Property Hub - Investment Insights & Inspiration - Get Invested: Part 1, Investory - Lisa & Brian create ‘Happ-iness’

Episode Date: September 8, 2023

How did a hard working, everyday Aussie couple build a $7 million plus property portfolio? On Get Invested, we bring you the first episode in a two part interview with Lisa and Brian Happ. Lisa and Brian are living breathing examples of 'the Power of 2' in action. Lisa is a former Teacher and Brian is a local government asset maintenance coordinator who have together spent 20 years building a diverse portfolio that includes 17 leases with a combined value in excess of $7M with a loan to valuation ratio of just 33%. They have also launched a buyers agency business, Personalised Property Professionals, focused on helping you achieve your lifestyle goals. Today’s chat will inspire you as the duo unpack their incredible personal property journey, while next week’s episode will reveal how they are now helping people avoid common mistakes and optimise property portfolio performance. Connect with Lisa and Brian  www.personalisedpropertyprofessionals.com NEW - Join the Property Hub community on Substack! Sign up to get Australian property news, opinion and episodes in your inbox: https://propertyhubau.substack.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, Spotify and 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.

This is something that I find or we find incredibly powerful and that is to write sort of goals with a bit of emotion in it and sitting there going, at the moment, and these do change. I'm not going to be saying they set in stone. And mine is, it's April the 16th in 2026 and I've just got out of the water from a dawn surf at Crescent Head. I feel the warm sun on my loose shoulders as I ate my breakfast of fruit and yogurt.

I smile at Lisa who's been updating our work log for the day. It feels a deep sense of upwelling from my chest, knowing that this is our lifestyle moving forward. We are financially independent from our property income and we choose to work with selected clients. Welcome to Get Invested on the Property Hub podcast channel, the 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, Predator Fighters. What's your investment vision and strategy? And more importantly, how are you making it happen? because if you're not crystal clear on what you're trying to achieve by when,

then you're not going to know what type of property you need to buy, where, when, how, and in what ownership entity and what finance structure to make it all happen. Unfortunately, I see way too many property investors whose only aim with property is to make money. But this is not a vision, a goal, or a strategy. It's more of a loose dream. It's like saying I want to travel, but I don't know where I want to travel to, where I'm going to start and finish, and I've got no idea about how I'm going to travel or how I'm even going to be able to afford it.

A well-developed strategy needs to clarify what you're looking to achieve by when and what's your capacity to make it happen. And when I talk strategy, I'm not talking about a fixed roadmap. I'm talking more about a GPS, a global positioning system where you're clear on your end destination, but there's flexibility in how you're going to get there as your outlook, attitudes, knowledge, expertise, timeframe, time availability, options, capability, capacity, and circumstances generally change and evolve over time. So in this context, your strategy acts as both a magnet and a compass that allows you to change course or get blown off track, but still tack back towards your ultimate destination.

So when it comes to your property, are you going to go for growth or go for cashflow or a compromise between the two? Again, I hear lots of investors chasing one or the other without any clear picture of what this really means or where it's going to get them. So what's the solution to this common dilemma? For me, the answer is actually pretty simple. As I detail in my book, The Freedom Formula, if the size of your projected nest egg of income-producing assets, excluding your family home, is going to be less than what it needs to be, you need to focus on growth. Conversely, if your projected nest egg is likely to be at or above the size it needs to be, then your focus needs to shift to cash flow. And it's not as simple as just buying as much

property as you can and then just paying off the debt and living off the rent. Because if you crunched the numbers on this, as I've done in the Freedom Formula, you'll find that within the limits of your buying capacity and your purchase price power, your net rental income after expenses simply won't be enough for you to live comfortably when you're looking to stop work. It's why I talk about adopting a wealth by stealth approach where you start by going for growth and then converting to cash flow in the years running up to and after you want to stop work. If you're going for growth or what I like to call affordable growth, where your property is cleverly structured to optimise a cash flow affordability and minimise the impact of using your salary savings or hamstringing your

lifestyle so that you can continue to enjoy life and last the distance across the 15-year-plus desert to enjoy the pulled fruits of your portfolio, then you need to focus on real houses for real people in tightly held areas, experiencing the continued positive growth drivers of new infrastructure, growing industry diversity, and strong and growing income demographics. Conversely, if you're going to cash flow or progressively converting your growth portfolio to cash flow as you approach your stop work break free timeline, you need to focus on higher yielding assets like units, townhouses, apartments, and multiple income solutions like co-living properties or commercial properties. So if you want to get a clear picture on where

you're at, where you're heading and what you can and need to be doing about it, then reach out to me and our Know How Property Finance team by emailing me at hello, that's H-E-L-L-O at knowhowproperty.com.au with freedom numbers in the subject heading. And our team will discuss how you can get your freedom forecaster strategy done as a basis to drive the right property strategy to suit you and your circumstances. In the meantime, what does a good evolving property portfolio actually look like? Well, this is where today's very special and great guests, Lisa and Brian Happ, are going to show you the way. Because in today's episode, we continue our series on sharing the nitty-gritty details of the property journeys of other True Blue hands-on investors

