Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Monica Rouvellas on composing limitless investment structures

Episode Date: May 26, 2023

Unlocking the right investment structures will remove blockers and increase your capacity for wealth creation, says Monica Rouvellas. Your purchasing entity structure and strategy is critical to your capacity borrow money and buy property. But many would-be property investors hit barriers with banks because of apparent income limitations or other financial factors.  But as Monica reveals, there is always a way. Monica has reportedly uncovered a bank hack that has enabled her to overcome income loan servicing constraints to secure three properties that now cost her nothing to own.  Monica is an investor with rare creative capacity and an ability to think differently.  She's a polymath with an incredible career as an entrepreneur, multi-disciplinary academic, researcher and educator. Her talents and interests have been spread across the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, she's also a lawyer and founded her own tech start-up. And somewhere amongst all of these demanding roles, she still finds time to invest in property. Enjoy this inspiring conversation! Connect with Monica: https://www.monicarouvellas.com/ Three easy ways to Get Invested right now: 1. Subscribe to this podcast now, if you haven’t already, and get the inspiration delivered to your podcast feed each week 2. Get a copy of my book, Get Invested, for FREE, and find out what it takes for you to invest in living more, working less. Go to: https://knowhowproperty.com.au/get-invested-free-ebook  3. Join the Get Invested community. Each month Bushy sends a free and exclusive monthly email full of practical ‘Self, Health and Wealth’ wisdom that our current Freedom Fighter subscribers can’t wait to get each month. Just visit bushymartin.com.au, scroll to the bottom of the page and sign up. About Get Invested, a Property Hub show Get Invested is the leading weekly podcast for Australians who want to learn how to unlock their full ‘self, health and wealth’ potential. Hosted by Bushy Martin, an award winning property investor, founder, author and media commentator who is recognised as one of Australia’s most trusted experts in property, investment and lifestyle, Get Invested reveals the secrets of the high performers who invest for success in every aspect of their lives and the world around them. Get Invested is part of the Property Hub podcast channel, your home for property investment insights, inspiration and stories from Australia’s top property experts, investors, leaders and analysts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts, Spotifyand Google Podcasts to get every Get Invested episode each week for free, and also get full access to RealtyTalk, Australia’s top online property show for red hot property investing news and insights direct from property industry leaders and influencers. Property Hub is a collaboration between Bushy Martin from KnowHow Property, Kevin Turner from Realty, show producer Andrew Montesi from Apiro Marketing and Apiro Media, and Australia’s largest independent podcast network DM Media.  For business and partnership enquiries, send an email to: [e-mail] omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

In this case, provided that your entities and the income generated from the properties are actually positive cash flow and there's a surplus in those entities, the banks will not factor in the liability attached to those entities when you go and borrow for a new entity. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, a leading weekly show to help you unlock your full self-health and wealth potential. I'm your host, Bushy Martin, and each week I go deep with the best investors, experts, leaders and founders to find out what it takes to break free from the grind, discover freedom and live by design.

Subscribe now and join me and get invested in the life you really want. Let's get started. Hi, Friday Fighters. Is your dream of property ownership fading? Are you suffering major challenges trying to get a loan for your next property? Is your income considered insufficient to secure the loan you need because your buying capacity has dropped following all of the recent rate rises? Well, if this is you, or perhaps that's someone that you know who's struggling with all this,

then you've landed in the right place at the right time. Because in this episode of Your Property Hubs Get Invested, we continue our special grassroots series talking to hands-on investors who share their trials and tribulations and how they've managed to overcome the considerable hurdles that they faced in order to continue to invest in property. Which brings us to this week's special guest, Monica Revelles, who has reportedly uncovered a bank hack that has enabled her to overcome her income loan servicing constraints to secure three properties that now cost her nothing to own. And how has she achieved all this? Well, stay tuned, because this is just part of what we're going to enjoy unpacking

for you today. But before we get into this great conversation, if you or someone you know wants to share your unique property journey for the benefits of others here on Get Invested, just reach out to me personally at bushey at knowhowproperty.com.au. Now, for those of you who've been listening to me for quite some time, as a closet amateur musician myself, you'll know that I often talk about the essence of sustainable success revolving around composing and writing your own life symphony and then becoming the orchestra leader in order to coordinate the performance of the right musicians playing the right instruments in the right way at the right time in order to transform your dreams into reality. And nowhere is this more evident than

the example of today's special guest. Monica is a multi-talented 30-something youth polymath whose love of music and the violin has driven her creative and innovative professional and academic career across the broad spectrum of her roles as an entrepreneur, a multi-disciplinary academic, a researcher and an educator. And in this regard, her talents and interests have been spread across the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, a law degree, her work as a solicitor and her own tech startup. And somewhere amongst all of this, she still finds time to invest in property. So I'm really looking forward to diving into your journey, Monica, and welcome and let's get invested. Thanks, Bushy.

I've read a number of stories about you in recent times which really captured my interest Monica so for those that are listening in and who don't know who you are can you sort of start off by giving us a bit of a rundown on what you do differently and as importantly why you do what you do Monica yeah I mean I like everyone I think when you first started working you sort of go after working in a full-time role and fairly early on in my career, I was, some might say unfortunate or in my case, fortunate enough to be made redundant in a role that I was working in full-time. And that really changed my perspective on employability. And it was something at that particular age, I kind of wanted and realized that I don't want to work

harder. I want to work smarter. And for me, having quite a lot of skill sets in a lot of disciplines, I wouldn't say I'm a specialist in anything. I realized that, you know, I could have the best of some of my skills in doing everything that I love to do and just finding a way to generate the most money out of those particular activities into basically a sustainable project management type of work. And so that's what I do. So I'm an academic. I teach students across three universities here in Sydney in the areas of business and law. I also do a brief subject also on music business and professional practice, which is always a fun one for me because it's really great to see students actually take what I teach them and actually

do something practical with it, which always amazes us every year. And with that said, I do a bit of legal work as well to keep up with my law skills and qualifications. And I still teach music, which is something that I'm very passionate about. And often a lot of people say to me, how can you do all of that? And I'm like, well, I work for myself. So I get to pick and choose when i work what i do um and you know how each day is always very different for me so and i and i love that i don't think i can go back to being in a very routine sort of stuck nine to five role love it love it everything you've just spoken about sort of pretty much mirrors my own approach to life monica and it's a it's a rare one and and not many people have the level of

self-confidence uh to do that and to take that on where is your sort of uh self-belief and self-confidence in that regard come from to take a more of a portfolio approach a lot if if that's a good enough description look it's hard to say but i mean i think it's that initial first step doing it so i remember when i first went from losing a full-time job essentially because of change management and reduction of costs in the business and going oh crap what am I going to do now um and I was briefly no joke I was briefly on Centrelink um in that transition period regretted because I ended up with some robo debt um which is still you know there in the background for for whatever reason and um but but it was really really funny because at that

particular point in time I was having a look at the people that I knew that were and friends that were working in nine-to-five jobs. And like me, I would be working nine-to-five, but I'd actually be working longer, realistically, in those roles, doing overtime and other things that crept up. And whilst in my full-time role, I really loved it, my friends in their full-time roles absolutely hated it. They hated waking up in the morning. They hated going to work. They hated staying back. They were always whinging about it. And I remember doing the maths at one point. I think at the time in my first job, I was earning about $70,000 as my base income. And I was like, you know what?

