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Indian-origin landlord with 23 properties explains why he still rents his home in Australia
Ravi Sharma, 32, is the founder of Search Property Buyer’s Agency and owns 23 properties.
A young Australian property investor has surprised many people after sharing that he owns 23 investment properties across the country, yet still chooses to live in a rented apartment.
Indian-origin Ravi Sharma, 32, is the founder of Search Property Buyer’s Agency. He has built a property portfolio worth about $25 million, and his company has been shortlisted as a finalist for Best Buyer’s Agency at the REB Awards in both 2023 and 2024, according to LinkedIn.
He recently spoke about his journey in an interview with Coposit, an app that helps people buy property, news.com.au reported.
“I have a portfolio of about $25 million, and I have like 20 odd properties in that,” Sharma said. “I have only got one or two in Sydney, but then the rest of them are across all of Australia.”
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Why he still rents:
Despite owning nearly two dozen homes, Sharma does not live in any of them. Instead, he rents a three-bedroom penthouse apartment in Macquarie Park, Sydney, where he lives with his wife.
“I pay nearly $1,420 a week in rent,” Sharma said.
According to the report, this lifestyle choice is part of a strategy called rentvesting. Rentvesting means renting a home in the area where you want to live, while buying investment properties in more affordable locations.
Sharma was also named Australian Business News Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 in Property and Construction. He also runs a YouTube channel called Personal Finance with Ravi Sharma, which has more than 1 lakh subscribers.
HT.com has reached out to the user for more details. This report will be updated when he responds.
The cost of buying:
Sharma bought his first property at the age of 21. It was a three-bedroom house in Dubbo that cost $190,000. Over the next ten years, he continued to grow his portfolio by buying homes in different parts of Australia and renting them out.
Sharma explained that buying a home in Sydney would have required a very large deposit. That money would have been “tied up” in the property and would not have helped him continue to invest.
“While the idea of not having to pay rent sounded attractive, having all that money tied up in an asset that wasn’t going to perform just meant that I had no choice,” he said.
He added that if he had tried to sell such a property, he could have lost money because of stamp duty.
