How One Young Sydneysider Got On The Property Ladder

Age: 25
Occupation: Finance Customer Service Manager
Properties Owned: 1
Property Type: Old tenanted house (to knock down and build a modern duplex)
Plan: Turn $60,000 of combined savings into $300,000 within a year and then repeat and do it again.
Yesim from Sydney is the oldest of five sisters living together with their mother. It was her own mother’s interest in property investment which started Yesim thinking about investing. However, Yesim didn’t have the income or savings to be able to buy a property in Sydney on her own. This obstacle spurred the idea her and her younger sister investing together.
At first they thought that investing through a family trust would be the way to go, however Yesim soon found out that this came with a lot of restrictions and added costs, potentially restricting her ability to expand her property portfolio in the future.
On the other hand, she also realized that directly owning property with others means you can be tied at the hip financially. This is not something she wanted for herself or her family in the long term future.
It seemed Yesim was at a dead end, however she got back up from some property investment experts (Binvested) and finance strategists (Zinger Finance). Together they devised a plan that would allow Yesim and her sister worth together while being able to each break free with a profit in under a year. The plan was to develop a new duplex and flip it for a profit, turning their $60,000 of savings into a potential $300,000 profit at the end.
The team of advisors helped her find a deal that suited her situation perfectly. She went on to purchase an existing house on land in outer Western Sydney for $476,000 using a 5% deposit. The property is currently tenanted and bringing in rent of $300 per week, meaning she can affordably service the mortgage repayments while she waits for the development plans to be approved. She has also structured the loan to be interest only so that the repayments don’t eat into her lifestyle.
The plan is to subdivide the land build two duplex’s for $200,000 on each new block. The price at completion is expected to be $650,000 for each duplex, which will hopefully bring a profit of over $300,000.
Yesim chose not to take advantage of the first home buyers grant saying, “It wouldn’t be worth it. It would actually cost me more in the end as I would have to actually live in the property and I wouldn’t be able to cover the repayments myself. I would also need to pay the principal instead of just the interest on the loan”.
The process has already been a big character building learning curve for Yesim. No one in her family had experience in property investment, let alone development, so she relied on her team of advisors through the entire journey. Yesim says the biggest thing she learnt is “let the experts do their thing and having faith in your team”
Her advice to anyone wanting to get into property is, “never hold back on what they want to achieve, especially if they think they are not ready to do so. I thought I would have been at least another year away from my first property, but the right team and right mindset makes things happen”.
Property investment can be addictive and Yesim had already caught the bug. After receiving the profits from this projects she hopes to buy a property to assist her cash flow and possibly undertake another similar development soon after.