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Take advantage of a NAB investment loan. The NAB Tailored Home Loan lets you enjoy a competitive interest rate of 7.14% p.a. fixed for 3 years interest only in advance.

How property made these Aussies multi-millionaires

Few investors dare to dream that their property investments will make them millionaires, let alone multi-millionaires. But property can – and does – create multi-millionaires. And May’s Australian Property Investor magazine has the proof: five couples who’ve become multi-millionaires through the property market.

The subjects’ net worth ranges from $2.3 million to somewhere in the region of $50 million. They reveal how they’ve used property to get where they have and offer tips for other investors.

With this in mind, Australian Property Investor has come up with 23 tips for cutting your overheads. Some of the tips API reveals in its May issue include:

API editor Eynas Brodie says, “Property is a tried and proven method of wealth creation, as more and more Australians are discovering firsthand. These investors and developers show what can be achieved through sound property investment, especially over the long term.

"As a recent report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics suggests, Australians are wealthier than they have ever been, and property – even if we’re only talking about equity in the family home – is one of the reasons why," Brodie adds.

Three of the five couples featured in API are:

Suzette and Tony Mackley
Net worth: $5.2 million
Suzette and Tony began investing together in 1998 on Queensland’s Gold Coast. They started out small, buying a single unit and then stepping up to a pair of townhouses.

"It was advertised as ‘renovate or demolish’ – and it stank. We worked six days a week on it to get it ready for rental as quickly as possible," Suzette says.

From those humble beginnings, using a strategy of buy, renovate and hold, Suzette and Tony have amassed property worth more than $7 million, with current debt of just over $2.5 million.

They’ve now made the sea change to the Capricorn Coast but their passion for real estate is still burning, with a number of projects currently on the go.

Linda and Ramon Tuck
Net worth: $3.1 million
Linda and Ramon Tuck have used cash flow positive one-bedroom units to build a north Queensland property empire worth more than $5 million. They own 36 properties, including their own home, 16 strata-titled units, a duplex and three blocks of units.

"When we got to 12 units we thought ‘that’s enough’,” Linda tells API. “But then another one came that was just too good to pass up on. We couldn’t stop at 13 because it was an unlucky number – so it continued on."

This was in the early 1990s, and the Tucks focused on buying properties where the rent coming in more than covered their mortgage repayments. They still use the same strategy today, renting fully furnished one-bedroom units in Cairns to the backpacker market on short-term leases.

Although they now live in a nice house in Cairns and drive a Mercedes, Linda and Ramon have made plenty of sacrifices along the road to property riches, including living for years in a Queenslander with no wiring and a bush toilet.

Chris and Virginia Anderson
Net worth: $50 million
Before moving to Australia in 1991, Chris Anderson collected pinecones for a seed nursery in New Zealand. He was “falling into decline”, drinking and partying too much, before his dad sent him on his way to a new reality in Australia.

That new reality now sees Chris and wife Virginia sharing space with Nicole Kidman and Lleyton Hewitt on BRW magazine’s Young Rich List. Last year, BRW estimated the Andersons’ net worth at $35 million, though Chris says it’s more like $50 million.

Chris and Virginia have built their construction and property developing business from scratch. Chris started by building a spec home; they used what they made to branch into a couple more properties, then a duplex. It grew from there to the point where the Andersons’ company was building around 120 homes a year.

A large chunk of Chris and Virginia’s net worth comes courtesy of a development they carved out of a parcel of farmland they bought in the early 2000s.

"That farm, from looking like $1.5 million profit… it’s yielding around $20 or $21 million in gross profit," Chris tells API.

© Australian Property Investor magazine - www.apimagazine.com.au. Reproduced with permission. To subscribe to API, go to www.apimagazine.com.au or pick up a copy from your local newsagent.

Brisbane and Canberra lead in overall performance

Brisbane and Canberra are emerging as the star performers among Australia’s largest residential property markets.

Brisbane is producing figures which confirm the positive view of many analysts and investors. Its apartments are the fastest-selling among the six largest cities and its houses the second-fastest-selling.

Brisbane’s median price for homes (including both houses and apartments) has risen 12.6% in the year to March. But it still offers value, with its houses and units the cheapest, except for Adelaide. Typical Brisbane houses sell around $370,000 and the average apartment fetches $280,000 (compared with $550,000 and $380,000 in Perth).

Canberra is the other market that stands out for its solid performance. Its houses sell the fastest among the six biggest cities and with the smallest discounts (comparing sale prices with original asking prices). Canberra has also delivered 8% growth in values in the year to March.

Melbourne continues to be the value market. It

overall median (houses and units combined) is lower than Perth, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane (and we know from other data that it’s also considerably lower than Darwin).

Melbourne’s median house price is $170,000 lower than Perth’s and the Victorian capital’s price growth in the past year has been relatively subdued. There’s clearly room for price growth, given the underlying factors of population growth, solid economic performance and very low residential vacancies.

Sydney is now showing signs of recovery. Its houses and units are selling in time frames comparable to Canberra, Melbourne and Brisbane – and there are indications of price growth.

Three months ago we recorded that Sydney homes were taking around 40 days to sell. More recently the days on the market are closer to 30 days.

Sydney’s overall median price is now 2% higher than a year ago, after consecutive months of rising median prices in February and March. But we need to see more months of growing prices before we can be confident Sydney is on the way back.

Perth remains our most expensive city – but the price trend is sharply downward. Three months ago we noted that the Western Australia capital was displaying all the hallmarks of a market in decline, with sales volumes falling and houses taking longer to sell.

For more information on the overall performance and city graphs visit RP Data.

© BRW magazine - www.brw.com.au. 2007.

Take advantage of a NAB investment loan. The NAB Tailored Home Loan lets you enjoy a competitive interest rate of 7.14% p.a. fixed for 3 years interest only in advance.

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