The Finance Show With Joe

From Engineer to Advocate: Steve Palise on Building Wealth with Data, Not Hype

• It's Simple Finance • Episode 31

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The biggest property gains often come from the most boring moves—and that’s exactly where Steve Palise thrives. We sit down with the engineer‑turned‑buyers’ advocate and author to dismantle catchy myths, unpack the fundamentals that actually drive returns, and show how to pick between residential, commercial, and development without getting lost in the hype. Steve shares how he scaled a buyers’ agency from overseas using deep-work blocks, SOPs, and a serious CRM, then channelled that structure into three practical books and a free 10‑hour course built to answer the questions everyone keeps asking.

We dive into the numbers that matter: vacancy risk, lease quality, and realistic lender appetite. Steve explains why Perth and Brisbane have delivered strong net yields and tight industrial/retail vacancies while Sydney’s sub‑5% returns demand bigger cheques—and how those relative values shift as yields converge. 

We break down ROI vs return on capital, the role of leverage in the early years, and why a “cash flow positive” badge means little without a decade‑long view of demand and rental growth. On the development front, Steve doesn’t sugarcoat it: margins have been squeezed, holding costs hurt, approvals take time, and banks want 15%+ profit on cost before they even listen. Small infill projects can work for the right operators, but the horror stories are real and avoidable only with proper feasibility.

If you’re tired of “one true strategy” gurus, you’ll appreciate Steve’s approach: define the goal, set the time frame, map finance constraints, then choose the least risky path that still hits the target. Expect candid talk on postcode restrictions, specialised assets, valuation traps, and the unglamorous diligence that protects your downside. 

Want more of the good stuff? Grab Steve’s free resources, then listen and tell us which market you’re eyeing next. If this helped, follow, share with a mate, and leave a quick review so more investors find facts over noise.

Follow us for more property news and mortgage advice!

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DISCLAIMER This podcast contains general financial information only. That means the information does not take into account your objectives, financial situation, or needs. Because of that, you should consider if the information is appropriate to you and your needs before acting on it.

SPEAKER_04:

There's a weird arrogance with property because people live in it.

SPEAKER_02:

They think they understand the concept. They understand the numbers, but they don't really understand what those numbers truly mean.

SPEAKER_04:

We're joined by Steve Pelosi, the founder of Pelesi Property, one of Australia's fastest growing real estate businesses. Property is not actually complicated.

SPEAKER_01:

It's literally just plus and minus things. The thing that I've noticed with a lot of buyers agents is they advocate for the things that works for themselves. And they don't advocate so much for the thing that might work for the client, but all the biggest hurdles that you kind of faced along the way.

SPEAKER_04:

I would probably say cash flow will help maintain your lifestyle, but it's not a strategy. It's to get rid of all the bullshit of people saying this is the right strategy.

SPEAKER_01:

Is there anything that you want to tell our listeners what this book might entail? Hey everyone, welcome back to the Five Air Show with Joe. As always, I am your host, Joe. This is Michael. Hey. And today we have a distinguished guest, which we have, we're gonna go with distinguished. Yeah, so we have with us Steve Pallis. Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_04:

No, I say Pallisi, they say Pallisa. Okay. When I was in Italy, they were saying I'll say my name wrong, and I'm like, oh my god. Which is hilarious. My partner's called Lisa, so she'll be Lisa Paliser.

SPEAKER_02:

Oh my god, that's brilliant.

SPEAKER_01:

That's perfect. We're here with Steve Pallisa from Palisar Property, who established his business five years ago. He's helped buyers purchase over 2,000 properties in that time. He specializes in buyers advocacy by presenting data, numbers, and ensuring that every single buyer that comes to him is wealthier afterwards. He has written three books, and today we're going to discuss all of it. So, Steve, thanks so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me on, man. There's so much that I want to unpack here, but the first thing I want to get into, what drove you towards buyer's agency? Now, off camera, we discussed this a little bit. Tell us how how you first got into the property market.

SPEAKER_04:

With jealousy of some people, actually.

SPEAKER_01:

That's the honest answer.

SPEAKER_04:

But I'll start at the beginning. So I'm actually a chartered structural mechanical design engineer. So again, did really well at school, got 99.5 in high school. Was like, oh yeah, if you work hard and you're smart, you'll make money. Realize that wasn't the case. So I went and did engineering. You don't earn bad money in engineering, but you never go next level. You're in that kind of 150-ish, and that's kind of it. Um, but I started buying some residential because there was a few young gurus back in the day. It was like the Nathan Birchers and Zachy Amir's and all these young guys with like Nathan Birch went to my high school and he had like 20 properties when he was like 23. I'm like, what am I doing wrong here? Yeah. So I bought my first one in Sydney's West for 230 grand. Wow. That jumped to about 300 grand in the first year. Yeah. So I'm at work being like, why am I working 12 hour days when I've just made like five years worth of savings buying a property? Yeah. Um, and then that was the bit of addiction moment. Then I started reading every book and any podcast I could find and stuff. And then slowly accumulated. I saw when I left Engineer, I think I had about seven residential properties. Um, I was known as the property guy at work. Like I'd literally have the CEO of the mining company in my office every week chatting property. Yeah. Uh, and then I was going through a divorce at the time and I was kind of like, but I need a bit of a life change. Let's go. So go joined a startup buyers agency, helped that grow to about 20 staff, uh, and then had another stuff at life moment, moved overseas and started my own one.

SPEAKER_01:

So you were operating a buyer's agency, buyers advocacy group offshore for Australians.

SPEAKER_04:

Yep. So when I moved overseas, I released my commercial book at the time. Yep. And I was like, to be honest, I was actually going to get a job over there in real estate just to learn another skill. And then like a lead would come through once a month from my books and I want to work with you. And buyers agents we charge a pretty penny. So I was like, oh, 15 grand, cool, let's do one of those a month. And then one became two, two became three, then we started doing five. Then I had to hire people. So I when I came back, I actually met five staff that I've never even met, just seen them on Zoom. Yeah, because it was during COVID, those lockdowns. Yeah, exactly. Funny enough, the the UK COVID was out of lockdown, and Sydney was in lockdown, or Australia was in lockdown. So I was gallivanting around Europe while they're all locked in. But in all seriousness, the best thing that happened for my business was working remotely because it actually forced me to get like the best CRM system, implement like systems and procedures because I wasn't there anymore. Like I was off for 12 hours of the day. And it meant I could actually scale, I could actually turn up the marketing and just scale it. Whereas if I stayed in Sydney, I just would have been running around doing everything myself. So I just forced it's like I need someone for this to fill this period. I'm gonna hire someone. I need them to know what I would do in this situation. So let's write a procedure. Let's write a um so that that actually, yeah, that's right. So that's I didn't even know what a SOP was back then. So um, but then I just wrote all the positions and then engineered the hell out of my CRM. So everything was ticked off without me doing it, and then it became easy. It's just uh crank the socials, crank the leads, and the leads from minutes is run itself, basically.

