AussieRodney

All finished.

AussieRodney — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:49:51 +0000

We have today settled on the sale of the final investment property & now all we own is the townhouse we live in & the bus. I guess that wraps up me being the “expert” in establishing financial freedom through property investing in Australia.

Although you might like to check out West Finance. The $200 I deposited with them 6 months ago has grown to $1500, and I have made a small withdrawal to make sure it works. They may be my salvation after all.

Update: They have just gone bankrupt, undone by the temporary loss of their 2 best traders who were stranded in Europe by the Iceland volcano, together with the shockingly erratic state of the Euro & the British Pound over the last month. What a pity.

Nearly there

AussieRodney — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 10:59:12 +0000

It’s now early February & we have sold 5 properties & desperately need to move #6, a townhouse in Kalgoorlie. It is also starting to look like we may have to bring #7 up from later in the year as previously planned, just to get our finances out of the hole that clearing the debt will leave us in. This whole process is frustrating & very scary, as we are very close to going broke if these properties don’t sell quickly.

Further progress

AussieRodney — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 08:35:10 +0000

Happy New Year & another property has settled. One more in 2 weeks & working on #5 in about 3 weeks. Now we need to push #6.

Progress report

AussieRodney — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 07:38:17 +0000

It’s now almost Christmas & we have sold 2 properties, with unconditional contracts on 2 more, plus 1 more under offer & only 1 outstanding. Quite a good result in less than 2 months. The lender is very happy with our efforts.

Paradigm shift

AussieRodney — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 21:18:02 +0000

It has been a very long time since I updated here & there’s a reason for that. The property in Townsville left us over-committed & then the escape vehicle of our dreams popped up. We went for it using a short term loan, believing that we could easily pay it off by re-financing our whole portfolio. Five months later, we are now in default on the loan & paying interest at 12% a month. Yes, you read that right. BTW, if you are an investor with some cash available to loan, DirectLine Finance will get you a very good return on your investment. Not doing much for us right now, but it might help you!

Financially, big mistake. Huge. (Yes, straight out of “Pretty Woman”). However, as a lifestyle decision, it was the right choice, although the end result has been that we are trading 6 of our 8 properties for 1 motorhome. Not something I would ever have done voluntarily, but now that it is actually in process, I am at peace with it.

I am actually looking forward to seeing my pay packet arrive in my bank account & knowing that not all of it is earmarked for paying off loans. We do still retain one of the properties plus our own home. We will decide later whether that one will be sold off.

We still look forward to hitting the road permanently & it is still my goal to set up a computer repair service called AussieRodney’s Outback IT Service on a “we come to you, wherever you are in Australia” basis. Although it might be a little further away than we thought! But having said that, it may well be that the income from the 1 or 2 remaining properties could be enough to sustain us on the road. We’ll find out!

Change of lender, not direction

AussieRodney — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 21:49:59 +0000

Major kudos to George Karandjias of PFA Private, who got us the funding for the property in Townsville (3 posts ago) in just 10 days from application to settlement – that’s 10 calendar days! We have now asked him to use his contacts to make the transfer of our whole portfolio & the winner is CBA, aka the Commonwealth Bank. They offer a very attractive interest rate along with the usual raft of banking accounts, services & facilities. We are moving a couple of high equity properties first to generate enough funds to pay off the caveat loan before the end of the month, followed by the rest shortly afterwards.

The amalgamation process

AussieRodney — Fri, 29 May 2009 21:59:12 +0000

We are also applying to AMP to bring our existing loans up to the 80% level, generate enough capital to pay off the caveat loans. This is the first stage of a process of amalgamating everything back into an AMP Master Limit, so that I only have to remember one set of account details.

Hopefully, it works like this: AMP agree to up our existing loans & issue a formal approval. We than take that formal approval back to the caveat lender to demonstrate that we can repay their loan & they remove the caveats, allowing AMP to proceed with their normal loan process. The funds from that process are then repaid to the caveat lender & we get rid of them for good.

The next stage is to bring all of the other properties into the AMP portfolio & then somehow generate enough spare cash to be able to escape in our freedom machine permanently. More on that when it happens!

Letting go of a property

AussieRodney — Fri, 29 May 2009 10:53:41 +0000

After consultation with a finance consultant, we have opted to sell the house in Mount Isa, on the basis that it has taken its rise in prices & with the current global recession, it is unlikely to grow anywhere near as much as it has recently. So this is one of the very rare occasions when we sell a property. As it happens, the tenant who moved in recently is very keen to buy the place, so we are starting price negotiations. And the place is overdue for some substantial maintenance costs, which means that now is the time to move it on.

Settlement on property #8

AussieRodney — Thu, 14 May 2009 15:34:15 +0000

We did in fact settle on Wednesday, largely due to my turning the mortgage documents around, from receiving them via email, getting them signed & witnessed by our local Justice of the Peace, & back in the Express Post box in just 50 minutes flat. We made the Express Post deadline of 6 pm by just 5 minutes.

We are now working with the onsite managers to get a tenant into it as soon as possible.

Small steps

AussieRodney — Sun, 10 May 2009 10:19:51 +0000

The bridging finance did eventually come through, just in time as I predicted earlier. We had already locked in a visit to Bundaberg on the weekend after Easter, knowing that the finance probably would not be ready in time. It wasn’t, but we went ahead anyway, as all of the flights were either using up Frequent Flier points or cheap ones, & it enabled Julie to get a decent look at the rig. At that point, our backup plan was to return on the following weekend (Anzac Day), which we did. In fact, our first night was parked in an off-street parking area associated with the RSL in Murgon, so it was good to be able to link in the some of the Anzac diggers on the day.

Unfortunately, we have paid a heavy price for the bridging finance, & have effectively negated the saving we made on the new rig.

Meanwhile, we are now finally in the end stages of settling on the last unit in The Sanctuary, now due to settle on Wednesday after nearly a month of extensions. Glencorp have been very good to us in not charging default interest, & I have been able to work directly with them, as well as having Dana, our Brisbane solicitor, work with their solicitors to keep the formal extension approvals in line. At this point, it’s appropriate to put in a plug for George & Bev at PFA Private for making everything happen quickly.