Bruno Novo talking your first investment property purchase

Hi, everyone. Dax, Daniel here from Hera Property. I hope you're having an awesome Friday. As you know, we've got Bruno on. Hi, Bruno, how are you?

Hey, how's it going? Thank you, Dax, for having me.

Excellent. You're welcome. It's good. It's a good Friday to have you on. Let's just as you all know that we're. This is for the members and the member site, but we do run this live to the Facebook group and also we're going to get Instagram going. So just hold your horses and we'll just go live and Bruno connect up with us there. Okay. So let's go there and check in connection. Okay. Hi, everyone. Dax here again. I wanted to take a moment to say thank you for coming along on this Friday. We've got Bruno from One Central Property. Hey, Bruno. Bruno's just joined and requested. Let's get this going live. As you know, we're doing this for the members of Hera Property and it's all about growth and growing their portfolios. We've got the Zoom running here. Hey, Bruno. We'll just turn our volume. How's it going? Volume off the PCs and we should be good to go.

All right then.

Excellent. Fantastic. As I was saying, Bruno, thanks for coming along. I think we're getting a bit of feedback here. There we go. We'll turn that off. So just to give you a bit of an intro, Bruno and I met a couple of weeks ago in a business group and we harmonized and we had a great chat and we really aligned with our investment of property and our love for property. Didn't we, Bruno?

Yeah, we did. As soon as we talked about the property industry, we clicked and we saw how instantly we were able to help each other. In regards to your property manager and our investments opportunity, it just kind of clicked simultaneously.

It was fantastic. And hey, Joanna. We've got Joanna Speckleton on board. So Bruno is a property investment consultant. He's a managing director of One Central Property. He's a young entrepreneur, has been working in real estate for around five years. And what he focuses on is first time buyers and investors to secure their properties. Bruno solely focuses on helping his clients into the property market to secure their first investment property and opportunity. And that's where we connected because as you know, the people in our launch program, that's all it's about. And so thank you, Bruno, for coming along. It's absolute pleasure and I look forward to to asking a few questions. Now, you were born in Sydney, but you grew up in Macau. I did, yeah. How did that work? How did it go? And then you came back to Sydney to achieve a degree in international business at Macquarie?

That's correct, yes.

Why the move?

What happened there for that one? I was born in Sydney and Hornsby, which is where I am at the moment, born here, but went back to the same home place again. So I think less than a year old, I think my mom made a decision, you know what, we are able to have a better life in Macau. And so we went back to Macau. And I don't think she was able to handle me as a kid because I was very hyper, lots of energy. So I had to go back to Macau. So I grew up there. I went to international school, got. That's where I got the English from. And I, once we got to the university, age around 17, 18, I was shipped to Australia to acquire my international business degree, which is very similar to my brother. He also did his degree in Macquarie. And that's how it all happened, actually.

Fantastic. And from us talking, your family are seasoned property investors themselves and you grew up around this sort of stuff all the time, inspecting properties, learning how to acquire. That must have been an amazing experience.

It was, it was. You talk about one or two topics on the dinner table. Either was sports, either martial arts or soccer, which I did both. And second was crop team. And I think it was. It was more of a common topic today. But growing up, there was one, the very topic that we spoke about. So, yeah, that I learned a lot from them.

Fantastic. And I guess, you know, moving around so much. How many languages? About four, I think. I remember. You're saying you know four languages fluently.

Yes. So it'll be English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese. But my Portuguese is a little bit rusty. It's still alright, but it's okay.

Well, that's good. I mean, it helps, you know, in your travels. It helps all that sort of stuff because I grew up in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne and I was one of four Australians and everyone else was multicultural. We lived in the growth suburbs of Box Hill. And, you know, I completely understand. I had all these different languages, so I know how to say thank you a lot in different ways. So. So, Bruno, tell me a bit about One Century property and the vision around that. I'm really interested in finding more about that.