SPEAKER_01:

This is actually the funniest thing I've ever heard because as Michael knows, I'm going through this period right now where I've literally built my own app. I've uh it's a web app that you could download, bookmark it and stuff. But I built all the flows myself, web hooked it all in into our CRM because our CRM was so clunky. You need that ease of access if you want to be able to scale a business. You can't focus on scale or being able to help more people if you are trapped behind a, or sorry, not so much trapped, but if you're driving around everywhere meeting this client, meeting this client, meeting this client. You need to be able to find the time to be able to. I've got a funny story about that.

SPEAKER_04:

So you know those companies that are like the CRM builders, there's one specifically for buyers agents. They come in, like, oh, we'll set up your CRM so it makes it easy and blah, blah, blah. I'd have had an hour Zoom with them. They jumped on, I showed them what I had, and they're like, Oh yeah, that's 10 times better than ours. I'm like, You're the experts.

SPEAKER_00:

Hell what are you selling?

SPEAKER_04:

But we spoke off air about how like I was very productive when I was over there because I had like a seven-hour window where no one disturbed me. Australia was asleep. So that's where I could like work on the CRM, write books, do courses, and it was just way more productive. It also meant I learned I didn't have to be reactive. Most business owners get an email or a call and they're like, let's get up, get a show good service. I only could actually block out your day. Yeah. And like, this is for calls, this is for emails, this is for self-work. Yeah. And I actually structured my day around that. So it was the it was literally the best thing that happened to me.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow, that's actually really amazing. Obviously, we mentioned you started the buyer's advocacy or the buyers agency group back in 2020. Tell our listeners what were the biggest challenges and the hurdles? I know we've got a lot of solutions that we just discussed, but what were the biggest hurdles that you kind of faced along the way?

SPEAKER_04:

I would probably say people is uh the unexpected problem I had. Variable. Yeah. There's just variable you, and we we we spoke a little bit about this as well. Um, just what people's goals are. I I thought everyone would be like me. Just cool, put your head down, get the work done, fix the problems. Everyone's got a different goal. Some people want the nine to five, some people want the lazy three-day week and they earn the 150k. Some people would come to me and this be like, Oh, I want to be paid 200k. And I'm like, Well, you're not making 200k for the business. Where do you think it's gonna come from? Oh, yeah, but I want to earn 200k, and you're just like, this is baffling. So the the realization of people was probably the biggest challenge for me because the the work of telling what a good property is, I can do writing a system procedure, doing education, I can do all that. Um, the people would just baffled me a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it does. It is a little bit startling. Michael, you're looking at me and I'm looking at you, and we're laughing.

SPEAKER_00:

We're laughing because it's just I'm looking at myself in five years' time, and I'm just like, is what's going on here?

SPEAKER_01:

Are we related? Are we not? Um you just remind me so much of my older brother and also 99.5 at in his HSC, also was an engineer, got into property as well. Um, I was the bad one of the family. I was the one that was like lazy in school and everything. And then I was like, hey, wait a second, I know how to do maths. So I would have got a maths degree, an economics degree afterwards and stuff. So it's just so cool to hear such a uh a forward trajectory of what I could potentially look forward to after you know everything is kind of gone.

SPEAKER_04:

It can be different businesses. So my older brother, probably similar, he didn't do that great in school. He's got like a 20 million plus business in the fruit industry, which is a way simpler industry. Like it's buy fruit, sell it to coals and woolies and things like that. There's no NCCP involved with that. Whereas like mine's way more thing, but um, I get a bigger return. So like I buy someone a property, so I'm less less people, yeah, but a bigger cost. He's got to do 10 times more, but it's a simpler business. Yeah, so he works well at that. I wouldn't be able to do that because I'm just like, well, this is I can't add value here, yeah. But he's got the the balls to actually be able to do it. Whereas I sell my expertise, which is I think why I'm doing well as well.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's also you have a gen, it sounds like you've got a genuine passion for wanting to educate people. Um, you know, you've written you wrote your first book in 2020. Where did the inspiration come from to want to want to do that?

SPEAKER_02:

Was that a lockdown project?

SPEAKER_04:

Uh no, that's what finished it. So it took me over a couple of years to write it. It was actually that was the kick up the bum when when COVID actually caused lockdown, no one bought properties for about two months. Everyone was just like, world's ending. And I literally locked myself in a room like nine to five, being like, I need to get this done. Yeah. Um, funny enough, I wrote the book to stop answering the same questions to annoying clients. Like every sales call, they were like, How do leases work? Who poses the archons? And I was just like a sales call is going for an hour and a half, and an hour of it was the same thing. So I was like, I'm just gonna write a little 20-page e-book, send that to them before the call so they can say, read this. When we have a call, then we chat about the good stuff. And then kind of 20 went out to 80. And then I was like, there's probably a book here, and then just finished it off. Yeah, um, I wasn't planning to self-publish it or anything. I was planning to self-publish. Uh, and then I was like, I'll just try send it to a publisher because I read another book and I was like, this book's terrible. Mine's better than that. Send it to the publisher, and she called me back within 10 minutes and was like, You wrote a book. And I'm like, Isn't that what authors do? And she's like, No, you're the first, first business owner that we've actually had written a word-for-word book. She's like, Yeah, we can edit this and publish it. I'm like, Wow.

SPEAKER_02:

Okay, so it got published. Well, I did to most of them, like I assume ghostwrite and stuff like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But but that's also why I didn't have a big enough name that I would have been able to get published after that because normally it's like a successful business. You've already got a bit of a name to it. They're selling something already. I was a nobody, but she was just like, I've just got to edit this. It's a really good book. And now she keeps being the one to push more books. She wants to get a fourth book at the moment on strategies.

SPEAKER_01:

That's that's amazing. Uh, you locked yourself in your room, you're writing out basically a commercial property course. It's the worst thing in the world, by the way.

SPEAKER_04:

But first 20%'s exciting. No, no, no.

SPEAKER_02:

20 to 70 percent is just the grind of oh it's like pulling out teeth and trying to try to write a novel, and it's the same thing.

SPEAKER_04:

When you get to the last 10, 20% that you're gonna do.

SPEAKER_02:

It's exciting again, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But it's you are always your own harshest critic because you're looking back at that book and you're going to yourself, oh, I should have added this here, I should have put this formula here. This could have really used the table on this page, and you're kind of sitting there. But you have to remember from the outside perspective, someone like myself, who back in 2020 knew probably 15% of anything to do with commercial property. Um, if I picked that up and I read it, I would have said, Oh, this book is amazing. This guy should write more. Yeah. So I love the fact that you've got the growth mindset and everything, but don't beat yourself up, man. I think uh, you know, if so if an or if the publishing company's calling you up for a fourth, you did something, you did something wrong.

SPEAKER_04:

It's funny you say that. So I probably read the first one 20 plus times, trying to fix everything. My book publisher at the time said she's like, Steve, getting everything perfect won't sell more books. No, like when you pick up, you're not going, oh, page 197, he's done a typo here kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02:

No one's line reading this. That's right.

