the acounting monies and monies from wraps. So really this was 130 properties between 2 couples (or 32.5 each). Sounds a bit less daunting that way.

As I’m in WA, wraps isn’t even an option unless you have a credit providers licence so that writes that idea off unless we’re going to go interstate to do them, not as easy to keep an eye on the market and costly to make many trips, so that’s out for us. So from our perspective, we stated by saving the deposit for our current home, once in that we paid as much off as quickly as we could, then we used that equity to purchase the next one (Same as what you have done so far). The next one (first investment porperty)happened to be negative geared (was before we read the book), however, it made good capital gains and we then did the next property in 6 months using the equity in the PPOR and the investment property. The 2nd invesment property happened to be positive cashflow (by accident more than anything, still hadn’t read the book at that stage) and we found that paid the shortfall on the negatively geared one freeing up the cash we had been using, so we could then save that for another deposit. We are now 12 months on from that one and looking for our 3rd investment property and basically it will be positive geared as otherwsie our income no longer meets the requirements (I am no longer working so on one income) and secondly I’ve read the book and it makes sense.

Basically, unless your really aggressive about cutting down expenses (remember Steve rented his own home rather than bought in the begginning) and either saving or paying off your mortgage to be able to access the extra equity or your willing to do extra jobs intitally (remember Dave missed his second childs birth due to working or looking for property) then I don’t think you’ll get there as quickly as they did. I’m comfortable with the fact that our plan will take longer than what theirs did, but we still have some lifestyle along the way (I’d be spitting chips if my husband missed our kids birth). I think it really depends on what you want out of life and how much you want now or how much your willing to forgo now. Only something you can decide.

Have you also read “Creating Wealth from Residential Properties” by Jan Somers. Her portfolio contains negative and positively geared properties and she became financially independent over 10 years. While I like Steve’s thoughts and we are heading the positively geared way now, we aren’t as aggressive and are willing to take longer to get there. This other book as some other interesting points and is also worth a read.

Good Luck.

Any chance i could have a copy of the spreadsheet too? Appreciate it!

[email protected]

Thanks

Yes I’m planning to buy in the next month, just waiting on the pre-approval. I have a plan of a couple a year and the highs and lows will even out over the long run so refuse to wait “just in case….”. If prices do go down in six months then i’ll be ready for the next one anyway and will have made 6 months of rental yield on this one during that time. Let’s just hope that finance pre-approval comes through so I can follow through with the plan. Good luck to everyone else regardless of whether your buying or waiting.