Ep 4 | Beyond Business: Building Wealth Through Property

Guest Expert: Mia Shilkin | Mia Casa Property Investment Strategy | Property Investment Expert

You've got profit in the bank. Now what?

Most Australian business owners pour everything back into their business, either reinvesting, expanding, or upgrading. But most rarely think strategically about building wealth outside it. The result is that you end up with all your eggs in one basket.

Property investment is about creating a diversified wealth portfolio that generates passive income and sets you up for long-term financial freedom.

The problem is that most people buy property based on emotion or follow a buyer's agent who's really just a salesperson. They skip the holistic assessment, ignore tax structures, and don't ask hard questions about their financial position.

In this episode, Fiercely Financial hosts Kate De Jong and Dee Skillicorn sit down with property investment strategist Mia Shilkin to unpack how business owners can use property to build real wealth, without the costly mistakes that derail most first-time investors.

Mia brings 15 years of experience working across Australian markets to help clients build portfolios aligned with their long-term goals. Her approach is numbers-first, emotion-second, because wealth creation happens in the strategy, not the dream home.

What We Cover

• Why most business owners are dangerously concentrated in one asset (their business), and how property diversifies that risk
• The holistic assessment you need before choosing a property: your age, relationship stability, business longevity, tax position, and financial ecosystem
• Capital growth vs. cash flow strategies: which approach suits your goals?
• Location, location, location: Why 80% of Australians shouldn't invest where they live, and how to find the right growth markets
• The SMSF property goldmine: How to buy commercial property through your super fund and rent it back to your own business (legally!)
• Why you need independent experts, not a one-stop-shop trying to sell you everything
• The mortgage broker vs. investment loan broker distinction (and why it matters more than you think)
• Common traps: inflated markets, land banking, false supply issues, and buyers' agents with hidden agendas
• Tax considerations, rental yield calculations, and what "debt till death" really means (yes, that's the French translation of "mortgage")
• Why financial literacy isn't taught, and how to fill the knowledge gap before making expensive mistakes

Key Insight

Property investment is all about preparation. Get your financial foundations right, build relationships with the right experts, and understand the strategy before you need it. That way, when opportunity knocks, you're positioned to act positively, not scrambling to catch up.

If you loved this episode, please share it with another business owner who needs to hear it!

Ready to build your property investment strategy?

Join the Fiercely Financial Action Planning Workshop on 30th May 2026 to get direct access to Mia and our other expert guests. Bring your wealth questions, your numbers, and your goals, and we'll workshop your personalised path from business owner to wealth creator.

Spots are limited, please reach out to your hosts to secure your place!

Connect with Your Hosts

Mia Shilkin, Property Investment Strategist
🌐 https://www.miacasastrategy.com.au/ | ✉️ info@miacasastrategy.com.au

Dee Skillicorn, Cryptocurrency Expert at Digi-Secure
🌐 digi-secure.co | ✉️ dee@digi-secure.co

Kate De Jong, Business Coach at Inspired Business
🌐 katedejong.com | 📱 @katedejong.inspiredbusiness | ✉️ kate@katedejong.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

You're bringing in the money, but are you building wealth? Welcome to Fiercely Financial, bringing you insights from top experts to help you shift from business owner to wealth creator. We're your hosts, Kate De Yong. And I'm Dee Skillicorn. And we're on a mission to help more business owners build long-term wealth. Let's dive in. Hello again, everyone, and welcome back to the Fiercely Financial Podcast series. I'm here with my wonderful co-host, Dee Skillicorn of DigiSecure. Hi, Dee. How are we all? Lovely and good to be back with you. And we're sorry seeing you too. Likewise. We're very lucky today to have a property expert on board in Mia Shelken. Hi, Mia. Hello, Kate.

SPEAKER_05 0:41

Hi, Dee. Lovely to be here.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

We're excited to have you because you are the next piece of our puzzle. So at the start of this series, we're talking to business owners with Sam Morris about how to actually structure your business cash flow to prioritize profit and build profit so that you then have money to invest in into wealth-building assets. And then then we in our second episode, we were looking at tax structures and how to set up your business to maximize your position for tax and so on. And then we looked at SMSFs being the vehicle as to how you can generate some of this wealth through SMSFs. And now we're moving on to you around property, how property can be the next piece of the puzzle to build wealth. And so we are very keen to hear all your wisdom today.

SPEAKER_05 1:33

Thank you. And it's funny, those things, it's all though all roads lead to Mia, the tax strategy, the SMSF, all of it. I was like, oh, good, we can have a good chat about that today. There's so many aspects to it. And I think this is such a vital and it's important topic for all of us. And I love the name of the podcast, Fiercely Financial. I think that that's what we need to do. We need to take control of our situations and make the most of them. And yeah, I'm really happy to talk today with the two of you about how you can do that through property investing as a business owner or as somebody who's an employee as well.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Wherever you have a bit of money around and able to invest, what's the best way to do that? And so, Mia, tell us firstly about your journey to where you are now in property. How did you get here? What's your backstory?