SPEAKER_04:

So you get to the thing, and then my second book I probably read three or four times, and then the development one twice. It's just like, yep, make sure the content's there, make sure it's correct. Happy days, let's move on.

SPEAKER_01:

Because the thing is, you're you're you're constantly involving. You're not sitting there thinking to yourself, oh, I'm going to uh not write again. You're thinking to yourself, okay, how can we do a commercial property uh update for 2025 or something? I'm assuming that's in your head right now, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. But that that to be honest, that's that's an easy one. Like But so this brings me to my next question. We've got 2020, we've got the commercial property handbook. We've got 2022, we've got the one on Resi. 2025, we've done property development. A lot of things have changed in the property market in that time.

SPEAKER_04:

It has, but the the way I write my books, so mine, my books are called Explain Simply. So it's like commercial property investing explains with me. Resident, it's actually all the fundamental. So it's actually like a textbook. The the book publisher was like, there's nothing on the mark of this. You're effectively doing the new, remember the for dummies? Oh, yes, yes, yes. It's kind of like you've done like a textbook version of the dummies, whereas most other business owners, because they're not actually writing their books, will do it out in dot points and then a ghostwriter will fluff it up into dream selling, yeah, which is more inspirational. You read those books and you get more motivated. Mine, if you want to know about leases, go to page 160. There's 20 pages on how to analyze a lease. So it's a bit more boring. Um, but because I've done it over data of 30 years, you can extrapolate what you want. So I've actually done interest rates at 5% for my resie book. Okay. Because I looked at the average and I was like, oh, they're five and a half percent. Let's go five percent. It's a nice, easy round number when you're doing million dollar assets. But then the tables I have in the book actually go from like 2% to 12%. So you can look at the cash flow on that. So that the fundamentals though with property investing don't change. Just the areas you buy and the returns you get due, and that's what changes the strategy. Yeah, hence the fourth book of strategy. We're gonna do one on all the different types of strategies, pros and cons. Yeah. And that might get me away from actually revamping them. But to be honest, going through and changing some figures, yeah. Um, nothing's changed in the five years of like fundamentals of how you buy property and cash flow versus negative the gear and all that stuff. Like, so it's just updating the figures. But the way I did it, it's doesn't actually matter because I had tables that cover both ends of the spectrum. Yeah, because you need to plan for that. If interest rates go up, you gotta plan for that. If they go down, happy days. But like you got to choose somewhere in the middle.

SPEAKER_01:

I absolutely love hearing that because people always come to me when and they're like, Oh, how do you do when uh the interest rates are so high? Or how do you build up business when interest rates are low? And you kind of touched on this, and I'm like, you have to understand people always have a need and it's the same strategies every single time, only you're turning up different points where interest rates are down right now. I'm still going to have people say to me, Hey, I need to refinance. Okay, I need to save money. When interest rates are higher and the banks are putting up their effective cash rate over and over again and the customers not noticing it, guess what? They still need to refinance and save money.

SPEAKER_04:

The best thing for mortgage brokers are when interest rates are going up or interests are going down because there's an incentive to go look at your loans. Um, the worst thing is if interest rates stay the same for you guys for five years, because then people are like, Why am I bothered doing all this effort? Yeah. Um so your job's actually easier. But one of one of the misconceptions I keep getting at the moment is people go, Oh, I'm waiting for interest rates to come down, then I'm gonna buy. Oh, and I'm like, but interest rates went up and property prices went up. So shouldn't it be actually if we're looking at that logic, it should be the opposite. Interest rates go down, prices go down. But there's this this I don't know where they get it from.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh, it's uh there's a basic economic principle supply, demand. We don't have enough supply on the market. We don't have enough properties on the market for people to be able to go purchase. Michael, you mentioned this a few weeks ago where your dad said, Oh, why don't you tell your friends to buy in Mount Druid? Yes, please say this again because I just I just wanted to say that.

SPEAKER_02:

No, it was basically what it was. It's like, why don't yeah, you just he's he's sort of one of those people that uh doesn't believe that it's harder for young people to buy into the market. He's like, just go to Mount Druid like we all did and just buy something that's really cheap. And I looked at the prices and I'm like, I mean, it's still not that cheap, and I don't know if this is going up either.

SPEAKER_01:

Hey, uh, I still remember what he said. He goes, Oh, can't you just go buy a house in Mount Druid for$400,000? I fell over. I fell over. Like what is where is this coming from, sort of thing? Sydney's million dollar ring from Bondi to I'm pretty sure now.

SPEAKER_04:

It's 1.2 in Sydney. Just for a house. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Fireboro built in the 70s or the 80s, million dollars now costs because of the land.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_01:

Like Sydney is a very restrictive city, and a lot of people don't realize that. I understand that we've got um parcels of land that haven't been developed yet. There's a lot of, you know, farmland or greenery, especially down in the southwest pocket, like Campbelltown and Oran Park, Camden, those sorts of things. But there isn't enough people jumping into the market. And this actually brings me to one of the questions I did want to ask you. There's not enough developers coming into the market and wanting to build because the risk is too high at the moment for them. And this I do we will go, we will go back to the residential investing, but I do want to touch on the property development board. So 2025, you launch your new property development board. On my side, I'm seeing a lot of developers and builders leave the market. They they don't want to get involved anymore because there's all these new regulations, holding costs are through the roof. Um, you know, uh the people are less trusting to purchase off the plan these days, and then you're coming up with a book on it.

SPEAKER_04:

So well, we'll take a step back. So funny enough, um, people ask me, I'm I'm known as the commercial guy, yeah, but I had nine residentials before my bought my first commercial. So I'm not I'm not the commercial guy. I love residential because you get more leverage. I actually wrote the residential book because I got sick of people saying, Oh, you're just gonna push me to buy a commercial. I'm like, no, no, Resi's got a place. So I begrudgingly wrote the Resi book just to show people I'm giving them both options. And then the development one is just to because people go, Oh, yeah, Resi's great, but I can make more in development. I'm like, well, you can, but there's also a lot more risk. So I was just kind of closed out the trilogy, being like, look, these are your typical three options. Here's the pros and cons of each one. Yeah, um, but you gotta be careful when I when I talk about developments, there's two scales of developers. Like most mom and dad clients are not building a 10-story apartment off the plan type one. Um, they're not doing a whole greenfield estate where they buy like 20 plots. Yeah, they're doing a very similar, this is what the basic premise of the book is like subdivisions, granny flats, maybe building townhouses or a very small apartment block. Yeah, you can sort of do that in well-established areas. You don't necessarily have to do it in an off the plan, uh like a big greenfield site. Yeah, those ones have risks, but then they also potentially have bigger margins. Correct. And that that's why most developers have stopped now because the margins just aren't there. One, we've got a few developments at the moment, um, but they're high-end, high-risk ones. So we're doing like six million dollar like duplexes down in Kayama and areas like that. That's the only way we can get our 20%. You try to do it in Mount Druid, the margins are nothing because bill costs have just outstripped the bill costs of around 20%. Yeah. So if the market's not moving with that, it's a lot harder to do. And like you said, holding costs and all that. So um that's why it stopped. That'll that'll change though. Interest rates will come down. The the demand will get even more there where people can't get in and they want to buy a premium. Um, but yeah, let's just make sure we there's a distinction between apartment towers. Yeah, that's that's different. That's like um the big, the big ticket stuff and the small ones. Um, that needs to come back to 15% plus. Otherwise, why would you do it?

