My "lucky" story:
I was "lucky", I had a unit in West Ryde purchased back in 2005. In 2008 we bought a house in the Epping area. I kept the unit because in 2008 as there wasn't really any capital appreciation in the property at the time. Then the full force of the GFC was felt. I was given notice of redundancy less than 1 month from the date of moving into the new place, and on my birthday that year to boot! I could see the reports at work, in October 2008 all the sales were going backwards.
I got paid a redundancy payout after working for the company for 6 years. The redundancy pay was equal to 7-8 months of salary when I include leave entitlements. I wisely used that as a deposit for my second investment property. (I could've blown the lot by going travelling and/or had vision correction surgery, bought a new car).... "Luckily" I decided to invest it, and "luckily" I landed a new job basically immediately (I basically had a choice of two job opportunities, one via a recruitment agency and another through an ex colleague) and this was during the GFC
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A colleague also was laid off at the same time but he took about 6 months to find a job, I know another guy who was unemployed for about 8 months and finally could only get a job paying a lot less and another guy who ended up not finding work and ended up moving interstate with this family. Another guy struggled for months to get work more recently... I guess I had skills that were still sort after and I have to say, I had enough experience but I was not old... to be honest, age discrimination is real.
I took a shortish (domestic) holiday, driving down to Melbourne and Tasmania, and then started the new job.
Been working ever since, left that company I joined in 2009 after 4 years there, did a couple of short term contracts, bought another investment property (experienced another boom).
In the meantime during those 4 years I had also sold the original IP, the Sydney market had boomed in 2009/10, bought another but that new one I completely renovated (converted from 1 bedroom to 2 with a bit of planning). That property was sold through a poor agent with a vendor over in South Australia. Got it for a great price. That conversion of that property was worth 70k in value immediately. The harder you work, the luckier you are... In this case I was knowledgeable as to its value and I jumped on it straight away after considering the possibilities of this property.
Anyway, my very latest IP I rent out on Airbnb and the rental returns are very strong. Its more work than a typical rental but it's worth it. Am I lucky? Sure, you can call it that....
So that's my story.... I plan to retire in 5 years but I really like my job so in 5 years time I could end up working two days a week.... House is almost paid off and by my next birthday there will be no more interest payments. "Lucky" i've been paying this off at an accelerated rate during times of low interest rates...
