In this episode, Christie-David will delve into his busy career, including how it began in liquor marketing to now co-owning a successful business. As well as this, he will share the risk of over capitalising and why having home security is so important when investing.

Timestamps:
1:01 | It’s a Busy Life
4:07 | A Typical Day
5:17 | Growing Up
8:18 | Life After High School
18:46 | The First Purchase
23:04 | A Big Change
25:59 | Home Security

Resources and Links:

[5:12] You don't want to have all your cash locked up in investment property and then pull out your own cash to then go and buy your own home which means you're left with a larger home loan debt.

 

This is Property Investory where we talk to successful property investors to find out more about their stories, mindset and strategies. 

 

I’m Tyrone Shum and in this episode, we’re talking to mortgage broker and managing director of Atelier Wealth, Aaron Christie-David. He will delve into his busy career, including how it began in liquor marketing to now co-owning a successful business. As well as this, he will share the risk of over capitalising and why having home security is so important when investing.

 

 

 

Christie-David is a co-owner of mortgage brokerage, Atelier Wealth and he and his team are on a mission to provide an excellent experience and service for their clients. 

 

[0:31] I specialise in helping property investors scale up their portfolio. So, what I call the frustrated investors who I help. So, someone who is keen and ambitious to build and maybe they've just hit a wall here and there. Maybe it's borrowing capacity, maybe it's knowledge or maybe it's just a bit of equity as well. So, they're kind of the bottlenecks that we help out with.

 

[0:50] My title is managing director of Atelier Wealth, which is our mortgage broking business. But really mate, I'm also known as Dad. I've got two little girls. They're three and a half and one and a half. So, Siena and Zara are our little girls and I'm married to Bernadette who I also run the business with as well, mate. It's been a great journey on not only building up the business but now taking it to the next level, which is growing and scaling up our own business as well which I'm getting a real kick out of.

 

You can only assume that running a business and having two young children must be full on. How does Christie-David manage all of his responsibilities?

 

[1:29] What's the saying? If you want a job done give it to a busy person and I think about pre children how much time I used to have. And that's certainly not a dig at anyone that doesn't have kids. I don't think you have to have kids to be busy but personally for me, I just used to, there were things that I would fill my time up. Whether that was gym, whether that was, you know, one of the Spartan Races or Tough Mudders. So, I used to get a real kick out of doing that. You have less time now to dedicate to yourself.

 

[1:57] So, you get a little bit choosy on what you say yes to and also you say yes to things that you know you're going to enjoy. So, whether it's catching up mates, a couple of dads, we catch up for beers locally. And that's really good quality time or that or it's family time. And when you're with your family because you've been able to have that outlet, you tend to show up a little bit better and I think that's where having time for yourself also helps you kind of have time for your family and how you show up and the way that you show up as well.

 

These races that Christie-David mentioned sound like a lot of fun. Let’s hear a little bit more about them.

 

[2:43] They're probably about 10k [to] 12k [to] 15k races with all the different obstacle courses. So, and then you get quite dirty. So, there's mud involved and there's water involved and I love it. So, you do it with a couple of mates. Even Bernadette used to join in and so, it gives you something to train towards because if you go into the gym, it's great but you need a deadline. You need something to train towards. Having one of those races just gave me a bit of a deadline to work towards and I love a bit of competition as you can tell. So, I need to work against the clock or work against the friend to get that competitive spirit going as well.

 

[4:16] But look, its enjoyment mixed with a bit of challenge as well. And yeah, I do like that notion of training towards something and it's for me personally, didn't tend to eat better, sleep better and it's just something fun. It's an outlet, and we all need an outlet regardless of what type of work you do, you need that outlet just to let off a bit of steam and an enjoyment as well.

 

 

Fitness is obviously a very big part of Christie-David’s life and exercising is his ideal start to any day. After that, the rest of his busy life resumes.

 

[4:50] Gym in the morning is an ideal day. Gym in the mornings, spend a bit of time with the girls, get them ready for school — Bernadette will drop them in the office usually somewhere between 8:30am and 9am. Uh, typically quite a lot of client calls and I do a lot of our new inquiries that come in. Talk to some of our existing clients in a day. We do a team meeting every morning at 9:15 as well. I do make time for lunch.

 

[5:11] So, again, making sure I block that time out and I'll try to be home somewhere around six o'clock. So, I kind of jam pack my day so I can be kind of on the ball and productive and not too much downtime. And then be home for bath time, get the girls ready and the quality time mucking around at night.

