Property Investment: Our Story

Like many people, our first foray into property investment was when we bought our own home. Even back then in the early eighties first home buyers were struggling to get a foot on the property ladder in Sydney and we had to move a long way west of the city in order to find a place that we could afford. We wanted a house that would become a home, a place where we would be happy to bring up our children.

That first property suited us well. It had three bedrooms, a front and back garden, and a pool. But as time went on our family started to feel a bit cramped, and we began to get itchy feet. We started to look for another property.

The real estate market in Sydney was fair, and our first house turned out to be a good investment, but we were about to discover a basic truth about real estate. Although our house had risen in value, when we started shopping we found that all the other houses had gone up in price too! Unless we lived in a tent we would simply have to spend all our real estate gains on our next house - and if we wanted a bigger house, or a house in a better location, we'd have to spend more than we'd gained.

It took a while to come to terms with this discouraging discovery - we weren't as well-off as we had thought we were.

We still hadn't grasped the idea that investing in property could be a way for ordinary people to build wealth, but we were about to stumble across three important lessons about real estate. Of course we didn't recognise them at the time, all we knew was that we needed to find a way to buy a better home for our family.

How do you get the home you want when you can't afford to pay for it? Lesson one in property investment turned out to be: there are lots of ways to pay for real estate. On this occasion we chose to pay with our spare time and a lot of inconvenience: we decided to build our home ourselves.

Two years on we were living in our new home, perched amongst the gum trees on the side of a hill. From our glass-fronted living room we looked out across the blue waters of the Pittwater lagoon. On our deck brightly coloured lorikeets and big white cockatoos with tufts of yellow on their heads came to feast on sunflower seeds. We lived with the results of property investment lesson two: if you really desire something badly enough, you will find a way to achieve it.

But there was a devil in paradise. And he couldn't wait to teach us Real Estate investment lesson number three: don't bite off more than you can chew. Our building project cost more time and more money than we had ever dreamed it would. We ran out of both. So when someone came along with an interesting job offer off-shore, we accepted.

Looking back, lesson three really was devilish. We became discouraged. We gave up on our dreams too soon. We could have been more creative about finding solutions - but we hadn't really learnt property investment lesson two. Nevertheless that third lesson is important because it's all about being prepared. Planning.

So we sold our lovely home, invested some money in a little rental property, and took off for some interesting years in the South Pacific.

Then to chilly Britain: children at high school, parents juggling work, a new business, and study, we began to think again about real estate investment. There was a fourth property investment lesson that had gradually embedded itself over the years we'd been 'away': ordinary people can actually own property that they don't live in themselves.

We spent a lot of time talking and dreaming, and we put the four lessons together: there's more than one way to pay for property, think creatively and you can achieve almost anything if you really want to, planning pays, and it is possible for ordinary people to own more than one property.

Since then the lessons keep on coming. We started our UK property investment by joining a partnership/syndicate. (We still own a share of that little property in South Wales.) Then we bought a rental in our own right - and spent huge amounts of time at the University of Property Headaches learning about tenants, the DSS, HMOs, DIY, and the art of self-managing rental property at a distance.

We renovated a Victorian cottage from the ground up, extended another, formed a property syndicate, bought and refurbished ex-local authority homes. We learnt about raising finance, drawing up budgets, sourcing supplies, dealing with the various tradespeople, the best of whom can turn a so-so property into something beautiful.

Putting all those lessons together we started Giroma - a co-operative property investment company. Working with our investors has allowed the company to take a share in several refurbishment projects, rental property, and a small development in the UK. Further afield we are buying off-plan properties in the USA. We don't get everything right, and we're sure to miss many brilliant property investment opportunities, but so far the company's projects have been satisfyingly profitable. Our strategy is developing as we discover more and more ways to make property pay.

The journey to achieve our dreams takes us along paths we've not explored before. We have to keep focussing on our goals, have the determination to face down those who put obstacles in our way, draw courage from the things we've learnt and have the good sense to learn new lessons with humility and grace.