Yahoo Finance Finding it impossible to buy a house? These Aussie schoolmates jumped on new trend to snag $800,000 home
High school friends Jordan Slinger and Jules Mahoney decided to work together to get onto the property ladder.
With property prices continuing to rise across the country, two Aussie mates have taken a unique approach to getting a foot on the property ladder. Alone the 27-year-old's wouldn't have been able to buy for years.
But together Brisbane high school friends Jules Mahoney and Jordan Slinger raise the funds to snag an $800,000 house in Brisbane they plan to renovate and resell. A real estate expert told Yahoo Finance buying with friends was becoming more common as Australia’s booming property market leaves many hopeful homebuyers behind, especially the young.
“Jordan and I first started talking about buying a house together about a year ago when an opportunity to buy a house came up. We missed out on that property at auction but we kept the idea in mind,” Mahoney told Yahoo Finance.
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In February, the two managed to secure the purchase of a house on a 405 square metre block in Brisbane’s inner northside suburb of Grange after coming together to raise the deposit.
“It came up quickly,” said Slinger.
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“We honestly didn’t think we were going to buy it as we thought it was over our budget. But we looked at all the other properties in the area and thought it was still a great opportunity with a huge upside.”
Young Aussies take on renovations to cut costs
The pair have begun renovations which they plan to do themselves to cut costs.
Mahoney, who runs his own carpentry business, told Yahoo Finance they have plans to turn the current three-bedroom one one-bathroom home into a four-bedroom and two-bathroom house.
“New kitchens and new bathrooms will be added in the extension of the property as well as a complete new front façade.
“All of the work will hopefully be completed by Jordan and myself to keep the price down. We are hoping to have everything done within 18 months.”
The friends are planning to sell the property once renovations are complete, but are keeping an open mind to the possibility of refinancing and using the equity to purchase their next DIY property project.
Buying alone was out of the question
Both said that alone, they wouldn’t have been able to afford the purchase and renovation costs.
“I think with how the property prices are in Queensland, it would be almost impossible to buy a property by yourself and still have money left over to renovate and make a profit,” said Mahoney.
Slinger, who is a business development manager for a property management agency added: “Prices aren’t going down and we know we have been lucky to be able to have a great friendship and trust to ultimately get this underway. It would be extremely hard for an individual to have enough for the deposit, renovation and holding costs.”
The pair had always been focused on buying a property and both did not attend university after school so have been working full time since finishing school and saving for their goal.
Buying property with friends an emerging trend
Luke Ashby, Mortgage Broker at Emerge Finance told Yahoo Finance that the trend of buying with a friend is emerging as a viable option to break into a Brisbane property market.
With median house prices in the city sitting at $817,564, according to CoreLogic, the market is becoming more and more difficult to afford for single income earners to enter.
“With interest rates the way they are now (more than double what we saw rates in 2020/21), a single income earner with no debts needs to earn at least $100,000 per year to be able to borrow high $400,000s as a loan amount,” he said.
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