and the learnings that this provides. And we're breaking our awesome conversation with Lisa and Brian into two distinct parts. Today's chat will unpack their property journey, while next week's part two discussion will reveal how they're helping you and others to avoid common mistakes and to optimise your property portfolio performance. To whet your appetite, as a powerhouse, hardworking, water-loving Aussie couple who are living, breathing examples of the power of two in action, Lisa's an ex-TAFE teacher and Brian's a local government asset maintenance coordinator who have built a diverse portfolio over the last 20-odd years that includes 17 leases with a combined value in excess of $7 million with a loan-to-value ratio of just 33%,

which is awesome. And they've done this all in their spare time. And they've just recently launched their buyer's agency business, Personalised Property Professionals, to help you better achieve your lifestyle goals. So welcome and let's get invested, Lisa and Brian. Thanks, Bushy. Great to have you guys on board. I've really enjoyed catching up with you and meeting you personally at a recent investor forum in Geelong which was a real pleasurable exercise for me but guys for those that don't know you or haven't come across you today can you sort of kick off by talking to us about what you do differently and as importantly why you do what you do guys.

Yeah so I suppose for both of us we're just mum and dads who started our journey as you know everyday kind of people moving forward um what we did differently was getting to the market as soon as we could and then look at how we could change that and move forward as we're going through so it was about um what our goal was um and then what we needed to do and it's turned in in the end to um being able to create a legacy for our family which was our you know original goal once we had our two girls um and now we're actually into that exit strategy um and giving back i suppose to the property community on um how they can also achieve this as well so brian do you want to add into that just so people know we're actually in two totally different locations

and and different states so normally we sit next to each other and we can hit each other on who's going but at this time it's going to be a little bit different we'll have some fun with that brian any thoughts yeah i suppose um when you when you look back over our journey and that's what it's been is when we started we really didn't know much um and we didn't know what we didn't know and there weren't awesome resources the internet was certainly around but um you still bought the paper to look at real estate um and you know there weren't things like podcasts and those sorts of things so our first foray both of us did property independently before meeting each other but um uh one of those went well and i won't say who's that was mine

didn't go that well though um and then you know when we combined and joined forces uh yeah we were we were paying hex fees on a property that uh was going to the government anyway well we'll dive into that that shortly but I guess where I'd like to be separate from your property journey initially is just give us a bit of a reader's digest of your own journeys in terms of what you've both independently invested your time energy money in over the years and why and how has this now led you to where you are and what you're doing today I think probably the main thing is we've both worked in terms of keeping a quality life with our kids as well as buying property and getting education so both property and self-education as well so you know i sold my

property that i had before we met to rebuild our our beach shack which is where our current ppr at the same time we bought a ski boat and a very dodgy caravan to ensure we could go camping and water skiing and also have that that holiday and that fun quality of life with the kids to bring them up as well that's when like we bought our first property and um you know that sat for a while and you know we we upgraded the caravan so that we could travel halfway around australia with the girls so you know while we're on long service leave so it's that mixture of um utilizing property making sure we direct we build our dream home that we're currently living in but then what else can we also do along the way yeah okay no that makes perfect sense on outside of the property

running because we're going to really get into the nitty gritties of that shortly can you share with us uh what challenging events in both of your lives have brought about your greatest learnings and and your best changes challenging things that um it's it's ironic it's almost similar to now is um when lisa and i first met we were um in different states and sort of um we met each other and quite liked each other and those sorts of things and then uh due the tyranny of distance we sort of built a relationship over the phone um there was no zoom or facetime or anything back then um and really got to know each other extremely well um and then when we did you know have uh 13 hour drives for a weekend each way and those sorts of things or

flights um we made them most of the time that we did have together um you know we both passionate in surf life saving both passionate in and around water those sorts of things um and i think one of the things that it did up front is it got us communicating extremely well um and being very open and vulnerable um is somewhat easier over the phone and the and you almost accidentally uh develop stronger feelings by by being that open that vulnerable um without the the physical um contact or the or the um ability to read faces and those sorts of things going back then so So whilst it was a challenge, it was probably one of the best possible ways to start a relationship looking back

because it built those foundations so strongly without the physical contact. It was, yeah. At the time, it was horrible, but, yeah, frustrating. But when you look back, it really did help us build that ground. That sort of intimate knowledge and respect for each other where, as you say often the physical can get in the way and you know the old robin williams quote of god designed man with enough blood for the brain or the nether regions but not both at the same

time can often get in the way of good relationships but uh in the context of all of that uh because i often say that you know without sonia there's no way i would be enjoying the lifestyle and that that power of two where there's mutual respect and the sort of yin and yang where one's got strength and the other hasn't how's that how how much and how important has that been to your journey that that you know that you're both sort of working together to make it happen yeah I think it's it's been really important I mean we bounce off each other we don't always agree with each other which I think is also part of you know what makes it even better is because i can bring something up you'll say no that's just no it's not going to happen um or the other

way around so you know what we do have disagree about stuff but it's usually like small kind of things etc um as we're moving through but i think you know we both have strengths and weaknesses and it is that yin and yang with what how we work together um with that and then when we need to support each other we're there for each other etc like that as well yeah really good point now Something I often ask, and particularly with yourself as a couple, what's something unique or interesting about you that you've never actually shared publicly before, guys? This goes back to our background and how we met.

