Meet Blair and Pamela: Living his dream retirement thanks to smart investment

Money Empire__blair and pamela

Written by Money Empire

December 20, 2019

Property investment can be a brilliant way to set yourself up for retirement. But, being a successful investor isn’t easy or simple at all – if it were, everyone would be doing it. 

Blair, an Auckland family man with two kids, is one property investor we’ve come across who’s definitely doing things right. We sat down with him recently to chat about his secret to success. 

Meet Blair, Pamela & family

Blair is the general manager of a manufacturing firm in NZ and also has governance roles with some prominent boards. His wife Pamela is the deputy principal of a private school in Auckland. 

Blair says him and Pamela are investing in property to ensure they live their golden years in style:

“We’re closing in on retirement so setting up our future is the priority right now. Our goal is to have a diverse range of assets that enable us to live comfortably and travel around the world.”

The investment properties

Blair and Pamela have been busy over the last ten years, during which they’ve purchased three investment properties:

  • A tenanted apartment in St Heliers, Auckland that they’ve owned for five years.
  • A townhouse in Mission Bay, Auckland that is being built and is slated for completion in mid 2020. The plan is to also tenant this property. 
  • An apartment in Paihia that is rented out seasonally. Owned for ten years. 

The goal with the two Auckland properties is to achieve capital gains, while the Paihia one is used mainly to offset personal tax. They have 50%+ equity in both Auckland properties so their rental incomes cover all of their costs.

Eventually, Blair and Pamela hope to sell all three properties over a 10 to 15 year period then use the equity they make off the sale to fund their retirements. Sounds like a good plan to us!

Challenges and solutions along the way

For Blair, the biggest challenge around investing in property is keeping emotion out of the purchase and having an open mind when it comes to the location of investments. There was also some work to be done around the numbers when they bought these properties, to make sure everything added up. Blair says the Money Empire (ME) team were really helpful when it came to working out those details:

“Money Empire helped us by working out the finance-to-purchase price balance, figuring out what debt to hold against what and by making sure we separated our securities and didn’t have them tied to one lender. The ME team are a young, focussed group of individuals who offer a unique finance service and their knowledge is second to none..”

The future for Blair and Pamela 

Blair and Pamela have no immediate plans to buy more investment properties but they’ve got money in Kiwisaver and other investments so they would consider it if a good opportunity came up. With that said, we reckon they’ve probably already done enough to retire in style.

When we asked Blair what they’d tell other investors who want to emulate their success, he said once you’re investing it’s important to remember one thing:

“The only thing I would add to new investors of the world is to make sure you don’t have all your eggs in one basket, as Money Empire likes to say.”We loved helping Blair and Pamela buy their investment properties so that they could live their dream retirement. We also know that if you invest smartly, you can fund a retirement that you can truly enjoy too. For help making your plan come to life, get in touch with the team at Money Empire to speak to one of our expert advisers.

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