‘Definitely mistakes’: 27-year-old builds $3 million property portfolio

At just 27 years old, Mark Abel owns six investment properties worth $3 million – but his success story comes with a warning for would-be investors.

At just 27 years old, Mark Abel owns six investment properties worth $3 million, and he did it after starting out with an $80,000 investment just six years ago.

But Mr Abel told news.com.au that while he has “saved hard, never had a credit card and never had a car loan,” his first investment property, bought in 2017 when he was just 21, was far from glamorous.

The purchase was a dilapidated home in the far north Queensland town of Charters Towers, about an hour and a half inland of Townsville, and his plan was to fix it up for his parents to live in.

Funded by a loan based on a small amount of money he’d been able to save after he joined the army in Townsville, the property cost just $80,000 and “the grass outside was as high as the roof”, he recalled.

After spending the next year renovating the property on the weekends with his dad, Mr Abel said he had the finished product valued and realised at that point that renovating properties could be profitable.

The rundown $80,000 property in Charters Towers that started it all.

He aimed to replicate that success with the purchase of another rundown property to fix up in Charters Towers, this time spending $95,000.

He followed this up with the purchase of another project – paying $175,000 for an old home to renovate in Townsville where he was living.

Mr Abel sold all three properties in early 2021, and all up, his first three investments cost $350,000 and sold for $835,000.

But he said the profit was less than the $485,000 it appears to be on paper, given the money he spent renovating the houses.

“I did spend quite a bit on the renovations, but I was pretty happy with the return,” he said.

Happy enough that he decided to invest again, having been well and truly bitten by the property bug.

But during this time he also educated himself about property investment by reading books and listening to podcasts and said that “knowing what I know now, those first two properties were definitely mistakes”.

This is because Charters Towers wasn’t an area that was experiencing any capital growth, so the only reason those homes went up in value was because he created value through renovating, he said.

One of Mr Abel's properties in Mandurah, WA, is on a 1000 square metre block, ripe for redevelopment.

After leaving the army in 2020 to work in maintenance, he made his next purchase in 2021, with a new strategy based on looking to buy in areas experiencing capital growth.

That purchase was a house in the Mandurah region south of Perth, which cost $292,000, plus another $11,000 on cosmetic improvements such as painting, new flooring and blinds, which he spent before renting the property out.

He followed the same formula with a second purchase in Queensland’s Ipswich, spending $325,000, undertaking some basic cosmetic improvements, and then putting in tenants.

Another house in Mandurah based on the same formula followed, this one bought for $375,000.

But Mr Abel said that in this instance he employed another lesson he had learned – that land appreciates while buildings depreciate – and was attracted to the house because it was on a 1000 square metre block that has the potential to be subdivided in the future.

Another property requiring some cosmetic touches before renting out in Townsville followed in 2022 with a $350,000 price tag.

Based on the rental income from these four properties – which equates to around $40,000 a year – he was able to take three months off work and fund a trip to Europe.

Mr Abel with one of his investments in Townsville, in far north Queensland, which he paid $350,000 for.

Back in Australia he bought a fifth property, again in the Mandurah region of Perth, for $485,000 in 2023 and by this stage was also starting to help friends who wanted to get into property investing find suitable houses to buy.

Given his passion, experience and success, it made perfect sense to create a business. At the end of 2023 he launched his own buyers agency, Abel Property Buyers, based in Townsville.

His sixth property purchase, again in Townsville at a cost of $420,000 was made at the start of this year, bringing his current property portfolio to a total of six houses across Australia, which cost a total of $2.247 million and were recently valued at $3 million.

Mr Abel also owns his own home in Townsville, where he lives with his wife Stella.

His passion led Mr Abel to launch his own buyers agency in 2023, helping others do what he has done.

When it comes to helping others do what he’s done, Mr Abel told news.com.au that he thinks Townsville is a great market to invest in at the moment, given strong migration inflows, low unemployment, low levels of property for sale, low rental vacancy rates and a large spend on infrastructure in the area.

“It’s been flat for capital growth for about 10 years but the signs are there that it’s about to take off.”

He also likes Ipswich, which he said is tipped to become a second city to Brisbane like Parramatta is to Sydney.

He recommends investors look for low set brick houses on a minimum block size of 500 square metres.

“Negotiate well and buy under market value,” he said, recommending would-be investors aim to knock $10,000-$20,000 off the asking price and add $30,000 in value through cosmetic renovations.

But he also warns the market is set to get more competitive for investors in 2024.

“Confidence is starting to come back into the market this year after two interest rate pauses.”