How a Busy Professional Built a 7 Property Portfolio While Everyone Else Waited for Rates to Drop

If you're earning well, paying the bills, and doing "everything right" - but you still have no real plan for your financial future… you're not alone.

This is the real story of Imran Zulfiqar, who reached 40 and realised there was nothing there for his future.

He had no investments, no passive income, and no strategy to get ahead. Instead, he was stuck in the familiar loop of work, earn, repeat.

With property prices still climbing in 2026, endless noise on social media, and constant headlines about interest rates - it's easy to feel stuck between waiting for the "right time" and just getting started.

This conversation reveals how Imran broke that cycle - going from zero investment properties to seven across five Australian states, without quitting his day job or becoming a full-time investor.

This episode shows you what's actually possible when you stop researching and start moving.

Tune in to discover:

👉What triggered the real financial wake-up call for Imran in his 40s (his journey may sound familiar)
👉Why having a good income still isn’t enough without a plan
👉The biggest mistake people make when waiting for the “right time” to invest
👉What actually changes after buying the first investment property
👉How one decision can lead to multiple properties across Australia
👉What financial freedom could actually look like for you and your family

Key moments:

00:00:00 Intro
00:01:00 Imran's journey to Australia
00:03:28 The 40th birthday wake-up call
00:04:20 Cutting through the noise of property advice
00:05:21 Finding the right team to guide the process
00:06:40 First property in regional Queensland
00:08:32 Early results and motivation to keep going
00:09:26 How accidental rentvesting changed everything
00:11:00 Seven properties across five states
00:13:23 Mindset shift on market timing
00:15:04 What financial comfort feels like now
00:18:55 Advice for anyone still on the fence

This episode is for anyone sitting on the sidelines… waiting for the right time, drowning in YouTube advice, or wondering if property investing is even possible on a regular income. 

Imran's story proves it is.

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🏡The Property Investor Next Door: 100 Property Stories🏡

This series features 100 real Australians sharing the unpolished truth about building a property portfolio -  what worked, what didn't, and how it actually felt.

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➡️About Ripehouse Advisory⬅️

Ripehouse Advisory is an Australian buyer's agency and consultancy that's helped over 11,000 investors take a patient, considered approach to building long-term wealth through property.

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📞 See How Ripehouse Advisory Could Help You📞

Book an obligation-free call here: https://www.ripehouseadvisory.com.au

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

This series isn't about how to invest. It's about how decisions feel and how they compound over time, especially the ones that you carry quietly. Here, we listen to how people think and the moments that shaped how they make decisions today. Today, I'm speaking with Imran, who, after years of doing all the right things on paper, hit a moment where he realized there was no real plan behind it. What followed was a shift from overthinking and uncertainty into action. And over time, that turned into a seven-property portfolio across five states, built step by step with a clear strategy behind it. Imran, welcome to the show. Now, before we get into your, I guess, investing story, I want to hear more about your story. So you came to Australia, you're originally from Pakistan, you came to Australia in 2014, but it wasn't a direct flight to Australia. What kind of led you there to come here?

SPEAKER_00 0:58

Yeah, so it was more of a curse the field that I'm in, the software development. So we did travel a little bit around. So my career started in Karachi. Then we I had a bit of a uh project in the US, and from there we ended up in Malaysia for a while, and then eventually we up to Australia in 2014. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

Very nice. Okay, good. I'm glad you settled here. This is a great thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Yeah, and a family, of course. Yeah, yep. Small family, me, my wife, and a daughter who just turned 18. So good times. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

Now, what was your, I guess, mindset before you had started with property investing? Your your I guess your mindset towards property and money in general before you you got on this journey?

SPEAKER_00 1:43

So, look, before we started investing seriously, we were in a very typical situation, I would say, working full-time. We had a very comfortable, nice paying job. We still do. Hasn't changed a lot, but yeah, just living a good life, paying bills. And but to be very honest, we did start to realize that we don't have a long-term financial plan as such. That's what led to all of this discovery. And eventually we landed on RIPAS. The mindset about property, we did have a few people in our social circle that were investing in property. But these actually they started when it was really good time to end property. Anybody who invested at that time made money. But that was that sounded really risky to us because we didn't really have examples of people doing that. So yeah, we we had those ideas with us, and but we didn't really know how to how to start that. And we knew that we probably will have to go out of Melbourne, go into regional areas. But how do people do it? What is the best way to do it? Those were all the questions we had.