Both Lisa and I are past Australian champions in surf lifesaving. Lisa's also a past world champion in IRBs, which are those little red rubber boats with the 25-horsepower motor that uh zoom in and out of the surf um you know it's something that we still do we still go to the local carnivals we still volunteer a lot of time um helping others in in that coaching and officiating um yeah but sitting there going slightly uncomfortable and it was a long time ago but to even recognize that the discipline and the dedication and the training that's required to get to that level, yeah, is something.

And then the competitiveness against each other. No. Do you think the, I mean, to get to become a world champion at anything is a major effort, there's no question. And as you say, Brian, that requires a lot of dedication, patience and persistence to make that happen. Do you think your involvement in Surf Lifesaving, And, you know, full disclosure, I used to be a little nipper years ago

and used to really enjoy that exercise because it was outside but it was competitive and it was physical. There's a lot going for it. How do you think that has helped you in relation to your investment journey? Has it contributed, do you think? Absolutely, Bushy. When you're working full-time, you're training to that sort of level,

um 4 35 o'clock get ups is is normal it's a discipline that both lisa and i have carried through to now um some of my most productive time is you know before everyone else gets up and before the birds um it's understanding uh processes and procedures it's repetition it's accepting feedback it's giving feedback um you know lisa is well known for for coming in from an irb training session and giving the feedback is something's not right okay least what's not right don't know it's not it's not going right and to start with people like uh blow it off and then as you know her skills and reputation got better we're sitting there going no let's listen to it there's something something not quite right is the pressure in the boat right or is it you know a spark plug or

something like that so it's that intrinsic feel it's that sort of yep can't tell you what's right but something's not right let's investigate and that's a that's a skill that just transfers all the way across and it dives into you know when we're doing due diligence um you know trust uh trust that gut yeah anything to add to that Lisa no I think that kind of covers most of it but I think um you know when you're getting into that kind of high level and it and it's you have to be dedicated um you have to you know like Brian was saying before trust the people around you trust your team um build a team around you as well that has the same goal um and I think that comes straight across into property like you have to have your team around you if you're wanting to

build a good property portfolio so you know those kind of skills and knowledge that we built up over a sporting has definitely transferred into our property journey as well. Yeah I love it well it's a great segue into your property journey and what I'd like and I'm probably going to test your memories a little bit here, but to sort of get into that, can you both share why you decided to get into property and what triggered your interest? Yes, I can start off here. So for me, my dad was a fisheries inspector. So we moved around all around New South Wales. We never had our own home. It was always a department home. So my parents never owned their home in that sense. So once we got older, my dad passed away and that deposit,

well, the money I got for selling his car, I went, that's a deposit that I can put on a house. So I went and bought my first investment property. Yeah, okay. Brian, what was your initial interest and why did you decide on property versus, say, shares or anything else somewhere that you wanted to invest your time and money? yeah look it originally started with putting a roof over my head um so that's where the interest

was and then an opportunity so i first bought in in melbourne i had an opportunity to uh to relocate at a reduced uh salary down to the down to the coast and um being a salty that i am i took that opportunity and i tried the turn the uh first uh property i bought and lived in as an investment and it didn't work um it was then probably working with lease and when the two became one and and you know family started those sorts of things we looked at um so when i bought in the in in juck in jan juck which is where we live it was an asbestos fibro shack at best we looked together to go okay let's not you know start our family in a in a bachelor pad that was um a halfway house for many a transient surfer let's go and buy something together and i think during that journey we

actually learned that location is so important and where we live is awesome so instead of um lisa just accepting the shack we strategically worked through and said right we want to stay here what do we need to do it we knocked over half the house we rebuilt the whole of the half that we kept and we turned it into what it is now a beautiful family home yeah yeah yeah go on sorry yeah lisa's probably the more of the the instigator at that stage um and you know i was very fortunate that um when we bought or when i bought uh jan jack it was during a a property significant property downturn in uh in what was a holiday location so we bought very well yeah awesome something i'd love to and i'm probably i'm really going to test your uh emotional memories

now for a minute did you either of you have any initial fears or feelings of concern about getting into property before you got onto it and if so what were they and how did you overcome this and any other obstacles that you thought were in your way? Yeah so for me personally especially being single I was only young so I was in my 20s which was quite good in that sense and I had a government public service job so I felt quite secure in my role but my two things was what can I do what am I going to do if I can't make the repayments um and would that mean that I'd lose the house kind of thing so everything about me was that security where I wanted that security of a property aspect to it so that was the main thing um but with my mum who you know both of us did bookkeeping at

that time or as a background kind of stuff um just went through the numbers and the numbers spoke you know the true story of what was going to happen with that hell potentially what would happened you know with the the rent and you know paying the mortgage etc like that so it wasn't you know the numbers I suppose just spoke the story yeah yeah what about yourself Brian any any concerns issues or obstacles that you needed to work through to get into it uh I was probably the opposite I was a little bit uh over ambitious and uh and uh had an elevated opinion of uh my ability to uh add value to a property in my sort of mid to late 20s um and that was a disaster and partly because of the economic climate around at the time

um so possibly the opposite and in sitting there going i thought i was gonna uh you know be the next uh property magnate with what with what i was doing to start with and uh and had a very a quick reality slap on the face you're saying i won that one no doubt i love it i love it guys hey yeah let's now dig into the nitty-gritties of your actual property journey as it unfolded and i'd like you to sort of talk us through you know what you did when and why what were the challenges on each of the properties if there were any what worked and what hasn't and what have been the learnings as you've sort of moved down that pathway when we were in a very fortunate uh position when when the two became one um with lisa having an