I'm working 50-hour weeks. Let's calculate this on an hourly basis. And then I had a sudden realization that if I actually worked at Woolies on a Sunday and Saturday or Saturday and Sunday, I'd actually probably earn pretty much the same amount of money. um and i didn't have to take home the stresses that came with work particularly dealing with certain work personalities etc and was something that you just kind of do your work and go i was like okay well i don't really want to work for willies either but you know if that's the monetary

equivalent there's got to be a better way and i started calculating like uh you know at this point i was living at home with my parents who were renting i was supporting them with their rent and I was like there has to be a better way to earn like an hourly figure that was going to give me that freedom so I started to work on that and I realized that even though at the time when I was working full-time I didn't do really much violin teaching I was only doing maybe four hours a week I was like you know what even if I work at a school one day a week and then did maybe 10-15 hours at home during the rest of my week I'd still actually make more money than what I was doing in my full-time job because my hourly rate would be a lot more dearer um and then I had the flexibility

to pick and choose as well when and when I could work and so that started and then an opportunity came up actually at Macquarie University to start teaching there um they were very interested in the fact that not only had I at this point done an MBA um I had my own music teaching studio where I was hiring a number of teachers throughout Sydney and they were like, we're going to hire you because you actually have a creative degree, not a traditional business background. And later on as well, I did some work for PwC and they also said the same thing to me as well. We're hiring you because you have a degree in music and you're creative, not because you have a traditional accounting degree, which always struck me as strange. But as I've realized across my career,

actually, that creativity is something that makes me very unique and more employable because I don't view the world in a very set formula that we get taught. I kind of look to see here's a problem. And whilst I might not be able to solve this problem just yet, I'm going to think about the different ways and different approaches in solving that problem. And that's something that I do now across all aspects of my life, my career, my personal life, and even in my property um journey as well love it love it so what i'm hearing there and we spoke briefly before we hit the record button today about the importance of creativity particularly in the world moving ahead given what ai is going to do for all the sort of standard procedural type activity

but what i love about what you're saying there is that nothing's there's no such thing as a problem to you it's just an issue to be overcome and that's a very different mindset to a lot of people who hit a problem and it's a no and that's that's the end of the story so we'll we'll circle back around that a little bit later when we talk about the property exercise because it's particularly relevant given some of the great work you've done in that area but while we're talking about music Monica I'd love for you to talk about where your sort of initial love of music came from and how do you feel that music has benefited you in other areas of your life in addition to what we've already spoken about?

Yeah, I mean, funny story. I was forced to play a musical instrument growing up because the school I was at, it was compulsory to pick up an instrument from year one. And, yeah, so and at the time I actually wanted to play the flute and one of the music teachers at the time who is now the Deputy Dean of the Sydney Conservatory of Music and a fantastic Australian composer, Matthew Hindson, was like, you need to play the violin. And I was like, no, no, no, I wanted to play the flute.

So somehow he convinced me and gave me a lot of repertoire, particularly in the younger generations that was fun and jazzy jazzy because i really liked that sort of pop jazz influence i wasn't a big fan of classical yep and then from there it was something like actually you know what i enjoy you know playing this instrument and i think as well because from from the school side of things it was something that was compulsory so you just everyone had to do it um so you're not going to it's not like some of the other experiences that some of my students have where oh i'm the only person that plays in the band and my friends make fun of me it's nothing like that because everyone is doing it

and you're forced into developing a bit of a habit and routine which is you're playing the instrument anyways the school's giving you the instrument to play on um the school's giving you lessons so you may as well just like your homework and do a bit each day and that from that routine then it became a passion particularly when I got to high school and more opportunities opened up with you know different orchestras playing in bands um I joined the senior youth orchestra as well and that was really exciting because you got to travel uh and socialize with you know a lot of other individuals that had very similar passions and you know you do interesting events as well like we we played one year at um Duntroon out in Canberra for their uh September graduation

ceremony and you get to like play with fireworks and cannons and it's all like you know fun and exciting and you'll meet interesting people on the way so it's brilliant talk to me about because i you know as i mentioned to you before we uh we started the conversation on a bit of a closet muso myself and um i've taken up piano very late in life i've always i've done other things but uh i've always loved the piano so things about five years ago i started and a lot of people say how do you manage to play like that given you haven't worked so long and I always say well it's just the amount of time I spend every day on the piano it's just a it's a practice thing yeah it's not it's no inherent talent that I've got I've just I just work hard at it I just put

in time every day and I and I'm not even scratching the surface of what you've achieved in in your career already in relation to the music exercise can you share what sort of time you spend practicing and how important that regular discipline is because I think there's overways between that again and success in property investment because if you just keep you patient and persistent about doing things you'll achieve the results can you share a little bit of that for us yeah so it it depended on I guess the age and what level I was at throughout my music learning so like you know when you first start to learn an instrument you just do you know the bare minimum usually it's about 10 minutes a day sort of thing and it's more to develop the habits

um when i went to high school there'll be days where i couldn't practice because there was so much going on i mean i was also um competing in rhythmic gymnastics at a national level at that point as well so i had a lot of training and sport commitments in addition to the music commitments that i was doing um and then basically i had to make a decision sort of it was around year 10 year 11 where i had to stop the sport and focus on the music because that's i wanted to get into the conservatory of music, and that's when my practice changed and it would fluctuate. So, for instance, if I had an assessment or an audition

or a competition or a recital, the weeks leading up to it, I would be probably doing around anywhere between two to four hours of practice a day. And mind you, because I'm a violinist, you can physically, you know, play your instrument for four hours a day. There's a lot of people out there who play trumpets and saxophones where they can't do that much practice because it wrecks your lips and whatnot.

