A dedicated youngster has managed to get herself on the property ladder, as a landlord, but not everybody celebrates how much the eight-year-old has achieved – and her dad insists they’re jealous
Many people can only dream of getting on the property ladder with a house worth £346,000 – but one eight-year-old has managed it after making ‘sacrifices’.
Ruby McLellan, eight, has bought a house with her two siblings – but how did she save up for the property? Turns out the three of them decided to not spend their pocket money on sweets and instead chose to save £3,000 towards a deposit for a four-bedroom house two years ago.
The home, in Victoria, Australia, has now skyrocketed in value and is worth almost a whopping half a million – but not everybody celebrates the youngster’s success.
In fact, some people are so livid with the purchase that Ruby’s parents have been trolled online. Some of them have referred to the couple as exploitative, with some even suggesting that the pair are bad parents. But Cam McLellan, dad to Ruby and her siblings Angus, 14 and Lucy 13, is not bothered by the criticism, and instead would like people to reflect on their own insecurities before projecting them onto others.
“It’s easy for someone who doesn’t have property or hasn’t made sacrifices, to be angry about it and easy to target a young kid who has a leg-up”, he told Daily Mail Australia.
Cam, head of the OpenCorp property group, said that the people who are complaining about his daughter owning property at such an age should put their time and effort into saving up for a home themselves, claiming that the “young generation” needs to “sacrifice”, and “delay gratification”, rather than wanting everything that second.
When Cam’s three children are all adults, they will share the profits made from selling the house, but in the meantime, the house is being rented out. He said that when they were purchasing the house, he used illustrations to try and make the process easy to digest – but Ruby was six at the time, so she struggled to understand exactly what was going on.
Ruby said that being a landlord is “pretty cool”, but she hasn’t shared the information with any of her pals. The siblings are already planning to buy a second property, borrowing against the equity of the first house.
Cam and his wife Felicity wanted to be “financially free”, so they purchased their first home in their early 20s. Thanks to their property investment, they haven’t had to work much over the past 15 years, with Cam admitting he only has to work for a few hours every couple of days. He also takes summer holidays off to spend with his kids.
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