Your Property Success Mentor Call July 01/08/2019

Hello, everyone. It is Jane here for our July monthly Q and A call. Please let me know by typing in that you can see me and you can hear me. That will give us an idea that we are live. We are using a new format today, so it's been a little frantic learning how to make it all happen, but I think it's working. So if you can put in some comments there, we will be able to see what you is going on, which will be good. So I've got some things I want to share with you today and obviously other people want to talk to me too. So here we are and it is August, so my apologies. We did definitely had a bit of a technical issue last week. Now John is just coming on screen. I can see he's trying. At least I can hear you. I just can't see your fun face, John.

Looks like it's coming up now.

I can see little kisses and things happening, but nothing else.

Okay, tell me it's coming up. All right, let me have a play with that in the background. What I might do though, Jane, is I'll just do the disclaimer so we get that out of the way. Alrighty. So like we always have to do have to say that it's important to take care in applying what you'll hear on this call. Everyone's situation is different. While we go to great lengths to ensure that everything we share is accurate, what you're about to hear is based on our personal opinions and experiences, not intended to be specific to your circumstances. So in order for us to share openly in the way that we do, we just need to make the following disclaimer. That we're not real estate agents, financial planners, lawyers or accountants and not liable for any loss, damage or misunderstanding caused by reliance on any of the information provided inferred. Now let me try and sort out my camera. Jane, One second.

Okay, so I've got that. It should be happening now and it should be going live. So let's just see if we've got anyone. Okay. Looking better.

Okay.

Okay, so let's just check John if over on the Facebook page. If people are able, you might need.

To post that link again. Pin it, I think, Jane, Because I couldn't find it there. I had the invite, but I couldn't find the actual BE Live link like normal.

And that's just for guests who want to come on live.

Oh, I see, so you're putting it there anymore?

Yeah, so other people can be clicking on it now so that we. They can actually listen to it. So I might hand over to you for a moment while I take myself off the screen and let you have a bit of a chat about what you've been up to and I will find out what's going on, no problem at all.

All right. Well, what have I been up to? Well, we had a great webinar last night all about the luxury finishes, luxury looks in how to achieve the luxury look in different renovation projects and by using generic brands 90% of the time and then known brands 10% of the time. So if you did miss that, obviously this is all stuff we cover inside the Ultimate Guide to Renovation. But the general gist of that, and I'm happy to answer any questions and come back to it later in the call, is that you use generic brands. So brand things for things like taps and sinks and lots of things, AC vanities, all of that kind of thing for 90% of the items. And then where the big signature pieces are like for instance, ovens and what else? Ovens are the main one. Microwaves too, if you've got built in microwaves, stove tops, you know, oversized stove tops. That's where you use the brand items. So that's the latest thing that's kind of we've been discussing around these parts. So if you've got any questions about that today, happy to talk about it because it's fresh on our mind. And yeah, that was a, it was a well received webinar. And it's all in the lead up because we've got, as many of you know, we've got the Ultimate Guide to Renovation course and we're running it in its current form for the last time this time around. And just to fill you in, in case you don't know already, Jane and I created that course in 2012. We created it kind of grew and grew and grew into a very comprehensive property investment course, even though its name is the ultimate guide to renovation. But over the years there's kind of been a little bit of a disconnect for some people that they're thinking they're getting a renovation course, but in fact they're getting this whole property investment course from goals through to, you know, suburb selection, suburb due diligence, property due diligence all, all the way through to finance and building the portfolio and all of that kind of stuff. So in some ways it's been a bit of a misnomer and a little bit of not in some cases. Anyway, most people are delighted to, to know to see that they get a hell of a lot more than what they initially anticipated it was going to be for other people. We felt that we've just, you know, perhaps lost some people because it wasn't. They expected it to be just a renovation course when they might have been looking for a property investment course. So what we've decided to do is next year when we run the Ultimate Guide to Renovation again, because traditionally we've opened enrollments once or twice a year for the last five or six years. So the next time we do run that and do the Ultimate Guide to Renovation launch again, it's just going to be a renovation course. So what we're going to do is, is rethink some of our education stuff, because primarily we've got three parts. We've got the. Which is the three parts of the Trident strategy. We've got buying below the market, got renovating to adequate and in a. In an area for capital growth. And so we're probably going to go along those lines and break down our educational content over those in all those three categories, which would mean that the Ultimate Guide will just be confined to strategic renovation. So that's the idea at the moment. Happy to take your feedback on that, too, in any way, shape or form. I guess why that's relevant is we're a week or two away from opening enrollments for the ultimate guide again for 2019.

And.

So that means this is the last time we'll be running it in this configuration. So if you're interested in, if you, obviously, if you're not a student of the Ultimate Guide already, if you're interested in hopping into it while it's still this full and comprehensive course, because it won't disappear, and obviously for anyone that's already in it, it will remain exactly the same. This is just for new people coming in. But if you're interested, if you've been wondering about it, you know, over the years and you're interested in joining, it'd be a really good time to join because you're going to get the full comprehensive course, which includes location, masterclass and the software and all of that kind of thing. So that's, that's basically the most of what's been going on around these parts. Other than that, what else can I tell you? I can tell you that Jane's just, just made it in today. She's not 100% and that she's got a cold passed onto her by her son Max. And we're wondering was touch and go whether we're going to run with this webinar or not. But thankfully, we've got going and hopefully she's not too far away from rejoining me. What I'll do is I'll just have a look in the Facebook page and just see if there's any comments there or if I'm live on the screen. Might be a sec. I'm just going to refresh this page. Nope, I can't see. Can't see us. Okay. Success club. Ah, you're back. Jane. Can't hear you, Jane. Oh, back now. I can hear you. Yeah, Jane.

Hi, guys. I don't know if I'm meant to be live yet.

Yeah, I'm not sure either. We can't hear you, Jane.

Hey, Kate, how are you going? I have a question you'd like to ask. Welcome.

Hi.

Yeah, I did actually.

So I've actually just come out of a meeting with two real estate agents who were talking about either selling or renting out our current property that we live in. It's our apartment that we have because of potential need to move to further out Sydney near Penrith. I believe my husband's looking at a possible job out there. And so we're trying to figure out what's the best way. Do we relocate or do we stay where we are and he commutes, or do we sell or rent 20 different options in between. So I just wanted a bit of a second opinion, particularly after watching your great webinar last night about the wow factor and all the ways that you can make improvements. I talked through a lot of the different ideas that I had have had for how we can improve our place and make it more appealing. So we live in Langove north and there's been a lot of development in the area, so lots of new apartments going up. There's been over development in nearby suburbs, so there's been. The rental market's not very strong and the sale market is slowly improving. But we will probably be doing well to get what we paid for it in 2015 if we were to sell currently. So, you know, wanting to think about all the things we could do to increase either of those options and I we have done stuff to the apartment already. So it's a better apartment than most, if not all of the ones in the block. We've done cabinetry and extra storage and better lighting and that sort of thing. But I was wanting to get some tips from them as to is there anything else that we can do, anything to make it more appealing. And really their approach was, no, no, no, don't worry about it, just leave it. Maybe repaint like fresh coat of paint. And I was like, really?

Like, is this really.

Surely there's something that I could be doing to improve things. So I can even take you through a walkthrough of the place if you want, and get your opinion.

Show us around. Okay.

All right.

All right.

Okay, we're going to put you back on main screen again. You're it. So tell us a bit about the place and what your concerns are and what you think you can do.