But for a violinist, you just, you know, play away for four hours a day or up to four hours a day. And it taught me a lot in terms of how to manage my time. Yes. So particularly in those upper high school years, you know, I was doing, I think, 12 units of study. I was doing some very heavy subjects like four-unit English, three-unit maths as well.

and yeah i basically had to become very good at setting my time and making the best use of my time so on the days where i couldn't practice four hours a day because there just wasn't enough hours in the day with school co-curricular study exam prep etc i aim to get at least an hour done yep and that would be my goal and i i learned how to become very efficient at my practice like focusing on just the things that needed to be worked on rather than playing the things that felt comfortable and easy and you and you learn to you know target the things that you're not comfortable about and tackle them first yes and there's a sense of accomplishment when you do kind of go after a few attempts like okay it's getting better it's getting better a week later

it's like actually yeah it's getting great and your teacher's like giving you that feedback as well that you then um go you know it's worth the effort and and there's that sense of achievement and that then motivates you to take that approach into other things so during that period i must admit i probably hardly knew what procrastination was um but at the same time to procrastinate i would say yeah because just my approach um and it's kind of why i like to be busy even in my career, because as soon as I am in a job where there's not much going on, I just hate that procrastination feeling of, you know, and I feel like it takes more time out of my day. But even that, like I became very good at, you know, tackling hard things first and confronting

some of those challenges headfirst. And I think that's kind of where my confidence comes in to be able to do what I do and take that step. And as you said, you know, where do you get your confidence in having that project management role um well it came down to you know seeing people hate their lives in nine to five job i had mates who were traveling the world as musicians picking and choosing their work they had a fantastic lifestyle um and then i also had the support of my parents who themselves were entrepreneurial they didn't have a nine to five job they they ran businesses all their lives and things like that and and whilst they had a lot of negative experiences which i learned from and keeping the back of my mind even now to this day um you know i i sort of

realized that you know you don't really want to be constrained to that nine to five and as i got older particularly as i approached 30 and i was starting to think about settling down having a family um as someone who has to be intellectually you know have that intellectual stimulation a lot of the time uh when i have kids you know i want to be able to have that flexibility where i can do some work whilst a child is resting or having their play time and then also be able to be there for them to give them that you know attention a hundred percent of and give my my fullest attention to them so um having that balance and that ability to kind of you know work switch off or you know take a couple months off and travel and just you know enjoy life that became really really important

to me. Yeah I love it. Now you're clearly an overachiever and it stands out you've only got to spend five minutes on Google to work that out. Where did your drive to overachieve in pretty much every aspect of your life come from? Can you talk to us about that? Yeah look that came from a very early age so and a lot of it comes from probably my parents but also the school environment I was in so um i was fortunate at the time to go to a good school um that particular school at the time was heavily invested in what they call independent learning and self-regulated learning habits and what i didn't know as a child but now i know um as an adult and actually doing research in this area to this day was that a lot of the stuff that we learned in primary school about collaboration

and this entrepreneurial mindset was somewhat encouraged and supported by the staff of the school. So, for instance, like from year three onwards, we would have to do some sort of creative project where we could do whatever we wanted, present it however we like, but it had to be on, you know, like a particular topic or an idea matched with an emotion or something like that, and you just turn it into a project and you'd spend like two terms

working on it and then you know present the class so it's little things like that what a great environment uh your parents were obviously it showed a fair bit of foresight to uh recognize that that's that educational environment was going to be good for you to be honest i'm not sure if they um did that i think part of their choice in choosing a school was that first of all it was kind of close to where they work and number two they didn't want me at the time going to a public school because back in the day I mean we were living in Greenacre and the local public school was pretty rough and my parents were like we would because you know I'm a first generation Australian they were like we don't want you to go through the things we went through when we

were growing up so we're just going to invest a little bit more in your education with that said though it was also during a period where my parents had lost their business they had lost the house, partly because of the, you know, the effects of the 1990 recession, but also because some wrong, some bad advice. They, you know, my dad's best friend who was a solicitor was actually in fact forging my parents' signatures on loan documents and doing all this sort of stuff. He got disbarred at the end of the day, believe it or not. But at the same time, once that has happened, there's no recourse. They had to sell up everything. They lost everything there's superannuation and basically had to start from scratch now that uh would have

been uh you probably would have been uh almost absorbing that by osmosis at the time how has that affected your relationship with money i mean you mentioned earlier that you know you've sized up uh the salary versus working in woolies and work out you're probably better off doing part-time stuff and still still be pulling in the same coin talk to us about uh your relationship money with money from those early days and how that's sort of transcribed into uh how you've approached the whole investment arena yeah look it was i mean look my parents did the best to try and shield me as much as possible from that but even as a child you will hear conversations when you go to bed of you know mom and dad talking or arguing over money as would be the case and there were

there were days for instance where my parents would practically eat just you know a toast in the evening because they just could not afford you know to serve dinner and things like that and they would rather feed you know the kids rather than actually eat themselves and things like that um so from that I must admit I became pretty savvy with budgeting and tightening down when it um when it came to it I'm probably less like that now but especially in my early 20s and mid-20s you know I would you know calculate everything I'd have a budget for okay this is how much i'm spending on a night out and i look for ways if we were to go out with mates how can we still go out but not spend ridiculous amounts of money you know is there a gig at the local pub

which we can see for free and we might you know eat at home or eat at mac airs and then just you know spend a bit on drinks and just have a nice night you know so you you don't have to you know sacrifice but you just look at it in a different way and that that definitely has you know affected my relationship with money because for me I don't like I don't I used to have like a figure which was you know I'll earn 100k and once I hit that it was like how was my next goal okay make it 250 you know and so it kind of and once you hit those targets you're like well what else is there to it and so for me it's well became a game it became like a game of how much can I earn in a week you know and if I can you know make you know 5 10k in a week

that's you know a tick okay next thing let's try and get some more you know um and it became like a game of you know how can i find ways to generate income but also how can i find ways to save income um and you know and then you have other issues as well like you know hex debts and all that other scary stuff which is about to also go up very soon so not looking forward to that Absolutely right. No, you're dead right there. Before I sort of start transitioning into your investment journey, if you look back on your life to date, Monica,

what challenging event has brought about your greatest learnings and biggest changes, do you think? I think seeing my parents lose everything, that was tough. And then also having to, you know, you're in an environment in a school where everyone has everything their parents want and you can't go to parties you can't buy the latest outfits you're shopping at you know big w full clothes when everyone else is you know going to target or something you know um so those sort of things um so that had a big impact um as well as that um and then as i got older having to