SPEAKER_01:

Banks aren't funding it. We do have banks trying to create niches for you know the large-scale guys, uh, but unless you could show 15% plus profit margin, yeah, they won't fund the project.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, well, we're all the ones we have to do, we have basically have to buy the land, cash. Yeah, and then then we can get like with the trobe, get a build-on completion price. But that's that's the biggest bottleneck for most people to do. Yeah, but that's also an opportunity. If 99% of people can't do lending, you leave a small group of individuals if they know what they're doing, um, you can actually make some money. But again, developing's high risk. My partner's actually an insurance broker, and I can't remember the stat. It was something like 50% of developers went bust during COVID. Yeah, 50%. Like that's they they if that doesn't give you signs of risk from the start. Like the and then you get mom and dad investors being like, I'm gonna do a development. You're like, well, good luck.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, good luck.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, even the successful ones I know, they've all been burnt multiple times. Yeah, just kind of got back on the horse.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, well, that's yeah. My dad's a developer, as a builder, and stuff like that. He's had projects do well, do poorly, all that sort of stuff. But yeah, we're building now three towns. Well, we're trying to build three townhouses in Quakers Hill. So we'll see how that turns out.

SPEAKER_04:

Builders have a better shot because they've got margins on both sides, they've got margins on being the developer and things. So if they've got like, let's say most builders, what, 20%, 30% margin sometime? Yeah, and then they're trying to make a 15% margin. If something happens and they lose 15%, at least one entity is still fine. Yeah, yeah. Um, so that's that's a the good thing for builders, and they know they can get how things are cost price without to markup. Yeah, the everyday investor who's got to pay cost price, it's it's actually tough. Like I we we can't make it work for under like sub four million dollar deals. Yeah, it doesn't.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, I'm just gonna be honest.

SPEAKER_04:

Sub four million, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I got a viso the other day from my cousin, the one in photo frame over there, Issa. Um, he sends me the the the the most back of an envelope feasibility I've ever seen, and he's expecting to build two luxury duplexes in Belmore for$750,000 a side. Luxury. Like he wants high-end and everything. I go, uh You can't build a standard house for$750,000. I go, where did you get these numbers? He's not a builder, yeah. He's a he's a technical. And I'm sitting I'm sitting there and I'm like, uh, who's building this for you? And he's like, oh, my mates, uh my mates are gonna give me good prices. And I'm like, do you understand that$250? This is mates are gonna give me good price. But this is my favorite thing about that just generic statement. Oh, oh, I've got a friend who's a plumber, he's gonna give me a good price. So you're telling me the plumber who has kids, who has bills, who has his own mortgage, who has his own properties, his own ambitions, is going to spend his nine to five making less money for the next three months because he's your mate.

SPEAKER_04:

I I've actually got a counter-argument to that. I actually, whenever I've got a friend doing something for me, I actually pay them full price now because I want their business to do well.

SPEAKER_02:

Actually supporting your friends.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, supporting them is not by getting a discount and having them work for Pima. One of the things I actually hate is pretty much every armchair investor says they want to be a developer, but they don't actually want to be a developer. They just want to tell people they're a developer and make lots of money. The actual doing of the work, I've done it before, it's horrible. It's never a feel-good. The builder never calls you up being like, great, it's on time, no extra costs. It's just, it's just 18 months of hell. Yeah. Um, the feel good is when you make a profit at the end if you do. Yeah. But no, they don't actually want to do that. They just want to tell people, oh, I'm doing this development and I've made a 30%. It doesn't work that way.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

If it was, you wouldn't be making the money someone else smarter than you would be anyway.

SPEAKER_01:

It's yeah, I there is a notion in Australia in particular where everybody has this aspiring dream to be a property developer and do these townhouse projects or do these, do these large-scale builds. I'm not saying don't go for it. But the people who are doing the best at it actually don't want other people to know that they're doing it a lot of the time because they are worried about number one, the tall poppy that occurs in our culture. But number two, there are so many variations involved with development, with scale, with large property things that things can go pear shaped very quickly. You want to minimize your risk, not increase it.

SPEAKER_04:

What killed it was from like 2012? Anyone who did something in like Sydney or most capital cities, the market did all the heavy lifting. So they bought this asset, it went up 20%, they had a 10% margin. They're like, oh, I made 30%. They didn't. That made 10%. Um, but part of my book, I'm I'm not a development expert. Like, I've I've done three, and I've got my but my business partner who has done a few as well. We interviewed 10 developers. So, like, we're claiming we're not experts, we're just like, here's all the knowledge we gain from 10 of the best developers we could find. And finally, at the back of the book, we do five case studies of the horror stories of the developments from the experts. So, so there's no sugar coating in this book. The end of the book is this is what goes wrong, and like stuff like one of the case studies is he had squatters.

SPEAKER_02:

He had his oh, we had that issue too.

unknown:

Wait, what?

SPEAKER_02:

We had homeless people stuck in there, we have to clean up needles and stuff.

SPEAKER_04:

But not in that, you couldn't you couldn't get them out.

SPEAKER_02:

It took him out. No, we got them out. Oh wow, oh, because squatters are rights and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04:

There's just little things like that, you know. Another one, just the boundary line was wrong. So, like they didn't do enough due diligence, completely stuffed the project. Just the boundary line being 30 centimeters out changed everything.

SPEAKER_01:

So I went on your website last night and I noticed something in particular. Now I don't know how often your website gets updated, if it's a live feed or anything like that, but there was one key statistic I noticed, and that was one in your last 14 properties that you helped buyers purchase was in Sydney. Everything else was in Perth. All the other things were in Brisbane. I think we had one in the ACT there somewhere. Can you highlight to me why do we have a lot of people from the East Coast purchasing out west or why they've got not out west, but west of the West. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The real West.