Okay. So it's a two and a half bedroom apartment. We've turned the study into an additional bedroom by having sliding doors that I will walk you through and show you. So hang on. It's gonna. This is. So we had it as a nursery. It's now a toy room. Enough space, but it has doors that makes it into a. Sorry. How to get it to actually work. Should have done this on my phone. So it can function as a small bedroom. Yep. This is. Take you from the front door. So this is behind me. You can see front door very plain. I've thought about actually putting in storage features over here. So some decorative boxes or something like that. A bit like the wooden frame boxes that you can put on. So there's a space for keys and all that kind of thing. I've thought about whether or not we put a big hall mirror here, and I think that that's something that we are actually going to do and try to think about whether or not putting like a hall bench or something. Sorry, this must be making you guys seasick. It's making me seasick. Yeah. So whether or not like a hall table either built in or freestanding in there to add something to the space, because it's very simple. So then we.

These changes that you're suggesting, what is the outcome that you want to achieve from that?

Like a bit more.

Oh, we lost you. We've lost your mind.

Oh.

Can you hear me? No, I got you. So this is Lane Cove north, right?

Yes. And it's below ground, but we have an apartment block and there's lots of other apartments in the area. So see if I can show you. So we've got this nice outdoor area.

Yep.

So with the second mezzanine type level up there that has fake grass on.

It.

I was talking to them about whether or not doing something like a deck or something along there would be of any use to make it a bit more attractive. It's something that a few of the partner blogs I've noticed have done to kind of modernize it a little bit. And it does add a really nice fresh look. They said, look, don't worry about it. Unless you're doing it for yourself. Don't worry about it. And yep, that I can understand. I was just trying to think of ways to make a wow factor. We even had ideas about outside kitchens up the top there or extra seating up there, that kind of thing. So those have been some of the ideas that I was playing with. Then in the lounge room, we're pretty happy. We've replaced all the light, these uglier lights that they used to have, and put in down lights throughout. And we've got a pretty wide open space. I don't know how well you guys can see that.

So.

It works well. We're quite happy with it. We also organized.

We lost your audio again, Kate. Lost your audio.

Oh, back now. Back now. Back now.

I don't know what's going on. Sorry.

Okay. And so we've got a two and.

A half.

Bedroom property.

Yeah.

Yep. And we're looking at improvements. And what's the target audience? What are you looking at to do with those?

It would probably be young families. Generally that's half of the population of this particular apartment block. And so. But generally those who have one child, two start to get a little bit cramped and.

Or.

Yeah.

Well, because of the two and a half, it could be young professionals.

Yep.

But yeah, yeah, it's a little bit. Now I can hear my own audio.

Okay. Too much fun. All right, so let me just have a look. So I'm going to look at RP data at the moment. And I think the thing is, let's just have a look what two bedroom kind of units are looking like that is selling. Because it sounds to me you talked about putting in some almost fixtures, things like the boxes and the bench, etc. They could be removed. They're not kind of like permanent fixtures. Is that what are you thinking about doing them permanently or how. What were you thinking about?

I mean, they would be the wall.

Yeah.

The decking. The decking would be semi permanent. Again.

We would think.

We were thinking about things like putting some shelving in the bathroom. In the bathroom?

Yep.

So nothing solid. Solid like permanent.

Forever.

Forever. But things. I think that adds extra cosmetic value.

Okay. If we look at these units at the moment that these two bedroom units that have sold recently, they're all around that. 890, 940, 960. Where do you think yours sits at the moment?

959. 50.

Okay. And where in the block? So what street are you in?

We're on.

We're on Mulberry Road. Okay.

And we're actually 554.

Let's see if I can find it here.

Mow. Mow.

Oh, Mowbray. Ah, my goodness.

James might be up close to your microphone.

I think it might be.

The fact.

That I've probably got the other thing playing. Okay, let me just turn this off. I'm going to get rid of Facebook, so I can't monitor Facebook. All right, Mowbray Road. So let's have a look at Mowbray Road and let's look at the current. Okay, so there's nothing that is sold there recently. So let's just increase the time frame that we're looking at this. So let's go back to 2018 and let's go to February 2018. So let's look over the last year and a half. Nothing.

Well, that's not true. That's not true.

Yeah. It'd be nice to think that there's been absolutely nothing going on Railway Road West. Let's try that.

Oh, yes, yes. Sorry.

Okay, now it's looking better. So let's just get back to the last six months so that we are getting some prices that are closer to today's prices. Okay, so 52 in the last 18 months have sold 17. Okay, so. And we're around number 500. Yep, yep.

554. 554.

Okay, so we have. Pardon me, number one and number 60 that have sold. So 60 is only just sold in the last month. Do you know at this. At what price that went for?

No, they ref. No, they're refusing to let us know. Let us know.

That's sneaky, isn't it? I do have. But I do.

But I'm number one. I'm number one, I think.

Sorry, what was that?

Number one was. Number one was 9:30.

Okay, so let's have a look at number one.

Let's see how that's wrong. No, sorry.

Is that in?

Yes, yes.

Okay, so is it a similar kind of. So that must be one of the lowest ones. Are low on a block.

More in a block.

Yep. Does it look much different to yours? They've done. They've done a little bit cosmetically. The bathrooms.

The bathrooms are similar. Otherwise. Otherwise. Yeah, it's relatively. Relatively similar.

Trying to. One of the people told me recently from RP data that if you look at it on your RP data on your phone screen that you can actually see the price when it doesn't appear here as a little hack, it's Not. That's not happening. Okay. So estimate back. Okay. So I guess the thing is, is there. If this is not that much different? Do you feel that? I mean, this. We've got feature walls here. It's downstairs, it's 9:30, so. And range from. From 0 to 10. How would this compare to yours, in your opinion of being set up as it is right now?

I think ours is probably slightly better.

Better.

So we've had.

So we've had.

Sorry, Jay. Sorry, J.

Again.

What was the price that you're trying. You're aiming for?

950 would be what he would expect. What he would expect.

Yeah.

I was. I was quite fooled that we. Fooled that we were better than that.

Okay.

But I think that's probably realistic.

All right. Because I just wonder how much. I mean, and this is the. I think the interesting thing about these properties is that with units you really do get that problem where you don't have the opportunity to add a lot of value. And so it's hard to differentiate it. So. And really, you're only as good as the most recent sales. So when we look at this sale here of this unit, the two units that we've just looked at and just quickly looking at yours, they don't seem to be that different. And so I'm kind of, you know, there's some creative paint in one of them, but it's still sold for 930s.

Yes.

And it's quite a. What would you call it? What's the word, John? It kind of alienates people when you put your own touch of that kind of. I've got the purple room and then the, you know, the blue room. So that can actually bring down, you know, people. They just don't see the opportunity of repainting basically tin of paint. But so, you know, then creating that kind of makes me concerned that, you know, if you did go out and you did create for yourself, say the. A paint scheme that could get a wow factor, then people are going to look at it and they date it or they're not going to like it. Putting in Shelton is always handy. It doesn't necessarily, in my opinion, and John will have a thought on this, but we're not talking massive value being added. It's kind of like, oh, isn't that nice? It just makes the decision a little bit easier for people to make. Do you have any thoughts on that, John?

No. It's coming from your end. Feedback. Feedback. It's pretty bad. Bad. But I'll give you.

I'll give you problems.

What James. James was trying to do. Look at all the comparable. Comparable sales and say. Say what the resale value is and then work out market value. Are you. Then we can. Capitalizing and properties of all the. In that block or even. Or even. You're trying to work out the ones. The ones that are. There was a scale of scale of 1. The ones. The ones 78 and the 8, which is where we want. We want. Because that's kind of. Kind of they're the outlier competition and. And for some reason, some reason record sales sales. So if we look. If we look at what's the standard that they're renovated up to and that's. We only have to meet that benchmark. You know what I mean? So because the danger is if you go past that benchmark, it's more likely that you're renovating to your own taste and you're in danger of over capitalizing. You fixed it, whatever you did there, Jane. Oh, there we go. What a. Yep. Headphones. We can't hear you.

I went and stole your headphones.

There we go.

If you're looking for your headphones later, John, I have them.

Well done. That's a lot better. Yeah.

You don't know if I've lost my voice or if I'm on mute. So you have to guess.

