Finance
Mega landlord warns some investors ‘will be wiped out’ in budget changes
Eddie Dilleen is one of Australia’s biggest residential landlords. He reckons he now has 200 properties in his portfolio.
But he just bought perhaps his favourite house yet. More than 25 years after his parents divorced and sold the family home for $97,000, he has purchased it back for a bit under $1 million.
“I just bought it sight unseen,” he told Yahoo Finance.
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Dilleen said he has spent the past decade periodically checking if the house had returned to market.
“You can set reminders and stuff like that, but when I was on my phone messing around, I would randomly check it literally every one or two weeks for the past 12 years.”
His parents first bought the home in the far western suburbs of Sydney in 1985 for $51,000. When he saw it listed, he felt “an overwhelming rush of excitement,” he said.
“This home holds some of my best memories… and some tough ones too. But today, it represents something completely different,” he wrote online, sharing a photo of himself next to the sold sign on Tuesday. “It’s proof that where you start doesn’t define where you finish.”
He ultimately bought it for 19 times what his parents paid for it 41 years ago.
“The affordable properties and suburbs, they usually grow at a higher percentage value. I’m all about percentages,” he told Yahoo Finance.
“Everyone talks about the best, blue chip locations, but I buy everywhere.”
Dilleen, who is in his mid 30s and also runs a buyers agency and writes books about real estate investing, estimates the properties he owns are now collectively worth about $150 million (he likes to buy blocks that contain multiple units) with about $60 million in debt against that.
According to ATO data, he is about one of 166 mega landlords who own 20 or more rental properties in their own name. Dilleen said he owns “about 30 or 40” in his own name, and others through trust and company structures.
Landlords overly reliant on negative gearing ‘will be wiped out’
With less than two weeks until the Labor government hand downs its promised “ambitious” budget, property investors are bracing for possible changes to the rules around tax deductions related to investments.
One of the most commonly used is negative gearing, which allows landlords to claim losses to reduce the amount of income tax they pay. But its days could be numbered with the federal government expected to cap, or possibly even scrap, the existing policy under certain circumstances. While no announcements have actually been made, most observers expect such a change to be grandfathered in for existing investors.
Dilleen says he “couldn’t care less” if the government does away with negative gearing because he tries to focus on purely “undervalued” assets that have good rental return, although he admits he takes advantage of it on some of his properties.
“Just some of my properties are negatively geared, but many of them are not,” he said.
“But it is a big thing for the average person that owns one or two properties.
“Average people, investors starting out that are just getting started buying properties, many of them rely on negative gearing, but that is a stupid strategy.”
Dilleen pointed to sections of the market, often inner city locations, where houses can cost $2-3 million but have relatively weak yield, or rental income, compared to the sale price.
“That’s stupid, because if they are negatively gearing like a $3 million house, and then you’re getting $1,000 a week renting it out, they’re going to be in big trouble. They’re silly investors … they’re relying on negative gearing and a lot of them will get wiped out,” he said.
According to the latest figures from the ATO, about half of all investment properties are negatively geared.
There are 1.1 million negatively geared property investors, out of a total of 2.26 million. In terms of total stock, of the 3.2 million property interests held by individual taxpayers, 1.59 million or 49.4 per cent are negatively geared.
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