then support my parents financially as well um particularly when they went through some health problems um so both my parents went through that there was a period of time when i think it was in second or third year of uni where because my parents were renting um it was a rental crisis not very different to what we're having now where you'd go to a you know a an open home there'd be 40 people just at that house um so there was a brief period where for a couple months we were living in a motel you know in um the inner suburbs um and had all the furniture and everything in storage because we could not get a house there was that many applicants and it was basically best in best dressed and it wasn't until we realized that um and we saw another um family

do this was that a um open home um this family went up to the agent said look we're going to offer you 50 more per week um can you give us a lease and we sign for the keys today and the agent said yes and when we saw that we were like okay let's do that on the next house we really really like it let's just offer more money and so so we did that um and i know a lot of people out there will be like why why should you do that and it's like well clearly if there's 40 people showing up for a rental property clearly that rental price is too much in demand and so to make your you know application more attractive you're going to have to pay more and that's just the reality of life and so in my mind i was like okay fifty dollars more a week that for me is another

two students at the time you know and so that's what i did i you know worked got another two students to be able to support my parents through that journey yeah yeah i love it so so looking at that how's that experience influenced your ongoing approach to life um yeah that's an interesting question um you know i think for me i approach most things i do in life from a more pragmatic point of view um so my relationship now of with having money it's not because i want it and and not so much either because i need it it's more of okay well i'm willing to pay to just get the job done yeah um for practicality point of view and of course within reason you don't obviously you want to overpay for something but you got to take the emotion out of money um i

think a lot of people are very emotionally attached to the wallet um and that's when people get into trouble either with credit card debt or just you know being like i can't afford this i can't afford this and they get good they get that tunnel vision and they they can't get out of it um whereas you kind of go you know what okay let's have a bit of a reality check yeah i need a roof over my head and whilst it's going to cost me maybe 50 a week more than what i'm paying what can i do that to increase my income by 50 or more dollars a week so i can afford that and that's always been my attitude it has always been what can i do to be able to afford the things i want so if i wanted a car if i wanted to buy some nice clothes or something like that if i had a

goal it would be like what can I do to afford that love it again that's that solutions approach rather than the problem approach I'd love to transition now into your property journey and I just want to start off with now why did you decide to invest and what triggered your interest in property as the thing to invest in so probably funny story a bad relationship number one I was dating someone at the time whose family had invested in quite a few properties actually in the Stanmore area in Sydney and they bought like really massive properties with four or five bedrooms, but they would basically turn them

into share houses, right? And my partner at the time, my boyfriend at the time, He, every weekend, was going over to basically manage those share houses, collect the cash from the international students who are living in those houses. And, you know, there were some times I said to him, you know, is the headache really worth it because you have issues of people not paying, people leaving suddenly, never to be seen again sort of thing. But what I realized quite quickly was, well, if you rent out five rooms for about $200

$250 a week um you know and and your mortgage at the time is say um i can't even remember back then but it was about two two grand a month you have this surplus which you can then use as a deposit plus the equity in the property etc yeah um so that kind of stirred my brain of oh actually you know what i could earn money without actually having to do anything um effectively um so at the ended that relationship when that sort of ended um i think for me i was a bit sort of down about how things ended there and one of the things for me was you know what i went out and bought myself a property um yeah did you have any were there any initial fears or concerns before you bought that first property um a little bit was first of all um do i have enough deposit um and

stamp duty and all of that um the other issue as well was because i was not considered a full-time employee by the banks i had to get my brother involved in that one um so just to be able to to service the loan calculations to be able to afford it even though the property would be paying itself off even though i could afford it even though i had the deposit my brother didn't um um it yeah it was anyways that's that's a whole issue there in terms of banks and how they calculate serviceability and prefer those who are a slave to the nine to five but um that was my biggest concern i guess my biggest concern was actually parting with at this point what had been my savings because um pretty much when i bought my first property which i think was 2016

end of 2016 um this was about six years after my first job four years after i lost my first full-time job um and so six years before that point so 2010 i had zero dollars in my bank account you know and i had saved i had worked up you know worked really hard and suddenly i had you know 60 70 000 sitting in a bank account i was going to use towards a deposit i'm like oh crap once i you know use this money on a deposit i'm back to zero again you know um and it was a very scary thought because for me having you know sixty thousand dollars sitting in account was a lot of money to physically have as cash in the bank um and was something that i'd never had before so you know having that mindset of it's okay to let it go and go back to zero and i might have to use

my credit card for a few months to pay off a few things if needed but you know it will build up again and so and even to this day every time i buy a property and my my savings or even my offset account goes down to zero i'm freaking out again going oh i need to need to put more money back into it then then then i go okay well you know here we go again let's find a way to you know make sure we can afford everything we need to afford yeah spot on well i'd love to i'd love to unpack your ongoing property journey now and and one of the important points there i think you've raised is that when you hit the hurdle in relation to not being able to borrow and do your own right and you you i'm assuming jointly bought that property your brother was both on the

on the title and on the loan was that right so it was yeah it was joint tenants um okay with a 50 50 split um with that said though i was a bit annoyed at the few years later because i didn't realize we could actually have done it as two mortgages rather than a single mortgage and if we had done as the two mortgages we probably still would have had the property together today um but and this is food for thought anyone who wants to you know buy property with someone else like a sibling or a business partner, et cetera, is that when you take out that loan and both your names are on the loan, you're not responsible

for 50% of the loan. You're responsible for 100% of the loan, and that gets taken into account in your serviceability. Totally. There are a few banks that allow you to have, as you said, separate loans and then only focus on the equity component that you're responsible for, but they are fewer than the many. So you certainly need to do some hunting on that.

Were there any issues, because I've often talked to people in the past about be very careful when you go into a property with someone else because unless you're married to them, life dynamics tend to change and needs tend to change. Did that create any challenges for you and what was the way of exiting that exercise? Yeah, look, the main challenge I guess came down to, for instance, when we had periods where a tenant wasn't in the property

and we had to add a little bit onto the loan ourselves um so for instance my brother who has a nine-to-five job he can't save as much as I can and in actual fact he can get he can often borrow more money than I can there was a point where he could borrow more money than I could um but he could only save 10 grand in a year whereas me on the other hand I could save twice as much three times as much if i wanted to um so it was quite ironic um in that situation so he often i mean he had his own expenses his own family and stuff like that where he had to of course provide for them so there would often be a bit of a struggle where i ended up being the the bank the family the big sister sorry the little sister bank um and having the big sister yeah yeah you know and