investment property and i'd had a i'd done quite well reducing the loan on on um what is now our ppor um and the first thing that we did was basically um i talked lisa into selling her investment property um and renovating as i explained before turning this from a beach shanty halfway house into into a home um which we did and we did it as owner builder we were very much hands-on at the time when we were doing that transition we had um i think kayla was around you know that eight nine months when we when we first started so lisa was on mat leave doing a lot of the project management i was at work coming home doing all that sort of stuff and we we built equity in this place very uh very well um and then

quite quickly sort of reduced the the debt to zero um because we were aggressive in paying that that loan that we did have off and we're very happy with ourselves early 30s and paid our property uh our ppor off and i think it was with a few um glasses of red uh liquid truth uh we were sitting around and and saying um you know we don't want to stop making the repayments because we were used to making those repayments we're both not frugal but we don't want to waste money um you know we did do some lifestyle things around at that time um so we said yep let's go and I can't remember how I got it, but I got one of the spruiker invites to go up to a lush motel

and sit in the big forum. And lo and behold, we filled out the information beforehand and Lisa and I randomly got selected to come and do a special one-on-one day with these house and land package spruikers. It was a great event and we sat there and thought, we can do better than these guys. So we talked about it. We drove around our backyard and found a block of land in Torquay

that literally backed onto the potato farms. And we bought a block of land and sort of we financed that and we had a decent deposit and then went to the bank again and we built a volume, built a four-bedroom, two-bathroom, two-car garage, concrete driveway, spec home. And we sat there and do you want, you know, stone benchtops? oh yes we want those and do you want the 2.7 high ceilings oh yes we want all of that and we built a beautiful home um that beautiful home um was negative considerably at the time

and its property value and i'm sure most of the listeners will be surprised that this didn't go anywhere for seven eight years at least so we were contributing uh so that we were subsidizing the the tenants rent um and going backwards and we were calling ourselves property investors we were doing great it was awesome um you know very proud of ourselves didn't tell anyone but between each other we were we were really proud of that um it was that was in 2007 um 2006 we bought the land 2007 we we put the spec home on um and we sat there and we sat there and we said nothing nothing changed we had hassles with tenants we changed landlords we tried uh sorry we changed agents we tried managing it ourselves to make some money back that was a disaster

um and it was around that sort of 2013 that we decided to do um something else and we needed do something else and do you still have that property yes we do well it would have turned itself around pretty sharply since then though i reckon it has that that's something we'll talk about a little bit down because not only did we did we hold it and it has sort of tripled in value but we've also put a stacking strategy on top of that as well um and we'll talk about that in a second but yeah we went on holidays we went up to noosa we had the kids up there and they were doing life-saving training and all those sorts of things having fun in the in the sun and one of the things i'd noticed down here is that lawn very popular holiday destination the property prices

were extreme they were they were unattainable for most people yeah but they were struggling with workers and then workers were moving into places like areas in y river and those property values were going up we're at noosa and and sort of scratching our head and said let's have a look at sunshine beach so we did a little bit of that while we're on holidays came back and did a lot of um research and a lot of sort of gut feel around it and said yep we're going to buy a property in sunshine beach um we bought the wrong sort of property um with the right intent we bought a uh two bedroom one bath unit in a block of three on a fairly large sort of block so As far as units in Sunshine Beach, it's the sort of unit you want to buy.

Hindsight, we would have bought a house and made considerable more sort of growth on that one. Yeah, so we've still got that one. It's on the list to rationalise as part of our exit strategy, and we'll strategically do that probably next year. The next one that we bought, and you'll see a theme here, Bushy, we'd gone and we'd done another course, a paid course this time. So we paid a significant amount of money to go and do a three-day

wealth building property investment course with an ongoing education and group and those sorts of things. And we were looking specifically for sort of multiple income streams from a property. Okay. And once again, we're up on holidays, this time in a caravan at Crescent Head up on the mid-northern New South Wales coast. And Lisa is the one that does this.

She sat there and was going through the estate agent windows and found a corner block, 910 square metres, I think it is, um 360 no not 270 degree ocean views two-story property with a self-contained unit and a three-bedroom house on it and it was only 400 with a view yes a rooftop deck um an older property but a great property um so we went back and did a fair bit of diligent due diligence around that and we ended up buying it um and again that mid-northern new south wales coast it's it's nestled between port mccrory coughs harbour it's landlocked um by flood zones and national park etc um it's done a great job in terms of being positive cash flow from day one virtually

and uh it's crap capital growth has been you know fantastic um that's it's around this sort if you look at our properties to this point in time you're sitting there going it follows um we've got two rules it's going to be the city or the coast um or water we can extend it to um all of the properties that we bought to that point in time were realistically um lifestyle drivers lifestyle destinations didn't know the terminology at the time but it's something that you know being a keen surfer i was i was following the the point breaks um and uh sitting there going choosing locations that i thought were undervalued for what the lifestyle opportunities were or what we thought were undervalued for lifestyle opportunities

