– Australian Business Book Awards: Winner, Positively Geared, best marketing and publicity.
2019 – Real Estate Business Awards: Lloyd Edge, finalist, Buyer's Agent of the year
2019 – Real Estate Business Awards: Aus Property Professionals, finalist, Buyer's Agency of the year.
2019 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Renee Edge, finalist, Operational Support
2019 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Lloyd Edge, finalist, Buyer's Agent of the year
2019 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Aus Property Professionals, finalist, Buyer's Agency of the Year.
2018 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Aus Property Professionals, finalist, Buyer's Agency of the Year
2018 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Aus Property Professsionals, finalist, Buyer's Agency of the year
2018 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Renee Edge, Winner, Operational Support
2018 – Property Investor Awards, Your Investment Property magazine: Lloyd Edge, Top Buyer's Agent (ranked first in NSW, third in Australia).
2017 – REINSW Awards for Excellence: Lloyd Edge, finalist, Buyer's Agent of the year
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My wife Renee told me that I must not write another book this year. We were having our second child, along with having a toddler at home, my business was continuing to grow which was keeping me busy, and we were in the middle of a pandemic. She insisted this was NOT the year to write another book. So I decided that I must go ahead and produce another book. So, thanks Renee for having the confidence in me!
Anna Warwick has worked with me on Buy Now as my developmental editor and I can't thank her enough for her work and support. You're tremendous. Thanks Anna!
I would also like to thank the team at Wiley who approached me to produce another book following the tremendous success of Positively Geared.
To my staff at Aus Property Professionals, thank you for your fantastic work and support in the business.
I would also like to take this opportunity to thank you, the readers for picking up Buy Now and I hope you find some gold nuggets that will help you along in your own journey in property.
INTRODUCTION
This book is for first-time property investors and first home buyers and for those considering their first or next step. It will help you understand how to find your first home or investment property, how to budget for it and how to read the markets.
ON HELP — GIVING AND RECEIVING
My role as a buyer's agent is essentially to help people, and I take this role very seriously. Yet, after many years' experience, I'm still amazed and inspired when my advice and example help give my clients a new perspective, opening up a world of opportunity they'd only dreamed about.
The media is full of noise about high property values, and how first home buyers can never break into this ‘unaffordable’ market. But it isn't true. There are always ways to manage it. If you can't afford a property where you want to buy right now, as you'll read in Buy Now, there are all sorts of strategies you can deploy to build the equity you need to be able to buy the home you want down the track. But this doesn't mean putting things off.
BUY NOW. I never advocate waiting to buy: I don't think anyone ever got ahead by waiting.
Of course it can be difficult initially to break into the property market, and some people find it hard to ask for help. They don't know who to believe, what advice to take and what will work for them. New clients come to me and share their frustration: they feel they've done everything they can and are still getting nowhere. They're working long hours and not spending enough time with the kids. They have a home, but they've got a big mortgage on it, and they're trying to work out how they're ever going to pay it off before retirement. Because, let's face it, if it's going to take you 30 years to pay it off, how will you ever be able to afford your dream home?
Even clients who own a really nice property feel like they're stuck. One I recall was living in the Sydney suburb of Burraneer, quite close to where I live. He had a beautiful house, but the $1.8 million mortgage on it was killing him.
After coming to me for advice, he sold that beautiful home and moved into a rental so he could invest his equity into doing some developments. I helped him build a duplex, which he's making a huge profit on. Now that client is looking towards his next development.
And best of all, he's now living debt-free.
THE IMPORTANCE OF STRATEGY
At some point everyone needs a mentor — someone with hands-on experience to help them get on track. I didn't start out with a strategy. If I'd had someone to advise me from the beginning, I probably would have done better, faster. My own experiences, both positive and negative, have helped me set up my clients strategically far better than I was, and I look at some of those in chapter 6.
At the time, I simply wanted to buy a principal place of residence, and if that's what you want as well, I cover it in chapter 4.
But if I'd had a strategy back then, I probably wouldn't have started out by buying that unit in Rockdale (more on this in chapter 1). I definitely wouldn't have lived in it. Instead, I would have ‘rentvested’ and built up a portfolio faster. And I would have started investing when I was younger but, of course, I didn't know any of this back then. A mentor might have advised me, ‘Don't buy a home to live in — just invest’. Who knows? I might have been advised to buy Rockdale anyway. Being close to amenities and close to the water, it was a sound investment (albeit an accidental one). All I know is I had no strategy, because I didn't know what I was trying to achieve. I didn't have a clear goal.
In fact, I wasn't happy with my first few properties, because in those days I had quite a bit of debt. Those properties were negatively geared, and it frustrated me because I wanted to create money through property. So you see, even after I'd started buying investment properties, I didn't know what I was doing.
That was almost 20 years ago. Today I've achieved a lot of what I set out to do. My goals included buying my dream home (I cover that in chapter 5) and building security for my family. I have a strategy in place for how to pay my property off through my investments. I no longer dream of what I want to achieve in the property markets. I've got other dreams, but they're a little different.
My advice to my clients is not predicated on a hypothetical strategy, but on long experience helping hundreds of clients each year work towards achieving their own goals. That's what's important. It's about achieving your
