The Gen Y couple from Sydney making $300,000 a year with 28 investment properties

Mina O’Neill, 28, and her husband Scott, 30, started buying properties in late-2010.

Now the rentvesting couple has a portfolio of 28 properties across Australia, including commercial and residential real estate.

Mina has an advertising and financial planning background, while Scott’s experience is in engineering. So when they put their minds together it was “all about the numbers” – a natural fit for them to get into investing.

After all their costs, such as council rates and maintenance fees, are considered their portfolio leaves them with an income of $300,000 a year.

They’ve put this income to good use – spending six months of 2016 overseas and they are intending to continue with this lifestyle in the future.

“Buying a property from Japan was hard though,” Mina laughed, “It cost $100 to send paperwork!”

But it’s not all sipping martinis and overseas holidays. Getting to this position has been a steep learning curve.

Their first purchase seven years ago was a house in Sutherland, near where they were living at the time.

Having saved up a modest deposit themselves, they moved into the property to avoid paying stamp duty and to get the $7000 grant available at the time.

“It needed a lot of work,” Mina said. The couple set about renovating it together, spending $45,000 to bring it up to scratch.

When they rented it out a year later, because it had a granny flat, they got a positive cash flow.

By 2012, they were ready to increase their passive income. They bought an apartment in Maroubra for $620,000.

This was also a renovation experience – costing them $20,000.

They then took a two-year hiatus on buying, to spend some time considering their options, speaking to mentors, making contacts with agents across the country and planning their next move.

“We looked for areas with above average [rental] yields, then looked for properties that would give us higher than average cash flow,” Scott explained.

By 2014, yields were too low for Sydney to be a consideration. Instead, in March, they bought a block of apartments for $480,000 in Port Macquarie.

Just two months later, they snapped up three Queensland apartments in Labrador – all on separate titles but in one block, later followed by another three in the same area with the same strategy.



During this high growth phase of their investing, they also decided to quit their jobs and focus on Rethink Investing – a property investment advisory company.

Their plans did not stop there. By the end of 2014, they’d diversified into other apartment developments, a subdivision project and were ready to try something new.

In 2015, as well as buying two others houses, they bought their first commercial property – a fast food shop in Perth.

“The residential market isn’t doing well in Perth, but this was a good deal and it’s a long-term lease,” Scott said.

Considering the longer-term outlook for the economy and local demand for smaller-style food outlets, he was confident it was a good purchase.

They have since added a medical centre and a warehouse with a commercial office to their portfolio.

The warehouse, along with a house, a duplex and a development site, were bought in March 2017 and have yet to settle.

Now, they’re reaping the benefits of this effort. The reason they invested initially was never to accrue huge amounts of wealth – it was to allow them to have the freedom to make choices about when to work and how they could spend time together.

“We wanted to have the choice about when we open the computer, when we work and how we use our time,” Mina said.

They’ve been able to travel extensively using the income from the portfolio, and have been able to grow their business in the meantime.

Their latest purchase, a development site, is expected to take their portfolio value to $20 million. The project is expected to start in mid-2017.

Scott and Mina’s golden rules for building a portfolio

• Buy under market value, with the potential to add value (for instance, through a cosmetic renovation) if possible.
• Focus on yield and cash flow. This will also help with bank serviceability later.
• Don’t only consider properties in your backyard – there are other markets outside Sydney and Melbourne.
• Outsource the work. Scott and Mina formerly self-managed, but now have professionals to do the heavy lifting. They allow the property managers to spend $200 a month on each rental before needing permission and have an email-only policy to ensure they don’t have constant phone calls.
• Rentvest. Rent somewhere cheaper so you can afford to invest.