that we were so during this stage of our our our sort of journey we were learning um learning a lot and um undertaking what we thought was due diligence at the time yep now i i think it was a bit thin on the due diligence but uh at the time uh we we were sort of you know really crunching numbers and getting advice and those sorts of things i don't know how much longer you want to go or lisa you want to yeah lisa you want to jump in and because i know you've done a fair bit you want to continue the journey from there yeah i think probably one of the things around this time we also were looking more at land in the sense of making sure we're buying property that had good land size on it so that if we wanted to do something down the track we had that option so

we're looking more now into that okay we've we've bought just a normal property we're in this property game how do we increase it and one was by bigger blocks so potentially we could develop them not that we knew too much about that but again it was like this is the back of our mind and our thinking coming into that crescent head one because potentially with a, you know, 900-size block, et cetera, we can chuck some units on the back or something else on the back of it. So we're getting into that development side of things starting to now. Next, we went into the buyer's agent aspect.

So we used a buyer's agent to potentially find a property that had good development potential for us and that was bought in Brisbane but in Moreton Bay Council. Yep. So the purchase of that, we never saw the property at all. Like from the time we bought it to the time we sold it, we did sell this one because we needed to release equity so we kept it for two years and it just,

it wasn't the right property for our strategy. and what we'd already bought and moving forward. So, you know. I'm sorry to jump in there, Lisa. Is that because the buyer's agent didn't really understand or put you into the wrong property? To buy and sell something in a couple of years, there's clearly a misfit there.

Can you just sort of expand on that a bit for us? Yeah, I think, and Brian could probably go a little bit more, but I think the main thing, yeah, it just wasn't the right property for us, for our strategy moving forward and what we'd already had um it just it didn't fit right so you know going back through that thinking back over it you know now and and now that we're setting our own up is what kind of questions should we have asked um or what should the agent have asked from us um as well um moving forward so i think that kind of um experience is just going it's helped us along the way to make

sure that we become the buyer's agent that we needed at that time but also helping people actually move through the journey properly not just getting a property meet the criteria bang there you go do you want to add more into that one brian yeah i think it was a um the property itself was more of a buy and hold to potentially release equity down the track yeah and looking back it's sitting there going we really needed to be saying we need we were looking for something to be able to develop in the near future um whereas this property again if i i looked back at the numbers i still wouldn't be developing it now it's it's its land value hasn't gone up enough in the last five years to make it and be able to release that equity in the land

So, yeah, I don't think we were specific enough in terms of what we were looking for, and I don't think the agent, the buyer's agent that we used, was experienced enough to be asking us the questions that we would now ask. Yeah, awesome. So some good learnings there. Your next venture was a joint venture of some sorts. Can you give us a bit of a walkthrough of that one?

This is your one, Brian, so you can go on. how come i get this one so yeah we went we went into it into a joint venture one we were funding partners not working partners um one of four um it was to re-establish a squash court um in principle that the numbers all look good the outcome would have been fantastic unfortunately the working party had a marriage uh breakdown um we're during the the initial stage of that um uh jv um and look i i don't know the details around their breakdown but it just put the project on hold um it's currently under contract at the moment for sale uh with the the da's in place um the finance clause is is about to to finish

we will make a little bit of money on that one um but certainly nothing like the returns that that we want to go through uh that we wanted and i suppose one of the things around this is sitting there going understanding the the risk um of going in understanding uh your jv partners and um you know it wasn't a lot of money for us at the time but we certainly could have used that money and put it to better work in you know it was literally at the start of 2020 right before the boom and and um yeah it it's again it's another hex fee that that we've paid in in lost opportunity it is about um acknowledging and learning and and working through um what was possible and what's the what's the opportunity cost and and you know risk versus reward um you

Not everything we've touched has turned to gold, I can guarantee you that. But like you said, it's a heckstead. It's the cost of learning. It's something I wouldn't mind just expanding on there because I guess having been in a similar situation many years ago in a joint venture arrangement, I came to learn the hard way that having a really good joint venture agreement

with very clear exit strategies on the what-ifs that like someone getting divorced or something else happening, what were the learnings that you've had around that whole joint venture exercise from that particular one? I think the first one is very much, like you said, that I would have gone a tighter agreement. We have a caveat on the property, but really there's not a lot of protection from a caveat. I would have also probably put in trigger points of sitting there going, if we haven't met this by such and such a date this is what's going to happen um probably would have made the decision to potentially move it on earlier um and have checkpoints in in line with the other jv partners

about meeting expectations and then what are the consequences if we don't meet those expectations because at the moment with it with our agreement there was no consequences written into it It was promised and it was all documented and legally and we had it checked off by our solicitors, et cetera. But having said that, it was also a toe in the water and a low-value, high-potential return on a JV. Yeah, Matt, love that. I've often said a JV is like getting married to as many people

as you're going into it with and you've got to treat it that way and know how you're going to get out more than how you're going to get in as a key there. Take us through the rest, Lisa. I think the next venture was in the Brisbane City Council. Talk to us a bit about that one. Yeah, so around the same time, around that 220, et cetera, we also got some more education and this one was

about the co-living aspects of it. So we were looking at how we can increase our cash flow at this stage and this was one of the areas that we thought would be a good way to make a more diverse portfolio than what we had so co-living was one that we wanted to investigate more so we went into full education with that one and what we ended up doing was we actually again used a buyer's agent who did the conversion for us as well so with this one this was during COVID so we were locked down we weren't going anywhere so we weren't going to go and buy a

