22 February 2019
>While his teenage peers focused on partying and the freedoms of adulthood, Mr D’Agata was determined to become a homeowner — the quicker, the better.
>He remained in his family’s home in Sydney’s Mascot to avoid paying rent while other teens moved out, and ruthlessly stripped back expenses wherever he could.
>In 2015, at the age of 21, his hard work paid off.
>He’d already squirrelled away a $55,000 deposit, so when he spotted a one-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment one street back from Maroubra beach for $450,000, he swooped.
>“I always knew property was something I wanted to get into but initially for me the vision was of buying that first property as early as I could,” he told news.com.au.
>Two years later in 2017 he visited his bank manager to discuss the possibility of a second loan, and he was stunned to learn he was able to borrow 100 per cent of the value of a new property.
>In July that year, he came across an off-market opportunity through a family friend, and ended up scoring a $350,000, two-bedroom home in Liverpool in a “nice spot” between the station and a shopping centre
>In March 2018 he followed it up with his first foray outside NSW, nabbing a one-bedroom, one-bathroom property in Southport in Queensland for $200,000.
>Just before Christmas last year, Mr D’Agata, now 25, bought his latest property — a one-bedroom unit in Rockdale in Sydney, which had passed in at auction due to lack of interest.
>He picked it up for $383,000 — about $120,000 less than another buyer paid for a near-identical flat in the floor above the year before.
>Today, his four-property portfolio is “floating somewhere between $1.7 and $1.75 million”, with a loan-to-value ratio of 74 per cent.
