Melbourne boomer with five investment properties reveals why he’s selling them

A property investor has criticised young Australians who complain about the baby boomer generation.

Craig Doyle, 61, from Melbourne’s western suburbs, owns five investment properties worth $3 million, which he pays for from his pension fund.

Still, he said it hasn’t been easy being a landlord. He estimates he’s lost $100,000 in the past decade due to property taxes, city taxes, compliance costs, unpaid rent and rising interest rates.

Mr Doyle was responding to younger generations’ resentment towards baby boomers and landlords, which is only growing as housing becomes more expensive for millennials and Gen Z.

According to him, this is because the vast majority of his generation is still active, healthy and economically involved, while 25 years ago everyone expected that they would end up en masse in nursing homes by now.

“I find it tasteless,” he told SBS Insight during a panel discussion on the financial impact of the so-called “boomer economy”.

‘I remember the idea 25 years ago that we would have the greatest debt to this country because we would all live in poverty. [into] retiring and in need of nursing homes.

‘I notice now that despite the fact that we are not, and despite the fact that we can take care of ourselves, there is still a pent-up hostility towards us.’

Craig Doyle, 61, from Melbourne’s western suburbs, told SBS Insight he had bought five properties worth a total of $3 million with his pension fund

“My wife and I got together later and 10 years ago we decided we had to invest in real estate,” Mr Doyle said.

‘We decided to invest in three separate properties through our pension fund and take advantage of that, but unfortunately interest rates have increased nationally over the last four or five years.

‘The price market for the properties we bought has gone down, we were losing $15,000 a quarter running our investment properties, so we had to make the decision to get out of all of them and we’ve lost money on it.

‘They all had homeowners’ associations, land taxes, new apartments, people who didn’t pay their rent, interest [rates] goes up three or four times a year.

“You can’t get the money back. All of a sudden you’re coughing up superannuation, and it’s going out the door before it comes in.”

Mr Doyle said he was selling his investment properties “one at a time”, with one apartment sold last month and one still on the market.

He had hoped to increase his capital base by investing his pension in real estate, but said this had actually eroded their ability to retire.

“We would be grey nomadic now, but that’s been put off for four or five years. It is what it is,” Mr Doyle said.

Mr Doyle said baby boomers had laid the “bedrock of prosperity” in the Australian economy and his generation should not have to pay more tax (see a “sold” sign in Canberra).

A ‘grey nomad’ refers to retired Australians, usually over 55, who spend their time travelling in a caravan or camper.

Mr Doyle criticised the Victorian government for increasing land taxes on investment properties in a bid to pay off Covid-19 debt.

The tax increase will last for the next 10 years.

“We are the ones being demonized. It is unfair that the government is taxing my generation. The baby boomers did well because we worked hard,” he said.

“The government has spent too much, they have too much capital. They are going after the people they think have money. But why should we pay these taxes to make up for the bad management of the state government?” he told the Australian Financial Review.

Doyle said baby boomers laid the “bedrock of prosperity” in the Australian economy and argued his generation should not have to pay more tax.

“Trying to understand why that is something that is being charged to us is really troubling. I’ve paid taxes all my life, I was taxed when I was a paperboy to where I am now,” he said.

‘I find it hard to understand how we as a group of people should pay more. Why?’