So when. When I think about some of those things that you were talking about, I guess the. Without knowing those prices really well like we talked about, without knowing the first place I want to do is go and work out. Okay. Realistically, what's the resale? What's the scope of this? You know, where are the good properties selling it in the sevens and the eights.

Yeah.

And then I can get it. And then if I get a valuation even just running an automatic valuation on the. On property now or the manual way to do that is just get three or four agents in and get their valuation and knock a few percent off because they're going to be cooking the books in order to buy the sale and get you as a listing. But that. That gives me two figures which is resale value and I'm not sure. Has the market dropped a little bit in Lane Cove? What. What have you seen there?

Yeah, it has.

It has dropped. It has dropped.

Jane, you've done something. Have you done something? I've got Echo again. I've got Echo again.

Let's see if it's. Yeah, unfortunately.

Yeah. So watch out for. Real estate agents said that they were actually starting to see movement that we feel post election by confidence with arpa changes that they actually have. They had, I think they had 30 contracts taken out on a property this week and they had 70 people go through an open home recently. So they feel like.

Yeah, okay, so that just makes. Where that's relevant is just with the comparable sales, because your comparable sales, you might want to start looking at comparable sales 12 months ago or just trying to get a. Make a benchmark for yourself as of how far the market's come off and if it's come back. I'm not sure of what it is in Lane Cove, but let's say it's come off by 10 odd percent like the rest of the Metro and you back at 2015 levels, then maybe that's where you should be looking at your comparable sales. That's probably but. And I would be doing that and just trying to have a conservative view and also taking in the opinion of the agents and just trying to find where the truth lies in between those valuations that you're getting in from the agents. But it could be the case and it's. And when you're in a situation like that with one apartment and there's many, you're always governed by the comparable sales of all of those other compartments, all those other apartments. So it's very hard to differentiate, differentiate yourself and bump yourself up above those and you run the risk of over capitalizing pretty easy. So my gut feeling is, without having seen those numbers, is you're probably better off with staging in neutral colors to give you the best possible price than you are undergoing any major, you know, structural work or deckings and that kind of stuff.

Sorry if it's a typical families, that young family. Is there something that you with the young family would want that you don't have? Is there kind of like a. Because I'm just thinking you showed us out the back and we did see a couple of the other places obviously had ground floor access to. Is there something that. Yeah, just something to just. They go, wow. It's like the, you know, the old TV over the bath and the, you know, bookcases built in or the little bin in the bench top or something. There could be just some kind of something.

I think that's those little thoughtful things. Those little thoughtful things that are just right at the target market is where you can. And they're not necessarily expensive things, you know, but they just hit the, the target market.

Yeah.

So we've done things like. Because we have lived here with a young family, I've got two little boys, we did things like I've had a special clothesline put in which if you haven't seen it, show us because it is awesome. So it actually, it actually packed stuffed into this nice little silver box.

Oh, okay.

And then it comes out.

Oh yeah.

But when done with goes all the way back in. And then when you don't have pegs on it, it all closes up into a nice.

Oh, that is very cool.

Very, very cool. And that's the kind of features, that's.

The little feature that I'm thinking you can really hit your target market with. And only you are going to know these. So you being basically your target market. So there's things like, you know, and it's almost like you need you to sell the property. You being the sales agent or you being the person who checks the copy that goes in the sale ad which is like perfect for. Yeah, John, you're the copywriter. Genius. Perfect for young families. Check out the fold away. Dah dah dah. Every thoughts been, you know, it's been broken in by a young family and now brought up to spec for the next family to take this home kind of thing. I think that is what you're after.

Actually what's called ask for property. And this is another great thing to add to your snatch idea book is when we bought it, the previous owners had had so this in most other properties, this is actually garden right through here and they put up these glass green walls and put in a staircase. You see this?

Yeah, yeah.

And turfed it. And so they've actually created an outdoor play area where most other people just had an old garden. And so when we bought it, they actually had a like an activity gym up there and it was safe for the kids because of the glass. And you know, we've had our clamshell up there and we've had it as an outdoor toilet facility for our dog when needed. Although doesn't work so well with fake glass grass.

So.

Oh, Jane, we've lost you.

I was, I was wondering what you're going to say. It's like it's an outdoor toilet facility where mum comes to stay or something. I was like, where's she going with this? Oh, well, there he is. What's his name? Barney. Barney. Oh, there you go. He's the bike. Hey Barney. So okay, so you can make some fun out of that turf. So you are attracted to that turf, right? So my thought should be have some fun with it. So if it's a young family, think about the total family look. So you could potentially like I'm Just saying this is out there. I know, potentially put a little cup in it with a flag as a golf course. I know, it's funny.

That's exactly what the real estate agent said today. And I've never thought of that.

Okay, so, you know, have fun with that kind of thing or, and have the clamshell down with like a towel and some sand or something on the, on the towel with a bucket. You know, you stage it for your demographic because I think if you take that and make it special, the people who are going to walk in every single other one of those units in Lane Cove north are going to turn around and go, oh my God, I can see myself here. And it's like, it's, it's like having that blue feature wall people can't imagine with a coat of paint, it can change. Like, oh no, I don't like blue. Like really? Yeah. So, you know, you could take, have a little bit of fun with it and even to the extent where you could in the six week campaign, you could probably remodel it. Something different every week.

That's a good idea.

Do you know what I mean? Like, people are going to come back to it. So let's, let's take this off completely. The, you know, we have to add a few little things that are going to cost you a couple of thousand dollars. Storage is nice, yes. But this, it's, you're going to have to really step this up and I think it's in marketing that you can, you can make this something special. And, and the agent's going to take all the credit for that amazing sale that he got. But at the end of the day, I think you could probably put something pretty clever together. Okay.

All right.

So in terms of basic cosmetic stuff. Sorry, one last question. So for example, I'll just quickly show you in the bathrooms, it has the lovely IKEA corner shelves, silver one that was here when we bought. So can you see? Very basic. We have a bath, which most don't, apparently, according to the real estate agent. And we put in the cabinets. So you can see none of the other apartments have these cabinets. So my other thought I had, which I thought would be relatively cheap and would look good, would be to take that out and then put here some very basic shelves, like feature shelves sort of thing that would also be storage shelves that could then be staged and have a functional purpose, but also bring it up a level in terms of quality. Is that something?

Okay, so John, you've done more staging recently than I have, but I would be Thinking about if you're trying to kind of do a little bit of a wow. Something there, you write the IKEA corner.

To make them to remember it. Basically.

Like maybe it's something. Like it's something. You know how you have those. I think Ikea has them. The ladders. The bamboo ladders.

Yep, yep.

You know, bamboo ladder, vertical, hanging down with beautiful towels on it.

Yeah. If it doesn't horizontal.

Horizontal kind of thing.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

Not that vertical horizontal. So. But you know, something that kind of, as John says, doesn't close the space out. But people are going to walk in, go, oh God, what a great idea. You know, and all you're really doing is potentially just.

I didn't.

With the tiles all the way up to the top. They were, weren't they?

Yeah.

Or you, you could potentially. What do you. Oh, there's some clever things that you can do there, like just have the. Even the stick on kind of hinge things that they can just rest on and they spring them down with nice change from the top or something. But have a look through some of the design magazines. You know, the bamboo ladder make me solo. Okay. This is like a really out there and I am on quadrule flu tablets and I've just had a wig of medicine as well. So, you know, it could just be something I regret saying that has been recorded for future use. But I was just thinking like, you know, up against that back wall, like one of those. A nice feature. So it might be like the open kind of bamboo ladder that's horizontal, that the front is kind of pinned by nice looking chains and the back just has like a sticky onto the tile holding hinge that just sits it there. So it's not actually going through the tile and damaging the tile. So it's an easy fix if people want to remove it. And then just some lovely towels up there and maybe some kids toys. Like once again, you could probably do a little decorating feature there. Don't make it dark, don't make it dark towels or anything. Try to keep it nice and light. But you could actually do something quite designy in there because it did look like quite a large bathroom for. For the size of kind of a unit bathroom. And the fact you've got the bath, which young families love that, you know, you've got a few features there that you can really play to so that it might. Yeah. What about animals? You've obviously got a dog. Barney. Is there other. Many people in the block that have animals? Like, is that a popular.

