Ferrari Seeker

Introduction
Since moving to Brisbane my wife and I count ourselves extremely fortunate to have been introduced to Renergi and their wonderful team. Today we rely on to keep our lives both stress free and financially lucrative and have no hesitation in recommending the club to anyone wanting to profit from renovating in today's market.

The following is some background on my wife and I, what our goals are, how we started off and some of the learnings we have made...

Goals
Our goals are simple: To be filthy rich and live like kings. To travel the world and be free of mundane things, like jobs!

As Sydney dwelling seminar zealots our wealth creation strategy had been to buy and renovate older property. This refurbished property would gain us higher rental income than other comparative properties and help to offset mortgage costs. The depreciation of the renovation, and any shortfall of income versus mortgage repayments would be negative geared against our incomes and we would use the increased equity to leap frog into the next property. The Ferrari awaited...

Site (or reality) and Strategy problems
Site: Given the small size of the older styled unit on Sydney's Northern beaches my wife and I had been fortuante enough to buy we decided that we would do the renovations ourselves. I took two weeks off from my normal job and with the help of a friend started the renovation. Unfortunately the effort involved was far more than we had invisioned and it became obvious that even though we were putting in 14 hour hour plus days, running foul of the body corporate and quickly learning about things called plumbers putty and the like, we would not be able to complete the job within the allotted time frame. Eventually I had to get in both a plumber and an electrician to help finish the job. This added several thousand dollars to the cost of the exercise. Also thanks to certain suppliers talking more than 14 days lead time to get some good to us the renovation ended up taking closer to a month than the two weeks initially hoped for.

Strategy: A limitation with our strategy had become apparent as ownership of just two Sydney rental units had us at borrowing and serviceability limits. Also the associated ‘current lifestyle' sacrifices were beginning to depress us, and it appeared there was nothing we could do to further speed up the wealth creation strategy other than wait for rents and property values to raise to a point we could commence again.

It looked like the wheels had fallen off my Ferrari!

Club Involvement:
Given our experience before coming to Brisbane consisted entirely of units we were nervous about tackling an entire house. However the lower entry prices with the Brisbane market and lower utilization ratio of units to houses lead us to decide that this was the way to go.

With Renergi's help even our first Brisbane renovation looked like something out of a magazine and achieved a sale price $30,000 higher than anything in that area had ever sold for before!

Renergi provided me a pool of subcontractors who turned up when they said they would. They were friendly and helpful and their workmanship and manner were of an extremely high professional standard. Having reasonable rates pre-negotiated was a big bonus!

As a customer of Renergi I was also able to source materials from a comprehensive list of suppliers at extremely competitive prices. In one case this was almost at half the price that I had been able to negotiate by myself. The product from their suppliers was the latest fashion and of good quality.

The ideas and the know-how supplied by the project manager were invaluable.

Products and Solution
The first solution provided to me by one of the Renergi team was a modification to our wealth creation strategy, which allowed us to regain our desired lifestyle and also continue a wealth creation program. This change was to buy, renovate and sell property as well as buy, renovate and keep property. Hence increasing our current income whilst still building future wealth.

This extra income allowed us to purchase and renovate new property without having to draw down on the increased equity of our previously renovated properties and hence avoid the increased mortgage repayments and the coinciding lifestyle pressure.

The Renergi project manager helped ensure the work undertaken by the sub-contractors was scheduled in such a way that it flowed with no hold-ups. He also advised me on the best way to perform certain aspects of the renovation in order to achieve maximum affect with minimum capital.

One example of this was when re-tiling the bathroom to tile over the top of the existing tiles. This avoided the substantial expense of lifting the original tiles and the final result was excellent.

Outcome:
The outcome of our association with Renergi can be looked at in two ways:

One is hard dollars and taking our first Brisbane renovation as an example:

We:

But the real value of Renergi does not come from a single $20,000 win. It comes from the fact that I can work a full time job (haven't quite managed to kicked the habit yet). My wife and I can raise and enjoy our new daughter and without the need to sacrifice all precious our spare time we can, utilising Renergi's resources, repeat this win over and over and over...

Maybe I'll get that Ferrari yet!

Sincerely,
Mark Poots