SPEAKER_05 2:22

Oh well, my backstory started sometime in the early 1900s. I have been in real estate for a while, but not that long. So I was actually in the human services field and I lived in beautiful Fremantle. This would be about 18 years ago. No, longer than that. Sorry, about 27 to 30 years ago. And I was living with this lovely lady who just was a bit too much of a party animal. And at that time, a mortgage was the same as rent. So I think about the third time that I went to visit my dad, and I had my pyjamas packed in the car, and he said, What's going on? I said, Oh, can't get any sleep at home. So I bought I bought a property. And what was actually happening at the time was I was searching for property and my dad and my stepmum were helping me and they went up north, and this obviously was many, many years ago, no phone signal up in the outback of Western Australia. And so I found this property and I couldn't confer with them as to whether or not they thought it was any good because they were out of signal. And the real estate agent at the time, because I have quite a distinctive surname, said to me, Do you know so and so? And I said, Yes, that's actually my dad. And so he'd gone to school with dad. Um, and so there was a situation, and this is not how we operate in real estate these days, um, but there was a man who wanted to buy the property as an investment, and then myself, as a very young, very early 20s person, and he said to me, I think you deserve a break. If you put in an extra thousand dollars, then I'm sure the deal will be yours. And so my first property at$145,000. I remember getting the phone call that it was mine and me going, Oh my goodness, how am I ever going to pay that much money off? But the good old days of buying large amounts of land for small amounts of money, but that experience that I had because I had had so many interactions with agents on this hunt for property, and then I'd had this really, really positive experience with this lovely man. And it wasn't because he gave me the option for the property, it was how he conducted himself and and everything to do with it that really sparked my first interest in that. My career at human services, I got to a point in my late 20s where I realized it was a little bit of a revolving door, and I was we were seeing the same young people coming back time and time again. And I really just got myself into this mindset where I wanted to help people who wanted to help themselves. And I'd always loved property and design and interior and exterior. My gardens are something to be reckoned with. I live in Queensland now, but when I was in Western Australia, I tried to turn my garden into some tropical situation, and no, I just had to move across the country to do it. But that's always been a really, really tropical plants dried out from the heat. Oh, my tropical thousands of dollars. Thank you, Bunnings. But anyway, so I at some point in my career thought properties are really, really calling me. So I did. I actually got my own sales registration and I started working as a sales agent in Western Australia, and I very quickly discovered it wasn't at all what I thought it was going to be. It wasn't this lovely assistance situation that I'd experienced. It was very cutthroat. The agents were, it wasn't a community, it was very isolating. And when I first started, I came in and I had a lot of experience with talking to people in in many different situations of life through counselling. So I found it quite easy to connect with people who were looking to sell their properties and really hear them and help them. And so obviously I did quite well starting out, and none of the other agents in the office liked it.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

So you had emotional intelligence, you could pick up on people's emotional needs, and that's always what's driving property decisions, isn't it?

SPEAKER_05 6:08

Well, it totally is. And I I I found that I'd gone from being oversaturated with people's emotions in the counseling sphere to then moving into real estate sales, and I was also being flooded with people's emotions because anyway, and I wasn't helping people, I was helping people to offload property after a divorce, or it wasn't quite what I wanted to be doing. So I found my way towards a company, I was actually introduced to them, um, and they only worked with investors. And for me at that time, it was a whole new, whole new realm um of what I'd been doing. It was all about the numbers, it was all about looking at people's situations, seeing where they were today, where they wanted to be in a certain period of time, and using property as the vehicle to help them get there. And that just really made so much sense to me because it's all there in black and white. We're no longer looking at the feng shui of the property or the the shape of the pool or the direction. We're looking at how old are you, what do you need to do to achieve and this, how much taxi paying, all of that sort of stuff. So I think this year it's 15 years. That was 15 years ago when I just dipped my toe into property investment strategy. And luckily the company that I first started working with were Australia-wide. So I was educated on the markets across Australia, and I've been working as a property investment strategist ever since. And I am very pleased not to be selling people's houses.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

Yeah, and I can see how that must be so much more fulfilling because you're helping people work out this is what I've got to play with. This is this is where I want to be in 10, 15, 20 years. How can I best get there? And it takes all the emotion out of it, like you say, whether or not the garden has the right feng shui or is purely a practical consideration of these are your financial goals. What's the best way we can help you get there? And I can imagine that's really fulfilling. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 8:04

It is because we plot this stuff. I always underestimate. We put a very, very conservative figure for what we expect the property will increase in value in over the year. And then being able to say to people 12 to 18 months down the line, here, we've actually exceeded what we were hoping, and you've made all this money and we're ready for the next one. And yeah, it's been extremely fulfilling. I really do love that sense of being able to put a plan in action and execute it. And don't get me wrong, there's still emotions involved. Because we're dealing with people. So there's always going to be emotion. But it's about managing that and and being able to say, and look, you want the dream home and the garden. That is definitely attainable, but let's work out what your strategy is to get you there. So it is good. And do pe people do sometimes connect their sense of self with their assets as well. So it's about saying, look, this is about doing what's best for you, not what you can then go and tell everybody else you've achieved so that you feel better. It's about behind closed doors what's happening.