Yeah. So Cats. There's a few cats, and there's certainly a few dogs. And they do. I think it's an automatic. Under 30 kilos gets approved, and then larger than 30 kilos on approval. So Barney's 33 kilos, so we had to get approval or a diet.

Okay. Crack yourself up. Okay.

So. So sorry, Dan. Just checking. So you're saying actually have it on an angle, so.

No, I was just saying, like, horizontal. Horizontal, yeah. So horizontal. So attached to the ceiling with little chains down. Am I explaining?

Yes. And then, John, do you want to.

Can you see what I'm saying?

I got the chains within the sticky bit.

I'm thinking you don't want to drill the tiles to put in something to hold the back of the. Okay, I'm gonna try to draw this. All right.

Okay.

Ready? I'm going solo, and I. God knows what happens. Can you hear me?

Yes. Can you hear me?

Yeah. Can you hear me? Okay, I'm draw. So normally we have, like, the bathroom. We have this, and it goes. So can you hear me?

Yep. Can hear you.

Yeah. So normally you have kind of like a ladder with some towels on it that look nice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this is the back wall here with. We've got the door coming in here. We've got the rest of the wall here with the bath hob down here. So I can't draw. Right. So what I'm thinking here, actually use some chains to hang down this bamboo ladder from the roof that kind of comes over the bath that's above. So, you know, even, you know, I've got magnets here, but it's kind of something that can just give a little bit of support.

Yep. That's a great idea.

So a box with kids toys in it.

Yep.

Does that make sense?

Love it. Love it.

Okay. And that's kind of what I'm trying to.

I was trying to go with, like, those little ideas that make it look better and also more functional and makes people love the space. And all of these apartments look the same, unless they have color walls.

And.

Yeah, I was just trying to think of what. What was low cost. Wow.

Yeah.

Love the ladder.

Key to all of that is if you can just appeal to that target market. The closer you can appeal to that target market, the better. And they can be really inexpensive, too. And the other thing, your Stages advice, they are. They're selling houses every week, and I use the stage of. Even when I'm renovating, like doing big structural renovations, I bring the stager in right at the start before I'M even relocating my working out where the PowerPoints and everything goes because that's how kind of heavily I rely on those guys because they've got the professional eye. They're seeing what sells every week, week in, week out. But.

Yeah, but they won't ask the contacts that they use. But I feel like all the advertising that's coming through from them in particular. Every apartment looks the same, maybe with a slightly different color scheme with cushions, but it's all that very neutral, identical, very. Only very small. Features different. And so that's why I think about what makes it better.

Yeah. If you can have a little signature piece which really taps into that target market, then that's. That's a way of differentiating with the rest of the stuff, though there's a fine line between differentiating and renovating to your own tastes. And neutral sells for a reason because it appeals to broad taste. So you just got to walk that line, I guess.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much, guys.

I appreciate it.

No worries.

I asked about the animals. Is the play that you can do on the kids. You can do on the animals, too. So it might be like a, I don't know, a dog shower thing that's just hung up going, where the dog showers at the back or in the bath. Do you know what I mean? It's just something that people go, never thought about that. I really want it. And you've got a $15 hose stuck there going, bunny shower. You know, it's kind of that little. So I don't think you need to spend a lot of money on it. But I. I don't think you, you should be spending time. A lot of money on, like the beach. Yeah. So I think this is like something that you can do quite well. I can't wait. You have to share it with me.

I'll share photos if I do it.

Yes, please do.

Just put something in. Put a comment in about getting people to give their ideas, because I'm pretty sure there'll be people who are going to go, oh, my God, can't you hear me, Jane? I was saying all the time that it should have been like, you know, a cat scratch thing or something. So put it into the comments.

Possibilities to life. Yeah.

And I'm going to find a photo of that ladder for you so you don't have to go in. Thank you. Well, if you think of anything else, Jade, feel free to let me know. We will, we will. You never know. You can ask John. I do come up for interesting ideas when I'm on quadrille cold. So we'll see what happens. Thanks for joining us, Kate.

Thank you, guys.

See you, Kate.

It's actually really interesting, John, isn't it? Because staging is really important. I mean, you've done that recently with the big developments and we've seen people add amazing value with houses and we talk about it as one of the key things to do when selling your property with renovating to sell and all of those amazing things. But the issue is, and it's funny because I've been thinking a lot about first home buyers at the moment and rescuing them from stuffing up on the wrong decision up front. And often what they do is they go, oh, I want to live close to somewhere, I can't afford the house, I'm going to buy the unit. And they get into this trap, Right. And that trap is now I've come to sell it or rent it. It's the same as everyone else. And you can't make the changes.

Yeah, yeah, yep. Yeah. We've said it lots of times, but it's the same problem with the new house and land and it's. It's really hard where you've got stock that's the same because it sets the price for everything. So there's always a challenge just to differentiate there. But yeah, and we have those. That conversation quite a lot, don't we? But, yeah, I think some good ideas there. And I think one of the things you can quite get to with Kate was the. Think of the reasons that she bought it in her. And I don't know whether they bought it prior to having or after having kids, but you'd imagine if that's the demographic. What's the kind of conversation that's going through their head when they're looking at those different open for inspections? You know, what are the. What are the. What's the conversation after they leave the open for inspection when they say, oh, that place was nice because it's got such and such, you know, so that's. That's what you're trying to. Yeah.

Okay.

I'm just going to check out some questions here, John. I've got some that have been sent through previously.

I've got as well.

Okay. And we've got a few underneath now. Susie. I do see that Susie. Susie is watching and I reckon that Susie might be interested in having a bit of a chat to us too, because she's just finished a. Well, she's doing her big renovation mil and she did post a lovely commentary about the help that she had been getting. Recently. So, Susie, I. I'm just going to. To put this into the chat for you so you can actually see. But Susie's also just put a comment up here, John, that, that you might want to talk to.

Okay, let me see. You might just want to read it. Oh, here we go. Where's the best place to get staging? We are literally. Does that say at the point, should every room be staged? Not necessarily. It's just. I'm answering the last part first. Should every room be staged? I think, and I was kind of a little bit there with the bathroom too. It's kind of like if you've done the job with the street appeal and because if you think about. We always talk about, particularly when we're doing with the mentor group, we're driving around suburbs and inspecting houses, we always talk about the conversation that people are having in the car on the way up the street. So the very first conversation is around the street appeal. The second one is around the curb appeal. So the facade of the house, third one is in the entrance as they come into the property. And then once you've seen the kitchen and the open plan, it's kind of like you can only lose the game from here on in. You know what I mean? Like, if you've got different. If you're introducing new stuff there that's different or personalized or whatever, then you're only detracting from your wins with those, you know, the street appeal and the entrance and the overplay and so on. So the way I think about it is if you've got the wow factor where it counts in those main areas, then when it comes to the bedrooms, you don't need as much staging. You just don't need to. It just needs to be neutral and not lose you the battle, in other words. So that's. That's the way I think about the bedrooms. Best place to get staging.

I think she's in Milura as well. So that be might be limiting for you in getting that.

Yeah, it might be harder. So the options are. A lot of the stages have warehouses, have their own little warehouse where they get all the gear. A lot of stages sell the furniture as well. It might be worth even talking to some stages in Melbourne and just seeing if they would be willing to rent you the furniture if you organize the transport, for instance. So if you went there with a. With a truck and picked it up and they gave you a plan to arrange it, whether they do that, you might find that that's a better price if you're Struggling for options in Mildura.