SPEAKER_04:

So good, good pair. We actually purchase a little bit more. It's about 70% of what we buy is a mix between Brisbane and Perth. And then the other 30% is a mix between Canberra, Sydney, and uh we occasionally buy in like Melbourne and Adelaide or regional, but regional for commercial typically needs an X factor, i.e., like medical tenant, multi-tenancy, some big value add because you're taking on an extra risk from being the regional area. Um, those come from our social media. So we post around three or four a week on social media and they just get doubled up on the website. The annoying reality of it, if I post the stuff that we're buying in Sydney, it doesn't do well on socials because it's like, look at this bulletproof four and a half percent yielding warehouse we got, and then the other buyers agents are plugging seven percent crap they're buying in Mount Isa. Yeah, like, and it's like you don't get any traction. So, like, that's the social media team pick and choose a little bit there. But in reality, the stuff we buy, like North Sydney, for instance, zero percent vacancy rate for commercial industrial. Wow, like Brookville, where I live, zero percent. So you're like, Why doesn't everyone buy there? Budget one, you got to spend four mil to get a warehouse, and you're getting sub 5% yield. And then this goes on to the question of well, why would you buy Perth? Vacancy rates where we buy around 1% there. Wow. Still, still tight. That's still a tightly held area. So that's like three months, four months vacancy. But you get a six, six and a half percent net yield. So you're getting bigger return, way more bang for buck. You go spend four mil on Perth and get your whole shopping center. I can get your whole industrial, like with two or three tenants or freestanding, more value add. So it's the balance between risk and reward. So a lot of the Sydney ones will buy just for like the older clients who want a retirement. The people who are middle-aged and younger, we can take on that little bit more risk by buying in these areas, but you get a better return, a better bang for bang for buck, and the property washes its own face. There's no right answer. Like the other buyers' agents buying the 7% yielding ones in mining towns will say, Well, we're getting an extra 30% more rent than you, so it can sit vacant for 30% longer.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

My counter-argument, and I know I'm right because it's proved in the last five years, is you buy in a tightly held area, you get more capital growth, you get more rental increases, and you have shorter periods of vacancy. Your ROI is way better.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, but you need to kind of shift with the market. So, like most of our stuff we bought in Perth is close to doubled in value. Most of it's 50 to 100% in the last three to four years. We're not going to keep buying there if that keeps occurring because we're going to get to the end of the growth curve.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

And that's why we've got a keen eye on Adelaide and Melbourne and Sydney because all of a sudden the yields are getting closer. Like you were buying Perth for 5.4%. Buying a 5% one in Sydney all of a sudden becomes way more attractive.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, but again, the questions I always ask when I get a client is what are we trying to achieve over what time frame do we want to do it in? What do we have to work with with finance? Which is to be honest, no, normally the one that dictates it. It's normally like I'm out of servicing, I need to buy commercial, get a lease stock loan. Oh, I that was gonna be versus versus what your risk profile is. Um, so like an example, I just bought a little shopping center for myself in in uh Brisbane for 3.175 mil, eight tenants, nothing special about the deal. 6% net yield. I could buy other ones for 6.5, but big land play, 3,500 square meters, next to a public school, next to a primary school. In the last 10 years, I only had two vacancies, longest period of vacancy, six months. That is because I've got a child and I want to park my money in a reliable asset, right? So I can keep traveling four months of the year. Yeah. So it's like it's just wave business profits and I sold some residentials, get that. It's gonna be paid off in seven years just because I put a 50% deposit on it. That I could actually, I've got a team of 20 people. I could buy a really cool value add or a high risk, high yield. No, I'm busy enough with work. That for me, my risk profile, perfect.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

For 25-year-old Steve, terrible. Yeah, let's get the value add.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

For 65-year-old Steve, yeah, all right, probably could do better, probably could buy a lower risk one with less an issue. So it's just balancing those four kind of parts.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh I you you brought something up there. Could you explain to our listeners that just because a buyer's agent is advocating for nine, 10% yield or whatever it is, you might not be able to buy there because would you be able to explain the postcode restrictions? Because that I've explained that thousands of times.

SPEAKER_04:

I need someone else to be able to lenders are just assessing risk. They're literally giving you a big bucket of money, and they and this is also why you have a bigger deposit with commercial. Yeah. Because they know if shit hits a fan, like they want to get their money back, and that's why you typically need a 30% deposit. Or if it's a lease stock line, you need a 35%, 40% deposit. So they're just riding me to getting risk.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

That can be through postcodes and like the state. Um, weirdly, it can also be between where they're too heavily leveraged. So if they own too much industrial in Queensland, they're like, let's stop doing that. We're too leveraged there.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, but normally they'll just look at the asset and certain types of assets, not even just postcode, they'll put a high risk on like a petrol station, for instance, because it's one-dimensional. They've got land contamination, office spaces, they have a high restriction. So that that'll kind of do. I don't really have to deal with that because I'm buying really in-demand properties. I'm buying suburban retail, industrial in really, really tightly held areas. Um, but the other buyers' agents, they always get short valuations or the banks don't touch them. Or then, like you mentioned, need a higher loan-to-value ratio. Correct. Um, but again, it's just it's just matching up what the client actually needs. I always focus on long term. If the property is gonna be in more demand in 10 years' time than it is now, I'll buy it. I don't care that you're getting a 7% in Mount Isa. Vacancy periods are one to two years. It's not a 7%. If you lose your tenant, it's a negative two or three percent.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm gonna give you the best niche story. So I helped fund the purchase and refinance of a nursing home recently. Base of Sydney. Yep. Uh,$8.2 million property. And we had to go, guess how many banks were able to fund this? We did lease stock application.

SPEAKER_04:

Because it's a specialized asset. Four.

SPEAKER_01:

Four. All the big four. So when it comes to the big four and big four lending, what do you need to have? Clear tax portals, no adverse history, all these things. The sponsor, our director at the time was owed money from one of his um uh he was uh listed as a creditor for a building company that went into liquidation because he owns a separate business and he's purchasing this as an investment. And so that pops up and they go, Oh, why is he, you know, asking for this? Is he not getting paid his invoices? There was hell on earth to get this deal. But we got it funded. People don't realize that just because something is attracting an extremely high yield or because it's you know in it's a cheaper price, it might be cheaper on purpose. Yeah, you know, just because something is$300,000 and it's netting a 9% yield does not mean that the banks are gonna give you a 70% loan on it or a six uh 65% loan on it. You need to always be able to speak, and this is where I'm gonna do my shameless plug. Speak to a broker that has dealt with these sorts of things before.

SPEAKER_04:

I don't understand people who don't talk to brokers. Like it's it's free. It's free. Go go go wait go waste their time.

SPEAKER_01:

Like, even if you're gonna go behind their we are a phone call away, and that is the truth. Go speak to a broker. Shameless plug, yet again, it's simple.com.au. But we are built here, we are here to make it simple. Like, I don't know.

SPEAKER_04:

But people, it's the same with the buyer's agents. People go, well, I would pay you XYZ, I can just go do it myself. I'm like, well, I still make mistakes after 2,000 acquisitions, so good luck on you first.

SPEAKER_01:

Um, I I hear that all the time. And oh yeah, why would you use buyers agent? A buyer's agent from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., a regular buyer's agent, not someone like yourself. They're looking at properties all day, analyzing statistics, working with the budget, making sure that certain um property fits your profile. If a property doesn't fit your profile, okay, and you're sitting there and you're going, oh, this one's good, you're going to waste your own time, okay? Not speaking to a professional.