SPEAKER_01 3:03

And did you say earlier, I think you mentioned that it was roughly around your 40th birthday, a bit of a midlife crisis part Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

So I still remember very clearly on the 40th birthday, me and my wife were just sitting down talking at dinner, and we said, okay, it looks like we have now reached a time in our life that we have to talk about what does the future look like. And we always talked about retiring early so we can because we've all both had very busy careers and busy lives. And we do take our time to travel, but you know, if you only have two weeks to travel, there's so much you can do in a year. So yeah, that's that's where the whole discussion started. And then we thought about okay, let's let's look into what other people are doing, what are the investment options? Of course, we didn't have a lot of money as well, so we had to think about how we get the capital to invest as well. So yeah, so all of those thoughts and discussions started right around that birthday. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:00

What were the biggest barriers, I guess, mentally? What were you most concerned about before you started buying property?

SPEAKER_00 4:07

So, yeah, that was like I talked about the fear of unknown and not knowing what are the right steps to do if we want to get property that we can afford. And there was a lot of information around it still is, but we it's unfortunately it has become so noisy that the everybody's a property expert now. And you have even on YouTube, the only videos I get for some reason are all property investment videos. And some of the advice that I that I see there, I I think, oh well, what the hell this person is saying. So the algorithms are what cutting through all that noise was important. And yeah, so we actually thought about okay, this is not something we can do on our own. Let's find some experts who can help at least with the first steps. And that's where we started looking for looking for somebody to partner with to help us with this journey of sorts. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Yeah. How did you come across RiPath initially?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

So yeah, same thing. I I spent a lot of time on YouTube looking for different companies who are offering different sorts of products. And the only first of all, the the initial session that what they call wealth planning session that where RiPath offers, it's a free session. So we thought, okay, why not? Let's have a look at what they say. And because we also thought that we can't really just go and buy a property. We need to understand what it means for us to achieve that goal that we're talking about in 15, 10, 15 years. So yeah, that so yeah, that's that was the unique thing about Ripe House at that time when we were looking, everybody was just talking about, yeah, we know the good areas where we can buy, and the conversation starts at the property. But I think with Rive House, the commerce started with what's the goal, where we're going, what do you want to achieve? And then we figure out how property fits into that. So that was a good sales switch, I would say, at that time. But again, the everything was how we thought it would be, and that first session actually gave us a lot of confidence to to start the process with them.

SPEAKER_01 6:13

Yep. That's great. That seems like a longer-term view rather than just kind of a one-off property. But actually, speaking of the property, what what was that first property? Tell us about it.

SPEAKER_00 6:22

First property we bought in Harrison, Towoomba area. This was just at the beginning of 2022. So we were started talking to Rive House about November 21 and then landed with the property in 22. So, yeah, very moderate $300,000 property in a regional Queensland area. Never heard about Tooomba or Harrison before. But yeah, the all the documentation that Drivehouse would send you when you are when they're proposing a property, that really helps because talks about why the area is chosen, why we are talking about this property. And one thing that helped us, I don't know if people like it. I'm sure some people don't like this, uh uh, and they may have different views. But the the process of Drive House does it always gives you one property at a time. So you can put all your energy in that, and if you don't like it, you go to the next one. So so yeah, that we actually went ahead and bought that property. And at that time, it was still it would still make sense to do renovations on the properties. Right now it's uh now it's too expensive and it doesn't make sense in a lot of cases. But at that time, we were able to renovate the bathroom, do the floorings, do some paint touch-ups, change the door. So we made that property a lot more attractive. And that renovation project was also Yeah, so we renovated the place, not a huge amount, but yeah, we did renovate the bathroom with the floors, we did some paint touch-ups, put in a new door so the front is more attractive. So, yeah, that actually made that property more much more attractive to tenants, and we were able to get some good rent from the first go, which was really good. And since then, that property has grown into we we have pretty much doubled the capital gains on that. So yeah, really proven strategy on our very first property, which was really good.

SPEAKER_01 8:14

That's great. That's such a good now. Did that motivate you? I mean, seeing seeing how well that first one performed, did that motivate you to kind of keep going, keep stay on the ride, you know? If you're serious about building wealth through property, it's not just about buying a property, okay? It's about buying the right one. That's where Ripehouse Advisory stands out. Their team are experienced property investors themselves, combining deep data from LGA right down to suburban street level analysis with hands-on human due diligence that goes beyond the spreadsheets. So to find out more and see how they can help you with your property strategy, head to the show notes and book a call with Ian and the team. Now, back to the video.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, so I think the second property we bought quite early. So we we waited for around eight, nine months before we went into a second property. Obviously, at that time the growth was not it didn't double at that time, but we were really happy with the process and we were seeing that yeah, the property is doing a little bit every month, and we were able to take out some equity from the first property to buy the second property, which was really good. So, yeah, at that time the decision to buy the second one was mainly we we built a lot more trust with the team and in the process and gave us a lot of confidence as well. Yes, we can do that too, and you don't need to save up for years and years just to get into some investment properties. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

