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About David Bradley- NT Area Manager
I'm happy to introduce myself, and my wife, Lisa, as the Area Managers for the Northern Territory. I'm an IT consultant during the day, while Lisa is a Marine Scientist - currently taking leave to raise our two children. We've been interested in property investment for quite some time. Like a lot of people, we thought that owning property had the potential to be a good financial move. Like a few of those people, we stumbled on the realisation of just how good it really could be! But it took a while for that realisation to sink in.
We always knew that we had to find a way to fund the retirement that we wanted. We knew that we were not going to have that dream on the pension, and we knew that we would have to start our investment plan sooner rather than later, in order to retire sooner rather than later.
But there was always something else to do first. We felt comfortable with the fact that we'd bought a 2 bedroom unit, so we'd already entered the property market. Right? We wanted an adventurous, carefree lifestyle in the meantime. We went camping, and skiing and travelling. We moved to Tasmania for more adventure. We had overseas trips, ate out several times a week, entertained, sought entertainment.
Then we wanted stability. We moved back to Darwin and immediately sought out a house to buy. We bought a pre-cyclone house in Stuart Park (and believe me, most of it was in pre-cyclone condition). Around the same time we sold our 2-bredroom unit (8 years after buying it) and learnt a thing or two about over-capitalisation, and buying in a low-growth area. We thought we knew a fair bit about property investing, and thought it was something that we'd do in the future - in a few years, when we got a bit of equity in the house. Well three years later, Darwin house values had moved slightly, and we thought that it would be a good idea to convert the capital growth into a new kitchen to replace the original 1968 version.
We'd all but signed the contract for the kitchen, when I read "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". It didn't tell us anything new, but it did help to solidify our direction. We knew that we wanted to invest in property when we had enough capital, but a new kitchen was more important. Wasn't it? The chipboard would litter the floor each morning like breakfast cereal. The stove was temperamental, the plumbing was beyond temperamental, and the bench tops were a type of laminate that could only be described as "I guess the choices were pretty limited in the 60's".
We joked that we could buy an investment property with the money that we were going to spend on the kitchen, but of course, we'd refinanced now, and we had the kitchen contractors ready to start work. And a new kitchen would add value to our house. And we wanted it.
Surprisingly, Lisa and I made the decision quite easily to cancel work on the kitchen, and find an investment property instead. We had both clicked that instead of increasing the value of our property portfolio by $10k, we could increase it by over $300k by spending the same amount of money on an investment property instead. The crappy kitchen would just have to stay for another year or two!
We sought out a WISE seminar. We knew other people who had successful dealings with WISE, and their formula made sense to us. So we bought a WISE property instead of a kitchen. Now we are on the way to our next IP, and after that, we might even buy another one.
Now might be a good time to mention that we didn't reach our "moment of enlightenment" at a sensible time in our lives. We didn't set all this up years before our family came along, or while we had two good wage earners out there making a living. No, we had one young child, and another on the way when we cancelled that kitchen renovation. There isn't a day that goes by that we don't think "what if we'd started this 10 years ago". But at the same time, we thank those lucky stars that we did start at all.
Oh, by the way, 15 months after we cancelled our first attempt at a kitchen renovation, we have taken the plunge and done it. Yep, the new kitchen renovation looks a lot different to that first one that we had planned, but we have a different goal now - to spend as little as possible on the renovation, to get the best possible capital gain. All so that we can buy another investment property sooner!
Taking on the role of Area Manager/Client Support Manager enables us to share our enthusiasm and knowledge of building wealth through property investment with other people. This is an opportunity that is attainable by the average person, on an average wage, who has more than average dreams.
Have you realised the true potential of property?
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