Yeah. So one central property's vision is really to drive a new age of millennial property investors. And the reason why we decided to go with millennial property investors is the age. Because the age of millennials between 25 and about 35, 36. So it achieves kind of two objectives for us. The first one is relatable, we're able to relate to them because we're in the same category. And two, we share the same challenges and experience. And on top of that, so that's how we designed the company to be what it is today. From a very innovative but comprehensive service for our clients today, for their future. And so we really introduced different experts into the conversation, acquiring either their first investment property or the first, second or third or fourth one. So this expert will include financial brokers, financial planners, accountants, property managers, quantity surveyors, investment consultants and so on. During times like this, we were able to kind of explore and how we can able to kind of further expand our vision. And I think that's how we able to do this partnership together. And a very interesting point with Hera property management is not only do you do property management, you also do portfolio checks on each and every one of your investors. And what me and Joanne Jordan, us three directors found really interesting was for every milestone you've done, you plant trees. And we thought that was a very interesting idea, not only to give back to nature itself, but to be part of a bigger community.

Thank you. Yeah, we love it. It's one of our major passions. We talked about our goal of a million trees by 2030 in those fire stricken areas. So yeah, it's fantastic to have visions like that. And I love how you've pulled a team together to be that sort of one stop shop. And it really helps people like that because you know, everyone's very busy and it really helps them, you know, focus on what they do really well and you can provide services to help them get thirsty or next property as well. So I love that. And you know, our passion is pretty aligned and that's what I resonated with you. Where do you think that comes from, that passion?

That passion? I think it came at a very young age. As you know, both my parents, they do investments themselves. But even before that even I knew what they were doing before that, let's say around my teen years on the weekends we would actually visit display suites. This was in Macau though, so we were in the weekends we would visit display suites. We get to see different projects, either new or off the plans. And you know, as a kid, you know, the first thing you go to the display suite, the most fun room where all the toys with double bunk beds and then with all the, all the nice paint around and you just go inside just visualizing you Know what? I really want to stay here. I really don't want to go home tonight. So I would come out and say, are we going to be staying here? You know, that kind of energy. And we've been doing it for quite a few months, so we will go to different display suites. And I was thinking, why are we not staying here? Why are we not deciding to stay here tonight? And so as I grew older, that piqued my curiosity. So I was just having. We were just having conversation with my parents saying, what was the reason? And they would certainly explain the reason behind it is for investments. The investment for a better quality of life, better standard of living. And so that turned into a passion. So both my passion is either soccer and real estate. So that became kind of the passion, and that's kind of the origin of it.

I love it. That's good. You know, it's always interesting to find out why people do what they do. And once you find that, you can really see how you can work with each other. And I love finding that out with clients and partners like yourselves and stuff like that. And, you know, the things. One of the other things I love to find out, and this is sort of relates to my next question, is what motivates you to get out of bed every morning? Because, you know, now we've got, you know, we're all, you know, in confinement. We are getting released now. I saw the borders between New South Wales and Victoria are opened and act, which is great. A couple investments up there I want to check out and we'll definitely catch up. So, yeah. What motivates you to get out of the bed in the morning?

In the morning. That's an excellent question. What really motivates me to get off beds is knowing that the investment opportunities that we have in a pipeline and after our checks, after our due diligence, after our own research, knowing exactly what sort of results our client can achieve, that, to me, is a very powerful thing to kind of introduce our clients because they know exactly what the future will hold and how will that kind of transform their quality of life and standard of living. So that got me up every day. And the passion for real estate is like breathing air now. It's a daily thing that we do. So I breathe it in and out.

Yeah, I love that. I love that. And, you know, we've talked about this. You know, you find an amazing property for somebody, they're vibrating on the same frequency. They understand all their ducks lined up. They understand. They've talked to their mortgage broker. They've talked to all those teams that you've got to help you deliver them this beautiful property. And I've seen you some of your stats, which are just fantastic. And they purchase, they close the deal and then you can see they're already, you know, they're in a positive cash flow or whatever their strategy was. It's working for them and it just, yeah, you just go, yes, I'll do that again and again. So good work man. And hi to Jaspreet is online as well. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for joining us.

So I mean I did mention it just before about how we're all in lockdown and stuff like that. It's been interesting for businesses like ours. You know, property, you know, property supply has dropped, but demand has dropped. There's, you know, there's been different pockets and stuff like that. What, what are you seeing how you, how does your business coping during this current pandemic?

