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With the Australian real estate market showing no signs of slowing down, investing in property is a surefire way to secure assets that work for you, improving your financial position and creating more opportunities to generate further wealth. When looking to invest your hard-earned capital, your best bet is to seek the support of a trustworthy, professional mortgage broker like Allen Chan, who can use his knowledge and network to secure the best value terms for your needs.
Founder and CEO of Zenrg Finance, Allen’s career in finance began over a decade ago, with a graduate role in a Big 4 banking institution. It was there he learned key lessons for investing and generating wealth before setting out to offer a better service to his clients than he could while working for the banks. Allen’s own personal journey with finance and investing also involved learning key lessons and that would later set him up for success; from leveraging his own parents’ assets as a fresh-faced investor and losing it in options, to flipping his first investment property, propelling him all the way up to property number 10, alongside building a successful brokerage business with a dedicated team of mortgage specialists by his side. Allen has shared some of his key lessons below that helped him to build the successful portfolio he manages today.
Stay out of high risk asset classes if you’re not willing to part with your equity.
I was young at the time, and I was in tears because I leveraged my parents’ home to borrow money and invest in the wrong asset class and lost it all. Fresh out of university with some banking experience under my belt and seeing some of my customers make those alluring double digit per month returns, I bought in and invested around $100k USD in options. Unfortunately for me it was actually through one of the companies that contributed to the Global Financial Crisis, now however I’m actually grateful that I made the decision to invest in a high risk asset class so early on in my journey. Once you lose money, you learn not to go into that class again because there’s no ‘get rich quick’ scheme. You have to build it yourself.
It’s not about how much you make, it’s about how you manage and leverage it.
This was a key lesson I had to learn, and part of what steered me clear of making a huge financial blunder in the first place. Some customers that I served while working in the private banking sector were solicitors, but I noticed that every week I had to extend their line of credit. I realized that comparing these customers to a different group of solicitors who were investing in property and structuring their finances correctly were able to purchase a new property every year. One of those clients I still talk to, and consider him one of my mentors. While paying off his first property, he was able to leverage the equity and slingshot himself into another one, and continue going further and further, which absolutely fascinated me, and led me down the path to eventually owning 10 properties myself.
Know your financial position.
One of my big moments of understanding was when I was working with a bookkeeper friend to manage one of my properties, and he was able to help me figure out my exact financial position with that property at the time. When I consult with clients and they tell me, “oh I’m positively/negatively geared,” but they don’t have the actual numbers to prove it, it makes it so much harder to make an informed decision with your investment portfolio. For example, with my first St Kilda property (which was negatively geared), do I continue to lose money? Or do I sell? These are the optics we need to make the best financial moves.
If you want to learn more about finding the best deal for developing your own portfolio, connect with Allen Chan and his team at Zenrg Finance and begin building your life of financial freedom today.
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