SPEAKER_02 9:08

Yeah. And so when you meet someone that has some some money, maybe they've received an inheritance or they've got some they've come into money, how do you what are the things they need to look for in a property decision?

SPEAKER_05 9:23

When someone comes to me, there's so many conversations that we have that have absolutely nothing to do with the property. And that, funnily enough, is what leads us to choose the right property by not talking about it at all. Right. So how old are they? Where's the money come from? What stage of life are they at? Are they partnered or independent? There's so many factors that are at play before we can even look at what kind of property would suit them because we need to make sure that whatever whatever's going on, as I like to call it in their current financial ecosystem, makes it sound very fancy, doesn't it? So we need to make sure that everything when you're building a building, you get the foundations set first. So do they have other liabilities? What assets have they got currently? What entity is best for them to be investing in? Are they a business owner? Are they employed? There's so many different options that we need to discuss first. And funnily enough, we also do need to talk about things like how good their relationship is, if they're about to consolidate their superannuation with their partner. Is this a long-term strategy that's going to work well for both of them? Or is this something that in 24 months we're going to be dissolving because their relationship is broken down? So you need to make sure that all of that stuff is very, very strong and in place before we add anything else to it.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

So it's a very holistic assessment of where someone's at. And you've got to figure out all the nuances of that before you can figure out what the right investment decision is.

SPEAKER_05 10:51

Oh, and it is wild to me when I have clients that come to me and say, We spoke to somebody before we spoke to you. And in our first meeting, they told us that they had a property for us, and but we just needed to quickly put a an offer in and all of this. And I'm like, Did they ask you about your financial situation? No. Well, then that's just a property that they wanted to sell. That's not actually, they're not investment strategists, they're salespeople. So that all of that that we've just talked about, that is so important to get in place before we add anything extra to it.

SPEAKER_02 11:23

I think that's a really important distinction, isn't it? Because now in today's market, being in WA, buyers' agents are a relatively new thing. We've always had real estate agents, and but buyers agents coming into the market, it's a lot of people make just suddenly decide on emotion or on a whim, right? I need to buy a property for this reason without doing that holistic assessment that you've just talked about. And buyers agents don't question the person on that goal or intention, right? And and so their job is simply to do what they've got. Yeah. So you fill a very important role, which is actually making sure that people are taking the right approach that suits their long-term goals.

SPEAKER_01 12:03

Oh, and it's about dots as well. It's about connecting the financial dots with the emotional dots, with the goals, dots, and all the other things, the whole lot. So it's actually connecting the dots.

SPEAKER_05 12:14

Yeah. Absolutely. And then you get to that point where you're like, what is the right property for this strategy at this time? And then you get everything ready, and then they've got more choices and more options. So you're looking at, as Dee said, the emotional dots, the employment dots, the entrepreneurial dots. Is this a business that you want to be in for a long time? Is this a job that you want to be in for a long time? Is this a marriage that you want to be in for a long time? All of these sorts of things need to be discussed before we start putting these things in place.

SPEAKER_02 12:44

So it is lots of decisions and it's quite complex, isn't it, the world of property management? You've got the capital growth strategy, which is buy a piece of property and hold. That's one long-term goal. And then you've got the positive gearing, which is a cash flow strategy. Is that right?

SPEAKER_05 13:00

Yes. There's multiple strategies within the strategy. And as we'll probably mention multiple times during this, it's very dependent on each person's specific set of circumstances. So some people are way more, depending on their strategy, the capital growth aspect, but some people need the rental yield to be at a certain level, otherwise they're in a tricky position. So it's about working out how it fits into their current life as well, because we don't property potentially is very long term. And we don't want people scraping through to get with this investment. It's not like they're saving up for a car and then it's done, apart from the maintenance and running costs. They're buying a property that's going to require money and possibly more money as time goes on, depending on how you've got it set up. And so you need to be in a position where you can sustain that for however long you need to without it impacting your life.

SPEAKER_02 13:55

And then you've got all the tax considerations. There's a lot of moving arms, isn't there, in in your field at voting. Presumably you have good people connected to you that can advise on all of those SMSFs and tax structures and so on.