You'd also mentioned that you were rent vesting early on. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

SPEAKER_00 9:41

Yeah, so that's a funny story, and I know a lot of us can relate to that as well. We actually bought our first property not as an investment property, but a property to live in in the back in 2017. But very quickly we realized that we did not like the area that that property was. Always the although the property was amazing, and yeah. So eventually we decided to rent out that property and move to an area we wanted to live in on rent. So we became like an accidental rent butcher. But yeah, that's in hindsight, it was a really good decision to keep that property and not just sell that just because we did not like the area a lot. Since then that area has become really, really vibrant and good to live in. But it's that property actually helped us get into our first property with the Raifouse because we did not have a lot of money to put into towards the deposit and those sort of things. We we do have a the Rife House is obviously part of the team, but over the years we have built a team of very good brokers, and then Ripa House helps with the buying, and then we have good lawyers for convincing, and that's also a good thing about doing it repeatedly that you've built a team and then the process is very smooth. So yeah, the the broker was my friend as well. He said, Okay, let's let's see if we can get some equity out for you because you wanted to start. And yeah, at that time it was all about buying the first property. So yeah, that's how it started.

SPEAKER_01 11:08

So then you've gone on then to I believe you have six properties now, is that right?

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Yeah, including that first property that we bought. We have seven investment properties now. So the rest of the six we bought from with Ripe House. So yeah, so the very recent property we bought last year in Tasmania. So we now have properties in five different states in Australia.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Oh, there we go.

SPEAKER_00 11:29

Going to the whole the full flush, you want what in each so yeah, I mean, a few years ago that was unthinkable for us because yeah, the the way if you're not thinking in terms of investments in numbers, the way you think about property is something you can see and touch. But you have to think of this as an investment and if the numbers make sense, it doesn't matter where the property is. So yeah, that now it makes a lot of sense. But yeah, I wouldn't have thought about buying any all the places from Tasmania. We still haven't been to Tasmania yet. So it's yeah, yeah. I think we've come a long way in in the confidence of getting buying these properties and and keeping them camp.

SPEAKER_01 12:08

Did you ever think you'd be in this position, you know, even five or or ten years ago that you would have, you know, so many properties and like you said, in so many different places. Did it seem like a bit of a dream?

SPEAKER_00 12:17

Yeah, once we put down the plan in our first meeting and we got the first property, it did seem like, yep, it's possible. The plan seems like something that we can work. It's just about keep doing it like you plan. So the good thing about creating a plan from the beginning is although it's a 10, 12 year plan, you also get like targets for each year, right? So we knew that if you want to do acquisition for the first five years and you want to end up with five properties, you have to buy a property each year. That's that's the only way to get there. You're not able to you'll not be able to buy everything at the end or at the beginning. So I think that was a good good strategy as well that we were able to think about in terms of smaller targets, and then eventually we had a bigger target in sight as well. That you're able to create the smaller targets and achieve them and eventually get there.

SPEAKER_01 13:11

There's probably a lot of people watching right now who, you know, might have been in your position, let's say in 2017 or or when you yeah, when you first bought with Ripe House or even the first property at all. How would you say your mindset toward investing in property changed in that time? Like now versus you back then. What would you tell yourself back then in order to get that head start?

SPEAKER_00 13:34

Yeah, so I think one thing that I kept hearing from all the investors that were around me was this is not a good time to buy, or this is a good time to buy. So I would say to myself, okay, don't think about when is the good time to buy. You have to work on a plan, talk to experts, figure out what you want to do and start doing it. And I know it's a cliche, but in property they say you have to be in the market longer. Time in market is better than timing the market. So I don't think anybody can time the market as such, but it's just about starting your journey. And as you learn more, I do I would say that yep, there you can you would make mistakes if you're going on a longer journey, but it's okay. Eventually you will learn things and the the first property we bought, uh, which is an investment property as such, but I would say growth wise, it has not done very well. Because uh when we bought that property, it had a lot of emotions involved because we were able to we were going to live there. But yeah, I can say, oh, we made a mistake to buy that property because it has not grown much, but that property actually helped us get into property that did perform. So I think it's about taking the first step and not not overthink it, not overanalyze it, and and have some experts on your side, talk to them and yeah, start your journey, I would say.

SPEAKER_01 14:59

No, that's good. That that's very good advice. Like you said, you know, it's very straightforward and simple. But I think so many people probably get caught in the loop of researching and yeah, like you said, timing, is it the right time? What if it's gonna, you know, collapse? Who knows? When really it's just just kind of raw action is maybe the best move.

