In an industry where the odds are often stacked against women, Rosemary Yang, Lorna Wang, and Gillean Opoku are muscling their way into property investing.
All single and without a family war chest to rely on, they started on the back foot, but managed to build multimillion-dollar property portfolios reaping handsome returns.
Gillean Opoku, 35, built a $1.2 million portfolio across three investment properties. Louie Douvis
Melbourne-based mum, Rosemary Yang, 41, amassed seven investment properties spread around Perth and Melbourne. Her investments are generating $232,000 a year rental income and currently worth an estimated $4.5 million.
Sydney-based investor Lorna Wang, 32, accumulated five properties worth $2.8 million achieving more than 6 per cent gross rental yields, while another Sydneysider Gillean Opoku, 35, built a $1.2 million portfolio across three investment properties.
Arjun Paliwal, head of research at buyer’s agency InvestorKit said there has been a spike in the number of women looking to invest in the past year.
“We’ve definitely seen an uptick of the volume of inquiries from women investors, which has increased to 28 per cent from 20 per cent in the previous year,” he said.
“They want to build wealth independently, and I expect that trend to continue to rise.”
A CoreLogic analysis early last year found that 29.5 per cent of all investment properties in Australia were owned by females solely, compared to 36.3 per cent owned by males, with the remainder owned jointly.
Gender pay gap as well as child-rearing and caring for aged parents have a significant impact on women’s ability to invest in property, said Eliza Owen, CoreLogic head of research.
“In addition to earning less than men, it’s more common for women to take time out of the workforce for child-rearing and caring of aged parents, which affects the savings accumulation time frame,” she said.
“Because property is so expensive, it’s probably something that affects single women in particular.”
Ms Yang said building a property portfolio was tough for a single mum, but she persisted because she believed it was the surest way to build her finances and support her son.
“I need to think about how I could afford to send my son to a good school and have enough money to live on without stress, so I decided to invest in property,” she said.
Ms Yang bought her first investment property in Perth about 10 years ago but decided to sell it after years of lacklustre growth. Soon after her husband died in 2015, she decided to get back to investing.
“I struggled a lot when I was starting out because I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t have any strategy and had no clue about financing,” she said.
“But I learned some lessons from my first failed investment, so I was able to choose a better property when I returned to the market.
“I decided to buy a townhouse in a top school zone in Perth, and then bought a couple of properties in the mining town Kalgoorlie. They’re all positively geared and have gone up a lot in value.”
Rosemary Yang, 41, amassed seven investment properties worth $4.5 million. Eamon Gallagher
By 2019, Ms Yang decided to move to Melbourne and has bought four more properties since then. All except one are earning more than enough rental income to cover the mortgage repayments and all have increased in value.
Because her overall portfolio was positively geared, Ms Yang was able to get finance to buy more properties using income from her casual job and from her small import-export business.
She planned to grow her portfolio to 15 properties, retire at 50 and maybe buy her dream home in five years’ time.
“It can be daunting to get started, but the key is to take small steps and don’t be discouraged by setbacks. They’re lessons that you could apply in your next purchase,” Ms Yang said.
“I made mistakes, such as buying a property that underperformed, but this didn’t deter me. It gave me the experience and the confidence to choose better assets that have continued to perform strongly.”
For Sydney-based investor Lorna Wang, buying the “wrong” property also fuelled her desire to get smarter about property investing.
“I bought a unit for $367,000 back in April 2014 and based on the current market, I’d be lucky to get $450,000, so the capital growth has been shocking,” she said.
“But I decided to get educated and bought houses two years ago, which have increased by at least 30 per cent in capital growth, so a mistake need not define the outcome of your investments.”
Ms Wang said she felt compelled to accelerate her property investment to set herself up financially, while she can.
“Overall, I think financial security is very important, but I feel women are biologically disadvantaged in the sense that, when we do bear children, that has an impact on our financial future,” she said.
“So for me, before I get into that stage in life, I want to really set myself up financially. I knew I wouldn’t have the same opportunity as I would if I had kids, so it really drove me to build wealth very quickly and made me want to accelerate my property investing.”
Lorna Wang, 32, accumulated five properties worth $2.8 million. Janie Barrett
As a single investor, Ms Wang said getting finance was the biggest hurdle in expanding her portfolio.
“I would love to add to my portfolio, but my income restricts me from borrowing more money to invest, so I’d have to wait a bit longer,” she said.
“The rapid rise in interest rates have increased my mortgage costs, but I allocated enough buffer to tide me over. But this also means my borrowing capacity has been severely diminished.”
Gillean Opoku’s first investment, a unit in Liverpool in Sydney’s south-west was also an underperformer, but the experience buoyed her to buy her second, third and fourth properties.
“I bought the Liverpool property because I was counting on the new airport to drive demand, but there are simply too many apartments in the area at the moment, so this has depressed prices,” she said.
“But rents are quite good, so I can hold on to it a bit longer until values increase a bit.”
Ms Opoku’s second purchase in 2019 was her own home – a three-bedroom apartment in Parramatta, which has since gone up in value substantially.
When COVID-19 hit, she got a job that paid twice her original income, which qualified her to borrow more money to buy her third property – a house with a granny flat in Cessnock, in the Hunter Valley. Recently, she purchased land in Adelaide, which she is in the process of settling.
Ms Opoku said getting finance was also one of the toughest hurdles to overcome as a single investor.
“I’m relying on my own income, so I have to wait until I can qualify again, which means I could be missing out on opportunities,” she said.
“Some people in the industry also tend not to take women seriously, so I basically have to fight my way.”
But she persisted and is now on her way to building a property portfolio that would set her up into the future.
“I’m really shocked at how far I’ve gotten in my property investing journey because I thought I’d only be able to buy two at most,” she said.
“I feel very blessed to have access to information that helped me make decisions quickly. I think many women tend to overthink and overanalyse everything and end up not making a move.
“My advice is, once you’re happy with your research and have your finances sorted out, take the leap.”
Follow the topics, people and companies that matter to you.
Fetching latest articles
The Daily Habit of Successful People
02 8005 6525
info@aktengineering.com.au
Recent Comments