SPEAKER_05 14:09

Absolutely. And I think from working with other companies for almost a decade, I truly did learn a lot. And it's no shade on them, but I also learned what not to do because it was pro this sort of battery hen situation where people would make inquiries and what they wanted to do was allocate an investment property or source an investment property for them. But the conflict that I was having towards the end of my time working for other people was that I was having clients coming to me that I could see were very much not ready for another investment until they'd cleared up what they were currently doing, or they were very much not ready for an investment because of what was going on in their emotional lives. But that's not a factor that somebody who is employing us possibly really cares about. I hate to say that, but it's sort of what I felt.

SPEAKER_02 14:58

Well, there's conflicting agendas there, aren't there? And whereas you are solely the client's long-term agenda is what is the right strategy for you long-term. There's no, you're not mixing it with any of your own agenda.

SPEAKER_05 15:11

No, and that's right. And that's why when I went out on my own, I made a decision that I've stuck to and will continue to, that the experts, most of the experts that I use, if they're not within my team and contracted to me, they're independent. And the reason for that is so that I can have them, my clients sit there with a financial planner who is giving them the exact right information for their personal situation and not one that's sitting there just putting something together that suits him or her and not is not necessarily for the client. There's better, there's mortgage brokers and then there's investment loan brokers. Well, that's exactly right. So it's the difference between someone who's really good at just getting you a mortgage for your first home. Actually, on that topic, do you know what the word mortgage means? It's French. Oh, and the French meaning of it?

SPEAKER_02 16:00

No, I have to say I don't. Debt till death.

SPEAKER_04 16:05

Oh, because mort is death. Yes, and gage, it's money or silver or debt till death. That's pretty accurate, to be fair. I never knew that.

SPEAKER_05 16:16

What a fun fact. There you go. So that's why my clients see investment loan brokers. Are they more are they classified as mortgage brokers? Yes, but that's not what they're there to do. They're not even necessarily always there to just go, here's the lowest interest rate. They're there to structure things and strategize things so that the client gets the best for themselves, not because a mortgage broker has, as I've been quoted before, a special relationship with insert lender's name here. We want people that are doing the right things for the right reasons. And so when you're independent, I even had a rule I've said to my clients, if so-and-so doesn't call you back at four o'clock on Tuesday, the way that they have actually said they will, then I won't use them again because I don't want people working with my clients who are unreliable. Whereas if you work in a big team all under one roof, you just have to rub along with whoever's employed in amongst the herd.

SPEAKER_02 17:11

Whereas when we're independent, we can bring in the right experts for the right people. And do business in a way that's aligned with our values, which is what I love about being a dependent.

SPEAKER_05 17:20

Yeah, Kate, that's so true. And it's funny, that word alignment, and it gets tossed about so much, but it's spot on. We know when we feel in alignment. It is it's a feeling as well as a knowing.

SPEAKER_00 17:31

I think that's been a common theme through the podcasts that we've done, hasn't it, Kate?

SPEAKER_01 17:36

Alignment, feeling like there's a holistic attitude to uh setting up your business and what you can actually do within your business. And that's been a pleasure to see that thread because we didn't develop that thread, that just happened through the course of the podcast. That was interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:50

Yeah, and the real need to inform yourself and get by getting specialist people to advise you. I think that's the main thing is, and that was part of our goal as well, Dee, wasn't it? It's yep, you can't have your head fully around any of the all of these topics that we're bringing together in this podcast, cryptocurrency and property and SMSFs and tax and business profit structures. It's impossible to be an expert in all of those. Boolean. And so yeah, making sure that you have the right people advising you is so important.

SPEAKER_05 18:21

And you don't want to be going anywhere where they're a jack of all trades and a master of none. Because I do hear situations where people say the finance broker has shown me some property, for example, and I'm like, ooh, alarms. Don't look. Hold off, don't look. And then I look at it and they send it to me, and I can see that the finance broker's getting a kickback from somebody and this kind of crazy stuff. So it is. And look, it's funny, I never would have considered myself very woo or woo-woo, but when you I think you cannot help but become pardon the pun, invested into the outcome of your clients. Yes. I want to make sure that they have the best lives possible and I do the best thing possible for them and their strategy. And that just means that sometimes you just have to keep that separation of interest so that it benefits the client. Because it is it's human nature to want to do things conveniently and as easily as possible. And what's more easy than wandering into the office next door and going, Hey Kate, I've got this client, this can you just sort the finance for me? Nothing more easy than that. But now I'm actually, and for example, I have certain investment loan brokers that will work with certain people. For example, if I have a woman who's recently come out of a relationship, there's the specific person I will send them to that's experienced with that sort of situation. And then I have other ones that I might send them to if it's self-managed super fund lending.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

So on that topic, I know that SMSFs are a beautiful vehicle for property investment, right?