SPEAKER_04:

One of the unspoken things with buyers agent, I call it the kick up the bum factor, is I save you from six months sitting on the couch with your partner going through realestate.com looking at pretty pictures. Yeah. Like at least someone's been like, here's the deal. You need to give me a reason why you're not buying it. And then they kind of like, oh, and then it just gets them going. And then the property grows by 30 grand, cool. You've paid for yourself.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. The best time to purchase property was yesterday. The next best time is to purchase today. If you're sitting there on the couch doing six months worth of research, the property that they presented to you, and you said it best, has already grown in that capital growth that you spent on the buyer's agent. All you're doing is purchasing your time back. Yeah. Okay. How much is your time worth? How much do you get your value, your stress? Those sorts of items are very important. Yes, you can do it on your own, but is it going to affect your everyday life? Are you going to be sitting at work stressed because you don't know if your offer's been accepted or not? Do you know if the real estate agent is reputable? The person that's selling it, the person that's presenting the property, are they uh, you know, giving you fake offers or fake bids? I oh, perfect story. Property, me and my wife were purchasing in Koji. We want it to live in. We put in an offer, okay, nine minutes before auction. Nine minutes because it was an emotional buyer. It was next to my in-laws where they live, an apartment. And then four minutes later, I've literally sent the contract to my conveyance. He's looked at it, he's gone, no, no, no, get all this out. Uh rescind your offer. Rescinded it one minute before auction started. Yeah. That agent took our offer, the one that was in the email, and started presenting it to people. The property's still not sold. Started it presenting it. This is what I got off it. This is what I got off it. I'm not accepting a dollar over. She's lost the listing now.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

But that is an example of where we could have used a uh a buyer's agent, you know, to research the area and tell us earlier than a day beforehand, hey, there's this auction for the apartment next door to your in laws.

SPEAKER_04:

There's there's a weird arrogance with property because people live in it. They think they understand the concept.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

But I I could I could remodel my kitchen. Like I'm competent enough. I think I could spend three months like learning the trades, doing it and redo my kitchen and probably save 10 or 20 grand. But why would I do that? Like, it's something simpler than buying property, but people for some reason go, oh yeah, I'll I'll do the big financial risk one myself, but not the the trade.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it's never I've never understood it because people like they under they think they understand the numbers, but they don't really understand what those numbers truly mean. Like they're like, well, uh subtract this from this, and it's like, well, it goes up in value. It's like, okay, but have you considered all the costs that go into it? And like you said, holding costs and all those kinds of things. The hidden fees, yada yada.

SPEAKER_04:

But residential, I get a little bit because it's it's not straightforward, it's just less complicated. I explain it like a bit of a staircase. So like Resi is your three or four steps up. As long as you don't do something really stupid like buying a flood zone or a mining town or a termite rental house or whatever, there's a few steps you can fall down on. Yeah, long-term, you'll be okay. Yeah. But again, why would you risk we'll do that long-term strategy when you can get someone who's an expert and making money in the short term as well? Commercial, you're like 20 steps up because you got lease review, contract review, tenant interviews, road and traffic analysis, vacancy studies, occupancy studies, credit history checks, you're looking at PNL statements, you've got a rental ledger. Like there's literally a hundred things where it takes like 30 hours to actually do it. So you're 20 steps up. Development, you're 30 steps up. It's way more things that can go wrong that are out of your control. Do you see the pain in my face whenever we say the word development? Just because some so it's a glorified word that we shouldn't be calling.

SPEAKER_01:

No, no, it's it's an over-glorified word because I'll have somebody come to me and they'll be like, Hey, I want to do this. Have you done a feaso? Oh, yeah, here they give me the back of the envelope, and then I'll show them one of my phasos, and they're like, oh nah. And I'm like, what do you mean oh no? This is the development.

SPEAKER_04:

So we do feas for clients in place and property, uh, and it's nine tabs long. And it's like, that's like all that. So we don't, and literally we've yet to have someone who we've charged to do a feeso that's actually gone through. So, which is a good thing. Like, we've stopped people from making a mistake, but out of we've probably done 30, 40 of them now? Wow, not one has been profitable. Wow. So they haven't even gone ahead with it enough. So they've they've paid a couple grand for our feeso and went, oh, yeah, I'm not done that.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. So give us a could you give us a serious, like a moment where you really saved someone money on that fee if feasibility? Like let's say you presented it to them, they thought they were gonna walk away with 30% profit when in reality they were actually walking away with you know 7% or even a loss.

SPEAKER_04:

It all of them. So that most people just don't do the work. Like you mentioned it before about was it your brother-in-law or brother that is the back of the envelope.

SPEAKER_00:

No, that was my cousin.

SPEAKER_04:

Yes, cousin. Yeah, um, they all do that. They just go build cost, X, Y, Z, that they're not even taking account of like holding costs, which are huge. Yeah, like 18 months of having a loan is ridiculous. Yeah, and that's if they're doing a little one as well, most of them are like one to two mil. Yeah, having 70 to 100 grand of interest repayments destroys your profit.

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, so it's always that they just don't know what they have to do. Then even all the applications, it's just purchase price, build price, profit. Yeah, it's the old South Park thing. You remember the underpant underpent gnomes? Yes. Where they steal the underpants are like steal underpants. Next step, profit. What's that? Um, we'll be right back for the he broke this man.

SPEAKER_01:

There's a few key questions I do want to know because you've written your three books. You've got number four coming. The manuscript is built out, and you're in talks with the publisher. Is there anything that you want to tell our listeners what this book might entail? Anything that, you know, just a little couple sneak peeks of the next textbook.

SPEAKER_04:

It's to get rid of all the bullshit of people saying this is the right strategy because everyone's got a different strategy. So we're gonna break down like 10 different strategies for people. Because you know the whole like, oh, I'm doing the negative gearing, I'm doing the positive cash flow, I'm gonna do the sub-division, I'm gonna do the granny flat, I'm gonna do the commercial, I'm gonna do the development. Like, there's all these sub-strategies, but you can make all of them work, but they've all got a negative. So it's just to get rid of all the noise of like, oh, I'm gonna, it's like my biggest pet peeve is when people go, I'm doing the cash flow positive strategy with residential. And I'm like, what does that mean? Like, I'm only gonna buy properties that are cash flow positive. And I'm like, you think there's a difference in your whole life of what your portfolio is gonna look like if you buy a property that's five grand positive versus five grand negative? Like, you're an idiot. Like, go pack shelves at Kohl's one night a week, and you'll make up that difference. And you could probably buy a better asset, better depreciation, better location, more capital growth. Like, why are we talking about like we should be talking about ROI, not cash flow? Yeah, cash flow is just a part of it. Cash flow will help maintain your lifestyle, but it's not a strategy. It's not the strategy is ROI. Look at the capital growth plus the cash flow plus any other return you get from the asset. That's what you should be looking at. The strategy will come based on leverage, and this is where sometimes commercial and we're bad mouthing lease doc loans and that and low doc. That that will sometimes help some people, but just look at ROI, like look at where what you're actually trying to achieve.

SPEAKER_01:

There's two things I want to touch on. Number one is I don't look at ROI so much anymore in my own personal investment strategy. I look at an RO say return on capital. If I put$100,000 in but I'm getting a million dollar asset, and that million dollar asset, you know, grows by 20% over the next two years, which current property trends are moving that way. People look at ROI and they look at the final purchase price. I bought for one a million dollars and I, you know, the property's grown to 1.2. I've got a 20% ROI. Yeah, that's a great way to look at it. But look at the return on capital as well. You've invested$100,000. You've made this many principal and interest repayments, you've been able to claim the negative gearing um from the interest, and then you know, your principal has gone towards your return on capital as well, or the capital that you're injecting into the property. Your return on capital, if the property's grown by$200,000, is actually higher than that. So that's the that's the thought process of.