SPEAKER_00 15:14

Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Uh what kind of financial, I guess, I don't know if I want to say freedom or or maybe comfort has this given you now. You know, you've got seven properties. Has this you know, do you feel more of a sense of comfort and freedom now, especially in regards to your family and the future?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Yeah, so I mean our lifestyle has not changed. Obviously, we are still acquiring property. We actually So I think the in terms of for financial freedom, right now I would say we are much in better headspace. We know that we have a plan and we have worked towards it. I would say we've done the most difficult part to get into a number of properties, and from now on and all it's more about planning and cash flow building and those sort of things. So yeah, it's it's a lot of peace of mind. You know that yep, you have once you get to that stage in your life and you actually decide to to go part-time or or retire, then you have passive income that would help you keep your lifestyle as you are right now. So it's a big comfort. I think it's it does give us a lot of confidence into the future.

SPEAKER_01 16:14

Yeah. You said that you're obviously sticking to a strategy, and every year you've got you know set targets that you make. What is the plan moving forward? What's kind of the next few steps and and ultimately where do you want to end up?

SPEAKER_00 16:25

So yeah, I think we so obviously when you make these plans, there are two phases of this. The first is the acquisition, and the second is the converting your equity to something that generates cash flow to to give you that monthly income. So yeah, I think we will now be thinking more about what is the next sort of asset that we want to buy that is more cash flow focused and equity focused because and use the equity in the current properties to actually uh acquire that asset. I think that would be one of the things that we will be thinking about in the next few years. But yeah, it's I think it's it's pretty much that our focus will be on on property, maybe a different class of property. But I think the way the property works and how the leverage works in the in property is the best way to get there sooner rather than later.

SPEAKER_01 17:16

And give me the uh ideal retirement plan. Where do you see yourself? You you're on the beach, you playing golf, what's the dream?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Yeah, so definitely traveling much more than we are. We are obviously we do travel at least once a year. We take bigger trips. We have uh a lot of family around the globe, so we do get a chance to go there and meet them. But yeah, it's it's more about having those longer, longer vacations where you're not bound to those two weeks and you have to come back and start your work. So yeah, lots of visits to I would say we we've been to Europe, but not to some of the places where we want to be, because those are the places where you want to spend a lot more time too on well that two weeks won't won't be enough in thirty countries, so even Australia. I mean, obviously we have been around it, not not with the measure of time that that you can do. So yeah, we we do this for ourselves doing a bit of traveling, but we don't see ourselves from that we will retire completely very soon in our lives. We but it's about having that option to think about okay, I wanna maybe reduce my hours a little bit for the next couple of years so that we can do this and then come back and again work. So once you have that freedom that you don't rely on your day job to have your to maintain your lifestyle, I think that's I think that would be that's the main goal. We don't see ourselves hitting the switch button at 50, now 55, we're switching off our our jobs. It's more about having that option, having feeling that freedom. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:49

That's great. Yep, then you know, investing definitely can bring that freedom. And I think you're a you're a living testament to it. So uh Imran, I guess final parting words. I guess you covered it a little bit earlier, but yeah, for for any investors watching or any hopeful investors watching, any any last words of advice you would give.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Yeah, I mean it's it can feel very overwhelming in the beginning if you haven't done this before, because these are really big purchases on paper. Obviously, there are multiple components to it, and bank gives you quite a bit of money. But what I generally say to people who ask for advice is your main focus should be on your careers and you should grow those careers and work on them. And property should be something that not just become passive income in the future, but you should not be spending a lot of time thinking about everything. So you should have a bigger goal in your mind, but you need experts to do their jobs to give you the right advice so you can focus on what's more important. And the more the better you do in your careers, you will be able to bring that money into the investments to grow this. So, yeah, I I think especially if you're in a field like mine, we we tend to do a lot of over-analysis and go into analysis foralysis a lot, but I think you have to tell yourself, okay, yeah, do I want to spend hours and hours and hours doing that and eventually maybe making a right decision? Or get somebody who can do who do this full-time, they have all the data, they have experts there. And so, yeah, getting the right team around you, talking to the experts, I think, wherever you go, I think it's it's very important.

unknown 20:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:28

Excellent stuff, Imran. Well, thank you very much. Thanks for joining us today. Best of luck with all your future property investments, all the all the you know, all the whole journey ahead. And uh enjoy the freedom and well done, mate. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 20:40

Thank you so much. Yeah, very nice meeting you.

SPEAKER_01 20:42

You too. Thank you. We'll speak soon.