What can you buy in Sydney for $1.1 million in 2024—and is it worth it?

What can you buy in Sydney for $1.1 million in 2024—and is it worth it?

In this episode of The Mortgage Chat, I’m breaking down exactly what I bought, where I bought it, why I bought it, and how I ran the numbers before committing.

I'm Tony Xia, the Founder and Director of The Mortgage Agency, one of Sydney’s leading mortgage broker firms. We help Aussies buy smarter, invest wisely, and pay down debt faster.

🏠 In this episode, you'll learn:

✅ What kind of property I purchased for $1.1M
✅ How I crunched the cash flow before buying
✅ What mistakes to avoid when choosing an investment
✅ Why I’d buy it again (even in this market)
✅ Real talk on rental yield, loan repayments, and strategy

If you're a first-time buyer, property investor, or someone thinking about leveraging equity—this episode is for you.

🔍 Need help planning your next move?
Contact The Mortgage Agency for a free consult with one of our expert brokers:
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Tony Xia | The Mortgage Agency
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Chapters
0:00 Introduction  
0:18 What kind of property did I buy?  
0:41 Location and property type revealed  
1:10 How much did the property cost?  
1:38 Why I chose this investment  
2:00 Crunching the numbers: cash flow example  
2:45 Loan details and interest rate  
3:10 Rental income and expenses breakdown  
4:00 Would I buy this again?  
4:40 Final thoughts  


Disclaimer:

This is not tax advice and all tax advice should be consulted with your accountant. All details on this video can be found on the ATO website