SPEAKER_05 19:53

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 19:54

So can you talk to us a little bit more about that for someone who might be considering an SMSF or what are the actual advantages?

SPEAKER_05 20:01

Absolutely. So self-managed superannuation fund or an SMSF is similar to an industry super fund that we nearly all of us get set up whenever we become employed, but it's as you would think from the name, it's self-managed. So instead of it being an MLC or a whoever you're using, it is the Kate Self-Managed Superfund or the D Digi Secure Self-Managed Superfund or something along those lines. So you choose your own name. There is a minimum amount of funds you need to have before it is viable to set up a self-managed super fund. So the first thing I will say that is super important is to make sure that you have around 200,000 plus. The minimum anyone should be looking at is 200,000, either in your own superannuation or in yourself and your person who you're in a very stable partnership with. Right. Not somebody you've just met off Tinder. Anyway, sounds like you've had situations where that's happened. I've had someone come to me and say, I've just met this guy and I've got a deposit, but he's got a higher income. So we're gonna and I was like, Do you know his middle name yet? No, we're not doing this. So so that's just one of those little things you need to be very mindful of. But self-managed superannuation funds are gold in terms of how good they are with the tax strategies and everything. Right. So if you qualify, it's a really great avenue. And that's something that a highly skilled financial planner can give you the green light on. So just to give you a bit of context, when my clients come on board with me, one of our first meetings after the investment loan broker is with the financial planner. And they will have a look and they'll say to the clients whether or not it's in their best interest to set up the fund. And I have had clients that have been around the 200 mark, and the planner has said, no, you need to wait a year or two because it's just not enough buffer there. Right. So they are very much wise to what is needed for the client. You can buy Property within your self-managed super fund, you use the amount that you've got in your super to pay the deposit. There, and then there is, and look, this is all very high level brush strokes. Yeah, high level. So you then get a loan against the property in the name of the bear trust, which is inside the super fund. Right. So the Kate Superfund cannot be written on a contract and own that property. It needs to be something that's called a bear trust. Right. And there's a lot more information on that, and I'm happy to share that with anybody that might be listening that would like it. But yeah, so there's complexities with that as well. So it's really not a great idea to just forge ahead and start making these big decisions without getting the right kind of advice. Because if you don't treat your self-managed super fund with the amount of respect that is needed, you can find yourself in some severely hot water. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Had that discussion too, haven't we? Previously, you need to play by the rules. There's no breaking the rules.

SPEAKER_05 22:59

You do need to play by the rules. Because we're given this sort of opportunity to manage our own money. That's great. But you can't do things like live in the ha in a property that you've purchased within your self-managed super fund. But bookmark that note for how you can do it as a business person, which I'll come back to in a minute. Right. You cannot rent out the property to your friends or family either. And it's purely an investment, an independent investment. Because the government wants us to do this so that they don't have to support us. So if you set up this self-managed super fund and you absolutely muck it up, then they're going to be supporting you. So they want you to do it right so that it it's it's there. Absolutely it is. That's exactly right. So if your property grows and it's got equity in it, you cannot leverage off that equity within your self-managed super fund as well. So there are it's different compliance and different laws for how you can access your property and your wealth within within the self-managed super fund, too.

SPEAKER_02 24:00

Right. But from a personal perspective, you could use a large portion of your self-managed super fund to put a deposit on a property, whether it's residential or commercial, but it's an independent investment property, and then you pay out the loan through your through your salary, or you right? Is that how that that works?

SPEAKER_05 24:18

So what happens then is the rent goes straight back into the self-managed super fund. Right. So that goes directly in there. Any tax benefits directly back into the fund.

SPEAKER_02 24:27

It's all completely separate.

SPEAKER_05 24:28

There's never any 100%. Yes. Your employer and employee contributions are now terms and conditions apply, but generally they're all going into the self-managed super fund. There are some instances where people will keep their industry fund open as well because they might have some insurances attached to it that they don't want to void. But in general, that's what happens, and that's a little bit more of a complex situation.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

And you mentioned you would come back to the business situation.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

So what I've had uh experience with is clients who purchase uh commercial property through their self-managed super fund and then their business rents it back as premises.

SPEAKER_02 25:08

So they're actually using the the premise that they're and that is allowed.

SPEAKER_05 25:13

Yeah. That is allowed. Yeah, that is legal. That is not just a mere special, that is something that is definitely out there on the in the market. And I know quite a few people doing that, and it's genius, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 25:25

Because you get a great idea. Dee, what burning questions do you have around property investing?