SPEAKER_04:

Even taking a step back from it, when you're first initializing your plan, and this is so so like with commercial property, we can talk about this. Like, you actually get the same capital growth. Uh, funnily enough, Sydney Industrial has beat every other capital city for residential.

SPEAKER_01:

Anything in Patsow or Canterbury or Banksdown, that that emphasis.

SPEAKER_04:

But commercial, we can go into it. Like commercial has the same capital growth and actually has to. Anyone who argues with me, I'm like, cool, is commercial expensive? Like, yep. I'm like, how do it get more expensive if it hasn't had the same capital growth?

SPEAKER_03:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

Um, so you get the same capital growth and you also get three times the cash flow. So you're like, well, if I'm getting the same capital growth three times the cash flow, why aren't I buying it? And it's the return on capital because if I'm starting out in 25-year-old Steve and I've got 150 grand, I can go leverage that up to the eyeballs. And my first property is I literally got a 90%, then I got 100%, then I got 105%. So I bought three properties off a 10% deposit. Um, if I went and bought a commercial at a sub 70% loan to value ratio, I've got a literally like one-fifth the less portfolio.

SPEAKER_05:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04:

So I'm not leveraging the money in the right way, which is the whole thing of property. I don't actually care about property. It's all about a game of leverage. It's one asset where banks are like, here's lots of money, Steve, go have some fun. Um, that's why I chose property. Um, but that's the crux of the start. And then, like you said, then you look at the return on capital after that, and that's where your plan plays out.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, and I think this is key. Like, this is uh free advice that you're basically giving to listeners. And I wouldn't even call it advice, but free tips in the sense of don't listen to every single TikTok ad that you're getting hit with.

SPEAKER_02:

Only ours.

SPEAKER_01:

Only ours. Trust me, don't trust anyone else. The thing that I've noticed with a lot of buyers agents is they advocate for the things that works for themselves, and they don't advocate so much for the thing that might work for the client. People take negative gearing as a strategy, and I it's my least favorite thing to use as a strategy because you still have to make the repayments up until it's tax time. It's not, it's it's not, oh yeah, just negative gear the property. What does that even mean?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, what are you gonna do for the whole year?

SPEAKER_01:

If you are a salaried employee, negative gearing your property is you know not the smartest thing in the world because you don't see those returns until the end of the year. If you are a small business owner and you want to possibly decrease your uh, you know, your overall profit because you want to claim back interest and increase your cash flow, maybe negative gearing is a smarter strategy for you.

SPEAKER_04:

Anyways, I'm nerding out a little bit here, but the only positive to negative gearing is if you're buying a property that you think negative the gear is going to outperform a positive the gear on. That's the only argument you can actually make. Otherwise, you're still losing money.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And uh you like it's it's to me, it's just don't listen to these catchy hooks all the time. Uh kind of delve deep into it and understand what your cash flow is. Basically, what I'm trying to say is don't buy a property on emotion. Okay. It's I think I think that's the best thing.

SPEAKER_04:

It's literally, and this is with the buyer's agent as well, it's a business transaction, not the me and the client. The buying of the property is a business decision. Like, if you were if you're gonna buy a property uh for a business for a million dollars and it ran at 35 grand a year loss, and you're like, don't worry, it might be worth 1.5 mil in five years' time. Most people aren't gonna buy that business. Yeah, unless there is something you can do with that business, like, oh no, I'm gonna bolt it onto a mortgage broker and it'll make a profit that way. But for some reason, property we've got this sit and hope. That's I'm being a bit facetious. That still makes sense as long as there's data to indicate that it's gonna do well. You buy an Amazon, they run at a loss, but that's because they're building lots of warehouses. You're like, I can see some effort on the horizon coming. Yeah, so it's just it's balancing that. It's just literally a business decision because it is.

SPEAKER_01:

So in your textbook, bring the question back. Um, but so in your textbook, are you highlighting are the everything that we just mentioned now? Is it all part of your 10 different strategies? Is it all part of, you know, different buyers that have um effectively performed using these different strategies as well?

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, the good thing with, and we we spoke about our parents like in Mount Druid and stuff like that. And then we were complaining that, like, oh, that's an affordable market, they got in easier. They also didn't have access to all this stuff. Like, I can literally get hundreds of points of data all over Australia, literally a click of a button. There's a few websites you can do it instantly. Yeah, they didn't have that. So that's bringing it back to that. But they're gonna go through each strategy and actually just say pros and cons and who's it for. That's that's generally the outcome. Property's not actually complicated, it's literally just plus and minuses. It's simple. It's actually simple. Yeah, um, but like you said, they hear the noise and they just they just go down one route.

SPEAKER_01:

I think uh ease of access to so many different things, uh, you know, websites, seminars, um uh YouTube videos, uh, you know, I could watch 30 hours on Australian property uh over the next over the next weekend easily on YouTube.

SPEAKER_04:

There, however, most people are lazy. So I'll use an example. So my commercial course is 10 hours long. So you gotta watch my face talking nonsense for 10 hours. I filmed 20 hours of content for that course, yeah, and my social media team are like, no one is gonna spend 20 hours researching this. You need to make it shorter. So we make we cut it down to 10 hours for the crucial, and then we did some extra like YouTube modules for people who want to get into it. However, um, I most of my clients that come from the course are like, oh Steve, loved your course, want to work with you, you really know your stuff, yada yada. Well, they don't realize on my host site, I can actually see the percentage of the course they've done. Pretty much all of them have done less than 30%. Yeah, really? But yeah, so they get to like the due diligence section, they're like, This is over my head, I'm just gonna get Steve to do it.

SPEAKER_02:

They must have been the people that didn't go to the lectures at uni.

SPEAKER_04:

But most I'll admit, I'm not gonna sit there and watch at night. I've got a two-year-old. There's no way with my partner two, I'm sitting there at night time for three hours, which I need to compress with. So people are lazy now as well.

SPEAKER_01:

It's it's uh you're saying music to my ears, and it's something that I'm gonna just talk about myself, like the what I've done in the business. I always try and tell the brokers in the business, salespeople in the business, the human is lazy. We have so many things to distract us and give us instant dopamine hits that people don't want to focus anymore. They don't want to sit there and focus on you know building websites, or they don't want to focus and read out all the due diligence, like you just said. But you need to be able to create that ease of access as well so that people keep coming to you. And the reason I bring this up is the buyers, the buyer's advocacy market is getting extremely busy. Okay. You've created ease of access by giving your course out for free, you know? And my books are free as well.

SPEAKER_04:

So I've given out 50,000 books now.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, but that's ease of access now.