property or see any properties up in Queensland for quite a while. So one of the things we did was do this. So it was a house in Brisbane City Council. And with that, you're allowed to have up to five people in micro apartments in the houses in Brisbane City Council. So this is part of the knowledge, the legislation, et cetera, on what you can do. So this was a normal house converted into a rooming house um construction for the conversion started the day after settlement and you know all costs up etc like that it's quite positively geared for us um we've had people in that house from nearly day dot after like the conversion only took i think two weeks brian was it yeah um and then basically it was fully furnished like we didn't we didn't do a

thing we were doing or managing all this from victoria um got people in straight away and you know some of them are still in there today so like really long-term professional clients or um you know people rentals tenants and they're all got their own separate leases all with individual micro apartments so in each of their own rooms which has got their own keypad to get in um their own bedroom little sitting room or table own bathroom um and own kitchen kind of facilities have a centralized kitchen area with a dining room and um communal laundry as well that sounds like yeah it's been quite a good little cash flow one and it's probably got some capital growth potential as well that's where you've sort of struck the goal with an opportunity that has

both the growth potential as well as really strong cash flow, which is pretty rare. Yeah, the growth on that, even after, it was only after three months after we purchased that, the capital growth on that property boomed. So we were quite lucky with the timing of it on getting in at that stage. It was really good. Love it.

One of the opportunities around that one, Bushy, is it was offered to other people first and it was the start of COVID and they were running scared, and Lisa and I were sitting there, very strong belief that this was the COVID sort of crisis wasn't going to curb the capital growth in southeast Queensland. So it was somebody else's loss and our gain, and, yeah, that capital growth on that one has been significant as well in the three years we've had it.

Very fortuitous. You know, it's the old story, when everyone's getting fearful, that's the time to be greedy. You obviously read the winds pretty well, given the petrol that's been thrown on the fire property post-COVID. So that was an awesome exercise. The next one is in Bundaberg South. Talk to us about that one.

Yeah, so just before we do that one, what we did do is going back to our first property that we ever had, um one which was close to us etc which was a sit and wait kind of thing um that one we actually converted also into a rooming house so we were getting you know we changed that into a six bedroom um in um victoria you're allowed up to nine bedrooms and up to 12 people so we've converted that um with the help also of the same people who with the taken converted that one into a six bedroom which that means we can have couples in each of the room as well so they're again the micro apartments um so that was rented at 500 a week for a normal rental and now we're hitting

near the 2000 a week um per week rental so that converted that one obviously into you know our one that was negative etc etc into quite a positive aspect now so just that timing that sit and wait sometimes does help it does help you do that and obviously that area growth has grown massively as well but now we do also have the cash flow going with it as well i love the way you guys uh invest in your education firstly so you're constantly learning you're looking at new opportunities but then you're actually following through with the action to make that happen which is a pretty rare combination so let's jump into bundaberg south now guys talk to us about that okay i'll do bundy i reckon oh um i tell this it's it's it's very close to the truth you know

some people um some husbands uh walk in from work and and go hey honey i've bought a bought a handbag i come home from work and lisa's like hey honey we bought a property um so we've done a road trip up to up to bundaberg we believe in in getting boots on the ground um and we've done a road trip with a couple of other property like-minded friends etc and really really liked the area um this one was on the on the market at 220 um lisa sort of mentioned something to me she was looking at it and those sorts of things and um i literally came home from work and she goes oh we've bought that property in bundy and i'm like what no why how uh she negotiated it down to 175 as a cash deal and this is an 810 meter flat flood-free block in bundaberg

it has been a hands-on project so we've done renovations inside outside we're very roofed etc and all up we're around 214k in plus sweat equity that we've done yeah um it now rents uh just leased for $450 a week. And when we bought it, I think it was at $190 a week. And Lisa's done some comparative sales analysis at around that sort of $350, $370 sort of mark. So that's done incredibly well. Gold.

That's a massive rental yield. Another piece of absolute gold there, guys. Love what you're doing. You now dip the toe into the commercial arena. So, again, there's a lot of what I'm hearing is you're not scared to get into areas that you don't know and learn like crazy and then have a crack. Talk to us about the commercial opportunity.

Yeah, well, this one, I liked Ipswich area. So I just started doing a bit of investigation into there. Found this property. Again, it was a good-sized property. from old Queenslander etc but it had a commercial property as part of it which was a hairdresser which was already set up had all the stuff there etc so doing the numbers etc like that and going oh this is quite good but it was actually being sold as a residential so we kind of like jumped in and was like yep yep negotiated etc got the property and then you know it was like well

Actually, it's a commercial and it was double commercial. So we actually had in the property in the main Queenslander was also a commercial tenant, but it was on a residential lease. So even though that they were running a business out of it. So it was all just a bit, you know, like I said, we kind of fell into it as a full commercial where we thought it was a residential on one with the commercial out the back.

