Wally and Millerine came to us as second-time investors who knew what they wanted from a property but not where to find it. Based in the Blue Mountains, they were weighing up two very different options: a $600,000 apartment in Parramatta, or a house around the $800,000 mark closer to home. They leaned towards rental return over capital growth but were open to advice. The problem was direction. Two options pulling in opposite directions, no clear way to compare them, and a real risk of picking the wrong one and locking up their capital for a decade.
In the strategy session we made the case for the Upper Hunter instead. Muswellbrook and Singleton offered the yields Wally was after at a price point well under his $800,000 ceiling. Tenant demand there came from local employment rather than speculation.
The first property we shortlisted was in Wanaruah Circuit. The agent was upfront: it already had a $720,000 offer close to unconditional, and the vendor would not seriously consider anything short of a substantial increase. Chasing it meant overpaying. Wally and Millerine let it go, and it sold at $720,000 a few days later.
Two doors down, a second home came up in the same street. Advertised as four bedrooms, we flagged straight away that it was really three bedrooms plus a media room. We pulled comparable sales and put the value at $660,000 to $690,000, and told them plainly that at the asking price it was slightly ahead of the market.
Wally’s next question was the right one, and it shaped the whole decision: which of this property’s weaknesses were permanent, and which could be fixed? We worked through it with him. The sloped backyard and the rear easement were permanent, though the easement sat away from the house and posed no practical issue. The dated kitchen was cosmetic and they could update it whenever they chose. The pest and building report came back clean, with only minor items typical of a home on reactive soils.
Critically, the property came with a tenant in place since 2022 paying $570 per week, with a rental appraisal of $600 to $620. We negotiated the purchase at $685,000, inside the assessed value range and $115,000 under their budget. They exchanged eleven days after engaging us.