Yep, good answer. Okay, now we have a question. John, I'm not sure if you want to read that out. I have just put into the chat there guys the guest link so that you can see that. So please go in there and if you want to come on and share your pretty face that would be great. If not, don't worry about it. But high on quadruple. Thank you. That's what I thought. Okay, so John, we do have a question here from Joe. Did you want to read that out?

Yeah, sure, I'll do that now. So hey Jane, I listened to your Facebook posts and I'm also lying awake stressing about money and the fact that I might miss out on getting into the market before it takes off. Been researching two to three bedroom houses in Brunswick, Pascal, Vale, As Scott Vale, Essendon, Preston, Thornbury. So these are all in a northern suburbs of Melbourne for people outside of Melbourne. And I realized I cannot afford to purchase a house at the moment as such I think I had to rethink my strategy. So I started looking at apartments with a twist. I came across one two story loft apartment with two car spaces on St Kilda Road in Melbourne which is Melbourne city. 5 minute walk to Alfred Hospital. It's close to transport. A few blocks away from Prahran market shopping precinct one block away from Anzac train station. Well positioned. While it's a one bedroom apartment, it's on two levels and squat spacious. It should attract young quite white collar renters or hospital staff thinking it will generate a good return. It's advertised for 4:10 to 4:50. Assume that's the buy price. Now comes the dilemma. I've heard so much conflicting advice about apartments that I do not feel confident with this strategy. She worried about overseas investors Body corporate never buy one bedroom apartment. So these are all things that she's negative things that she's heard. As the next purchase I make will be setting up the foundation for my portfolio. I can't afford to get it wrong. So the big question is, is a one bedroom spacious apartment with parking a no go for my first investment purchase? Your advice would be much appreciated.

Big question eh? Alright, so I'm going to try to share my screen without noise feedback. So tell me if we've got some feedback going on there John.

We're doing.

Okay. How are we?

Yeah, it seems good at the moment. Yep.

Good now so what I've done here is this is the data so that we get from call, sorry from SQM data every single month. So you can see here there's about eight and a half thousand properties, sorry, suburbs that come up here. Now if I look at the these St Kilda properties suburbs once again and just check out first of all my biggest concern that I would be looking at straight up and I think I know the answer to this is is it the typical property? So the typical property is a two bedroom flat and correct me if I'm wrong, it was a one bedroom that Joe was talking about.

Yeah, one bedroom.

Yeah. So we know that units are the most popular property there. So that's good. But now we're taking it a step back and we're saying we're looking at not a two bedroom but a one bedroom. So this then would just start me having some concerns about, you know, is this going to be saleable again? And you know, is this where we want to be? And it's very similar to conversation we just had with about Kate which was I can't avoid the houses because I think the areas that you've chosen, the sensational areas that in a west, in a north or north up to Broadmeadows is really areas that we, you know, looked at over the, the last couple of months and mentoring students.

The advertised price for the apartment is 410 to 450. So I guess we have to assume that that's per budget, say 450.

Yep. So. So just looking at that, you know, we've got vacancy rates there are very good. So those numbers sit well with us. The number of properties now this is houses as sold. So we don't have the units data there. And when we start looking at things like growth. So this is be reflective of the fact that St Kilda west would have, you know, not a very big. I would suggest we don't have a lot of sales and there's not that many properties there anyhow. So you know, we've got a smaller amount compared to like 10,000 units that we've got in St Kilda and 4,000 units that we've got in St Kilda East. So that's why it comes up as statistically not relevant. So you know, we've got some, we've got some good data here. Let's just have a look at the percentage of renters. So we've got 53, 55, 64 renters. So. And it was just St Kilda, John.

Or was it Melbourne?

Okay, so it's not St Kilda at all.

No, let me just read it again just to double check. No, it's Melbourne so it's, it's okay, it's city.

Okay. So let's check this out and see what comes up. So we've got St. Kilda Road, Melbourne. Okay, so this would then just ignore everything I just said. So what we're looking at now is I can't even search for Melbourne. Yes, I can. See if I can find filter. Lots and lots of properties all around Australia. Laying awake at night worrying about money is not a good idea either. So you know, we want to make sure that what we've got available for you. So we don't have the data on Melbourne proper because they just look at the city, inside the city. Okay, so let's jump over here then and have a look at what we've got.

In itself, you can't get data.

So here we've got 7,800 properties. We've got 4,800 of those units. Of the one bedroom units, we've got. 1271 and two bedroom units, we've got. 1800. So there's still quite a lot of one bedroom units there, John, which is interesting. Okay, so we've got the 1200 one bedroom units and 1800 two bedroom units. So it's not that much of a, you know, completely out there. No one wants that kind of property. So that's, I guess that's interesting in itself. I guess the other thing is that it is units are typical along that road. But once again you're falling into the problem that we see a lot of people fall into and that is that they can't then resell that property or, or they have trouble because it's the same as every other property and you're kind of facing those troubles that Kate has. So I'd be considering maybe with the money that you have, the, let's say, $400,000 budget, where could you buy that could potentially get you some great value? And where could you buy that if you didn't necessarily have to live there? Be agnostic about where you look so that you can actually buy the best property you can buy with your money. And that's how I would start thinking about it.

Yeah, I think it's a good, it's a good exercise. Even if you have got parameters or restrictions around where you will and won't buy. Like I only want to buy in Victoria or I only want to buy in New South Wales. Even if you just start with a thought exercise of saying I've got $400,000, where's the best possible place? As in where's the best possible suburb that I can park that for the highest possible return and based on all the criteria that we know we're trying to achieve. So you know, things like number of sales and percentage renters and low vacancy rates, all of those, that good stuff that's, that's in your probably success club and Location Masterclass because what you're trying to do is you're trying to say in an ideal world for $400,000, is this the suburb that has the more ticks in more boxes than any other suburb for $400,000? And if you can start from there, even if you have got parameters, then at least it gives you a yardstick, you know, where you can say, well I'm, it's a few, it's, it's got a little less percentage renders or whatever it is, it's yields a little lower but it's, it's in Victoria. So I'm willing to take the hit on that, you know, so you know, at least you can measure what you're losing out on if that's your decision.

And sorry guys, I'm going off mute. Coughing attacks Now I'm just going to jump back in to Location Masterclass because one of the things that you can do here is John, we can use the suburbs lecture software to do that exact kind of analysis that John just talked about.

Now it might be worth a little bit because I'm wondering if Joe's just familiar with, you know, some of the fundamentals around appreciation of land and versus, you know, multiple units and that kind of thing. Do you want to just cover off that quickly? Because I just, I'm worried that we might be just skipping over fundamentals there.