so in the end we've now got two commercial leases on the one property um which we've had a bit of issues because you know one was tenanted one wasn't so it took a while to get the the hairdresser in we've had to break lease with that we've now got a new tenant coming in though which is um a government kind of tenant so it's going to be very you know good i think in that sense um so yeah it was kind of like what to do and what not to do and then all of a sudden it was like oh hang on we've got to do commercial leases um we have to understand about outgoings we've got to understand about auditing the outgoings so it just yeah it was um learning yeah definitely a big learning curve on that one well it's clearly work because i think your last and most recent exercises was

an industrial warehouse which which appears you've sort of uh used a self-managed super fund to get into talk to us about how that one came about going into it it's taking a step back around the money story bushy um when i started uh working for local government sort of 28 years ago i was given the advice of of um match the the salary sacrifice the the percentage um of super that your employer gives because i i hadn't had super before working for the local government and um that was uh an awesome piece of advice where at the time when i first started it was three percent so i'm like yep i'll tick the box and say three percent where the the the compound of that is starting that early is sitting there going your salary sacrificing it so you never see

the money you're not it doesn't matter um every time you get an eva increase or a pay increase for whatever reason that contribution also goes up and then what i did is when um uh the super moved up from three to six and the the increments i just continued to increase it by that same percentage um and similarly when when met lease did the same sort of um shared that trick with her and did the same thing so we've got a fairly sizable um super amount i suppose when you look at us and and what we've done and the um you know government employees that we've been that don't have defined benefits those sorts of things so we've got about 1.2 in in the in the smsf so we we've set that up and we wanted to buy a um a commercial and we did a lot of research listening

to podcasts and and researching what we could industrial again we've hit southeast queensland So this one's in the Sunshine Coast. And we negotiated, okay, Lisa negotiated a purchase price of 1.3, which was down a little bit. Again, there's some slight challenges with this one in that the contracts, we still haven't got the contract, but we've got notice of intent and those sorts of things. So it's in a very tight industrial estate,

but they're subdividing what is multiple tenancies on the one block. So not afraid to take a challenge on in terms of our own buying and knowing that there will be some speed humps along the way, knowing that we're going to get a better end value. So we'll borrow sort of maybe 500 to purchase that price so we're still getting the power of leverage. um well it's at a six percent net return so we'll be getting fifteen hundred dollars a week um return on that one which means we can be paying that down whilst we're you know before we hit that

uh magical retirement age and those sort of things it'll be gone um the other portion of our smfs we're sort of hedging on the on the other side of investments through a financial advisor into a space that we don't know. So we're sticking with property, but we're also having a bet each way with a little bit on the other side. Love it. Love it. Well, let's jump to the end game, because I'd love for you to paint a picture of what does the end game look like for you guys? And then circling back from that, think back to what your initial investment strategy was and and how has that evolved and changed over time to where it currently sits can you talk us through that yeah i'd start with the gold wish if you like that and um this is something that

i finding we find incredibly powerful and that is to is to write sort of goals with with a bit of emotion in it and sitting there going at the moment and these do change they're not going to be saying they set in stone and mine is um it's april the 6th uh 16th in 2026 and i've just got out of the water from a dawn surf at crescent head i feel the warm sun on my loose shoulders so i eat my breakfast of fruit and yogurt i smile at lisa who's been updating our work log for the day it feels a deep sense of upwelling from my chest knowing that this is our lifestyle moving forward we are financially independent from our property income and we choose to work with selected clients so it's sitting there going you know we've got a target of a residual

150k from property and we're very well on track to do that and it's moving some assets down and potentially changing one or two but to me it's it's about what we're doing and what we're choosing to do we love travel we love being in and around water um we're not sit down and by a poolside and have a pina colada type person i would go nuts um you know i can't sit still i need to i'd rather be busy than bored and um active and i think one of the things that both lisa and i have always had is that deep sense of giving back so we've done it through surf clubs we've gone on patrols on on voluntary patrols on christmas christmas days we've done training we've done coaching we've done all sorts of things and get a buzz out of that and i suppose moving forward that's where

i get that deep sense of satisfaction it's about you know the the the aha moments you get when you when you're talking to people it's about the excited response and the what-ifs and the questioning and the challenging and the and the ability to guide and um help people along that journey it is it's a buzz and uh it's something that we both really enjoy i love that i love that guys i the fact that you've actually sat down and and put the emotion on paper uh i mean i encourage people to do exactly what you've done all the time and i can count on an amputated hand how many people actually take the time to do it but as a as a sort of a guiding light the northern star that gets you excited and it's magnetic and it's vivid and it basically means you're going to be

happy to crawl across broken glass to get there uh full respect for the fact that you've done it and 100 agree with you that that fulfillment comes from giving uh it took me a long time to learn that by the way but there's no question about it and the voluntary work that you've done for a long time guys that that what you've invested is going to enable you to do a lot more of that both in the property sphere and and beyond that i i have absolutely full respect so but i'd love for you to share given you know the real clarity around what the what the end destination looks like think back to what your initial investment strategy was and how has that evolved and what does it look like now in terms of how you're going to attain and then maintain that

lifestyle ongoing yeah so my my original one was um and this is back when before Brian was to buy a property that was it that was my my original goal so I think you know the the way that's developed now um is so different and part of that is through education like my I'm a lifelong you know I love getting educated whichever way it is that that learning aspect is something that we both enjoy um so i think as you learn as you're going along um it helps you then develop into you know wider and bigger things that you can actually look through so now it is all about you know with brian retiring in a couple of years um us being able to travel around have the lifestyle that we want but still be able to do our work with um the buyers agent as well as our

own properties wherever we are so the idea is that we want to actually dig deep into a suburb and be able to travel to that suburb live in that suburb for a while and help our clients that way for investors so actually really get to to know that and that could take us anywhere around australia but you know we've got the caravan we've got the travel we can work anywhere um you know and that's kind of our our goal on on where we're seeing what we can do yeah i absolutely love it But I'd love for you to also share, you know, the mistake, as I sort of mentioned in the intro, there's a lot of people who just think it's a matter of buying the properties,

eliminating the debt and living off the rent. As we all know, unless you've got unlimited purchasing price power, which most people don't, they're going to hit the ceiling at some point in time. That's not going to work. So have you put any thought into how you're going to rationalise the portfolio to free up that ongoing residual cash flow to fund that lifestyle you just talked about?