 

[5:29] Read a few books, put them to bed by 7:30 which means we can clean up and hopefully have a bit of downtime for Bernie and ourselves. And I say this, this would be an ideal day. So, some days are great then some days it's just all bets are off because a sick child or works got a little bit busy as well. But it's all part of the journey.

 

 

Let’s rewind in Christie-David’s life and explore how he got to where he is today.

 

[6:42] My parents are from Sri Lanka, originally. My parents moved to Saudi Arabia, which was where I was born. So, quite unusual to have that on your birth certificate and then your passport as well. And then we migrated to Australia when I was two. So, there was a civil war going on in Sri Lanka. So, Australia was a very welcoming country and you look back in hindsight, what a great decision that has been to come to this country. And so, we're really fortunate to be here.

 

[7:11] And when I say we, I've got an older brother and a younger brother. So, one of three boys. And we grew up in the working class suburbs of Southwest Sydney in Endenser Park, pretty much where we grew up most of our lives. And I went to one of [the] local public schools and then high schooling. I went to Macquarie Fields high which my parents, you know, new to the country thought that are doing great thing and that was a part selective school. Look, it was an interesting, it's an interesting place to school and to grow up, right?

 

[7:41] So, I used to commute downtown Macquarie Fields and there was kids that were because it's got an anyone knows the areas and I'm speaking ill of it, but it's got a housing commission to it. And then you've got the selective school kids, right. So, it's kind of like this best of both worlds. You become street-smart very quickly because you may be one of the nerdy kids at school but you've got all these cool kids as well. So, a real mishmash of cultures and I saw some really, really good friends from school who have gone on to do some amazing things as well.

[8:10] So, I am probably like a lot of people. I don't feel like school defined me in terms of where it was but the school friends that I've got, I feel like we're be defined by each other. We've not let that tag sit with us. We've gone through some big and amazing things as well and I'm kind of proud of, you have to embrace that where you grew up and what your parents were trying to do for you.

 

There are multiple selective schools in Sydney. So, why did his parents send him to that particular one?

 

[8:57] It's probably the one that I got into would be the short answer to that Tyrone. So, you do selective school tests and so that was the school that I was eligible to go to. And my younger brother was much smarter than me and so he went to Halston. But yeah, so three brothers, three different schools, three different unis. Which probably was logistically such a nightmare for my folks.

 

[9:50] So, for us, we, I think we had very different and it's great. We had three different skills, three different types of the way we learn, three different personalities, behaviour. So, I think our schools really reflected. Like my younger brother's very academic, very academic. Me, not so much. I like playing sports, I liked having fun and I probably got into too much trouble. And my older brother, he was great at sports. So, he went to Westfield Sports. And so yeah, it kind, it probably aligned... probably really aligned to who we were as kids and that's why we went to those schools.

 

 

After finishing high school, Christie-David continued his education at university.

 

[8:38] I went on to do my tertiary studies over at UNSW and did a Bachelor of Commerce there. And that was, to me, I feel like that journey, when you look back at it was, I don't know, super exciting. You didn't know at the time but all the roads have led to me to here.

 

When starting university, Christie-David didn’t really know what he wanted to do.

 

[11:00] I wasn't great with numbers which is kind of ironic which is what I do now. But I was a little bit more into the creative side and a lot of people said look, could you consider marketing, for example. And so, I felt there was a few people saying it, there had to be something about it and I was really fortunate that the UNSW had a separate program which was Bachelor of Commerce but it was tourism [and] hospitality based as well, and marketing.

 

[11:30] So, you've got, you had to do an interview to get into this program. And then they selected I think 55 or 60 kids as part of the cohort. So, you're almost going into another school program which is a bigger class of say, 55 [to] 60. And we were in this same program all the way through [and] it was a four year degree. So, a bit of a bolt on to the normal Bachelor of Commerce.

 

[11:51] And there was so many different personalities. There were international students, there were local students, there were people who like to party, there were people who enjoy the uni lifestyle and there were some who has kind of found our feet a little bit more academically as well. So, yeah, such a good cross section but I loved uni for the fact that it's such a level playing field.

 

[12:09] It doesn't matter what school you went to, you are all in the same class and I feel like that was the way that's the real world. I feel like that was my first real foray into this is the real world, it's based on merit to get to this point. It wasn't based on what school you went to or you had to get the marks obviously, but to do the interview you needed to be aligned, to have a program was running and what your intentions were.

 

[12:34] So, I feel like that to me more than the course really just gave me this confidence to go, I've interviewed and I've got into this program and then the people here want to be in this program and we went through that together as a cohort. That's a unique experience because you don't typically get that in uni. You just kind of one of many in the system, right?

