Saturday, September 10, 2016

Local Auction

There was an auction today of another free-standing house in our complex. Smaller and without a view but it is at the end of the row, so not as hemmed in by neighbors as many of the houses are here. This time there was bidding interest. The house sold at $A600k with three active bidders. The original price in 2008 was $A459k. That is a 30% uplift. Our house cost $A650k in 2008 and we bought for $A740k at the end of 2014, a 13% uplift. Of freestanding houses in the complex bought since the beginning of 2014, which have sensible prices in the database (i.e. not zero or something else low), we paid the lowest uplift. However, the uplift is very strongly negatively correlated with the original sale price. Based on a regression of uplift on original price for all houses sold excluding ours in that period, the uplift on ours should have been 20%. Date of sale is not statistically significant. So, I'll rerate the carrying value of our house up to $A780k.

Friday, September 02, 2016

August 2016 Report

Here are our monthly accounts (in AUD):


Spending (not counting mortgage) was low at $4.5k. Again, no large and exceptional purchases this month.  Salaries etc. added up to $10.6k. After taking into account the mortgage payment of $3.7k (which includes implicit interest saving due to our offset account - the actual mortgage payment was about $500 less than this) - which shows up as a transfer to the housing account, we saved $2.4k on the current account. We made $3.6k of retirement contributions , and saved a net $1.6k in added housing equity. Net saving was, therefore, $7.7k across the board.

The Australian Dollar was fairly stable falling from USD 0.7598 to USD 0.7520. The ASX 200 fell 1.55%, the MSCI World Index rose 0.39%, and the S&P 500 rose 0.14%. We lost 1.25% in Australian Dollar terms and 2.26% in US Dollar terms. So we outperformed the Australian market and underperformed the international markets.

The best performing investment (in total dollars not RoR) was the PSSAP superannuation fund, which gained $1.9k followed by Oceania Capital Partners, which gained $1.5k. The worst performer was the CFS Geared Share Fund, losing $17.3k followed by Platinum Capital, losing $4.3k. The best performing asset class was AUstralian small caps, which gained 2.64% and the worst hedge funds, which lost 2.79%.

As a result of all this, net worth fell AUD 8k to $1.592 million or fell USD 19k to $US 1.197 million.