Sydney real estate: Man owns six properties at 32

A Sydney father, aged 32, can boast a portfolio of six properties valued at $ 2.7 million. That’s how he did it.

At the age of 32, Bobby Haeri owns six properties in two different states with net worth of $ 2.7 million.

The Sydney father bought his first property at the age of 18 after sharing the cost with his sister and father.

Since then, he has pushed his way through loans, rent, mortgage insurance, and his salary to buy another five properties.

“The reality is that you have to make sacrifices, maybe not go on vacation for a few years, budget, or work 12 hours a day,” he told news.com.au.

“Working just eight hours, five days a week, will be difficult to achieve in the early stages.”

Mr Haeri says he now works 12 hours a day, six days a week and runs his own real estate agency while he and his wife Dionne raise their daughter Mia, 1.

Although he admits he currently has $ 1.89 million in debt, he has healthy cash flow.

His tenants bring in around $ 10,000 a month and he only has to pay off $ 7,000 a month on his mortgage, which leaves him in his pocket.

Immediately after graduating from high school, Mr. Haeri went full-time, started his own gardening business and bought his first property in 2008.

It was a $ 550,000, two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in St. Ives, north Sydney.

“At that point in time there were government grants and incentives, it was about a five percent contribution. You didn’t have to pay stamp duty, you paid stamp duty and then you get it back, ”he recalls.

They spent $ 27,500 to secure the apartment.

When he was 21, he used his share of the equity on his first property to buy his second.

This time it was a two-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in Killara, a neighboring suburb of St. Ives, for $ 570,000.

“When I worked in the gardening business, I listened to podcasts and read books 11 hours a day. I felt like I knew a lot about real estate, ”he said.

Both properties had tenants covering his mortgage fees.

A year later, Mr. Haeri decided to sell the apartment in Killara as he had just become engaged to his current wife, Dionne.

Since it was in Sydney during the housing boom, the apartment cost $ 100,000 more than he paid for it.

Two years later, at the age of 25, he used part of this money to finance his wedding and honeymoon. The rest went to a new home for him and his wife, which, like the previous apartment, cost $ 570,000.

It was a one-room apartment in Brookvale, Sydney’s Northern Beaches.

The $ 2,200 a month mortgage payments were “convenient” as his gardening business was doing well and Dionne was earning a post-graduate engineering salary. Together they made just over $ 100,000.

Because of this, Mr Haeri said, “You definitely want to try (building a real estate portfolio) with someone” as a piece of advice.

With two qualities in his name, Mr. Haeri decided it was time to try something different.

In 2017, he heard that Grafton, a town in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, was going to have many government infrastructure and construction projects going on.

“This is how the area gentrifies when you see these regional cities experiencing strong growth,” he said, adding that he wanted to diversify his portfolio.

The couple bought an established home in Grafton for $ 290,000.

“The thought process was that we knew we wanted to build a real estate portfolio, but the cash flow income in Sydney wasn’t there,” Haeri said.

“You can’t own more than two properties in Sydney because it’s too difficult financially.”

He believes 90 percent of investors are “stuck” with the two-property brand.

Then they grabbed a 700-square-foot block of vacant land valued at $ 65,000, also in Grafton.

They divided the empty lot in two and built two completely identical houses with three bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Each house cost $ 260,000, but they only needed a 10 percent down payment to build.

At that time, in 2017, Mr. Haeri owned five properties.

A year later, Mr. Haeri and his sister sold their very first property.

“I wanted to keep building my portfolio and my sister didn’t,” he said.

“It was easier to go away with my money, she’s gone with her money.”

They had held the St. Ives apartment for 10 years. It sold for $ 790,000, up from $ 550,000 when they originally bought it, bringing him an additional $ 100,000 straight into his pocket.

In the same year, in 2018, Mr. Haeri stepped down from his gardening business and delegated the tasks to others, but still reaped the rewards, which gave him the time to set up the real estate investment agency.

They also moved out of their Brookvale home and opened it up to tenants. So they could live cheaper elsewhere and the rent covered their mortgages.

The couple had worked hard to repay their mortgages “fairly aggressively” and felt ready to buy again in early 2020.

In March of last year the Haeris looked even further into the distance – this time to Queensland.

They got a $ 300,000 house in the southern Brisbane suburb of Kingston, a 30-minute drive from the CBD.

In July of the same year, their daughter Mia was born.

Just three months later, in October, they did bought a $ 302,000 lot in Deception Bay on the northern outskirts of Brisbane.

This was his sixth simultaneous quality.

They are in the process of building granny flats behind the two houses in Brisbane and one of the Grafton houses.

The couple make a quarter of a million dollars together.

Mr. Haeri’s wife, now an Associate Engineer, makes $ 130,000 while making $ 120,000 a year.

Mr Haeri said his impressive portfolio of six properties would not have been possible with the lender’s mortgage insurance or LMI.

He used LMI to secure the Brookvale property and both Brisbane.

LMI, in his opinion, isn’t as scary as it sounds.

“People shouldn’t be too obsessed with it,” he said.

“If you have $ 100,000, you could buy a home for $ 400,000 and you’re not buying an LMI. Or you can buy two properties with increasing value.

“These properties, which are increasing in value, will far outweigh the LMI costs.

“Then you can pile up your real estate twice as fast.

“Don’t focus too much on saving a 20 percent deposit.”

LMI is required when you have a down payment of less than 20 percent of the property’s value.

It is a one-time, non-refundable, non-transferable premium that aims to protect the lender from financial loss if the borrower cannot afford to pay back their home loan.

It can either be prepaid or added to your home loan.

Mr. Haeri said some of his loans were principal and interest while others were just interest.

However, for the next year he plans to transfer everything to interest only.

“We take some time off to spend with Mia, that way we have the passive income,” he said.

Read related topics:Sydney

source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/19/sydney-real-estate-man-owns-six-properties-at-32/