having to lend him the money and i'd get paid at tax time when he gets a refund from his tax returns little thing um which would often be frustrating because sometimes you know especially in the in the beginning with the deposit and we did some repairs and renovations to the property there was a point where he had owed me about close to ten thousand dollars and it took him about three four years to pay pay that back to me so um and of course without interest so yeah it like you you have to kind of have those discussions early on when you go into the property about okay what happens if you can't afford it how does this work how do we repay it back so we had all that in place so we were pretty good on that but there was also times where i'd be getting

frustrated saying i could really do with you know the money you owe me and you know it it made those conversations a little bit challenging you know because being family you kind of don't want to say hey by the way where's his money because it puts stress on that and that relationship yeah totally great so did you still own the property with your brother or has that changed and and i'd love you to sort of take us through from there that first property where that led to for you personally yes so um we don't have that property together um we did a bit of a restructure and and whatnot so what happened was was that i then um a few years later i think it was just in the start of covid i decided to buy a property um on my own a quite a cheap property with a good

rental return and quite good growth um so i bought that property and at this point that after that property the banks were like we can't lend you anymore you've hit your maximum serviceability and i was like hmm i i called bs on that to be honest um because i'm looking at my tax returns I'm like I'm making over 100k after tax a year um both my properties are positively geared by far and this was not with the two percent one percent interest rates we had this was with the interest rates at about five percent so kind of a little bit less than where we are now but almost almost the same and they were both positively geared and the banks were like no no no um and then I was looking into it um because one thing that fascinated me when i first started my property

journey with the ex-partner that i have was that his family also were buying property in so-called company structures which always made me like go why um so i started asking why um and then from my law background and experience um i was aware that you know you could buy property in companies and it would be treated a lot differently so it got me thinking saying okay well what if I were to sell some of these properties into a company um and then I was like oh no I'm not gonna get the capital gains tax okay so let's you know figure out ways to do it so I started chatting to people and I didn't even realize that in a book that I had bought and hadn't fully finished reading the answer was there which is the book by Steve McKnight and

I recommend anyone who reads it there is a small snippet in there where he kind of explains if you do it this way you'll be set for life sort of thing had I read that I probably but even then I probably wouldn't quite have understood it so it took me a while to kind of understand the structure and kind of go okay well you know what yes we can still borrow it under a company but if we pair that with maybe a trust or something like that then there are certain benefits there's also a lot of disadvantages that you have to weigh up um and and so it got to a point where i decided to restructure it so i said to my brother i'll buy you out but instead of me paying him um cash for his share of the property i gave him my other property that i had because it was the same in

terms of the value of his share okay um so we we did that we restructure it he also brought in um a structure as well and um because he was also having serviceability issues as well where you know he was looking to buy his own place his principal place and the banks were like nope this is all you have um and he again was like well what's going on here so we we restructured everything and then that allowed me to go off and buy more property essentially so if you come up is it a hybrid structure that has a sort of corporate trustee and then trust or are you able to just break that down for us. And one of the other questions I'd like to ask around that, I guess,

is I'm making the assumption here that by using the corporate structure, you could effectively use low-doc type loans where the evidence of income wasn't so reliant. Am I making the right assumption here or not? You can. I've never done low-doc, to be honest. And if I did low-doc, I could probably borrow close to twice as much.

Yeah. I've never been in a position where I needed to do low-doc. Okay. And the reason for that is with low-doc, as great as it is, you know, where banks just take whatever your account says to be your income, you're limited to basically second and third-tier lenders. You're limited to higher interest rates. And that also affects your credit score to some extent.

So I generally stay clear with that. So, for instance, all my properties are with a major full bank in terms of the lending. um but what happened with the with the corporate structure is the way the banks calculate risk yep right um so because it is a business entity they treat you like a business you're guarantoring the loan rather than using your own serviceability and that is the main difference i know it sounds strange you're like there's no different to buying property in your own name essentially but because it's under a different entity they treat you very very differently

how do they because i know most of the major banks in particular look at the last two years financials for a company to decide what your gross declared taxable income is that they'll then use for the loan servicing how did you maneuver around that exercise so in the case of residential mortgages they don't actually care too much about the business financials because you are personally guarantoring the loan if i wasn't personally guarantoring the loan then yes they will just look at their the financials of the business for the last two years um but generally speaking for residential mortgages they will expect the director to be a personal guarantor on the loan yeah yeah yeah okay no that's good and you managed to do that through one of the

the big four yeah yes yeah good now that that's that's awesome um okay so talk to us about the progression of your portfolio from from there then if you wouldn't mind please yeah so from there it was just you know being able to buy more property um kind of rinse and repeat with the the strategy of the structures um and you suddenly didn't have to worry about serviceability issues because you know with that serviceability bucket once you filled it up um you either have to earn more money or pay down debt to do it. In this case, provided that your entities and the income generated from the properties are actually positive cash flow and there's

a surplus in those entities, the banks will not factor in the liability attached to those entities when you go and borrow for a new entity. Yeah, so you set up a separate structure for each individual property essentially, is that what we're saying? Yeah. it's costly yeah no but but in terms of it might be a cost but in terms of the value that you're able to secure and and then the asset base that you're able to establish makes a lot of sense

and i think that the key thing that's probably worth reinforcing there is that the property must be positive cash flow after all costs involved in both purchase so it's not just yeah so not just the cost of the loan it is the cost of the loan the rates the management fees repairs everything so um yeah it's um and that's the other thing you don't really want to negatively gear in these structures because you can't offset that loss against your personal um income tax anyways um so yeah there's things like that and i guess for me i mean for me to set up a structure is relatively cheap because being a solicitor i can do that myself um the other thing you do have to be aware of is the land tax implications that certain structures have like for instance in new

south wales if you buy in a discretionary trust you will be paying land tax um likewise if you buy in a company once you hit that threshold of any related entities then you know that's that's it um there are ways you know and i've done it for clients myself where we can set up structures in a way to um create entities that are non-related but again they're very very complex and you know they're several thousands of dollars plus then you've got to factor in the accounting fees and then the auditing fees as well um because being entities they need to be audited obviously yeah of course of course um what i'd love for you to give us a bit of a feel for is what was your initial investment strategy when you started and how has this evolved over time and why

yeah so i mean i've always been more focused on cash flow properties with some growth As we know, historically, all properties will always go up in value. And whilst, you know, I see a lot of people, particularly in the Sydney area, they'll buy these properties, they heavily negative give them and then try and sell them a couple of years later to gain on the capital growth so they can have cash to go again. What I've realized is that realistically, as long as your property goes up $50,000 every year you don't really need a massive cash flow uh sorry a massive um capital gains property um because every time you sell you're paying capital gains tax um you you want enough equity

