The Bennetts are a typical hard working, time-poor couple. What made them different is that they wanted change and formulated a strategy to achieve it. They decided to sell their family business which sucked a lot of time and energy from them and become full time investors. To arrive at this decision they had to look at all the alternatives of how they can make money and live a comfortable life which will give them financial and personal freedom to spend their money and time how they choose.
As Jane has a passion for property investment, she had already done a lot of ground work and knew that to gain maximum capital growth for a quick influx of wealth, they would need to go for quick value-add properties which had the option of being subdivided, as well as needing some renovations.
Jane:
Applying this strategy meant that we could make more money, as the prices of the homes would be lower and we could renovate at a much lower cost as my husband is quite handy and can do a lot of the renovation himself. We would also have the added bonus of subdividing the land and making money off both blocks.
We started looking for properties, but were unable to find any in our price range and decided to use a buyer’s agent. We looked on realestate.com.au which listed three buyers agents for Perth, all of which we contacted. I had specific criteria in choosing our buyers’ agent and these were;
• Who got back to us the fastest
• Who would come and see us, as we are time-poor
• Who could move the fastest in getting the ball rolling
Our Property Wizards adviser came to meet with us in our home within days of my enquiry
They assured us that there were properties out there in our price range which were subdividable.
Property Wizards started our search straight away. We did not get the first two properties, but as the saying goes…..third time lucky. The whole process was really quick, even though we had signed with one adviser, when working with Property Wizards you have the benefit of all the agents working for you, as they are constantly scouring for new properties, especially subdivisions. We benefited from this scenario in the way that one of the other agents found the property in our preferred suburb.
This property was perfect and we moved quickly on it and bought it for a great price, considering the median property price for the suburb at the time was $35,000 more than we paid for our property. The existing house was great for renovating and the back of the block was big enough for the subdivision. Already the median property price is currently $65,000 more than what we bought ours for.
We have not had our property professionally valued yet, but estimate that we could sell the front home on its own for more than we paid for the entire property and we could sell the land at the back for an extra $150,000. Taking into account the $30,000 we have spent on the property to date, we would have capital growth of 44% so far. We are intending to hold onto the property however, renting out the front house and building a house on the back block to be rented out as well when completed.
At the moment we are in the accumulation phase of investing, having just finished consolidating. At the moment we have our family home and this investment property, but I will continue to buy even when I don’t need to, because that is just the way I am. Our next step is to use the equity in our investment property as well as our primary residence in South Fremantle, to purchase another property in which to live while we renovate our South Fremantle property, we want to make it the perfect home we have always dreamed of. Without the equity, we would have had to rent a house and pay off somebody else’ mortgage, rather than living in one of our own homes.
Property Wizards helped us kick off towards our goal of living off our property investments in 5-10 years time, helping us to spend more quality time with our children and do the things we really enjoy in life.
I love being able to be a fulltime mum to our three children and love having them at home with me rather than having to send them to day care if I had to work.
Property investment has given us the freedom of choice we never had before, or would ever have had, had we continued working in the family business. Now we look forward to acquiring 10 – 20 properties over the next 5-10 years, engaging in renovations, subdivisions and buying new properties to create a diversified and profitable portfolio.