Yeah. So I guess what, what John is talking about there is that the fact that, you know, when we, when we talk about what drives value and what makes value go up, we're often looking at the fact that land appreciates and properties depreciate. It's like the car, as soon as you drive it out of the lot, it starts losing money. So you know, so that's why we see, you know, the long term type of numbers around, you know, the land appreciating and that's what's driving a lot of the capital growth. Now that's not to say coming up into the next five, ten years where there's a lot of infill and we start seeing townhouses and units. But quite frankly, you know, some of the cladding issues that we've seen in units in Sydney and the fire issues that we've seen in, you know, some of the larger blocks of units, I think There's a bit of reluctance now and we're starting to see a bit of a dip in those type of properties now. There's been a lot of commentary over the last few days that I've been following around. You know, construction has really dipped off in, you know, the last few months and they're expecting it to be lower for the next 18 months. So arguably a lot of the potential excess in some of those cities that has been there will be sucked up and then there will be a shortage of affordable units and accommodation and it does go in cycles, but. But the underlying feature is that it is the land that goes up in value. So, you know, if you can get land and being the best possible area to get land, that would be my preference for anyone. So that's where I would start looking at it. And you know, when you, if you've got access to the ultimate guide to renovation, you know, when you go into here, you don't have to choose one particular city, you can actually just go into all cities and, you know, you, you might be happy to go 20% below and maybe 10% above and you want to be, you know, within, let's say, 20Ks of the CBD. And all of a sudden across these cities, you're going to start coming up with areas that potentially can be affordable. So, you know, we've got a lot there in Adelaide, there's a few there in Brisbane that are coming up. We've got, you know, go to Darwin, Geelong. So, you know, these. Norland and Whittington in Geelong have come up a number of times on some of the deal reviews I've done for our students recently. We've got Hobart that, you know, just taking the cap of being the third best economic winner of the state by state CBA prize, which I'll get to in a moment. Newcastle, there's been some really fantastic growth around Newcastle that's coming come up as well. So there might be some affordable areas there. Roman Terrace keeps coming up on radar every now and then when I'm doing maps and things. Perth, you know, arguably there's some recovery, the iron ore prices back up. There's a lot of money going into exploration as well. So it is very much driven by the mining industry. So I would have some concerns about, you know, the fact how long you want to keep these properties. And then there's the Sunshine coast. So, you know, that northern area, there's been a lot of development down the hospital, etc. Up there and Wollongong. So don't, don't just restrict yourself to. I can't afford these great areas and now I'm going to be in the, you know, go and buy a unit that may not be the typical unit. You know, consider, consider exactly, you know, what you can potentially afford and be geographically agnostic would be my advice.

Whoa.

Okay. We've got a huge question here, John. I hope that helped. By the way, I'm going to try to show on Facebook, I'm in the car. Is that it? Is that Susan?

Yeah, that's the one. Yeah. So what I'm. She's just filling us in there a little bit on. She sold up everything, including all the furniture. I think the actual question there though is, question, is it. I think it's. Is it advantageous to have minimal staging, maybe entrance, perhaps not actually have beds in the bedrooms etc or lounge in the lounge room. So I guess it's a. From what I can glean from that, it's whether you would have the choice between an empty house and just bare minimum staging. Just a few bits and bobs here and there.

You know what I'd say, John? I'd say it depends on the area and I would. My gut feeling is Mildura doesn't need staging. Don't overthink this. Don't overthink it.

Yep. And so you're probably feeling on that. Yeah.

As much as I like Mildura, hello to everyone from Mildura. I don't think it needs staging. So it's fine. But remember, it's all about what the typical person wants and is after. And you've got from memory an atypical property as well. So I think that, you know, you've got enough of a property that doesn't really need to have anything special done to it. So don't overthink it. Susie. I think it's fine. Okay, I am going to share my screen again because I want to share with you guys a couple of things that I've been watching recently and I think I've managed to create a PowerPoint presentation in the middle of all of that as well. So let me just see if I can run this and show you some of the information that I'm seeing at the moment. So as I mentioned before, there's a state by state commsec guide that comes out and judges the economic performance of the different states around Australia. Melbourne is winning the charge, followed by New South Wales. So Melbourne's just taken over New South Wales. New South Wales has been the leader for the last three months and then we've Got Hobart. So we're really seeing some really good economic information coming out of Hobart and then followed by Canberra, Brisbane, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. Now I don't believe any of these are uncharacteristic for even when I start looking at what the long term growth is in some of these areas, actual fact, I'm going to share that with you too but because I think that sometimes when we have a look at some of the growth in these suburbs and as I said, you know, we run this, the macro that we run every single month. And here's some of my behind the scenes information here. But when I have a look at that macro I see helps. I see this is what the 10 year growth has been. So Adelaide over the last 10 years we've got 1.2, Ballarat 4.3, Bendigo 3.3, Brisbane 1.5, Canberra 3.3. So we start looking at these areas that have had, you know, some, some good growth. We've got these major regionals here that are having that flow and effect from the capital cities. And once again Wollongong down here is another one of those and Newcastle. So we've had some of those larger regional areas. So from an affordability point of view and especially back to Jo's question, I'd start, I wouldn't be too shy about looking in these areas and the reason that Ballarat and Bendigo is not on the list for the suburbs lecture software is that statistically a lot of the numbers can be thrown out. And so one month you might have growth of 20%. In the next month it's like minus 45 because there was one big sale. And so if I don't believe the numbers, I don't share them basically is.

My answer to that.

And Sydney is 5.75 and we've got Hobart and Melbourne here at 4 and 3. Now these are the areas that I think, you know, in the last few years, like in. Sorry, in the last few months. So I being a bit of a nice nerd here but I track these numbers. So if I'm actually tracking for instance the Sunshine coast and I'm trying to get a feel for, you know, what's been happening in the Sunshine coast. It's gone up from this time last year at 1.51 and we're starting to see this growth 1-71917 up to two ones. So this is the 10 year growth. But so it's really telling us that there has been some significant growth in the Sunshine coast area in the last few years. We know that there's been employment there and infrastructure spend, etc. Now we've got, you know, Perth that's done nothing at all. We've got Darwin that's done nothing. It's quite depressing. We've got Brisbane that's done nothing. And although people are saying it's almost Brisbane's time, you know, it's almost Christmas time, we've kind of been hearing that for five years now and I'm kind of over that. Adelaide hasn't really been performing either. So if I look at this kind of economic, goodness knows what I'm about to reveal. The economic kind of stuff, you know, Melbourne and Sydney and their associated commuter cities are the ones that just have the kind of no brainer. It always just works. So if I look at, you know, why this would be. There's a huge amount of annual popular growth, population growth rates and if I pull out my notes here, I've just. I was speaking to the chief economist from Suncorp yesterday morning about this exact same conversation and he was saying, you know, Melbourne's got a 2.2% growth rate per annum and that's actually like one of the absolute highest in the entire civilized developed world. So, you know, we've got a huge amount of international people and interstate people coming to Victoria acts back up there. Now Queensland's always kind of had that, I call it the retirement factor. But you know, it's a lovely lifestyle but there's been a huge push from affordability. Now John, I don't know about you, but I've known people who've been selling up here in Melbourne, in Kew, eastern suburbs in Sydney, selling it, you know, 2 million and buying like an extraordinary mansion for a million bucks and putting a million in the bank up in Brisbane. So, you know, I think that's been driven that as well. So population speak once again, is this the kind of construction stuff? You know, people are not going to invest their money where they don't think there's value. And the constructions in Victoria, New South Wales, there's an interesting article today from Harry Tranoff who's, you know, basically an apartment builder and he buy, he builds big apartments. Now he's done a little bit of a swivel on his strategies in the last couple of years and one of those has been build to rent rather than build to sell and he's building to rent the bigger properties along the lines like the New York properties that are kind of like the three to four bedroom properties that mum and dad want to live in. With the kids. And then we've also seen him, you know, talk recently about the fact that a lot of the one bedroom units are moving because people do want to live near the city and they're close. So you know, there's a, they're building one bedroom units and four bedroom units. So that's interesting. But this is construction and just a quick jump here, which I think is also very interesting because, you know, we've had some really bad rental returns. So this is another study that I've been looking at in the last couple of weeks. And you know, we've got some nice yields here. We've got, you know, when we think about principal and interest loans at the moment and we think about them on own occupied properties, the interest rate has a 3 in front of it. For investors with principal and interest, you're around kind of 4.2. And for investments with interest only, if you kind of like your first investment property with kind of 4.5, if it's your second or third and you're at a kind of a second or third tier lender, it's, you know, closer to 5. And if you think about this, because I really want people to think about this, I'm not going to harp on about it much, but a half a percent from a, you know, 4.5 or even a 4 to a 5 or 1% difference on $100,000 loan is $1,000. So $500,000 loan, $5,000. So if it's the difference between getting a property in a good area that can go up in value, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 a year to paying an extra five grand in interest, don't, you know, don't be fearful of those third tier lenders with their property. The interest rates a little bit higher, you know, stand up proudly at the barbecue when your mate says, I just got a 3.5% loan and you go, yeah, I've got 5%, but I'm making 50 grand a year, so be proud of that. Own it. But we do know that Sydney's okay. I am on quad, quadrul once again. So if I just raved then and I play this back and it sounds dumb, I apologize. But the other thing here is look at the drop. So we have had a significant drop in Sydney rents as well. And Darwin, poor Darwin. So there has been some rental issues, but you know, the, those regional areas, Geelong, Bendigo, Ballarat, Wollongong, some, I mean say Sunshine coast and Newcastle, we've got some really good, you know, rental increases and you know, Perth is starting to work. Perth deserves to have a little bit of break. It's had 10 hard years, so. And you know, Hobart's got some really good rental increases there too. And that's back to the fact that there's severe shortage and a lot of the issues associated with people putting properties on Airbnb and just finishing off here. You know, I think there's some really positive stories here as well. You know, Melbourne this month has just started rebounding now. The clearance rates are still 78% in Sydney, 74% in Melbourne. These markets are back. I know I've harped on about this for the last four months and begging people to get into the market, but guys, it has moved, it has happened. If you're waiting for the whistle to blow, consider it blown. The market is back. We're going to have 10,000 new first time buyers come January in the market. And if you just think about this, you know, I track the realestate.com and domain.comau views, they have gone up. You know, we're talking 20, 30% in the last couple of months. What happens is people start looking at properties, then they ring their mortgage broker, our mortgage broking business, Investors Choice Mortgages, we're having huge amount of increase in people getting their pre approvals or getting just a finance check. What happens? They get a pre approval, they go out and look for, you know, it takes six weeks, four to six weeks really, to get a pre approval approval if everyone's honest about it, rather than just a rubber stamp and offers. And there's an equity release there as well. So six weeks, we're talking, you know, August, middle of September and then you've got, you know, you probably start looking and although you have approval for three months, let's just say it takes you six weeks to find a property. So now we're in the end of October, beginning of November, six weeks to settle. So now we're in mid December and it's like our nightmare time of the year. It's when poor Lisa in the office decides that she's going to go on a holiday for two weeks in Christmas and everyone settles like a new Christmas Eve. But everyone will be settling. January, the data readers are going to get the data and February, you'll hear the boom is back. So, guys, it started now, mark my words, this is what's happening. Okay, rant over. There you go. That's all. I have to share on that.

