Hi Everyone.
Thought I would start a new topic about deals we should have jumped on in the past but for varying reason we let them get away.
I’ll start the topic off with a story of my own that began back in 1999.
Me and my wife worked for a large mining company in the north west of WA. During our time there we lived in a modest 3 bedroom weather board house that we rented from the company under a subsidised housing scheme. In the three years we lived in the town we saw the population drop from an almost capacity 5000 people down to just 2500.
When we decided it was time to move on, the mining company gave us an offer to purchase our rental property for $35000. Upon visiting the local real estate office we discovered that this was about the market price for such a home at that time and that due to the company downsizing they had flooded the market with the many vacant properties they owned.
So, we decided to let it go and we moved on to our next location.
With the aid of the booming China economy that same mining town began to grow once again.
In six years those same properties have increase in value by a whopping 1000% ( I think my percentage is right). The same house that I was offered at $35000 would now easily sell for $350000 but more probably $400000. And they rent out at over $550 a week.
Even if I’d picked up only two of them at that time. The first 12 months may have been rough with high vacancy rates but after that they would have more than paid for themselves…Not to mention the extraordinary capital growth rates….
Oh well, ‘hindsight is a beautiful thing’
I’d love to hear about other peoples ‘should have’ stories. Maybe we can all learn a thing or two from them
Cheers
pevans[exhappy]
Pevans
You must be talking about Newman?
Just missed that one as well!! It taught me a valuable lesson..
Hindsight as they say is Twenty20 vision!!!!!
Regards
MikeyMickey
Spot on !! Its just amazing to see how expensive it is up there right now.
Did you have the pleasure of living there at some stage?
Pevans
g’day pevans,
That hindsight thing has followed me all over Australia.
Never had much foresight.
I look at all my missed opportunities, it makes me want to cry.
Missed opportunities were in West Aussie, Geraldton (couldn’t give the place away). Even Perth was dirt cheap.
Then there was South Aust. The Adelaide suburb of Elizabeth.
Plus Melbourne and then Sydney. But my worst missed opportitunity was Qld. Some bloody solicitor talked me out of putting money into that state.
I kick myself when I think about it ( twice a day).So now it’s “get on with it”. Forget the past and consentrate on the future.
Where to from here ?
That’s the question we all have to ask ourselves.
Me, I’ve answered that question, I’m now into it !bruham. [exhappy]
Hi Burham
Yes i hear you…
I remember visiting my parents down in Bunbury WA a few years back. You could buy places out of the paper that easily passed McKnight’s 11 second test, spoilt for choice…But “no one” bought investments in Bunbury….Until the BOOM hit that town too..
I think the key is to not follow the herd…Because if you wait for them to take action….it’s too late!!
pevans
Hi All. Firstly, Bruham – I like your style.
Now, no doubt there are always ‘coulda/shoulda’ stories, but one I remember clearly before I ever even thought about real estate remotely seriously, must be about 16 years ago now, in a small country town ‘dump’ in Victoria, about half way between Melbourne and Mildura, having a bit of a chuckle because ‘we’ could have purchased a block of land next to my parents place on my credit card – and it had a $2500 limit at the time! I t seemed hilarious to me at the time that land was attainable that easily, but of course, it would have been a terrible buy……..The rest is history as they say.[strum] Must be a lesson there somewhere……yesterday is gone its what you do tomorrow that counts. A crystal ball would certainly make life easier, but quite frankly if a large mining company was pulling out why would you want to invest .there has been plenty of gost towns over the years. And who was to know we were heading for a boom.
I reckon my biggest hindsight mistake was actually buying a house in Wodonga, and owning it from 1989 until 1997. The market did not grow at all in that time. We started at interest rates of 15% and by the first monthly payment they had gone to 17%. If we had rented during that time we would have been better off financially, and the stress would have been a lot less. We looked after our house, but a very similar one around the corner actually sold around the same time (after having been bought around the some time) for about 10 grand less than purchase price. If we had steadily put the difference between rent and loan repayments into stocks we would have been so much better off. Since then that house has more than doubled in price of course.
One good thing we did do is buy a house in Wagga in 2000 when we couldn’t find a place to rent. I was worried that if we didn’t stay for at least about 4 years the costs of buying and selling would really hit us. Anyhow, we renovated it in 2003, and made nice money thanks!
Another big one that went past was Aristocrat shares at less than $1 in about early 2003? They had dropped from about $6, so why would you buy them? Now they are about $16. *sigh*
You can’t do everything, but if you do nothing you get nothing![lmao]
kjs
Hi Guys
My biggest hindsight mistake ended up being a good thing, you know the old saying ” one door closes, another opens”.
I bought a duplex in 1998 opposite the green acres caravan park in Dunsborough for $175,00. It was only one street back from the ocean and had a lane way opposite to the beach. I was renting it out as holiday accomodation, but got frusturated at property managers and sold it in 1999 (18 months) for very little profit. I failed to do my research at the time and later discovered that they were developing land opposite my property for holiday accomodation.
Luck should have it that i scored a job in Newman and used my equity from the dunsborough duplex to secure 4 properties over a 4 year in Newman just prior to the boom.
So in hindsight, yeah i am spewing that i still dont have the Dunsborough property, but am laughing that i did quite well out of the Neman properties. I ended up taking profits on all the Newman properties, but in hind sight once again could have made a larger gain waiting 6 months. Virtually same type of houses, first one sold in January 06 for $220,000, 9 months later $375,000.
Not complaining though, but in hind sight!!
Wayne
“Hindsight is 100% Clear”
“Money is a currency, like electricity and it requires momentum to make it Effective”
Online Positive Cashflow and Renovating Calculators
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