to be able to have a deposit or two um to then go again and even with that um like some of the properties i've recently bought the they're on huge lands where i can actually put a granny flat at the back or i can knock down build a duplex or a set of you know three townhouses which not only increases the capital gains of the property but also increases the cash flow. So initially when I first started buying, it was all about cash flow, being able to have a property that pays off itself because I said to myself, I'm not going to invest in a property if I have to put money

to it because I think that's stupid. I hate negative gearing. I don't understand why people would do it. Yes, I understand you get these great capital gains, but when you're paying 50% of it on CGT at the end of the day, You can get the same kind of returns anyways with positive cash flow properties, particularly if you buy, you know, some good ones and have 10 of them, you probably make 100K every year

plus the capital growth, which for me is a great investment strategy, much better than shares. Yeah. Yeah. So let's expand on that then. What is your, if we look at your ultimate life vision and your ideal lifestyle, what is your current investment strategy in terms of what it looks like with the sort of numbers

that it's going to do to produce the sort of cash flow that you need to sustain your lifestyle? Yeah, so, I mean, my goal at the moment is to get to 10 properties. I'm not quite there yet, but I hope to be within the next two, three years. So how many have you got at the moment? I have three. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, so within the next two to three years, I hope to get to 10. So the biggest hurdle for me isn't deposits. It isn't finding the right properties. It's always to do with just meeting the requirements of the banks and they change according to interest rates, as you know. So that for me has always been the biggest hurdle, particularly now that, you know, I'm in, you know, close to, I'm in that sort of higher tax bracket as well.

I still get very confounded by banks where they're like, oh no you can't borrow this much um and and you're like well i earn more than you and you can go out and buy you know 1.5 million dollar properties but you won't give me the same amount of money anyways but that that yeah it's funny that you have those sort of conversations and thought process um but for me the strategy is always positive cash flow properties yeah with capital growth obviously um and the and the potential to develop on them as well so i guess the challenge is uh the the level of cash flow that you're getting from that they'll certainly cover the properties that's probably not going to be enough to live off is there a is a thought process around

the transition at some point in the future where you'll do a partial sell down to eliminate debt and then then free up equity that you can then put into more cash effective cash flows i think The only time I'd probably consider selling is if I want to buy a principal place for myself. Yeah. But even then, I would probably just pull out the equity instead because even with the three properties that I have, I think from memory each of them make between five

to ten take profit at the moment. So ten properties at five grand is 50 grand. That's probably not going to be enough to sustain your lifestyle. Do you think you'll need to transition? Yeah, so five properties will be $50,000, so 10 properties is $100,000. So even that may not be enough, but at least, you know, at least if I have $100,000 in passive income by the time I'm 40,

it means I can choose to work at that point. Yes. And I don't have to work as hard necessarily. You know, and I guess, you know, when is enough property is enough? To be honest, I don't know. um you know i say 100k now and you know two years from now i'll be you know quarter of a million you know so well you you've asked a very good question how much is enough for you because if you're clear on exactly how you want to live and how much that lifestyle costs all you need to do

is invest to the point where you're going to generate that passive income and the job's done so you're well and truly on track as far as that goes um a quick segue uh if you like uh if you look back so far on your journey what has been your best and worst investment then monica um i can't say i've had a bad investment so far um i've been very fortunate with my investments in the sense that they've generated very good return and capital growth um i think um the i mean i've done a few things so with the first property that i bought um we did some renovations on that one to increase the rent and also the the um get some instant sort of capital growth on the property um so that was quite useful um one of the properties I bought sight unseen sort of thing

um so that was a nerve-wracking experience as well but I did have some inspiration from a mate who's bought like 50 properties sight unseen so hey over here over his lifetime so I was like oh okay it's you know at the end of the day it's a business not not a place for me to live in so i mean i've been fortunate that my properties have done well um i think some of the things that i have learned from my property journey has been to um really calculate interest rates so when i run the numbers on a property i don't run them at what the interest rate is now so for instance if i'm about to buy a property i'm calculating at the interest rate of between nine to ten percent and if I can break even at 10%, then I'll buy the property

because I know if interest rates, not that they will go up that high, but, you know, in the event that they get close to that, I know I can at least pay off the mortgage at the worst case. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I love that. If you were starting out again, then would you invest any differently? If I was starting out again, I would probably start by purchasing in the structures right away rather than taking them out of your personal name and restructuring later

because unfortunately we can't escape stamp duty and to pay that twice on several properties is not a pleasant experience and not to mention the capital growth that sometimes can't be avoided. So it is a costly exercise, but then with that said, it has freed up my service ability to be able to just kind of buy a property as soon as I have a deposit. it um so it's yeah so that would be my best advice is structure get the structure right from the beginning don't listen to accountants and other people saying oh it's okay you can buy

three or four in your name then worry about structure because at that point you have two options earn more money or pay down most of the debt or sell them oh sorry third option sell the properties or sell them into entities and it's a costly exercise very costly so so if you were starting out again that sort of break down for us how you would structure your portfolio because i this is really good learnings for those that are listening in can you sort of take us through that yeah so i would actually get the advice in terms of you know what entity structure is suitable to you so this is also very state dependent because you've got to factor in things like land tax laws which vary from state to state so for instance new south wales and victoria

we like to tax the beneficiaries in those states whereas all other states in australia they tax the trustee so that's if you're thinking about the trust structure likewise companies have different thresholds as well from state to state so that's something to factor in yeah um the other things then to think about as well if you're choosing between companies and or company trusts is whether or not you're going to sit and hold or whether or not you're going to actually then a sell um and one thing to calculate particularly like in the states of new south wales and victoria is okay if i were to pay land tax every year versus me putting it in a company and getting the threshold um and then selling say 10 years later would the amount be the same more or less

and um depending on the property you might actually find you're better off maybe just with a company only structure um then to set it up in a trust so those are the things you have to weigh out and the other thing is is to work out you know how many properties you would like to get to yeah so when i first started out i was happy with one or two and just to be able to have a little bit of extra income to be able to pay my rent yeah um whereas now i'm like nope i want to be able to have it fully pay off a mortgage buy a luxury car be able to travel the world for you know three six months at a time and to not have to worry about working um so my goals have definitely changed so the target that i want to hit by the time i'm 40 in terms of properties and

passive income is probably up there whereas when i first started off it was like yeah if i have one or two properties i'm happy with that so yeah i love that and i i guess what i'm picking up from what you're saying there is uh build it out on paper in terms of the numbers before you even start so you know what the reality is going to be of the various options so you're making fully informed decisions. And of course, for the average person who doesn't have your corporate taxation and legal background, they obviously need to be talking to an accountant who understands property and getting the right legal input to assist them with that. Would that be a fair assumption? Yeah, absolutely. So you sort of need to have both the accountant and the lawyer because

