BREAKING FREE OF MORTGAGE SHACKLES
LIVING mortgage free is in reach for this young family once their renovated Mermaid Waters home is sold.
It’s been a hard slog revamping fixeruppers while raising two boys, but Kimberley and Kyle Bate are set to put home loan repayments behind them.
Their goal is to enjoy more time with sons, Lennox, 5, and Spencer, 2.
“We just did a six-month caravan trip around Australia and we’d like to do more travelling. Our plan is in a couple of years to do it again and maybe live overseas,” said Ms Bate, 33.
“It is just the freedom to be able to spend time as a family and not have to slave away to pay a mortgage.”
Proptrack data shows average home loan repayments in the suburb have spiked by about 30 per cent in five years, to $4990 per month. That will rise to $6200 once rates hit 1.75 per cent.
Ms Bate said investing from an early age, equity creation and selling some of their properties at the height of Queensland’s boom in 2021 had brought them closer to their goal.
Mr Bate owns ECP Constructions and purchased his first home aged 19, a three-bedroom unit in Labrador.
Their biggest project yet is 25 Birigun St, which is listed with Mcgrath for $3.2m. The Bates bought the late 1970sbuilt home on a 684sq m block for $790,000 in 2018 and transformed it.
Proptrack data shows the median house price in Mermaid Waters reached $1.55m in April, up from $750,000 in 2016.