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Oh, it's just interesting hearing the take with regards to businesses buying their own premises in their superannuation and and renting those back because that opens up a whole lot of things. Firstly, the business owner feels very secure because they're actually paying it back into their own fund, they're not handing it over to somebody else. So I think that's a really critical point to see how that can be done. And taking a look at that from a business perspective. And because we're sort of really talking about that that startup business, it can be a goal for them to do. And some of the commercial properties are not anywhere near as expensive as a residential property. They can be well priced in a great location, serve a purpose with really good yields in them. And I think a lot of people underestimate um commercial property in their portfolio.

SPEAKER_05 26:15

Totally. And the important note there, Dee, is it's not the business buying the property, it's the self-managed superpower. Correct, yeah, you are correct. And the business is renting it back. And I guess if you're in that situation where you have a business and you're renting at a high rent in an area, it makes sense if you're going to be spending that money to be putting it into your own retirement i in a legitimate and legal way. What a good feeling to be paying paying rent to your own asset. That's and I think that self-managed super funds are very underutilized. I know that they're a little bit prohibitive in some regards because you have to have a certain amount of money. But look, your average Australian who's been working a good portion of their life will get to that amount of super if they're not in a horrendous industry fund that's not doing what it's supposed to do. I know there is fear and quite often analysis, paralysis, and we fear of change and all that sort of thing. But being able to leverage a self-managed super fund, especially for those of us that haven't been making wise financial decisions from the moment we turned 18 onwards, it's a good way to be able to make up a little bit for lost time because and we are sort of charting into areas that I'm sure you have an SMSF expert dealing with, but there is a certain amount that you can put in each year. If you haven't put it in over the last five years, you can actually top up your super more than than you have done. So there's all these really great hacks that that help us to make the most of our situations.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

And so is it still the myth, the old saying property is all about location, location, location. Is that still the case when it comes to investment properties? Unfortunately.

SPEAKER_05 27:55

It very much is. There's so many factors that go into what makes a good investment and a good area. And unfortunately for 80% of us, where we live is not a good investing area, which is why when people are looking at an investment, most of them historically, they either want to buy where they grew up, where their parents live, or where their f friends live. And generally those are areas that have already peaked or are continuing to elevate because they're well established, they've got a lot of infrastructure, they've got an affluent demographic, so they're not necessarily so it's very much location. So there's criteria that we look for. And we want the area to be established, but we still want to have room to grow. Yes, that's right. And generally the modern Australian family doesn't want to live in an area unless they have to for school or for work that's getting ready to grow because it's not as convenient as areas where everything's all done. But for example, there's I was in Victoria last week and two properties that I looked at, over$200,000 difference between the two. The one that was less money was actually bigger than the other one. And yeah, the one that was expensive was in a horrendous location. But the suburb that it was in, I drove around the corner, very busy road, and then bang, you're at the house. And you've got nowhere to park. There's no one. So it's just what the difference in the location was over$200,000. In fact, sorry, my mistake, it was over$400,000, not$200. It was over$400,000. Similar properties, but yeah, the location made almost half a mil's worth of difference. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 29:38

Such a lot, isn't it, just by switching to a couple of different streets. And uh, we've certainly seen that in our location up here in the Sunshine Case, it's become a lifestyle position and the pricing has changed accordingly, and it's been quite phenomenal. You can't get into certain areas now where you might have been able to do so two or three years ago.

SPEAKER_05 29:58

Oh, absolutely. And the thing with the Melbourne situation is these were, according to my maps, 24 kilometres away. But it was an hour and a half to get between the two because of traffic. That's right. But as the as the crow flies, 24Ks apart. And indeed, you're absolutely right. People who are looking for and I have people who come to me and they're like, we'd like to invest and we'd like to look at the sunny coast. I'm like, oh, get ready to sell the family jewels.

SPEAKER_01 30:25

Absolutely. And that's what you've got to look at too. They think they're going to end in at a certain price point, and it's it's just not the case. And even the median prices, I think, are not overly accurate at the moment in certain areas.

SPEAKER_05 30:37

You're right. And we need to be very careful of that. I was speaking last night about what's going on in the capital cities, and one state in particular is showing on st statistically quite a lot of growth. But that's not an area that I would ever choose for my clients. I'm not going to tell you what it is.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

That's on the Sunday first, is it?

SPEAKER_05 30:57

I may have been on that call last night, so I won't reveal it either. And none of us would buy there, none of us who have an insight into the property market. But you mentioned buyer's agent before, Kate, and that is the danger of it. We've talked about this before, Dee and I, and I actually spoke at an event last year where I mentioned a particular suburb in a certain area where buyers' agents were flooding to two years ago. A little bit of money was made by their clients, but now everything is very, very flat and it has just leveled out, and people are just sitting there waiting for their investments to start growing again. So they all made money within their first two years, but now it's stagnant. And that's not what we want for long-term growth and wealth creation.

SPEAKER_02 31:39

So what is it about this suburb that makes it number one then, even though none of you would buy there?