Look, there's no, there's no hiding that during times like this people are gonna be a lot more fearful, a lot more unknown what the future you would hope for them. So what, what we have done as the company is more education, more about telling them what might happen, what will happen. And so we do more video consultations and for that we're able to do. Because we don't go to work now, we don't commute to the office now, we're able to kind of spend more time, spend more quality time with our clients, just really educating them about the market. Right. Because there's a lot of articles, a lot of blogs about the market is dropping X amount of percent. It's just about educating back then the reasoning of a particular place. And that's why we have all these experts to kind of recession proof that having a good financial broker is really essential at times like this. You need to look for a really good one to kind of just compare with X amount of lenders, knowing exactly which lender is the best fit for you. And on top of that, during our consultations we do identify very unique investment opportunities because they just somehow just pick up kind of just pop, pop. And so we are there in the front line to identify them and able to present them. So I think that was a very good way of kind of coping in it. And because of building relationships now is a fantastic. And doing new partnerships. That's why we're having we partner with you as an example. I think it's because of like that we're able to kind of expand more in depth with our business and Our vision and our unique relationship with developers and financial broker, as I mentioned earlier, to really unlock hidden incentives. Because times like this, you know, there's a lot of incentives that we're able to negotiate on behalf of our investors and support is what they need at times like this. They need someone to be along with them every step along the way with a team. Either we call the A team or One stop Service to be there at all times.

Yeah. What are some of those? I really want to understand some of those incentives. Like I know, you know, a lot of our, lot of our members and stuff like that are really just starting off and learning how to invest and stuff like that. Can you just delve into a little bit about, you know, developer, what's a good investment property from your perspective? And then how does those sort of.

Incentives.

Model to get into people's heads so they know that, okay, this is what Bruno and One Central Property does and they can lock that in.

Yep. So in our company we don't just select any project to take on. So we do have particular criteria and we call it the One Central Model. So in that model actually it has seven kind of criterias or categories. So I'll go there step by step. So the first one will be the developers. So we do a very background check, we do interviews, we do conversations with them. Just have a good understanding of what the reputation is like, what is the experience, how long they've been in the game for, what sort of materials they use, what sort of construction company they use, and so on and so on, so on. So it's a very in depth conversation with them and we need to have a look at the areas we choose in what sort of demand and population growth will we be expecting to see based on the research we do? Because we want to go into an area that we want future tenants either moving in or future owner buyers, homeowners wanting to buy their first home there or home. So we want to know it's in demand. And we look into the third one will be the investment infrastructures. So either if it's from a private or a public sector, if from a private sector, if they're investing a lot of money to make that stuff that much more desirable, that much more livable, along with a separate with government sector, you know, improving the roads, having a new hospital, improving the consoles and so on. So we know that is a confidence into the area. They know this area will look good now, they can live even better. Now that is kind of a checkpoint for us. Number four will be our vacancy rates. So that is a very good kind of checkpoint for our investors or for ourselves to kind of analyze very quickly if that suburb is either oversupply or under supply. So as a rule of thumb, we always try to go below 3%. And that is a very good balance for your supply and demand. It achieves a few things. One of them will be it will be easier to find your future tenants rather than some. If it's a vacancy, it's really high. So that is one thing. And two, it doesn't fluctuate the price as badly because when we know if it's much more in demand, we know more people want to actually move in. So recession proves certain times like this.

That's crazy.

Yeah, absolutely. And number five will be your amenities.

So I'm just saying we've got Bruno Novo here, managing director of one central property. We're talking about investment properties, either being your first property or your next one. Bruno has a team of experts. We're talking about what he identifies as a good investment property at the moment. Please keep going. I love it.

