My main goals last year were to get my sports car ( at 50 properties), for my partner to retire from work and to try and purchase 1 property per week.

I did manage to get my sports car, and actually ended up with 2 ( a red Mitsubishi GTO, and a silver Mitsubishi FTO ), so I now have one for sale ( the silver FTO).

My partner did also manage to retire, which was great, especially since it was about the time that we had initially planned for her to retire.

The 52 extra property target ( 1 more per week) however was not achieved. This was for a couple of reasons, but partly because we attempted 2 major purchases, which could have been jeopardised by buying smaller ones. We also spent a lot of time looking at cars ( My partner also needed a car when she retired, but had to replace it later in the year for something more suitable (She started with a WH Statesman with very high K’s then changed recently to a Ford Fairlane). ( Note that all the cars we purchases were under 20K, because we spent a lot of time searching for bargains – we don’t consider cars to be very good investments).

Note that we did purchase 3 blocks of Flats ( 2+6+4) in Southland New Zealand, and 1 House in the North Island. We also Purchased a Block of 4 in North Qld and an apartment in South Qld. Which was a total of 18 Properties.

Note that last year it was getting much harder to find Positive cashflow properties, due to yields getting lower as prices peaked, and also due to Steve McKnight’s popular books, which promoted properties with yields over 10.4%.

Although this was way below my target, we signed a contract for a block of 90 units at 5.5 Million Dollars, but unfortunately the vendor decided to up the purchase price by half a million after we negotiated and signed, which we decided was not on.

Had this deal gone through then we would have doubled our target.

A later 3.5 million deal on a Nursing Home ( around 60 rooms I think) also came close to being accepted by the vendor.

Both of these deals were very exciting for us, and although we didn’t pull them off, the experience gained was unbelievable.

Other things we did were to set up our own self managed Super Fund, which we are very excited about, and we also invested in a Redemption (Like Vending/ Game) machine, which has performed extremely poorly so far .

We also invested Money into a High Risk Gold Mine that is looking very positive. And we loaned some money to a developer at 20% interest ( Low Risk).

Note that at present we also have a lot of property (in 4 states + NZ) at various stages that we hope will settle over the next few weeks.

They include a near new 3 story townhouse on the Gold coast with 6 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. A Block of 13 Units in NSW –
6 units and a house in SA -and a house in NZ.
We also have an offer in on another QLD property that hasn’t been accepted yet but looks positive.

Regards

John F

Hi everyone, I use a similar method to steve and have 43 IPs, – I bought my first in 2000 and only bought 1 that year.

Steves basic system is good but there re several problems I found in the book. One is that he uses best case numbers, not realistic numbers.

For example I have 8 property managers and they all charge more than 8% management fees. Steve uses 5% I think for his calculations.

He also uses cashflow of $30 – $50 per property, but at the end of the year I’m lucky if I get $30 for an average property, – $20 is a more realistic for most investors, although I do have a few that give me particularly high cashflow.
I think that giving movie tickets away eats into the cashflow too much.

Coincidently I use a similar rule to the 11 second rule, but I use it backwards, – I double the purchase price in thousands and if the rent is lower I just discard it as it is still not good enough for me – if it is higher I work out the yield, then if that is hiogh enough I analyse in detail.

I also started in an easy market like Steve (mine was Elizabeth SA), but now it is extremely difficult to find good cashflow properties, and I think that for the average person, it would prove too difficult.

I also fine tune my methods differently to Steve and this gives me an edge. My criteria are even harder to match than steves.

I suspect that by using wraps and money from seminars, he has boosted his purchasing power, although he does admit this. We cant all do seminars, and they are not passive income. For South Australians like my self wraps are illegal, and lease options are not as lucrative.

Note that in his calculations he omits the extra interest paid when you use equity in another property to secure it, and in one calculation, money is created out of thin air as the calculation moves from one page to the next (dyslexic maybe).

The other gripe I have is the title seems a bit misleading – 130 properties were apparently aquired by two couples.

Besides all that, I enjoyed the book and even if you follow his methods you should be much better off than by negative gearing.

John Fowler (0414 602903) [email protected]

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Hi Guy’s,On a clear day I can see you.I’m from Broken Hill.Mick[]

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I have 43 Ip’s

JF

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rajohn (John Fowler)

hi JOhn,
would you like to communicate with me by email? I would like to ask you about your experience with Brad’s seminar. Very interested to know what u got out of it.

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Hi,

When you say – aquired properties, – do you still have these properties, or have you sold some through wraps? – and is the book about wraps.

As i am based in SA, where wraps are illegal, a book on wraps is of little interest to me, but other forms of property investment are.

Thanks John