Transcript

1:35

okay everybody I don't normally do this but guess what I just purchased a new property I'm Tony and thanks for joining me on another episode of the Mortgage Chat so every now and then I get messages from my social media platform people ask me questions like what is my portfolio worth how many properties do I have what are they worth what's my net worth what's my investment journey like am I buying this market or what's the best time to buy what's my next game plan what am I gonna purchase next etcetera etcetera etcetera so some of these questions I don't enjoy answering because I just don't like gloating about how many properties I have or what my net worth is what's my property worth etcetera right you know some of these financial advisors or buyers agents out there feel the need to tell everyone out there how many properties they have to try to attract you to get your business right I'm not one of those guys I don't feel the need to tell you how many props I have just so I can get your business I'm not like one of those guys okay I like to tell you what I can and cannot do for you guys right cause everyone's financial situations a little bit more different right so just because it suits me and what I can do doesn't mean you're able to do it and vice versa okay but some of these questions I don't mind answering but as I said they are subjective cause what works for me may not work for you it fires faster but today I wanna tell you what I've just purchased and I'm gonna break it down for you in why I purchased this property what future use I have for it and I'm gonna show you the cash flow on this property and how much it's cost me to sustain the property so let's get cracking so what did I just purchase well I purchased a new investment property at Balcom Hills New South Wales I purchased the property for 2.05 million and I borrowed the whole amount right and I also borrowed for the stamp duty so I'm all in for $2.15 million which is quite scary and how did I borrow 100% of the purchase price plus stamp duty well I use equity from my unencumbered owner occupied property so therefore I didn't have to fork out the 20% deposit plus stamp duty in cash right I was able to draw that equity out from my existing property and I can leverage that and purchase this investment property so essentially I borrowed the whole $2.15 million so before you heavy investors out there jump on your high horse yes I know what you're saying you're probably saying I could have purchased three four or five investment properties that's gonna be a lot more cheaper with better rental yield all around Australia you are correct but that doesn't suit my future plans OK I purchased this property because it allowed me to do multiple things on it in the future especially in the next 4 5 years when my family gets a little bit bigger and we need a bigger place and closer to the school where I wanna send my daughter in the next 3 four five years I'm gonna treat it as an investment property and keep living in my own occupied property where I have no non tax deductible debt on it so why did I purchase this property and say I have multiple use for it well the first thing was it was very hard to find a flat block of land square and the house didn't have much value left in it okay it had it had an older house on it which wasn't renovated so it didn't have much value left on it so if I knock it down so the front house was an older house it wasn't renovated so it really didn't have much value left on it but I do have a granny flat at the back which probably was built maybe three or four years ago okay so that's why I really want to buy it because a lot of the houses around the area just had too much house value left on it and I probably would have had to spend a lot more than$2.05 million to purchase the property okay and it was just a bit of a wastage for me to knock down a renovated house or a newer house in the future this one didn't have much value left on it which is why it suited my needs but more importantly it was in a good location that me and my family was happy with that we're able to knock it down and rebuild a new house on it because it was because it was north facing it was quiet it was on the higher end of the road but more importantly if I didn't wanna live in it and move somewhere else I can do multiple things on it for investment purposes the first thing is I can unsell it if I don't want to live in the area in the next three four or five years so there's a house at the front where a smaller family can live in and there's a granny flat at the back so in that particular area is very high demand where you know you might have a smaller family living at the front and your and your parents could be living at the back so it's two separate areas or you one can live at the front and you can rent the back out for rental income or I can develop it and knock down the front house and build a brand new house on it and on sell it with the granny flat the good thing is the granny flat has its own address and the front house has its own address so if you're an investor that wants to buy a brand new home well you got two houses that's gonna receive dual income or if you're gonna buy the property for owner occupied use you can live in the front house and you can still lease out the back granny flat okay cause it's two separate addresses two separate meters so you can segregate everything but what I can also do with the property is once the New South Wales Planning Government relaxes the criteria for building duplexes I can knock down the whole thing I can build a pair of duplexes there and on sell it to first home buyers or upgraders and this is why from the start I noted I had multiple uses for this property I can either keep it knock it down for owner occupied use or I can develop it on sell it or sell it on as is so now that I've told you why I purchased this property I wanna show you the breakdown on the cash flow for maintaining the loan now the prices around the area is quite high and then rental yield is quite low so I wanna show you what it's like purchasing a property in Sydney with such a low rental yield the good thing is I can sustain it because like I said to you I don't have any non tax deductible debt so sustaining the loan is a little bit easier for me so if you're listening to this podcast please just jump on YouTube and just look at this part of the video because it will show you the breakdown on Excel spreadsheet how much it's costing me to hold on to this property alright everybody so as you can see here this is the cash flow from sustaining and maintaining the property alright so as I told you I purchased this price and borrowed 100% of the purchase price plus cost which is around 2.15 million dollars okay I purchased the property for 2.05 million and $100,000 was on was on stamp duty and the rate here 5.93 now this is just after the may rate cut alright which was passed on by the bank I'm paying interest only and that's my repayment per month okay so it's a bit scary right there but you know what it is what it is now my rental income is $1,350 per week so I got a front house which is a main residence and I got a granny flat at the back so I got dual income there okay now that's my gross rental income for the month now I like to take out 30% as expenses okay so call it um property management fee insurances water rates council rates whatever you wanna call it sometimes it could be 20% but I like to keep it at 30% just to be more conservative okay so my net rental income is just under 4,000 and 100 dollars alright now as you can see here at the bottom my cash outlay is just above six and a half thousand dollars per month alright so how do I get this is repayment minus my net rental yield okay and one thing I accounted for for this um cash flow is the depreciation I can obtain back from this property right so I got a front dwelling which is a bit old but most of the depreciation came from the granny flat at the back and I got my mate Joel Tax trying to hook me up for one if you don't if you guys haven't used him before please check him out okay he's very good guy very good team uh very smooth process I got this report back in call it 3 days alright now so you can see here my total loss for the year is $85,355 which is a combination of paper loss seven grand and my net cash outlay of 78 3 5 5 so obviously this loss I can claim back at the end of the financial year okay so me and my wife's tax bracket for that amount is 37% so 30% of that amount equates to 31,000$581 so this is the return I'm gonna get back at the end of the financial year well not me me and my wife 50 50 each OK cause the property is uh purchased fifty 50 under me and my wife as a ownership so my real cash outlay is actually 85 3 5 5 - 31 5 8 1.35 cents alright so my cash outlay is actually in paper value in real life is 53,000 7 7 3.65 cents okay so per month is just under 4,500 and per week is just a little bit above $1,000 that's gonna be cash outlay out of my own pocket now normally I would consider this quite high okay but because I don't have any non tax deductible debt anymore and I don't have a loan against my own occupied home I'm able to afford this quite easily okay if I had a home loan still in my in my property and I'm paying call it $4,000 a month then yes that's a different story but because I have no more home loan left it's easier to sustain for me alright so there you have it everyone so this is just a quick overview of my cash outlay for this particular property so that was an example of the overall holding cost of sustaining that debt but now I wanna break it down a little bit more on the cash flow on the house only at the front and the cash flow on the granny flat itself which help with the cash flow and this reverts back to the original granny flat strategy video I've done previously so everybody again if you're listening to this podcast only please just jump onto YouTube and watch this second part of the video so guys this is another reason why I believe a granny flat can help you with cash flow right so this links back to my other granny flat strategy video okay and I'll show you why how this granny flat has helped with this property in particular now for this particular property I'm gonna break this cash flow down to two parts one of which is the front house and the other part is the granny flat okay so what I've done here is I've breaking down the total cost of the two properties of the front house and the granny flat okay so these are the two combined total cost of my purchase price plus cost stamp duty exceptions I'll just break it up into two OK so on the depreciation report um it said that the granny flat cost about 220 grand to build

so I equate so I bumped it up to 2: 12:01

40 to account for some stamp duty OK so front house are valued at this amount with stamp duty and the granny flat are valued at this amount alright so same thing as the last cash flow I showed you but except I've just broken it down to two parts OK the front house and the back house which is the granny flat so the front of the house actually got rented for 7 70 alright so if I was to just account for that portion itself my cash outlay is $7,102 if I didn't have a granny flat at the back so now if you look at the granny flat itself at $240,000 cost at that rate of 5.93% interest only the current property is actually rented for 580 per week okay so you can see here my total cost is actually lower than the rent received after expenses so I'm positive cash flow on this granny flat itself by $573 per month and this actually helps out the loss that I'm incurring on the front of the house so as a whole it's actually worked out quite good for me and that's why I say to some people sometimes if you're able to build a granny flat at the back for rental income it's actually quite good because the rent you receive from the rental income outweighs the cost of sustaining the loan for that granny flat to be built okay and this is a perfect example of it right here okay everybody that was the breakdown of my recent purchase in Sydney I hope you like this video please stay tuned there's a couple more exciting videos in the coming months so I hope to see you again in the next episode of the Morris Chat peace