No problem. So on the fifth one, we'll have a look at the amenities of the project, right. Either if there's little or none, amenities, meaning there's no gym, there's no swimming pool in it, so the maintenance won't be, you know, it's quite affordable for investors. Or two, we recently got, just signed up with a new partnership with a developer where they have kind of world class, kind of mantis there, you know, cinema, gym, swimming pool and so on. So on, the first thing, the first thing that came to, first thing that came to our mind was how much would the strata or the Honest corporation, which is Victoria. Right. How much would it cost? When we did our research, it was actually quite affordable. So that was a very interesting point for us to take on because normally we don't take on projects like that, but after looking at research the numbers, it was almost a no brainer. I think from a investor point of view, from a owner point of view, is that desirable? You have your private cinema in your building. So that was very cool. And I think some of our investors, some of your investors, we're gonna definitely explore that. And the last two, one, the number six will be our cash flow. So when we go to a particular stage of our conversation, what we provide is a 10 year investment blueprint, which is probably what you've seen before, right? And what they will see is what from day one, what sort of cash flow they can expect to receive or achieve. So that is very important for investors is knowing what the future holds them, right? Are they if they're in a positive cash flow, what would X amount, a few thousand dollars extra after your investment net mean to their daily life? So that was very important. And then the last point will be the growth which is appreciation. How with all the first six kind of categories, they all adds up to the appreciation of the area, the property. So that growth is what will create wealth. So that was very important for us to identify using these criteria. So this has worked really well with all our investments Bruno.

And it's quite complex, isn't it? You know you've got 13,000, just over 13,000 suburbs in Australia, Australia wide. Now Bruno's team is out there talking to developers, talking to people that building new stock in the market. And like you said Bruno, very surprised that you're investing into something in terms of, you know that that is something that in that suburb people really want. So they're willing to pay the rent to have those facilities in that area. And I think that's that knowledge and experience that you bring, you and your team bring to the table to sort of go, yes, there's a cinema next door has nothing and it's getting X amount of rent but this place is getting this much more rent and that'll cover your strata, that'll cover all this sort of stuff also grows faster compared to the neighbor's place in that neighbor's place in that high end one. You're going to get a higher price straight away in that sort of market. I love that analysis because it's not, you're not a one stop shop, you're not let's buy in this growth area and that's all we do. That's what I relate, do your homework and you get in there and you have a look at, you know, the product and the developer and you know what they're building and then you go to the suburb and and I love that you're not just cash flow. Finding that balance between cash flow, This keeps you surviving and I love that balance. I'm understanding you'll be able to be do doing decent depreciation to get money in your pocket or keep it, you know, neutral so you don' it's hands off, you don't have to do it. And that's why we love that freedom program. It's just freedom to set and forget, let it run its turn and you know, talk to Bruno and you do something similar to us as well where you talk to your investors every so often and know when they're ready to buy next, don't you?

I do. And before I go to that, I got a good story because you mentioned a very good point, because choosing a area. So there's this area we just got exposed to our new development. In that area there is four hospitals. So in that four hospitals, what we understand is all the doctors and nurses and we know that they've been working tirelessly throughout this whole few months. And for them, the number one issue they haven't gone to work is they can't find car parks. Right. And they probably will live quite far away from the hospital, at least maybe an hour away because of maybe the rent. Right. Maybe they want to get a little bit further out. So what we identified with one of our project because of all the amenities we've just mentioned, the doctors, they want to live a quality of life, but they want to be close by to the hospital as well and also have car parking. So that criteria is quite hard to achieve. So we found for this particular project, not only does he have his gym, he has his concierge, he has like those click and collect, you order stuff online and go to that parcel, all these amenities. And it's just a few moments away from the hospital, maybe like 500 meters away. So that create that sort of demand while all the doctors now are able to kind of invest here because they do make pretty good money and with all that money, pay a lot of tax. So having that investment property but close by to the hospital, it slowly sucks to do that, you know? You know, it does make sense. It does make sense. It does make sense. And so back to your question is, yes, we do. We do very regular checkouts with our clients, our investors. So every before the settlement, we will do, I would personally do maybe every two weeks to a month. So we have a conversation. How's things going? Have you had the conversation with the broker? Have you had the conversation with the conveyancer? How's everything looking? Like, just because I'm no longer how I say this, I will always be the main contact person to my clients. So I know exactly from a background, I mean, most of the time in control of all the conversations. So I know what is happening from my client's point of view. And when we, after the settlement, I would do a very regular checkup, especially the first month, how they're feeling because now they bought the first one. The first investment probably is a huge milestone. Huge milestone. So we need to find out, I need to find out what are they how they're feeling, how's it looking like? And then we do it probably every quarter or so, see how sort of what sort of equity we can play with, what is the plan for the next one? And so on and so on.