 

What is the difference between this course and a regular Bachelor of Commerce?

 

[13:14] The program was commonly known as hospo. So, anyone who's done a Bachelor of Commerce at UNSW knows about the hospo guys and girls. So, it's a little bit different and so, it was the university's way of expanding to offer into tourism management and hospitality. So, if you want to go into that part, without necessarily going to a college, it's University and tertiary qualified as well.

 

[13:41] So, there was some people from our cohort that went into like hotel management jobs. Yeah, and that was kind of fast tracked as that career path or tourism marketing, for example. All those type of roles but more as a senior level is where you come out of university. And then there's a traditional path to go into a marketing role, which is quite a lot of that number of our colleagues did.

 

[14:04] So, yeah, it was kind of, it could take you on a different direction. But yeah, it was like a sub stream of commerce marketing that it would open up different doors if you wanted too as well. And so, that's why it had that hospitality spin and flavour to it as well.

 

This course also set Christie-David up well for life after university. 

[14:57] That's the other part with a degree. You had to do some workplace experience and write about that. So, I had good experience coming out of the degree and that again was another strong proposition of that program.

 

[15:02] So, after uni I was fortunate enough to pick up a job. I moved into liquor marketing, so working under Metcash. So, IGA supermarkets, they got the bottle shops. So, really competing against Liquorland, Dan Murphy's, Coles Liquor — That type of brand. So, I worked on what they call Celebrations and come up with a new brand called the Bottle-O.

 

[15:32] So, I moved into a marketing role FMCG type style role. And that kind of taught me a lot. You get thrown in the deep end — Learning spreadsheets, learning meetings, learning all the technical skills that come with being in a smaller corporate environment, which was wonderful. And I was there for quite a few years. Loved the experience, great smaller team as well. And then from there, I moved, that's where I kind of moved into financial services.

 

[15:56] So, I've got my first role in financial services working for Wizard Home Loans in marketing. So, and I was really fortunate, like you look at Wizard now in hindsight, that's what was called like a disrupter now, right? So, you will challenge a brand and I think again, that suited me because I like being number two, I like being the challenge, I like hunting, for example. And it's the culture was that. It was like we were always the challenger brand.

 

[16:23] You know, there wasn't the beautiful processes or it wasn't well structured. It was like fly by the seat of your pants, we've got an idea, let's just execute. And so, everyone, it probably doesn't surprise a lot of people. That's how it's run, right? Like, we've got an idea, let's do it. And it was that type of culture and I loved it. I worked under some really incredible leaders there.

 

[16:45] Obviously Mark Bouris is running it but that was towards the tail end of the business. You have Brad Seymour is one of the guys that started out with Mark, and we've become really good friends even to this day. And the people that I've met there just seem to attract a certain personality, like you had to be that personality. Whereas once wizard was sold off to Ozzie and effectively, we all lost our jobs at the height of the GFC.

 

From here, Christie-David took a small career break and then moved to another company.

 

[17:12] That's where I got a role at the Commonwealth Bank. So, you look at the culture at Commonwealth Bank, which is your number one and there's everything to lose. You look at the culture at Wizard and go, there's nothing to lose. Like, they're such different, we almost become a square peg in a round hole in a big bank because we just like, hey let's try this. And they're like, no, no. That's not going to work because we have to tread a very fine line, as well.

 

[17:35] So, look, I really enjoyed my time at CBA. You know, it's like the dream you get into a big bank, for example. You meet some incredible people, some very, very — The bank attracts high calibre talent, as well. And it's such a big place to work that there's so many different parts of what's going on. But I knew deep down inside that I just couldn't see myself being a career banker or working my way up through.

 

[17:59] I think, not I think, I definitely know that penny drop moment for me was my older brother and I were going to go to our MBAs. And we're trying to do the, we're both trying to do the because you got to do like, what is it like an entrance test, an assignment. And my brother did his, he breezed through it and I struggled just to understand why I was doing it. I'm like, no, this is not the right idea for me. And I said, well, I'm going to take and spend this money on MBA, why don't I take this and start a business. You do MBA and see how we go. Turn everything into a competition, my older brother and I.

 

[18:39] And he suited it, he loved it. Again, my older brother is very corporate and that suits him very well. To me, I'm like, I just don't like the rigidity of it and so to me, I'm like, well the real life MBA is doing and starting your own business. So, that's why I initially started, I bought an existing mortgage choice franchise over in Alexandria. It's a really good nice partner in the inner city and in Sydney.

