25-year-old reveals how she was able to own three homes

A 25-year-old has revealed that she’s already bought three homes and has attributed her success to what she swears is a “domino effect”.

Keeley Starling is a nurse and a real estate agent, and her husband is a draftsman. The pair have amassed a property empire in a relatively short time.

Ms. Starling said her husband bought his first house before they met, but now that they’re married, she also considers the home hers.

The couple is very much a team, and she helps service that mortgage as well. In fact, both their investment properties are negatively geared.

This means the tenants’ rent doesn’t cover the mortgages, so both need to contribute funds to the properties on a monthly basis to keep them afloat.

Ms Starling purchased a home last April. It was her first, but the second for them as a couple.

“Eight months ago, I bought my first house while we were together, but I had saved up the money from before we’d gotten together,” she explained.

Owning multiple homes is relatively common among Aussies. Financial comparison website Finder found that 61 per cent of Aussies own at least one or more priorities.

She said that, while her husband didn’t contribute to the deposit, the couple serviced the mortgage together and considered it a joint venture.

“Now we’ve just put an offer in our third house, and our offer has been accepted, and we’re just waiting for a settlement,” she said.

Ms Starling said they were able to purchase a third property because they used the “equity” from one of the houses they already owned to buy their third property.

“I never thought I’d be in this position in my life, especially at 25, owning three houses,” she said.

The 25-year-old said her biggest takeaway is that you shouldn’t be “nervous” about buying multiple properties because, once you buy one and accumulate enough equity in it, you can use that money to buy another one.

This means you’re not stuck in a cycle of constantly saving up another deposit for another house.

“You just need to make sure you have enough borrowing power, and you can service the debt,” she said.

Ms Starling told news.com.au that she feels totally thrilled she’s been able to purchase multiple properties.

“I feel really proud that my husband and I are in this position that we both have worked so hard to get to. Especially when we have bought two of those houses in a cost of living crisis,” she said.

“I definitely feel like more financially secure knowing that we won’t ever have to worry about money when we are older.”

However, Ms Starling’s positivity about her three properties isn’t shared by everyone. When she took to social media to share her success story the reaction was divided.

Plenty of Aussies loved her success and called her real estate empire “inspiring”, or proof she was “living the dream” and “killing it”.

On the other side of the coin, though, there were people condemning her for owning multiple homes.

“Never lose your job you’ll be screwed,” one warned.

“How much debt do you have?” someone asked.

Someone else just wrote “debt, debt, debt”.

However, Ms Starling replied and said owning three homes means she “won’t have to work” once she’s in her forties.

“Hoarding houses during a housing crisis shouldn’t be celebrated,” another complained.

Ms Starling’s success isn’t the normal, with the housing crisis leaving plenty of Aussies unable to buy their first homes.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), the median house price in Australia is now over $900,000 [$564,300 USD], and the average rent nationally has surged past $600 [$376.20 USD] a week.

Financial comparison website Finder released research that found that the minimum household income required to afford the mortgage for an average Australian house is $182,000 [$114,114 USD] annually, while those owning units need about $130,000 [$81,510 USD].

When you factor in the fact that the average full-time employee now earns just over $100,000 per year, according to the ABS, most people are earning less than the amount it costs to service a mortgage [$62,700 USD].