While I'm chatting away I should tell you it all we had The Rexinox in the last few weeks - the one year anniversary of me buying Rex coincides with the Equinox ha ha.
We're going strong mostly fully booked with a wait list at times. We have just cleaned out the last place of junk - a storage shed. So it has taken a year to go from 32 rooms + outdoor areas full of junk down to not a single spot of junk! We have a super fun new bathroom custom made by a handyman. My tradie guests tell me it is a little dodgy but not like I see any of them offering to help out - they just whinge at me lol. I'll try and put some photos up.
We've got a good rep in town now. Have had a few incidents of scummy guests and most of them came by referral from JobLink which in town does provide money for accommodation. One suspected drug dealer, one nut case who passed himself off as working for me and collected some rent and took it! Fraud charges for him. One cash box gone missing. Lesson being of course not to let anyone else decide on my guests - I can't take any referrals at all.
A few fun problems that we didn't expect. Turns out the sewerage system was blocked from one end of the property to the other. I thought it was my son flushing a Happy Meal toy that started the issue but eventually we had to get someone with a water jetter thing. Raining pads and tampons and surgical stuff and rubber tubing and other drug stuff I reckon. Ahem. GROSS. No idea how long it had all been building up. Decades I guess.
We are still working with council on the fire upgrades. Latest news is we may avoid having to have sprinkler systems over side boundary windows which would save me $20K plus. But everything else is done.
I employ about five staff casually now so I don't have to scrub toilets myself or stay in the reception.
I'm pouring most profit back into projects around the house - we redid all the switch boards lately as one example. I've moved out of the house so I have some space and a better work-life balance. About 9 months in I finally started paying myself $1000 a week after having just had food covered and no real income and now it is close to double that at times with only a few hours work needed. So I am almost at that magic passive income people on here talk about. But I need to pay off my overdraft and credit cards still - I haven't touched them since buying the place and they are quite high! Trouble is I see the cash flow and think...mmmmm...what could we do this week with it? I'm not good with long term planning yet.
My son starts school next year so I am a bit worried about what to do with all the hours during the day and also that I won't be free to travel so we are about to start a couple of months of on/off travel to wrap up the year. Hawaii, Paris (bucket list for a five year old is Disney!), Iceland (bucket list for me to see Northern Lights) and Sri Lanka.
In January I need to decide if I want to start to step down the Sydney businesses or keep them going. I think I could almost replace the income just by focussing more on Rex and keeping our rates up and occupancy up and bills down and staff levels down. The profits in Sydney are small now. During the time I've been on AirBNB it has gone from something like 191 places for rent to 7500 in Sydney alone. Might be time for me to find the next new and exciting thing.