 

Christie-David ran the franchise but after roughly one year, he came to the decision to resign the business.

[19:06] I just realised that the franchise model, again, almost found myself in like almost a corporate style model which made it hard for me to scale that business. And that's when we made the decision to resign and retire the franchise back and then we left and we started Atelier Wealth now six years ago, on our own.

 

[19:26] So, it's been a real journey but at no point do I feel like there was any mistakes made because you connect the dots looking backwards going that led to that. That person led to that. That decision led to that. So, at the time it feels why did we choose the Mortgage Choice franchise? But that you can't say that because I met some amazing people and I learned a lot through that process as well that maybe that step if removed, wouldn't have led me here today.

 

 

Coming up after the break, Aaron Christie-David will tell the story of his first property investment…

 

[25:07] I went, oh, well it looks okay. I can afford it and I've been saving up a fair bit as well.

 

He shares the risk of over-capitalising…

 

[30:17] It's not what the market wanted and it struggled to sell in a hot market and more like, yeah because it was over renovated.

 

We’ll discover one of his ‘aha’ moments…

 

[3:18] This may go against the grain sometimes of investing, but the security of having your own home cannot be understated.

 

And that’s next. I’m Tyrone Shum and you’re listening to Property Investory.

 

Let’s take a look at the first property that Christie-David invested in.

 

[24:33] Let's cast the mind back. So, my first property purchase would have been probably about 2010. So, that's when I was working at Commonwealth Bank. You know, you're on an okay salary. I just, one of my dad's friends was a real estate agent. That's literally how this happened. My dad was playing cricket with him. He's like, I've got a property you should buy. That's all and I had no research. I had no idea what I was buying. Like, he's selling property, I got to trust this guy. And it was a two bedroom unit over in North Parramatta.

 

[25:07] I went, oh, well it looks okay. I can afford it and I've been saving up a fair bit as well. So, I'm like this can make, I can make this happen. And so, I bought it and back then I'm going to tell you probably wasn't worth more than $300,000 [or] $350,000 is what I bought it for. Two bedder, it wasn't hard to get rent. So, I rented that out for example. I did get the first homeowners grant back then. So, I lived in it for six months and I was like, I'm not gonna spend a cent on it because he's like, you don't need to. It was okay condition. It wasn't great.

 

[25:42] When you think those old style apartments, you know, the apple crumble ceiling, the other great archways, not well laid out. So, the aspect was terrible. Yeah, near a main road. So, you look back and like, sometimes you should be embarrassed to the first property you buy because it's just getting into the market. I was very embarrassed of this but everyone was like Parramatta is a good corridor.

 

After this first purchase, Christie-David was able to invest in a second property.

 

[26:12] I was able to buy another unit out in Liverpool and so, that was the second purchase that I bought as well. And then that was going, I wouldn't say it was great. It's an apartment in Liverpool. So, I say this now but at a time, it’s just you don't know what you're doing, right? I only wish I knew 5% of what I know now. It's like, there'd be different decisions to be made but it was just like buy. Just buy property and get in. Look, it was cashflow neutrals all the above. It was good rent near the station. So, it was ticking boxes at the time.

 

[26:45] And then a couple years later when I left the bank and then that transition to becoming self-employed, it's a journey because your borrowing capacity to pretty much comes to a grinding halt until you can get two years of financials or have the ABN registered for two years and then have enough income and you're doing this back into your business. So, that kind of meant I was in the wilderness for quite some time and so, we were living out towards the Little Bay. So, out past Maroubra, Bernie and I [were] renting and that's when we thought hey look, we like the area, why don't we buy?

 

[27:20] So, then made the next decision which is to buy off the plan and we thought we bought it on the ground floor apartment because we thought we'd live there and be near the beach. So, you look back now you're like everything probably I shouldn't have done, I did. Bought units, bought off the plan. But again, looking back now, so we ended up, when we had that decent one a couple of years ago is when we sold Liverpool and Parramatta.

 

[27:43] So, I was of the belief never sell, for example. And then Bernie and I were like, look, we did the numbers, we could take the cash out, we could buy something of quality, buy our own place and that's when we decided to buy it was a really nice property in Little Bay. And then we found out we were having a baby and so we consider ourselves rent vestors at the time because we had at that stage, you know, three properties. And we're renting.