SPEAKER_04:

Actually, I'll touch on that quickly because the people are lazy. So the course has had about 15,000 people do it, but not most people do it. What we've done with the book, I find most people come back after holidays and be like, I read your book, because it's the only time they can actually that's a good medium for some people. They like sit in their lounge chair, they can knock it out in a couple days. Then we actually we're gonna do an audio book, but me kind of reading out a textbook didn't really make sense. So we did like the first 10 episodes of my podcast series, uh, us going through the book, but in a conversational. So we've got like a host and it's like this, we have a good chat. So we're still we've got the books in front of us. Yeah, yeah. And we're literally like, okay, we're gonna talk about leases, make sure we say this.

SPEAKER_02:

So it's it's kind of like a university like a tutorial or something like that.

SPEAKER_04:

So the same 10 hours is there in 10 podcast episodes as the course, but I know 99% of people are listening that way because like I listened to Hormosy on the drive in today to come do this podcast, so it's just a bit easier. I'm not gonna buy his book and read it just because of the two-year-olds, no chance at all. Yeah, so you just have the mediums that work for some people.

SPEAKER_01:

I I actually can't listen to Hormosy, funnily enough, even though he does uh motivate me quite a bit. I can't sit there and listen to 20 to 35 minutes of him talking, and I don't know what it is. I can I can re-watch Harry Potter a million and one times. Not re-watch it, sorry, re-listen to the audiobooks a million and one times. I cannot listen to Alex Hormosy for 35 minutes at a time because I feel like he has created it at such, and I'm not bad mouthing him, but he's created it at such a generic level that I'm just like, okay, like Alex, I know that you know, can we move on to the people?

SPEAKER_02:

You're just not his target audience anymore.

SPEAKER_04:

I guess so. Well, you you're kind of past it. So I was literally just listening to the hundred million money model things because of like I heaped Kim and clients and other people. Oh, I gotta listen and listen. And like you said, it's just like, yeah, it's all right.

SPEAKER_01:

Like the diary of a CEO bloke. Um, I look I've listened to his episodes with Hormosy for two and a half hours, and I've loved that stuff. I it's a I don't know, I just have to touch on that for a second.

SPEAKER_04:

You you need the you need the back and forth. It's the same as like back in the day he's listening to Joe Rogan when he interviews a scientist. I always do that on a car trip because they were long episodes, so it turns like two and a half hours go really quick on the way to Kyama. That's it. But but without that, if it's just one person talking, it's hard. Like um, I went down the rabbit hole. You know Andrew Huberman.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, oh I love him.

SPEAKER_04:

Yeah, but but again, after half hour, he gets hard because it's just him talking. But when he interviews someone, it's it's all right.

SPEAKER_01:

Imagine my so this was the last trip I went on, last overstace trip. We went to um uh Argentina, okay, and we did the hiking through um oh what's it called again? Patagonia. So imagine we're driving from like small town to small town, okay, four hours at a time, and she has to listen to Alex Huberman the whole way. And I'm like, yeah, cult therapy is good for you. She's like, this is the worst car trip of my life every single time.

SPEAKER_04:

I'm leaving you.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Pretty much.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm leaving you at the top of the mountain and I'm walking down on my own. You figure out your way.

SPEAKER_04:

I got the opposite problem. My partner's an ultrarunner, so anytime we go on holiday, she's like, Oh, let's just run 30 days up to the top of that hill.

SPEAKER_01:

And I'm like, Oh no, I love that stuff, man. I love that stuff. Okay, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions if that's okay. 100k deposit. Where are you helping someone buy?

SPEAKER_04:

Geelong.

SPEAKER_01:

250k.

SPEAKER_04:

Uh commercial Brisbane. 500. Uh, commercial, any capital city. Um, this I want to, I know it's not a rapid answer, but this is the annoying part with commercial. Residential, you pick the suburbs you like in certain brackets or versus the risk profile. You don't get to do that in commercial. So, like, funny enough, someone did um a resie course, one of the well-known like Resi course educators, like, it was great. He told me all the keys to the secret of how to choose the hotspot. And then all the people from my commercial course will be like, you don't really tell us where to buy and what suburbs. I'm like, well, it can't because it changes based on your budget, and there's no definition of what a good property is. So let's use this is like Perth. Like, we'll buy in Perth as a 1% vacancy rate, and you've got a 500 grand deposit, which will get you a 1.3 mil warehouse. I could buy you in five comments from the CBD and get you really tight vacancy rate, a body corporate warehouse, single tenant, optics, all the boring boxes. Or I could go down to Rockingham and get your freestanding warehouse with two tenants, and the one close to the CBD is say 5.4%, the one down an hour south is 6.4. Which one's better? There's no actual right answer. They've both got a pro and a con. And you've got to make that decision on a case-by-case basis. Um, my little shopping center I sent to two clients and they didn't like it because there was nothing special about it. Um, and so that's that's the hard thing. Whereas with most residential, you can put them in a bucket risk category and you know your suburb, and then you just keep an eye on the market, off-marketrealestate.com and see what comes up. Commercial, you don't kind of have that, and that's why to answer your question, that's why I said everywhere. But Perth, you'll get an awesome bang for buck at the moment. Favorite meal, favorite meal, or chicken schnitty, uh best way to wind down. Um, swim in the ocean. Morning or night person? Night. Although I've we've got a two-year-old, so I've been waking up at 4 a.m. the last year.

SPEAKER_01:

Tropical vacation or winter?

SPEAKER_04:

Oh. Um, I'm a heat guy, but I love snowboarding. I actually met my partner skiing and we got engaged in Italy and the Dolomites. So like both. Um, but ocean. I live in freshwater on the northern beaches. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay. And the suburb that gave you your most wins or city?

SPEAKER_04:

For me personally, Western Sydney, so Blacktown and those areas, because I got in early at 2012. Uh, for clients in residential, it was probably the southeast corridor, Logan kind of area where we're buying houses sub 300k. And then the last five years they're 650 plus now. So again, it was just quantity. We I've literally bought 200, 300 plus residentials there, and everyone had a good time. Yeah, um, that's that's not claiming that's me, that's just the market was there, but we saw vacancy rates days on market reducing. It was the right time to buy them.

SPEAKER_01:

Always remember, guys, general advice on this channel if you need specific.

SPEAKER_04:

No, no, go out and buy an Eagleby and Logan, no matter what the price, pay a million dollars plus. Don't worry about the yield, don't worry if it's got termites. Go ahead, guys.

SPEAKER_01:

Steve, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people find you?

SPEAKER_04:

Um, bit of a social media all over the place. So just type in Steve Police or Plesi Property. Um, my YouTube channel is the one where we've got a lot of kind of nuggets, but um, Plesi Property, all my spreadsheets, books, course, podcasts, everything's free on there. Um, you can go to town and spend 30 hours watching my face.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, thank you so much for coming on. And if you need any help with your finance, if you're looking to purchase residential or commercial, you can visit us at www.itsiple.com.au. And they're free.

SPEAKER_02:

And not stress how much they are free.

unknown:

Yeah.

People on this episode

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Joseph Daoud

Co-host
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Michael Lozina

Co-host