the accountant will be able to advise you on like the tax implications the lawyer can advise you in terms of the legal implications of the structures so the i guess the other advantage as to the way i've set up the properties as well is not only do you have um you know the ability to potentially you know keep going and buy more properties but you also have things like asset protection you have tax minimization strategies that you can then implement not that it will make much of a difference from this financial year when they redo the tax brackets but it is you know something to then consider um particularly if you do want to have a large portfolio and if you have families and things like that um the the last thing you want to have is just everything in your personal

name and a will um whereas you know some of these more uh complex structures can be better and more tax effective at the end of the day should you have to pass those properties on to to your family so 100 trust structures are very beneficial in that regard and having a testimony a testamentary trust as part of the estate planning exercise would also be something that would be very well worth considering for most people yeah so something i'd just like uh parallel with this so i know that uh from from google stalking you monica that uh you're a rent fester uh talk to us about your decision to be a rent fester and why you're doing that and what are the benefits and also how long do you intend to remain a rent investor um yeah i mean i've had a

love-hate relationship with renting um particularly with my parents renting and just knowing how not so much landlords but more property managers can sometimes be quite um draconian yeah and draconian and somewhat greedy sometimes um for instance they will remove a tenant from the property simply because they get a week's free rent when a new tenant comes in and if they have a portfolio of 40 properties and the average rent is like you know five hundred dollars a week then for them that's really good money if they can do that every six months um you know they they end up with you know twenty thirty thousand extra in the pocket by the end of the year um so you know and i do feel the pain of renters out there when they're like you know we hate moving every so often the cost

of moving is quite expensive particularly when you have a large family and a lot of stuff so number one get rid of all the stuff but with that said I personally especially now with the value of property I don't see much point in owning your own home where you have to pay off the mortgage yeah right I rather have investments that can pay off my mortgage for me because if I lose my job tomorrow i know at least my rent will cover my mortgage yeah right um and i can imagine particularly once a lot of homeowners and young homeowners who bought properties that were overvalued and overextend themselves when the interest rates were one and a half percent um when they come off their fixed term you know mortgages august this year um they're going to

really struggle uh to pay that off if they don't have some other secondary source of income um and so that's been one of my key things is that i would you know not pay off a mortgage from my own pocket at least not entirely from my own pocket um i don't see the point um one of us and if you've structured the properties like you have then between the tenant and the tax office they are covering 100 of the cost of that property so it makes absolute sense how much longer do you tend to be rent best i asked this because i rent vested for many years myself but wait this is years ago before rent vesting was even a thing we we just worked out that that was the best thing to be doing because for the reasons you've just mentioned we're getting the tenant and the tax

office to actually cover all the costs of the property and then we could live a lot more cheaply with a lower rent than a mortgage in the areas that we wanted to which were closer to what we're doing at the time yeah and it gives you that opportunity to save and reinvest or you know um even that I'm in a situation where my properties can probably cover my share of the rent. So, you know, so I'm not, you know, fussed with that aspect of it as to how long. I guess it really comes down to, you know, how much do I want

to spend on my first PPOR and am I going to splurge or am I just going to be modest and, you know, settle for something that I know is not going to remove my forever home, but it's going to be the next step towards getting that. Will the investment portfolio end up funding your own home purchase at some point? Is that part of the plan? That's part of the plan, so pull out the equity.

I guess, I mean, I could probably already do that now if I wanted to. But for me, I just have bigger plans. I want to buy a few more properties. Like I said, I want to get to 10 in the next two to three years. I also want to be able to do some developments on some of the properties as well. so um until that happens then you know i'm happy to rent vests um you know and the good thing about that as well it's funny you say that there's a stigma you know people don't like renting but

one of the things that i learned um in my career as a violin teacher was i used to teach in the eastern suburbs around double bay and bellevue hill and a lot of those people that we think are really uber rich and wealthy they actually rent their own homes for similar reasons they have lots of investment properties themselves um but they will be paying you know at the time i think it was 1500 to two grand a week in rent in properties that are worth 10 mil because for them to pay off a 10 mil mortgage was unthinkable and for them they wanted the lifestyle absolutely i i think makes perfect sense at both ends of the journey actually from that perspective and monica i want to do a a bit of a tangent exercise now and and get you to tell us about your teaching software

company music box because it sounds very interesting share with us your entrepreneurial journey around that and what it means and and how that's helping the equation yes so it was something that i came up just before covert to do um so when i was a music teacher one of the things i struggled with was just having a system that had everything in the place that was cost effective um and one of the things that i also discovered was that music teachers are great at teaching very passionate at what they do but they're not very business savvy um and a lot of teachers are like oh crap who owes me money uh you know or when's my next lesson oh crap i have a student like in five minutes i gotta go and they're very kind of like on the fly type people

so um one of the things that helped me particularly with saving for my first deposit was actually being very systematized with my music teaching business and treating it more like a business and structuring like a business. So instead of being a sole trader, run it as a company, that sort of thing. So this app is aimed to help particularly the younger generations and can be used by anyone of all age, but particularly those who are starting out in the music industry or the music education industry more specifically to have a system in place where they can kind

of just go set and forget um and it costs them a dollar a day to run yeah you know so you know one lesson in one week will pay for the whole month sort of thing so um yeah so developing that cost effectively and for me it was another way to generate um passive income and something i've always wanted to do was getting to the tech space and then if this goes well then i might launch um other apps in other industries like sports and tutoring and stuff like that for yeah love it so it's a monthly membership exercise you're actually building a passive income through the user exit interface is that how it works that's right that's right love it yeah and there's features on there as well for parents like for instance particularly with the online learning

space after covid teachers will be working with children verified so you'll see that when you click on their profile that they have a working with children's check or not so if you if they don't you just ask can you provide us with that evidence if it says it is you know that's one less hassle for a parent and the other thing that I aim to do through that app as well down the track is to encourage the accessibility of music particularly in places like regional Australia but also where there might be lower socio-economic backgrounds and things like that down the track depending on how profitable the business becomes I definitely want to be able to give back to the community which might mean partnering with a local music shop to you know

give away you know x amount of violins or subsidize a certain amount of lessons or something to be able to provide music to everyone um no matter what economic background you're from love it absolutely love it that's a great way to bring us into what i like to call the ambush round uh monica which is where i give you a blindfold and a cigarette and i ask you the fastball questions that uh you you get on all podcasts so to kick that off what's what's your favorite quote and why um my favorite quote i have a few but i think um i can't remember who said it but my favorite quote really is that um education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world um and i like that because it doesn't matter what you do in life whether it's