Of course, Bushy, we've got a couple of scenarios as it goes through. The first one is to sort of take the equity that we've done out of the JV that is for sale as opposed to progressing. And we're going to be taking that money, some of us getting reinvested into education for us, never want to stop doing that. and then the other part is going to sit in the redraw for the commercial property in Ipswich. That's our highest percent of interest. That property returns us around, when it's running well, it returns us around $1,300 a week net.

If we take that sort of residual $170, probably after capital gains $150, that means we've got about two years to pay that um that debt down to zero um looking strategically we're looking we talked about sunshine beach that's probably going to be sold next financial year so we don't want to do more than one in in any given financial year for obvious reasons um so this year we'll we'll rationalize out of the jv we're going to um reduce our largest debt first the following year we'll uh take the equity out of sunshine beach and and we'll lose some of the that income that we're getting from that because it is also a

positive geared property um but rationalizing the debt down so our end goal is before retirement is to have that debt level below 500k if we if we've achieved that we will be in excess of our 150k a year um cash flow but we've also got lifestyle choices and and lisa spoke about it before is you know if we are traveling when we did the halfway around australia with with um with the kids seeing they go oh wouldn't it be great to be able to go on the on the boat ride up the horizontal falls or wouldn't it be great to do a helicopter flight over ularu next time when we're there we it's going to be a choice as to know as to whether we want to do it or not it's not going to be a financial decision um that's where it is and talking about strategies and what was it like

to start with we didn't have one bushy we were just like everybody else um you know buy an investment property and we'll live off the income you know now you sit there and go how are we going to do that that's never possible that was that original strategy buy one and we'll live off the income off that bake beans and toast maybe well hey join the club i was right there with you but i love the way and you've had exponential growth in both your knowledge and and what you've invested in so you know such a shining example of of how to move that forward and continuously uh challenge yourself but then learn like hell to get your head around it and then learn from the lessons that you went through so if we sort of sum up that very diverse uh journey

that you've been on and the types styles and locations of properties that you've invested in if you were to sum up now what do you believe to be the keys to successful investment and why um i think a lot of it is definitely um the education is is so important with with the success of what you're having um also making sure of the team around you that you get the right team um to also move forward um i think have a plan um start with the end in mind and then work back so that you can actually go, where do I want to be? And how do I then get there? Obviously, like we said before, the journey does change, like things happen around you, whether it's, you know, you have a child or two, or, you know, you lose a job or whatever like that. But

if you have that goal in mind, and that plan, then you can adjust things as you're going along. Need to definitely review and update the plan as you're going along as well as these things happen. um we like to always have a bit of a contingency and a bit of a buffer in place in case things do happen like we've just had two hot water systems go in the last not three in the last couple of weeks so you know these things you you don't expect but it seems to happen that if something happens with your properties it all happens at the same time so you know that contingency is definitely something to to um to be mindful of um and be patient let time do its thing so you know like our first property um we could have potentially sold that but now we wouldn't

have had such a good property sitting in our portfolio either um and then think about your exit strategy as well so looking at that full um journey of where you're wanting to be um and the steps that you might need to put in place for it so really that strategy around it yeah beautifully said if you are starting out again guys would you invest uh in any way differently i think that's a really hard question to answer bushy because you're sitting there going if i knew if i was starting again right now would i do things differently absolutely but what opportunities of learning would we miss along the way um i call it the hex v um and that's a that's a phrase i've borrowed off a mentor um because it is you learn and you grow um you do get stressed you do you

have the highs and the lows um i think that the philosophy of start with growth and start in your own name and then move on to more complex uh purchases um structures those sorts of things as you're going through that journey then release the ones in your own name and and you end up with cash flows um in sort of structures that will protect you and your future generations you know the great grandkids that i'll never meet or might meet you never know um sitting there going it it's for them um as well as us we're going to have a an awesome life we have an awesome lifestyle um it's going to get better with age um and you know there's a there's a warm little glow that sits there knowing that um you're setting your kids and your grandkids up but you're not giving

it to them yeah yeah i beautifully said guys look i think you absolutely know that the living legacy that you guys are crowding out and being smart enough to invest early enough and continue to do that in both your knowledge and the physical assets has been more inspiring so look I want to thank you both for sharing the ins and outs of your long and varied property journey guys and we look forward to continuing this conversation in next week's episode where we're going to deep dive into the good bad and ugly world of buyers agents versus your new and improved personalized property professionals biases agency so thanks again guys and we look forward to continue the conversation then.

Thanks, Bushy. 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

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and I look forward to seeing you next time.