A while back I looked at my savings and my super fund and realised I was going to have fuck all at retirement age unless Princess and I did something to make lots more money for little effort, because the shit we're already doing has us pretty busy.
Long story short we decided to bite the bullet and get in on the property scene while we still could. We were fortunate enough to get in the market at a pretty good time with an OK house at an OK price in an OK location in a then-"unboomed" city (Adelaide). That first place has already appreciated enough so that we could borrow against it and buy a second place, which we did. It has worked out better for us for the past couple of years (tax breaks, rental prices, etc) for us to not live in either of those houses but rather rent them out and be tenants ourselves in the place we live in. We're now in a position to buy #3, so we're actively looking now oh god how I hate this shit. By the looks of things the tax/loan/rent/mortage algorithm has changed a bit and owning-but-renting no longer looks like the best option so we'll be moving house soon and moving into house #2 fulltime while we shop for #3, unless we find #3 and get it very soon.
Basically our plan is to borrow against what we've already got and buy another house every 5 years (obviously we're running a bit ahead of schedule by already shopping for #3 in what is year 9 of this glorious plan) so by the time we get to retirement age we ARE those fucking sixty-something cunts with a pile of houses. Retire, sell off all houses but two, use the profit from those sales to pay off all remaining debt on the two remaining houses, live in one, rent out the other and live off the proceeds, kids have two houses when we die.
So we've basically committed ourselves to being heavily in debt, having lots of assets on paper, and having fuck all actual liquid money, for the conceivable future. If property prices where we buy continue to rise, every time we buy a new house we accelerate the rate at which our wealth grows. So long as property values rise at a rate greater than the interest rates of the mortgages that we've got on the properties, we're sweet. If property prices dive, our nuts are on the table in a room full of hammers.
*sweating profusely*
But property is a race with an inverse handicap. We have a big advantage over someone looking for their first home. But someone who has been in the game for years longer has a massive advantage over us.
A couple of times in the past month or so Princess and I have been at a house inspection and thought "yeah we could do this", and begun having the hasty house meeting in the corner and calling the bank and seeing if the numbers stack up. Then a couple of Mercedeses pull up and a bunch of old people get out, and it's like "DARLING, THOUGHT WE MIGHT SEE YOU HERE, DID YOU END UP BUYING THAT ONE LAST WEEK? WE PASSED ON IT, DIDN'T LIKE THE VIEW" "OH YES, WE GRABBED THAT ONE BUT WE LIKE THE LOOKS OF THIS ONE TOO" (etc etc) and next thing you know one of them has made an unconditional cash offer for the place and the selling agent has her commission and it's gone.