investing in property whether you want to become a doctor whether you want to become an art teacher whether you want to become a manager in an accounting firm um if you want to be good at something you have to educate yourself and knowledge is power at the end of the day and that's something that for me throughout my career and it's part of the reason why i became a lawyer and got into the area of law was i just wanted to know more about how the law plays for my own personal use particularly in the property space um and then that became a like a lightning bolt moment of actually you know what this could have so many other advantages as we talked about before so yeah um education is very very important love that uh sort of returning to the literary field

for me you mentioned steven knight earlier and i'm a massive fan of steve's and and he's actually been on the show a couple of times uh in recent times uh what's the top book that you'd recommend we read and why um i have actually two so one of them is the seven habits of highly effective people yep yep steven covey that for me i read that back in 2012 when i was sort of in between career changing and that really changed the perspective in terms of how i deal with people and how i perceive the world and also you know my relationship with money as well yeah um and then of course atomic habits i think that's for anything that you do and i'll say this both as a property investor and also as a music teacher whether you're trying to save for a

a deposit or say for your you know your stamp to your next property or whatever it is or you know um or you're trying to get kids to do their homework those habits you build and that discipline behind the habits are probably the thing that will set you apart it's not intelligence it's not you know giftedness or being talented at something at the end of the day it's the habits you form that will get you um ahead of and help you achieve those goals perfectly said i'm gonna change up the order here given what you've just said that what what's a a personal happy habit that's contributed most to your success today then um i must admit i'm terrible at habit forming but i think for me it's it's more of when i want something i will do everything possible to to get to that particular

point so for instance like at the moment i'm doing a phd um even if i have a very busy day i will spend at least half an hour on actually reading something that will contribute or thinking about something that contributes to that phd and just making sure it's consistent so one of the most important things i say even to my own students that i teach violin to is that it's not about how much practice you do it's about the quality and the frequency so that if you do it every day you will see results pretty quickly absolutely yeah consistency is a big key that a lot of people miss they're looking for the quick fix and the instant result but consistency over a long period of time gets that exponential compounding growth working in whether it's skill money wealth you

name it so i nailed that uh just to close off the fastball what's the worst and the best piece of investment advice that you've ever received then monica um okay the worst piece of investment advice that I got probably was um the one where oh yeah wait until you have a few more properties before you restructure um and my accountant will kill me because he actually initially said that to me and then recently he's like I said he said out of all my clients that I've known over the past you know decade I never thought you'd be the one that would be the serial investor and i was like yes and i said imagine if you had told me to structure it properly from the very beginning you know and we sort of have a bit of a chuckle there but um but like you know

and and that's the thing and you know on our teacher accounting students in in one of the roles that i do um funnily enough from an accounting point of view you kind of don't give the advice to a client until they need it so for instance if it's a mom and dad investor you'll just say yep you can afford it in your personal name why set it up in a structure you have all these extra expenses you're better off you can negative gear all this other stuff um which from an accounting point of view is great but from a wealth management point of view it's not not the best advice yeah yeah no it's uh horses for courses when it comes to that and the transition of the entity structure too is really important in terms of the whole exercise

but we might talk about that at a future point. Just to bring everything to a head then, to sort of summarise our great conversation today then, Monica, what are your key takeaways and actions that aspiring investors need to take, do you think? I think, number one, get the right, get the structure right. That's most fundamental. Number two, treat property like a business

and take the emotion out. I often see many clients that, you know, are so emotional to try and get that property that they over-offer. They don't care if there's massive faults with the property, which could be costly down the track. Take that emotion out because whilst there might be one property that you miss, there's going to be another tenant exactly the same type of properties somewhere in the country, you know.

Yeah. and my third bit of advice is that if you are quite new to investing um and it's funny because you speak to different investors and i have a mate who just kind of bought most of broken hill just for the sake of doing it like broken hill is not really the best place to invest but he's doing really really well um and a lot of investors you know are just very lucky investors um but one thing that could help you i guess capitalize on things like capital growth and um yield and cash flow is to actually ask for help you know find like an investment strategist or investment coach or someone who's done it and actually learn from them and you know some of these people like I'm

sort of against using buyers agents to some extent because there's a lot of crappy ones out there and a lot of ones where they I mean you can become a buyer's agent overnight essentially but with that said there are one or two out there that are quite good and have large portfolios themselves um that that i know of um and they actually know how to look and buy property because they're doing it for themselves so and i have mates who do that so i would say chat to them about that um and actually learn from them and invest in those people because at the end of the day you know you might spend you know 15 000 on someone to assist you with that property purchase But if they can save you $50,000 on negotiations

and you get a really good deal that within six months you've made $20,000, $30,000 on equity, it's definitely worth it. Absolutely. Yeah, and you make a very good point. You need in any profession, and particularly in property where it is a late-team sport, you need to be getting the best of the best in each of the professions. And the underlying exercise from what you've just said there as well,

which is important to reinforce, is that only talk to property professionals who actually invest themselves and do what they're suggesting you do. You know, it's really key because if people aren't walking their own talk, they don't understand the nuances that's involved, then you're not likely to get the best results. So some really good thoughts there. Thanks, Monica.

Now, I really want to thank you for coming on board today and being so open and sharing your story. will follow your story and get you back on in times to come as your portfolio progresses so that you can continue to share those exercises but for those in the audience that have really resonated with your message how how can we find out more get more involved with you monica yeah you can reach out to me i'm on facebook and instagram at monica rivelas is my social media handle so that's probably the best way to reach out to me just send me a message on there and then I can shoot you across my email and yeah organize yeah ways in which I can sort of help

you get on board so I'm always happy to provide advice I try not to provide financial advice of course I can only provide legal advice but yeah if you want my help then by all means feel free to reach me through through those platforms fantastic look really enjoyed the chat I think it's the the start of many to come really keen to keep the conversation going Monica and thanks joining us on the show today no worries thanks for having me thanks monica thanks for tuning in to get invested on the property hub podcast channel your home for property investment insights and inspiration and don't leave yet until you've taken the next step towards living by design by getting my award-winning book get invested absolutely free when you sign up at

knowhowproperty.com.au or bushymartin.com.au and finally make sure you subscribe to property hub to get your weekly dose of get invested inspiration along with every episode of realty talk australia's leading property show for red hot property investing news and insights direct from industry leaders and influencers remember to always get invested in your knowledge and i look forward to seeing you you next time.