Throughout 10 years of property investing, it has not been all smooth sailing for Daniel Hain. However, this investor turned renovator chooses not to focus on the mis-steps, and instead let his experiences – both positive and negative – teach him every step of the way.
Daniel was introduced to property at the tender age of 16, with some wise words from his father.
“He told me that buying houses and building a property portfolio will set me up for when I am older, and I won’t have to be in the trade for my whole life,” Daniel shares.
“I did pay attention to the fact that many older people were living week to week, and I didn’t like the idea of following that path.”
He began saving for his first property as a teenager, and in 2006, he bought his first property in the Latrobe Valley’s Newborough area, at just 19 years old.
“I wanted to buy something rather than just leaving money in the bank and possibly spending it. I grew up in Newborough, and the property was cheap,” he says of his decision to buy.
“I had the money to buy in locations closer to a CBD, but I decided to buy in the Latrobe Valley region. That was a mistake, as the growth was much less.”
Daniel would hold on to this property for years before eventually selling it in late 2016. He also engaged a property advisor, who assisted him in buying a house in Gladstone, Queensland in 2012. This turned out to be another regrettable choice, as Daniel made what he considers to be his biggest investment mistake to date.
“It was the biggest hold up ever – it cleared out all my equity and gave me a high negative cashflow, which impacted my borrowing capacity,” he shares.
“The lesson from this was to not fully trust so-called ‘advisors’, as they can get great kickbacks from the developers on new builds.”
The experience also made Daniel realise that he needed to study up on the property industry himself so that he wasn’t entirely reliant on other people’s tips when building his portfolio. Since then, Daniel has made self-education a high priority in his investment journey – and he’s gone on to amass a highly profitable portfolio.
Learn more about Daniel’s investment journey, including the strategies he has used to deal with the ups and downs of investing in mining towns, in the November 2019 edition of Your Investment Property magazine.
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