AN EIGHT-year-old who saved up enough pocket money from doing chores to buy her first house has already made a huge profit.
Ruby McLellan, from Australia, purchased the property for $671,000 (£345,420) in December 2021 but the home is now estimated to be worth a staggering $986,992 (£508,088).
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Ruby had pitched together with her two siblings, sister Lucy and brother Gus, for the plot of land in Clyde in southeast Melbourne, when she was just six.
At the time, their father, Cam McLellan, a property investment expert, revealed that each one of his children had saved up $2,000 (£1.029) to contribute to the land.
With a partially built house on top, it was thought she became Australia’s youngest-ever first home buyer.
“My name is Ruby and I’m six years old and I’m about to buy my first house,” she told 7NEWS.
Mr McLellan estimated that the price of the block had risen by more than ten per cent within months of the trio buying it.
“The price on that block has already gone up $70,000, so they’ve done well so far,” he explained to 7 NEWS at the time.
According to suburb data from realestate.com.au, the median house price in Clyde has risen from $625,000 (£321,740) to $677,750 (£348,895) since the kids bought the property.
But according to CoreLogic, the Melbourne median house price currently stands at $986,992 (£508,088).
It means Ruby and her siblings have already made a remarkable $315,992 (£162,667) profit in just over two years.
Mr McLellan confirmed his children plan to sell up in the year 2032 and split the profits.
“It’s written for my kids to use when they’re old enough, so I’ve outlined all the steps it takes to build a property portfolio,” McLellan added.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Cam said he wanted to help his kids get a foothold in the market.
He said: “It’s much harder now for people to enter the property market and in years to come it’s just going to get harder.
“That being the case, my wife and I knew we were always going to have to help our kids get into the market and so we thought, why not now?”
Once it is built at the end of next year they intend to rent it out while it gathers value.
But Mr McLellan insists it won’t be a “free ride” with his three children.
They will have to pay back the portion of the deposit he and his wife put down.
If the often-quoted rule that property values double around every ten to 14 years applies over the next decade, the McLellan kids will cash in on their real estate investment.
Can a child own a house in the UK?
A CHILD under the age of 18 cannot own land or property in the UK.
It is possible to transfer property to a minor, but an adult will have to be the legal owner of the property until that child turns 18.
This means the property would have to be owned in trust by trustees, e.g. parents.
The most common way in which the property can be held is under a “bare trust”, where another person holds the title to the property as a nominee.
When a parent transfers an asset to a minor child, and the asset produces more than £100 income per year, the parent is liable to income tax on that income until the minor reaches the age of 18.
When the property is sold it will be taxed only on the child and not on the parents.
A similar alternative is to set up a Trust Deed, which is a legal document setting out who the trust beneficiaries and the trustees are, and how and when the trust’s income and assets should be distributed to its beneficiaries.
In this case, the trust itself is effectively regarded as the owner of the property, rather than the child or their parents.
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