When Sam Gordon left school at the bright-eyed age of 16, he took the advice of his father. Rather than purchasing a glossy car, he took his first plunge into the property sphere and started to carve a path that would lead him to far bigger and wealthier gains.
In fact, little did Sam know at the time, he would eventually go on to own a property portfolio that would be bursting at the seams with a diverse asset base. From land to houses to duplexes, Sam’s properties and his sound strategies for turning over a profit in ‘bread and butter’ properties, have handed him the title of Your Investment Property’s Strategic Investor of the Year award.
In the latest Your Investment Property YIP Talk podcast, Sam sits down with host and magazine editor Sarah Megginson to share how he progressed from his very first project and some of the skills that he had to hone along the way.
“Once I kind of started looking at real estate and realizing what I could probably get [as a profit] got damn high, I kind of just started to get bitten by the bug of it really,” he shares in the podcast, also reflecting on the drawbacks of feeling as though he had to execute each project on his own and not being completely aware at the time of how that could impede his timeframe for execution.
Sam explains that the longer your holding costs are for a property that you’re renovating or developing, the further it’s going to shave down your profit.
The investing award winner also spotlights the importance of sourcing the right team of experts and trades for a particular project, and how his particular approach has allowed his developments to be a relatively smooth experience.
“You want people who are passionate about what you do, what they do, and real professionals that are in that space, wherever it is that they are in,” Sam says in the podcast.
“It’s taking your time, making sure you are very well-versed in an area and in that lot of property, and even building the team along the way [as] you’re trying to pick up an investment.”
Joy and Michael Williams have also generated substantial profits from knowing how to transform the dullest property into an attention-grabbing wealth mine come auction day. Their hands-on approach and carefully perfected strategy have helped them to rise above some tough competition to take out Your Investment Property’s Reno Investors of the Year award.
“We definitely believe that a renovation can add value to the property whether it’s from a sale point of view or from a rental point of view, and then my husband has the cabinet making background so we started doing a lot of things ourselves,” Joy shares in the latest YIP Talk podcast.
The couple have fashioned the bones of up to 12 properties, one of which they executed a sub-division on. Having taken advantage of the property’s large land allotment and timing the market right, the sale went on to break suburb records.
When asked how their first renovation went, Michael shares that the 1970s art-deco property in Melbourne that they had tackled together was poised for “an amazing outlook” thanks to some DIY painting, gardening and tiling. “We were very excited and happy with the end result,” he says.
The project might have far exceeded the couple’s expectations – sweeping in a momentous profit of around $75,000.
“With a bit of help with the internet and do-it-yourself guards and Bunnings, we were able to get the job done and achieve a really good result,” Michael shares of the project’s success in the podcast.
Joy and Michael also discuss the value of understanding the market that you are about to approach and conducting independent research on the ground before signing into a project.
“Get out and about and have a look at the suburbs,” Joy says. “Not just the community itself but what other properties are for sale, what are developers doing to really market their projects so [that would indicate to us] what can we do to make ours a little bit better.”
To gain tips from Your Investment Property’s Investor of the Year Award winners Joy and Michael Williams, and Sam Gordon, as well as get an insight into their journeys in the property market, tune in to the latest YIP Talk podcast.
