For $250, it's yours

You don't need big money-or big loans-to get a foot on the property ladder

- PAM WALKLEY

Most Australians value the M security that comes with owning property, yet many of us feel locked out of real estate because of high entry costs for individual purchases and rising interest rates.

But virtually everyone can afford to invest in property because, believe it or not, you can start with $250. And better still, no borrowings.

So, even if you are on average earnings and a tight budget, you can participate in the rental income and capital growth that usually come from well-chosen property over the medium to long term.

Here are three ways you can get on the real estate ladder with as little as $250.

1 Invest in a "brick"
Buying property one brick at a time is the concept behind BrickX, which was founded in 2014. Since then, it has purchased various properties across Australia, ranging from a four-bedroom house in Kangaroo Flat, a suburb of Bendigo in Victoria, to a one-bedroom unit in the trendy, inner-city Sydney suburb of Potts Point.

Each property is divided into 10,000 bricks, which are sold to investors. On the Brickx website (brickx.com), you can see full details of each property to help you select which to invest in. Each brick in the Kangaroo Flat house, for example, is available (at the time of writing) for $68 (valued at $69.06 in December 2022).

All the properties are leased, and you earn money in two ways - rental income and capital growth, just as you would from most investment properties. With the Kangaroo Flat property, the net rental yield is 3.57% and the 20-year historical capital growth is 6.98%. If this continued over the next five years, you would make a return of 8.03% a year.

To open an account, you must deposit $250 into your BrickX wallet. You can either choose which property or properties to invest in or let BrickX choose with the Smart Invest option. You can list your bricks for sale at any time.