Saturday, May 27, 2017

Another Very Local Auction

The house 2 doors away from us was auctioned today. It sold for $801,000 (AUD). Initially it passed in at $785,000 after one bid at that level after the auctioneer made a bid at $780k but then there was a negotiation with the highest bidder. The house plan is identical to ours. The main difference is that it is wedged between two other houses - side windows are frosted glass, while our house has open land or the street on all but one side. We have a much better view as a result. Our backyard is a bit less deep and our front yard longer. The presentation of this house is better than the current state of our house. I reckon we might need more than $10k to bring it up to standard. The original selling price was for some reason $10k more than our house. When I add this new sale into my model of the value of our house based on sales in this development since we bought, it only increases the carrying value of our house by $2,000 to $777k. I think this is a good conservative value for our house.

Monday, May 01, 2017

April 2017 Report

Yet another positive month for the markets and us. Here are our monthly accounts (in AUD):

Spending (not counting mortgage) was high at $8.0k (after taking out some business expenses that have been refunded - "Other income" includes the refund as well as salaries). Salaries etc. added up to $13.1k (after tax). After taking into account the mortgage payment of $3.8k (which includes implicit interest saving due to our offset account - the actual mortgage payment was about $642 less than this) - which shows up as a transfer to the housing account, we saved only $19 on the current account. We made $3.6k of retirement contributions, and saved a net $1.9k in added housing equity. Net saving was, therefore, $5.5k across the board. Still not getting the childcare subsidy.... This month we paid the apartment rent for our trip... part of which was the business expense that was refunded...

The Australian Dollar fell from USD 0.7637 to USD 0.7475. The ASX 200 gained 1.03%, the MSCI World Index gained 1.60%, and the S&P 500 1.03%. We gained 1.52% in Australian Dollar terms and lost 0.63% in US Dollar terms. So, we outperformed the Australian market and underperformed the international markets. The best performer in dollar terms was again the CFS Geared Share Fund ($7k) followed by Unisuper ($5.1k). Platinum Capital gained $4.4k after the share placement. The worst performer was Oceania Capital Partners down $3.0k. Private equity was the worst performing asset class, followed by small-cap Australian stocks. All other asset classes gained. Many investments, in particular international shares and large-cap Australian shares are at all time highs.

As a result of all this, net worth rose AUD 27k to $1.798 million (new high) but fell USD 9k to $US 1.344 million.