A high school dropout with more than 30 homes bought while carving out a living selling alarm systems has revealed the two key elements that made his unlikely property empire possible.
“Some people are happy to get a job and work normal hours, finish at five, and the rest of the day is theirs. For me, I want to be in control. I don’t enjoy working for other people. I didn’t enjoy school. “They want to make money, but beyond that they haven’t thought about why. They go through the trouble of getting a loan and finding a tenant, but there’s no connection to a goal.“The other thing is people’s lives change. They get sick, or they’re offered jobs overseas, and when these things happen, they sell based on short-term goals. The challenge is to stick to a long-term plan.
He used a small deposit and spent about $60,000 renovating the property. “My friends were tradies. They helped on the weekends. I paid mates’ rates and in lots of beer and barbecues.“Because I was one of the first in my friendship group to buy, my place was where we hung out.”“For its location, it was a good price. I wish I bought 10 of them … there was no strategy. It was near where I grew up and wasn’t based on a particularly well thought out plan.
With the $200,000 he got for the business, he moved to Sydney at age 23 and began work as a sales consultant for a security company.Now having a salary – rather than being self-employed, which made getting loans difficult – Mr Harris bought a second property in the Perth suburb of Wembley: a two-bedroom unit for $115,000.
“It was a budget friendly renovation to tidy it up. I subdivided the block, the market picked up, and I ended up selling a few years later for a lot of money.”
Stop celebrating this . That’s 29 houses that could have been someone’s first home