I’d like to acknowledge my mother for initially sparking my interest in real estate in general. My grandfather was a stock and station agent in Harden in NSW, and his real estate business was run in conjunction with the family farm.

My prime reason for becoming a property investor was that my goal was not to work for someone else. When I was a young real estate agent in Newcastle, one of the older partners in the firm I was in told me that he thought the easiest business in the world was collecting rent – I’ve never forgotten that!

Over the years, I have invested with my two brothers, Andy and Rob, and I don’t think you could ask for better business partners (or brothers) – we have had lots of laughs along the way, and have been creative with the properties that we have had together.

Like many other investors, I have also had business partners, and some of these partnerships have been fantastic and some have been challenging, but all adding to a huge knowledge base of different deals and scenarios covering pretty well all aspects of property.

My Story

My property journey actually started when I was very young, around 20 or 21, and like most people, I started buying residential properties. My first little house was in Newcastle, NSW, and cost me about $17,000. I was working as a real estate agent and property manager and I was really interested in renovating, so I used to renovate properties on the weekends, after work.

I was fairly aggressive. I bought cheap houses, flats, semi-detached properties and renovated madly, turning them over and making pretty good money. But after a while, I realised that I had quite a few issues. I was pouring the profit from each previous renovation into the next house. So while I was making good money – I sometimes made $50,000, which was double my annual income at the time – I was pouring that money back into the next renovation. It was like playing a gambling game because I was always hoping that the next renovation was going to go well. It was a bit tricky.

One of my old bosses, a partner in the firm that I was with, had a great big ledger that he used to pore over every day. He was planning to leave the firm in about 12 months’ time, so I started to talk to him every day about what he was doing. He told me that this ledger contained all his own properties, some of which I was managing for him. He had about 20 or 30 properties at the time; half of them were commercial and half of them were residential. He showed me all the ones he had bought over the last five or six years to get ready for his retirement.

One day he told me something that stuck in my mind. He said, ‘I don’t buy anything unless it pays for itself plus puts a little cash in my pocket from the very get-go.’

I remember the loan I got for one of the first places I bought. It was through the Newcastle Permanent Building Society and the interest rate was 17.5%. This was back in the early ’80s when interest rates were really high. At the time, my solicitor told me he thought I was mad to buy this property. But what this old boss had said to me was like someone switching a light on. He also told me that I should be looking at some commercial properties, some shops and things. Like everyone else, and like a lot of people now, I

didn’t know anything about commercial investing. So, he gave me a few little tips, and that led me, almost by accident, into a commercial property that a friend was selling – a butcher shop.

But let me go back a little bit to tell you how it all went down in the early days.

I w