 

[28:13] So, okay we're rent vestors and we'll continue with this model as well. That and then find out that we were expecting a baby. And like, that's the real turning point for us. And I think this is where I have that level of empathy when I speak to a lot of rent vestors in my line of work as a broker. I'm like okay, great but the game does change when you start to have a family. Renting is great but there's a little bit of instability attached to that and we felt it.

 

 

Over four years ago, Christie-David and his family made the decision to leave Sydney for the South Coast.

 

[28:53] So, the sea change was a relatively new thing. We're leaving Sydney behind. Only an hour and a bit south but still far enough to go, hey, we need to figure out where we want to live and if this is the right decision for us.

 

[29:05] So, we made the decision to rent for maybe 6 to 12 months. That's when we had our first daughter Sienna and yeah, and then COVID hit and then prices just went kaboom. You know, down here and that's when I said right, we'll bunker down and save and just keep looking to buy. And that's when we're able to buy our family home. We're in a suburb called Woonona, which is just the next suburb down from Bulli on the south coast. And we're really fortunate it's the type of home that we wanted.

 

[29:53] So, somewhere we can grow into as a family. From upstairs you got some decent water views. So, for us that's where we are. So, we bought [and] sold. In the midst of all that we renovated Liverpool before we sold — Sorry Parramatta before we sold it. You talk about learnings — Man, did we over capitalise. Like, we went all out. We knocked out the archways, we put beautiful wooden floors, we subway tiles. Totally over renovated the property. Over capitalise. It was like this is what we want because we're city slickers.

 

[30:17] It's not what the market wanted and it struggled to sell in a hot market and more like, yeah because it was over renovated. So, we learned a lot actually from that actually. Should we just had sold it? Did it need to be renovated? So, again, you know, you build this massive muscle memory of learnings and the journey going alright, we'll bank that idea [or] that learning and go right, what is the market actually want? Versus what do we think at once, as well.

 

Looking back, Christie-David thinks that putting so much effort into this property was a mistake.

 

[31:07] I definitely feel like over capitalising was the worst decision that we made and look in the grand scheme of things, it's not terrible because we made the money back. But dollar for dollar. So, we didn't actually make any money, we just made the money back. Which when you're renovating is not the idea.

 

[31:25] So, to me, I'm like, yeah, the worst mistake was spending all this time and effort on a property that wasn't gonna give us any better returns for all the effort to then have trades, manage the trades, be out of the house for ages, on top of running the business. In hindsight, I just would not have done it. I would have just sold it, moved on and sometimes speed to make a decision and speed to sell can be your best friend as well.

Now, let’s hear about another one of Christie-David’s lessons from his time of investing.

 

[3:19] This may go against the grain sometimes of investing, but the security of having your own home cannot be understated. Yeah, and where I see that is a lot of people will go down the rent vesting path and this is what happens for younger people, right. Particularly for our younger clients because they are typically the ones who have gone into the rent vesting model. Rent vest, rent vest and then when they go to buy their own home, where's the cash going to come from to buy their own home? Because the cash has been tied up in all these investment property purchases.

 

[3:49] So, now they've got to pull that equity, which means they're going to borrow their own money back to then go and buy their own home. And that's typically when they've probably met the one or they're going to have a family, for example. And so, you know, rent vesting got them to this point but there weren't parts that were considered around buying your own home.

 

[4:10] And yeah, if I, not that I would do it differently but I would like buy our own home and then go down and buy investment properties. Because typically, what you're buying when, let's say you're in your 20s Tyrone, you're with all due respect, you're at the lowest income levels that you're ever going to earn in your life.

 

[4:28] So, you're typically buying cheaper property. Yeah, it's what you can afford. It's not necessarily good, good investment grade properties. They're buying what you can afford. Yeah. So, typically, Sydney, you're buying apartments. In your 20s, you're buying units and so yeah, a lot of them were okay but none of them are great unless you bought in a really good location.

 

[4:52] So, to me I might, having that longer term view and then go okay, so what happens when you want to buy your own home? And just asking that question now I have clients when they go, when they're rent vesting, like what happens when you want to buy your own home? The penny drops for them just like it dropped when we were looking to buy quite some time ago, how does this work?

 

 **OUTRO**

 

In a future episode of Property Investory, Aaron Christie-David will explain the steps he takes before buying a property…

 

[0:46] I'm going to speak to a number of buyer's agents and where they're looking to buy.

 

We will hear about some other investing strategies…

 

[13:38] So, because we don't have that rampant market anymore, people can afford to sit around and wait.

 

He will delve into the importance of a good mindset…

 

[18:19] But the mindset, I mean, that's where the battle is.

And that’s next time on Property Investory.