SPEAKER_05 31:44

Well, it's a state, not a suburb. Oh, right. What makes us not able to not interested in buying there? Well, this will be a fun, we could do a fun competition where if someone guessed it, they could do that. It's only seven, so I know, right? But even so, we what the issue is is that the economy is volatile. When we're looking at sustainable long-term growth, we want to see infrastructure coming in at multiple points during the next the life of the portfolio. What we don't want is something that inflates and then crashes because of a false economy, let's just say.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

So is it the fact that this ranking of this state as number one was a temporary snapshot? Or I'm just curious as to what how they assessed it to be number one when no. Let me have a look.

SPEAKER_05 32:34

It was assessed to be number one because of the fact that it has had the most growth in this in the period of time than the other parts of the country. But they didn't take into account anything else. So it was about there's more population growth and there is limited supply currently. But the other issue with this location is there is no shortage of land. So currently there's limited supply because developers and builders are land banking. So they've purchased land and they're not releasing it, which means that we have a false supply issue here.

SPEAKER_01 33:13

Right. We saw that in the eastern suburbs of Brisbane, out in the Bayside of Brisbane. We saw that uh probably 15, 20 years ago, and there was a highly inflated pricing structure going on out in the bayside of Brisbane. We saw the exact same thing. And it was simply because the developers have were land banking and they were family developers buying up farms. And they were able to sit tight for 20 years, and of course, they've been releasing that over the last five to 10 years. Now we've got the next challenge in the Bayside of Brisbane is the infrastructure hasn't been able to keep up with the growth that's occurred. So that's caused another set of challenges, and now the land has been released. There's not enough land bank there. So we've got the opposite challenge now as those prices are going up. So it's been a it was interesting watching that occur from our time in the in the Redlands in Brisbane for 16 years, watching that market fluctuate. And then that's so different to what you see in pockets of the CBD of Brisbane and how you see consequently there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 34:11

Totally. But you mentioned the sunny coast, Dee, and if you go for a little drive from Brisbane to, let's say, Gympie, on either side of the road at multiple points in your journey, you're going to see huge amounts of land as far as the eye can see. But yet we have a supply issue. There's no supply issue. People are just holding on to the land. There's a certain area in the sunny coast where there's a lot of development going on, and I see the most insane prices for very small parcels of land with properties where they're all basically living in each other's pockets. And then they release the next sort of land and they add another hundred or two hundred thousand onto the price of a shoebox, basically. So there is no shortage of land.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

Correct. And there's been another issue on the Sunshine Coast, too, is the infill sites have started to disappear. So you're right, there was the land release situation, but that's also tightened because of the relevant body saying that it's a green space, whatever the case might be. You've got that situation where there's going to be limited land released except for those land banks. And then the infill sites are no longer via well, they're drying up, that's the first thing, and it takes a lot to make them viable again. So you've you're up in that upper echelon of a property that's purchased. And we've seen that through the construction company as builders. Um I'm not speaking because I know a little bit about crypto, I'm actually speaking from a construction perception perception as well, because we've done that. We've got an infill site that we've we've done two infill sites, plus a sub-development in Brisbane. So we've actually seen the processes and the and the pricing change dramatically for that entry point for investors to get into whether they're in self-managed super funds or as individuals. It's a much different market to what it was 15, 20 years ago.

SPEAKER_05 35:56

Oh, absolutely. And then you've got that issue that with all the extra costs, you're looking at 2% rental yield when it should be around four to five or whatever it is, because you've overcapitalized. And we could talk for ages about it.

SPEAKER_01 36:11

Oh, we could go on and on about it. Don't start being construction. Like that'll get me fired up at a no end. So we don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_05 36:18

This could go in a very different direction.

SPEAKER_01 36:20

Absolutely. Let's not go down that path.

SPEAKER_05 36:22

No, let's keep it civil.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

I'd be fascinated. We might have to do another uh podcast on that, Dee, to hit unpack one of those stories.

SPEAKER_01 36:29

But there's just so many stories. And from this podcast, I'll be so keen to see if we can grow this podcast into something else because what it has seen in all of the uh sessions that we've done is it's unveiled lots of little gold nuggets that lead to something else. So it's almost like this is the beginner's level of the podcast. This is just to open your eyes and go, well, hang on a minute, have a little think of oh, I'm a little bit interested. What the hell am I going to do next? Well, the next step is exactly that, May. We are going to, Kate and I are putting together a workshop where we're going to bring you guys in as the experts to be able to look at people's portfolios and we're going to be able to give a much better assessment. So, Kate and I keep your ears posted, um, everyone in the audience, because we certainly are going to do that as a productive workshop because we've had some sensational people on here with a wealth of knowledge that I think need to get out to the market. And I don't think we realise how many resources we we need when we're growing our wealth or when we're growing our business.