That's awesome. Yeah. One central property really aligns with Hera's principles. That way of about growth, about helping them buy. Well, the first time my history that I was able to buy my first investment property in Sydney and make a lot of money by just doing the research and finding the right spot. And that leverages leveraged me very quickly into my investment portfolio. So, you know, I love what you're doing, Bruno. I think it's fantastic. Thank you. I've got my usual two questions that everyone knows about. So, Bruno, what's something that people don't know much about? You give me something interesting that you. That no one knows.

I kind of spill the beans in a very early stage. So one thing a lot of people don't know about me after I entered this industry is I used to play semi professional soccer. So I played in Portugal and England as well, but a shorter amount of time. So that's a lot of people who don't know about me in the industry, but before the industry, a lot of people know I do that. So that's something a lot of people don't know.

Excellent. Okay, well, we might have to play a bit of ball. I'm not that good. Well done, man.

That's great.

And look, thank you very much for coming on board. I think there's been some really good nuggets of information, those eight criteria that you came through and stuff like that. And my last question is, how do people contact you? I know we talked about, you know, everyone can contact you through the show and through our faith, our groups and stuff like that. But yeah.

So firstly, thank you for having me on the show once again. I really appreciate it. We all appreciate being part of the show and so the best way to get in contact will be either on Facebook, you go to One Central property, or you go to our Instagram One Central property. Feel free to DM us, send them a message if you have any questions. And as a gift for today's show, we would like to give based on the eight categories. I'm sure it'll be quiet to take notes in that because there's quite a lot of take notes on. So as a gift for this show, we'll be sending through a PDF, so a starter kit. A starter kit that will cover the Etsy categories and how the. Step by step how to become a property investor. Comment below if you would like a copy of that and we'll organize that.

Bruno, thank you so much. That's really great. You're the first to give something away and I really appreciate it. It's a really great thing. So I know we've got a few online here on Instagram and Facebook in our members group. So please comment below. Bruno and I will send that out to you. Bruno, send that across to me and we'll get that across through the channels and things like that. I'm gonna have a bit of a read myself because I love that stuff. Thank you so much for being on the Hera interview series. I think you're a real great partner that I think, you know, there's a lot of people that will love what you do and it's that first investment property, You know, if you don't do it the right way. And I've seen so many people go and do it themselves and think, oh, I know this one's a killer and go to auction, pay too much for it. And it takes years to recover from that. You know, there's case study after case study that, you know, I've repaired. You know, we've had people come on board and I've seen their investments and we've literally cleaned them up, put them back on the market, sold it and then go to someone like Bruno and go, let's find something that really suits where they want to go, what their lifestyle is and what their end goal is. And so, Bruno, thank you for supplying that to the market. Thank you for coming on the show and I look forward to. Let's do what I'd love to get you back on probably when, when this Covid stuff comes out. And maybe we could do a case study on, on one of your projects.

Absolutely. That would be a fantastic idea. And I think based on your story, I think the number one thing we're actually trying to achieve is take the emotion out of the decision making process as much as possible. As much as possible.

Yeah, isn't that. Yeah, it's so true. It's so true. That's why we have people like you go and, and talk to the numbers and stuff like that and just make sure it's very clear. We're not salespeople here. We're not people that push you into buying stuff or anything like that. It's all numbers driven. It's all making sure that very clear and concise. So thank you, Bruno and everyone on Instagram. Thank you. We got a whole lot of people. Ryan, Steve, a few others there. I should have asked. If you want any questions. If you've got any questions, please post it below. We're on for a little bit. Go over to Facebook. We've got a fair few people on there, which is fantastic. That's really good. I don't. I think we've dropped off, so I'll get. Say goodbye to Instagram. Thank you so much. Stay online. Yeah, we'll save that. And we'll get that going. Move that over here. How good's that? And we'll get that happening. And I'll. I'll pause the Facebook.