A property investor who owns more than 80 rental properties says people struggle to understand people making money when it isn't a "per hour" activity — especially when it involves earning 10 or 100 times a normal wage.
Graeme Fowler focuses mainly on a buy-and-hold investment strategy, but also makes money through property trades.
He said he had done about 250 to 300 trades over his investing lifetime. The key to success was buying the house at a good price initially, he said.
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In a recent deal, he made $40,000 from a trade that he bought and then sold again within three weeks.
In 2017, he and his wife, Katrina, did 24 trades, trying to see if they could make $1 million from trading. They reached about $880,000 in trading profit, plus rental income.
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But Fowler said he often received backlash from people who were uncomfortable about traders making money from property.
Some thought they should pay more tax, he said.
"Also that they cannot seem to understand that not everything is a dollar-per-hour activity.
"People may earn $30 or $40 an hour and then see someone make $30,000 for the same amount of time involved, they get upset or think that it's wrong in some way. Earning 10 or 100 times as much as someone else does for an hour or two work is beyond many people's comprehension or understanding."
He said people were more willing to accept a deal that involved a lot of work.
"One property we're doing at the moment is a repile-and-renovate job which so far has taken six months and still has a long way to go. If we're lucky, we will make about $40,000 on it after all expenses, before tax. People generally think this sort of trade is okay because a lot of time is involved, or if we fully renovate a property and sell it, it's okay. The key was still buying it well in the first place. These same people however think it's not okay to be diligent in buying, and then selling again doing nothing to the property. "
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Graeme Fowler said he had done about 250 to 300 trades in his lifetime.