Very good. Well, I got a few questions here, Jane. I know we're getting up to Time. Will we zip through those just quickly. There's a couple of them I think. Reasonably straightforward for you, but this is a good one. This is from Rue. So Rue's been watching the video that we put out where you explained how to cost a renovation for profit. So how to make out the work out the cost before you start, he says it's very useful. I can use this golden rule to search my property in Melbourne right now. However, I found something very interesting. Some areas the properties sold, meaning the past sales didn't even reach the land value. So obviously he's gone and had a look at the land values and found out a bit about the land values per square meter. However, in some, in some area, way more than the land value.

Yeah.

Do I get into those areas where they sold below land value or not? So I guess it's a question around buying under market. I guess he's saying there, is there a canary down a coal mine if the houses are selling below land value.

Where'S he seeing that In Melbourne?

Yeah, he didn't actually say the area. Now he does say he searched for my property in Melbourne, So. Yes, that's right. So he said there in some areas, properties sold didn't even reach land values. So I mean, there's an obvious data question there. The land values might be where he's getting information might be lagging given that there has been a correction. So, but, but putting that aside, is there, is there any alarm bells if he sees houses that aren't going below land values?

I think your comment there about the question on land value is really relevant because often it's really difficult to get data on land values. And if I just share this screen with RP data, just to give you an idea, give me a suburb in Melbourne, John, that's got land. Broadmeadows.

Yeah, why not?

Yep, broadmeadows.

Okay, so if you've got. It's Ray, isn't it?

Yeah.

Rao. Yeah.

Raoul. Raoul. If you've got access to RP data, this is what I do. You can go through and you can get some information here on the suburbs report and it actually gives you some information on what land value is and what the house and the unit prices are. So there's two reports that I find really useful and this is one of them. So this gives you what the median sales are, number sold houses and then units. And then it comes down to land value when there is actually land value sold. So there's not that much sold. And this has been my concern. You know, we're now, you know, Broadmeadows, we're out of, you know, the CBD, we're out of the 10, 15K range. And we're only seeing two blocks of land sell in 2018 and 14 so far in 2019. I don't statistically believe this is enough to do a land value kind of calculation on. And often what people do is they do this land value based on the sale. So that would concern me if you're, if your land value calculation is based on something else and you know, that might be something like, you know, you're saying, I've seen a couple of land sales and they're at 450,000 and the property sold at, you know, 420, then it doesn't make land. It doesn't make sense. It might be that that 450,000 land block is bought by the person next door that can extend it and develop it, or it might be the fact that it is a, you know, bought at commercial value by the RTA so they can expand the roadway or something. Sometimes there's something behind those things statistically. That land value kind of question always concerns me because I always wonder whether data is coming from and it's not easy to get the data on the land value. So I would question it. I would, I would just compare against, you know, house and land together that's similar to your property. What are they selling for?

It's almost its own measurement. Like if you, if I think of the way developers use land value and the way that, that discussion that takes place with real estate agents. So there's some suburbs that have got that are kind of in the sweet spot for, you know, multi unit or whatever. So they've got council, a zoning where development can take place. And then basically every, every developer and every real estate agent that deals with developers in those areas knows that what that land value is. But the land value is a function of what that property or what that block of land's worth to the developer. So it's a function of supply and demand and it really doesn't have anything to do with the dwelling. So the dwelling in that case becomes kind of irrelevant. But again, it's hard. It's hard data to find. And most of the time it's just, you know, information that's known between the people actually on the ground there, you know, the developers and the agents. That makes sense. You might be muted there, Jane. I'll go on with the next.

I'm using myself. Sorry.

Alrighty. Kerry's got a question. Chad, I'VE been following your videos and I was wondering if I form a company to renovate both cosmetic Renovate both cosmetic and eventually structural renovations. I heard that I can complete unlimited cosmetic renovations, but I'm limited as far as structural according to the ATO per financial year or two years. Is this correct? Where would I find out this information?

So this is what you need to speak to a solicitor about because there's a lot of people who do talk about, you know, buying in a company with a trust structure or corporate trustee. I know, you know, we did it back in like 2001, 2002, because I went to some seminar and the solicitor or accountant got up and convinced us or we're all going to be sued if we ever buy properties in our own names. Hasn't happened. Has never happened to any of my clients. So that worries me. I've recently been seeking out some answers on this myself for one of my mentoring students and I've come across a solicitor who is very versed on this and whether, you know, companies are worthwhile or not. So send me a PM and I'll get you some details of people who I think you could speak to. I think everyone's situation is different and it does concern me that people rush in and get these. And I know, you know, a few years ago we looked at moving two of our properties out of the company just because of the extra cost associated with it. And you can't keep your negative gearing benefits and blah, blah, blah. If you're flipping, you know, arguably, you know, company you can flip and your capital gains taxes charged at the company tax rate, which I think is 29% now, rather than your tax rate. So there could be benefits for you. But you know, when we were looking to move out to properties out of the trust, company structure was going to be like $94,000 in stamp duty. So make sure you have the right decision up front, get the right information. And that's not, John and I, we're not good at that stuff.

No, no, I think, yeah, find someone who's really good at that, accountant and solicitor who's, you know, versed in, in property in that way and, and go down that route. But yeah, I think, I think having done companies with the developments, it would seem strange that there would be restrictions on the type of renovation. But you know, that again, take that with a grain of salt and talk to someone who knows what they're talking about. Yeah, perfect. One last one here from Troy and this is relating to. We recently had a, a video Series, Jane, where we talked about or you talked about the.

Remind me what I talked about.

