Nicole Haddow

First-time buyers now are in an even better position in Victoria because there is no stamp duty under a certain threshold.

But the ultimate aim for me was to rent that property out.

So the advantage of that, well, there's a few advantages really.

The first is that you get to set up the lifestyle that you would prefer by getting someone in your property and renting where you want to live.

So I now live in Richmond, much closer to the city than where my investment property is.

My property is also negatively geared, so there are tax benefits that come with renting

paying for things like the gap in the mortgage.

So say, for example, off the top of my head, say, for example, your mortgage is $2,000 a month, but your rent only brings in $1,500.

There are tax breaks on that gap.

Even the cost of the water bill, which I pay, and the council rates, all of those sorts of things add up as a tax deduction at tax time.

And ultimately, I now have someone in my property.

I really don't think about it on a day-to-day basis.

And I am allowing it to sit there and hopefully build in value so that I can eventually use the equity in that property to take my next step.

Had I waited to buy something that I wanted to live in, it would have been far harder to enter the market and it would have taken me longer.

Absolutely, absolutely.

So when I moved out of my property, I managed to get hold of a two-bedroom house in Richmond, which I would never be able to afford to buy as an owner.

But because it had two bedrooms, I went back into a housemate scenario.

And so I was splitting the cost of that with someone else.

And it meant that my rent on that property where I wanted to live was actually less than my mortgage.

So there were a lot of advantages there.