One of the most common questions people ask is how Victor Kumar actually built his property portfolio. This page answers it using the numbers and decisions he has published himself.
Where the portfolio started
Victor and his wife Reshmi arrived in Australia from Fiji in February 1997 with $4,500 to their names. Both were qualified radiographers. Neither had bought property before, and Victor has said he did not even know what property investing was at the time. He had to look up the phrase “bricks and mortar” in a book of Australian slang.
For the next five years he read every property investment book he could find and attended seminars, at a time when very little information was available online.
The first property, and what it did
The first property Victor bought, in 1998, was a three bedroom house in Camden in western Sydney for $137,000. It is the clearest example he gives of why holding power matters more than timing:
1998
Purchased for $137,000.
2006
Worth $340,000, renting at $285 per week.
2016
Worth $600,000, renting at $430 per week.
That is growth of 337 per cent over 18 years. In his own words, the reason he achieved that result was simple: he had the cash flow to hold the property long enough for compounding to do the work.
His first dedicated investment property was an unremarkable unit in Campbelltown, Sydney. Nothing about it was special, and that is rather the point.
How the portfolio grew
Victor and Reshmi set up a mortgage broking firm early on and kept buying whenever they could, often without obvious means to do so. Over the following two decades they bought multiple investment properties each year, constantly adjusting the portfolio in line with their goals and the market. During one acquisition phase Victor bought 17 properties in the space of 12 months.
Today he controls a multi million dollar portfolio built across several complete market cycles, including the global financial crisis.
The principles behind it
- Goals first, strategy second, property third. Most investors do this in reverse and buy a property before they know what it is for.
- Holding power beats market timing. The gains came from being able to hold through the flat years, not from picking the bottom.
- Negative gearing is an outcome, not a strategy. You need cash flow to hold every month, not a tax refund once a year.
- Buy on fundamentals, not hotspots. Supply, demand, employment and transport, rather than whatever the media is promoting.
- Assume it could go wrong. Every property should be one you could sell and walk away from with your money intact.
Learn the method
Victor set out the full approach, including area selection, finance, negotiation, value add strategies and the mistakes to avoid, in his book Super Charge Your Property Portfolio.
If you would rather talk it through against your own numbers, Victor offers a complimentary Blueprint Strategy Session.