SPEAKER_05 37:31

We just don't realize it's a very interesting point of view. And I think the saying you don't know what you don't know is really relevant. And we don't want to find out what we don't know by making a mistake. So what you two are doing with this podcast and your future plans is so vital. I was taught really badly how to type for a semester at school. I was taught how to play some Pac-Man game on the computers, and then and that I did maths. There was no financial literacy. There was no lessons on we won't sidetrack, but it was sort of this well, we're gonna grow up and get married anyway. So what's what do you need to do any of this? There's a huge gap, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 38:13

Well, it is that education piece that we we've seen in the generation grap, and we're all at at slightly different ages, and I'm in the granny bloody department. And I can see the changes that have happened in the last 30 years, and I never thought I'd be looking at that going, oh my god, where are the young ones going to get this information from? It's not on their iPad.

SPEAKER_05 38:33

So as we develop what was that, is that the issue is that they're getting information from AI. Correct, and they're going wrong. It's wrong. It is a hundred percent wrong. I have tested it and it is wrong. It's giving bad. I actually had a somebody send me something from Chat GPT one day, basically saying, I don't need you, here's what I'm gonna do. And I was like, good, off you go. That would be a horrendous decision. If I didn't say that, I told them why, but you've got to be careful, it's a minefield, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Absolutely. And it doesn't have all the nuanced understanding of local markets and can local conditions and all the things that you as a property advisor understand, everything you were just talking about, land releases and all this thing. There's no way AI can have its head around all those things.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

At the end of the day, people are still looking for relationships. We're looking for someone to build a relationship for property. We're looking for someone to build a relationship to guide us with their experience in crypto or bullion or NFTs or bloody EFTs or stocks or whatever. We're looking for all those experiences and those relationships. So I think when you're growing your business and you're starting out, you get focused on the day-to-day running of the business and forget about these experiences. But if you can at an early stage in your business start developing these contacts and reaching out to people for help, you may not use them in the first year or even the second year or the third, but when you're ready, those guys will drop everything for you. So relationship building is so important in the early stages of your business to get you ready for what your your target market is or what your target is.

SPEAKER_05 40:10

People put that off because they say, I'm not ready. Yes. And then what they don't realize is that you don't need to be ready. Preparation is super important. So are you ready to today buy a property? No. But what are the steps to get you there? And is it a possibility that if you don't do them correctly and in the right order, you might actually sabotage your own efforts? Absolutely. So you're absolutely right, Dee. What you've said, you have these relationships, you get have time to get to know people and see what they're doing with their other clients as well, because that's very telling. I had someone say to me recently that they wouldn't work with anyone that didn't have 10 of their own investment properties. They were actually speaking about an investment loan broker and they wanted to know what their portfolio was. And I was like, Well, wouldn't you rather see what they've done for their clients than what they've done for themselves?

SPEAKER_02 41:02

Because you don't know their personal situation and what they've been through and and and or where they're at.

SPEAKER_01 41:06

No. And how many marriages they've had and forgot to sign the pre-nutd. Thank you. Exactly right.

SPEAKER_04 41:12

You're absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Not that I'm making fun of those situations, but you've got to make light.

SPEAKER_05 41:17

Oh, we're not, but they are absolutely they're the things that need to be navigated.

SPEAKER_02 41:21

Well, Mio, there's so much more we could talk about with you. Uh, we've just scratched the surface today, but we thank you so much for spending your time with us today and sharing your wisdom. We do have to sign off because we've come to the end of our time together. But is there any burning message you want to share that you haven't already or any advice you'd want to give?

SPEAKER_00 41:39

She probably wants to come back 100%.

SPEAKER_02 41:42

That's what my burning question is. Will you have me back? Absolutely. Yeah. And yes, we will be running that workshop. And if any of you have property questions, that would be your time to come and take advantage of Mia's knowledge and experience. So we will let you know all the details of that workshop when it's ready to go live. And until then, Dee, any fine any closing thoughts from you?

SPEAKER_01 42:03

No, just great to have you on, Mia. Thank you for sharing your experiences. Kate, you directed the conversation beautifully as usual. It's always a joy to be here. And I do like the way that the three of us bounced off just with the whole episode. It was great. So everyone, just sit up and take a bit of notice of your own portfolio and say, what do we need to do next?

SPEAKER_02 42:22

Yeah. Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, Mia. Thank you so much, everyone. We will be back in the room soon. Bye for now. Thanks so much for joining us today. If you're ready to take action, you're invited to come and join us at our upcoming Fiercely Financial Action Planning Workshop, where you'll get direct access to all of our expert guests. Sam, Rachel, Natalia, Mia, Jeremy, Carmel, and Dee. Bring your wealth questions, your specific situation, and let's workshop your path from business owner to wealth creator. Spaces are limited, so we invite you to book your spot using the link in the show notes right now. We hope to see you there.