Buying real estate in the lowcountry and across Australia. $5M+ in residential rentals. Goal is $10M. Sharing systems and strategies for smart investing.
Hey I’m Austin. I’m a real estate investor from Spartanburg, SC
I’ve built a $5M+ rental portfolio over the past few years starting from nothing, with properties mostly in Charleston, SC and Perth, Western Australia.
So how does a broke bartender/housekeeper from rural South Carolina end up a real estate millionaire, living abroad in the Land of Oz, and travelling the world with a beautiful Aussie wife?
Here’s a bit about my adventure:
I bought my first property in January of 2021. $230k house in Charleston, SC. I was earning around $60k a year at the time bartending, which was pretty solid. My pre-approval was for $250k so I got really lucky finding the place I did. I put down 5% which was most of my savings, and it was a tiny tiny place…but I was so excited. Homeownership finally became real!
I had just moved back home from living in Australia for 3 years, engaged to an Aussie girl (now my wife). I was on a work & holiday visa over there that had just ended, and I wanted to come back stateside and buy a house in Charleston, SC for the both of us to live in. Time to become a grown up.
I’ll expedite this next part of the story:
Pretty much my wife’s visa at the time to live in the US got delayed by 36 months, so we decided to cancel the visa and I was going to move back to Australia long term so we could be together. So we turned the house I just bought into a rental. This forced us to learn systems for managing a property from abroad (the other side of the planet 😵💫) and become remote investors.
With this first property under our belt we decided this was going to be our path to wealth. It felt so cool to own something, and we knew it was a way for us to change our current circumstances. We were both working as housekeepers and in restaurants, so it was a complete paradigm shift once we owned a piece of real estate. We started diving into all the content and podcasts and trying to make our moves. We knew this was going to be our thing.
We started saving money together and putting every dollar we could towards future investments. Educating ourselves together. Doing it as a team.
We ended up saving some good money working and we bought a property in Australia together, which was wild to me and so awesome being able to invest in a different country. Now we owned a house in two different countries!!! Nuts. Such different markets with different metrics and growth/cashflows. It was such a cool feeling.
We’ve taken on whacky jobs over here like iron ore mining, working 2 weeks at a time living on site in the middle of nowhere, and living in a campervan during our week off. Working and living in hotels and resorts. Living for cheap, grinding, and saving whatever we could. Having a blast too. Adventuring all over the place.
Eventually we started learning about how to leverage our properties to buy more. Building equity creatively, refinancing and extracting equity, using HELOCs and creative lending to grow grow grow. We’ve built up a portfolio in both the US and Australia. Leveraging growth and the experience/relationships we’ve made to generate millions in value and solid cashflow. Saving and reinvesting. Saving and reinvesting.
Now in 2025 my wife and I are sitting on a pretty substantial asset base, one that has allowed us to hit millionaire status, but more importantly has given us our freedom.
Freedom is all we’ve ever wanted. And because of real estate we’ve gotten it. Now we have the time to focus on ourselves, pur marriage, our families, health, travel, wealth, everything.
My goal with this account is to share our story, because I think it’s pretty unique and kinda cool, and also to help people get through those beginning stages of investing in real estate, in hopes that my experiences can be relatable in some way to yours.
It IS hard, and we’ve hit a ton of roadblocks and made so many damn mistakes. But we made it. And I think I can help some of you do it too.
(1/2) 👇
Debt is what you see:
People’s cars, homes, and lifestyles.
Wealth is what you don’t see:
Free time, peace of mind, and zero stress.
I know which one I’m aiming for.
@WallStreetApes It’s Santa Monica…? Is she expecting it to be affordable? When has a coastal city with huge demand ever been affordable compared to the rest of the country? Stupid post
@WallStreetApes ….so go to a suburb you can afford…? You seem to be a young couple with no kids, why do you expect to be able to afford the expensive side of one of the most expensive cities on earth?
“Landlords shouldn’t make a profit.”
Right… So I invest hundreds of thousands into a property, take on all the risk, cover the repairs, taxes, & upkeep & I’m not supposed to earn anything in return?
I provide housing for people who can’t (or don’t want to) buy yet somehow I’m the villain?
How exactly do you expect homes to exist without someone paying the cost?
It’s not exploitation. It’s economics.
Wake up you left hypocrites