smart six-year-old and her two siblings have officially become the proud owners of a brand new home in the latest indication of Australia’s insane property market.
Ruby, Gus and Lucy McLellan purchased the home and surrounding land in Clyde, a rural suburb about 48km southeast from Melbourne’s city centre.
The siblings all pitched in $2,000 of hard-earned pocket money for the stretch of earth, following advice from their property investor father.
Cam McLellan, 36, said he encouraged his children to buy into Australia’s thriving property market but first put his children to work to save for the deposit.
The home cost the siblings a total of $671,000, which their father has predicted will double in value to roughly $1,342,000 in ten years.
Mr McLellan is the director and co-founder of property company OpenCorp and recently authored a step-by-step investment manual.
The children were able to save up their pennies by helping do household chores and packing their father’s how-to guide to investing.
The best-selling book, My Four Year Old, the Property Investor, was first published last November but has been relaunched and is dedicated to the author’s children.
‘It’s written for my kids to use when they’re old enough, so I’ve outlined all the steps it takes to build a property portfolio,’ Mr McLellan told 7News.
He said the price of the Clyde block has already gone up by $70,000.
The McLellan brood plan to keep the property for another decade before selling up in 2032 and splitting the profits.
The purchase comes as the latest indication of Australia’s out-of-control property market, which was recently valued at $9trillion.
The Australian Bureau of Statistics earlier this month revealed the country’s 10.7 million residential dwellings rose by five per cent or $487 billion in the September quarter to $9.3 trillion.
‘The value of Australia’s dwelling stock has risen by nearly $1 trillion in the past six months,’ ABS head of prices statistics Michelle Marquardt said.
Australian property prices in the year to November surged by 22.2 per cent – the fastest annual pace since early 1989, CoreLogic data also showed.
The Property Council of Australia said while low interest rates had driven up house prices, factors like undersupply, taxes and inefficient planning systems have antagonised the overheated property market.
However, the Commonwealth Bank and Westpac are expecting Australia’s property market to slow in 2022 and fall by double digits in 2023, as the banks increase their fixed mortgage rates from historically-low levels of two per cent.