The four different quadrants of the investor model, the behavior that went on. You also did an appearance with Bryce from the property couch with this as well. And the video series had a downloadable check. Not checklist, I always want to say checklist spreadsheet that was called the portfolio killer. And you put your property into the spreadsheet the year it was bought, how much you bought it for what the current price is now. And then it calculated the capital growth at the end of that to say okay, well over the seven years that you've owned that, that's had 7% capital growth. And at the bottom of that we could put each property in. At the bottom of that it gave you the capital growth, the average capital growth for the entire portfolio. So it was a really great tool. Now this is a question around cash flow versus capital growth and how it relates to your retirement. So this is an oldie bit of goodie. So choices I found throughout your video series you left out some vital information. For example, while you focused your presentation on capital growth, there was no discussion on how to turn that position into positive cash flow to allow for retirement to occur. There is obviously a debt pay down as part of the strategy, but that seems to have been overlooked. Can you expand on that?

Oh, Troy, so many questions there. And here I was going googling away trying to find that portfolio killer in case that was the calculation that you're about to ask me. No, I think you know so many.

Things, it's really just an explanation.

No, that's fine. I found the calculator. But you're not even going to share it with you now. But I will share with you another calculator. You know what, what you are asking about is. Yes, you know there's always this kind of assumption that we, we end up in a good position. And this portfolio calculator that I have here on my Investors Choice mortgages site. So just under investorschoice.com portfolio calculator, this does make the assumption that you are selling the properties at the end. So let's just say you say $50,000 is the income that you want in 15 years time you get to go in here and go inflation, it's only one and a half percent. And you know where I'm never going to get 3% on my money if I put it in the bank and my tax rate's 30% and you know I'm only going to get 5% growth and you know I've got capacity to buy two $650,000 properties with a 90% loan, like, let's say 80% loan. So you just put in whatever number you want there and calculate it. And what this does is it looks at it and it says, okay, what you want today based on inflation is this in 15 years, which means you need this much in the bank if you're only earning. And it back calculates with all that capital gains tax information and comes up and says, look, you're going to need about $2 million worth of property now. So this is assuming, yes, your home debt is paid down. And you have concentrated on doing that through a number of. And we've got techniques of doing that as well. You know, John and I just met up with two very, very amazing financial planners last Friday who presented to us, paid down your home loan debt structure over five years. Same kind of thing. So, you know, where there's all. There's all a lot of stuff. And yes, that was left out, but this was an assumption that, you know, you had these properties, they've gone from $1.9 million now for that up to, you know, $4 million in 15 years time. You sell them, you pay the capital gains tax at your taxpayer, you pay all of the loan back, and you pay the selling costs. So we have lost any costs here. You put 2 million bucks in the bank at 3%, you get some money. So, yes, the conversation that you are suggesting that we forgot, we know it's going on and we know that there's a back end, but unfortunately, we don't have time to explain everything that we know in one webinar. For us, it was really important for people to identify themselves in where they sit. You know, if you're a cynic, there's nothing I'm ever going to tell you, Troy, that you're ever going to believe. And I'm okay with that because I'm not teaching cynics stuff because I get that if I'm talking to a gambler, I need to make it exciting for them. So. But I need to show them how not just take action, but to do it with rigor and do it with contemplation about the research and the education. And if I'm talking to a dreamer, I want to talk to the dreamer. I'm going to go, it's okay to dream and do every course that's on the market. But guys, it's time to start taking action, you know, So I needed. Yeah, I needed people to actually have the capacity to have that conversation going. How do I identify myself as a bigger part of. Yes, there's numbers down below and yes, you know, building for capital growth is great. We want you to have cash flow. That's why we teach you how to renovate so you can push your, your rent up, you know, and that's why, you know, we have you look in the club. A lot of our students mind the way Troy, I'm not saying you're one of the cynics because obviously you haven't. You invested time and energy in being part of the community. Right.

So he also said that he understood that somewhere in there was, there was a debt pay down. He was just basically looking.

Exactly, yeah. We want the debt pay down on your investment properties. We're saying sell them, but, but you know, you need to be able to afford them the whole way through too. So, you know, push up the rent, be it from granny flats or short term stays or renovating or whatever that you do to do that being an area where there's demand, anticipating, those kind of things. So there's that opportunity as well. But at the end, debt has to be paid back. The banks want their money and there's ways to do that and get to it faster. I mean, we have, you know, offset account strategies, we have, you know, strategies paying your home down, all of those things, but you need to have your home paid off.

Yeah, I think broad strokes there, Troy, and I don't think this is applicable to your question, but just for other people that might be dealing with that question of cash flow versus capital growth, Jane's strategy, which is the Trident strategy, and if you think of her book with its two renovations. Sorry, two properties, one renovation, a million dollars in the bank is primarily a strategy where the positive cash flow is realized as part of the exit strategy as opposed to. Because if you think of the guys that we're working with who are typically got, you know, passive income goals between 50,000 and 250,000, you know, passive income goals per year. If you're trying to do that with properties that are paying you 40 bucks each month, you're going to need a hell of a lot of properties. And that's just not possible these days where we know when the restrictions. So most of the guys we're dealing with even up over the 200k target mark, we're only talking about two to four properties. And that's because it's realized that the endpoint is part of the exit strategy. And there's lots of ways, as Jane said, to realize that exit strategy. But that's essentially the difference and it's not always appealing to people because it's far easier to say, hey, you can buy this property and it's going to pay you 40 bucks each week but it doesn't get you to that end goal in 10 or 15 years time. So that's, that's the difference between it. We're delaying that gratification in order to have the big payday at the end.

Ideally I would love for you to have the opportunity to say my properties have gone up so much in value, I only need to sell one of them to pay off the debt and keep the other one growing. Pay eatstead off and it can keep growing and the rent's just coming in as my income. So you know, we'd like to have you structured in so many ways so that you don't have to sell everything down. But the worst case scenarios, sell everything down, put the money in the bank and live off that.

Well, it gives you a nice benchmark, doesn't it? It gives you a benchmark to aim at from the very start. And that's a, that's a great, you know, a great thing. Nice to have a target.

Absolutely. Well, John, I think we've tucked out running late from a 2 o' clock meeting. I'm sorry we had a few more technical issues today guys, but. Yeah, well, we've, we've managed to do our July call in August and we will be doing an August call in August. I know, bonus. We've been doing these every month for the last six years and we have never missed a month. But last week, you know, I think it was the 24th, I was like, it can't be the last Thursday of the month. And wasn't the diary and it was my fault, all my fault, I confess. Anyhow, guys, thank you so much for your questions. Thank you so much for participating and being part of this. Thank you so much for being part of the community. Look at all of our hearts and prayers at the moment with Piper, Sarah and Heath Crawford. Little Piper's back in hospital. Good news is they did have to bring her out of her coma. She had a really bad epilepsy. She was having them for 40 minutes at a time, as many of you know, because you've made a donation to the Epilepsy foundation that goes to supporting the families in the hospitals that support families with epilepsy. That all of those donations go to. Join the youe Property Success. No, join your Property Success Club. Go to that foundation. We're about $1,000 off our target of $10,000, John. So anyone else who wants to make an extra donation to that, please do tell your friends they can get in for as little as $5. Or some people pay 15amonth, some people pay 500. It used to be 97amonth so you know, it was over 900 worth of value. And we just donate every cent to that foundation. But anyhow, they bought little Piper out. A lot of people have asked me out of the coma on Monday because she, they found she had pneumonia. And the good news news is she's up this morning and she is looking a little bit brighter. So all your thoughts and prayers that have been coming through have been very, very well intentioned and are doing good. So thank you once again to our beautiful community for supporting us in supporting them. So there you go. Okay guys. Well, I guess I'm going to do my sign off and you know, I hope you have a great weekend. I hope August is wonderful for you. Happy horse's birthday today. Having grown up at horse stud, celebration day in our family. And as always, here's to your property success. Bye.