Our listeners will hear how different the property world is in Australia compared to England, while also learning about Smith's first property investment. We also find out how she made a large profit on a development by seeing potential where other people wouldn't dare to.  All that and more on this episode of Property Investory!

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[00:26:17] we started to think that we needed to do something different to make some money out of properties.

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 speaking with Property developer Lesley Smith. Join us as she discusses her upbringing in the UK and how she saw potential in a property that was overlooked by everyone else. We also learn how moving to Australia got her started on her property journey. All that and more coming up! 

Smith works as a finance officer while developing properties on the side. She is also a mother, so her day to day schedule is unsurprisingly full. 

Lesley Smith  

[00:00:51] I usually drop my daughter off at school in the morning, and then I come home and work for my employer, or go into the office. And then once I've done my hours for them, then I spend some time on background work for investments, stuff at home and then school pickup time, it's time to pick my daughter up and move on to after school activities. [00:01:28]  She's very much into dancing at the moment. So three times a week to the dance school. So I guess you could call me a dance mom. She's in the squad there. So we got competitions and lots of practice and things to do. So dancing is the main focus at the moment.

Tyrone Shum    

Although Australia is her home now, Smith spent most of her life in England. 

Lesley Smith  

[00:01:59] I grew up in Southampton in the UK. That's famous for being where the Titanic sailed from. And so I had a pretty normal childhood there, really. And went to school there. And then when I met my husband, we decided to emigrate to Australia. We could both see the opportunities and lifestyle that was offered over here. So we moved here in 2004. And I've been on the Sunshine Coast ever since. [00:02:35] I was 33 when we moved over.

[00:02:45] we've been in Australia for nearly 17 years now. So almost half of the life in the UK. Yes.

Tyrone Shum   

While you might imagine schools in England to resemble Harry Potter’s Hogwarts, however, the reality is much more ordinary. 

Lesley Smith   

[00:03:08] Schooling is a little bit different in England. We have three schools that you go to so we call it little school, and then primary school or middle school and then we call it senior school over there. Which is the equivalent of high school here. So went to the three different schools. The little school seemed very tiny. Now I'll go back and see it. At the time it seemed really big that was literally just around the corner from our house and then the middle school was a little bit further walk away and then the senior school was about 20 minute walk from the house so over there you don't really get any choice of which school you go to you just have to go to the local one. Unless you go to a private school, so it’s a fair bit different to Australia. Yeah. Yeah,

Lesley Smith    

[00:04:09] the distances for going to sort of local things in our area, everything was pretty close to where we lived. We used the bus a lot where I grew up so everything was either within walking distance or you could catch a bus.

Tyrone Shum    

Smith shared a fond memory of her primary school days

 

Lesley Smith   

[00:05:30] we used to have a school fair every year in middle school, which I enjoy doing, and we used to have a big raffle. And I actually won the raffle one year. So that was very exciting because the.. Don’t know if they use them over here much, but you have like a drum barrel that spins around with all the raffle tickets in it. And it was jam-packed full, you could hardly pull any out. It was so full. And I was the lucky ticket to be drawn out first. And won a little black and white portable TV. Very exciting at the time, because I didn't have a TV in my room. So suddenly, I had a TV in my bedroom. So I felt very special with that. And yeah, we had, like in the senior school, we had a canteen that you could go along and get food from which was quite nice food there. Yeah, apart from that, not really sure. What else was different over there really.

While Smith didn't come from a wealthy family, she inherited something more valuable than money: Her parents work ethic and her grandfather's passion. 

Lesley Smith    

[00:06:47]  My mum and dad, they rented a lot before I was born. And then a few years before I was born, they were lucky enough to be able to purchase a house and the local council were doing a scheme at the time for people renting their properties to be able to buy a house and they helped them with a mortgage. So by the time I was born, Mum and Dad were in that house. And I always remember them having a very hard work ethic. And the money wasn't, there was a lot of money in our household, but they always made sure that the mortgage was paid first, before anything else. And their goal was that by the time they retired, the mortgage would be paid off. And they achieved that.

So get some from them, you know, learn about budgeting and making your money work as often as you can for you. They did have a number of investments where they tend to invest in shares, they never owned any other property. But they always saved money, and safe before they bought anything rather than putting things on to credit. So that was another lesson that I learned from them. My grandfather, he, unfortunately, died before I was born, but he was a master builder. And I know that one of the things he liked to do was to have little projects on the go all the time with renovations and building houses. So my mum, so we said that I've probably inherited his jeans, love of property and wanting to do things with property.

Tyrone Shum   

Although she was unaware of most of her family's financial situation, the things she did know about shaped her motivations for the future. 

Lesley Smith 

[00:08:51] I guess my mum, dad always saw bricks and mortar as being a good investment, to say, you know, they spent a lot of time and energy, making sure that they had their own house. Um I think also, just the whole thing about wanting to make life secure for ourselves, and not having to rely on our jobs. My dad was made redundant a few times while I was a child. And I know that those were hard times for the family. So I guess I can see from that, that it's not good just to rely on one source of income. So to have multiple streams and the ability to be able to create some other income if something happens to your main. My source of income became important to me.   [00:09:51] As a child, I was so shielded from a lot of it, but you know, you could sort of tell that the money was tight in the household. My mum was very good at housekeeping and making sure that we always had good meals on the table. But I know that it was a struggle for her.

Tyrone Shum    

When she finished high school she pursued further education 

Lesley Smith  

[00:10:47] I was actually um very lucky because we had a good college in Southampton. So when I left school, I went to that college. And then after a few years, I progressed to a higher education college. And I decided that I wanted to go more into management roles. So, I was actually lucky that the next college that did that type of diploma was actually only about 45-minute drive from our house, so I could just commute there and back. So I never did the whole university living away from home thing. I didn't really see the point in moving out from home if I didn't need to. And my mom and dad were happy for me to stay at home and look after me. So I was very fortunate in that way. So all my working career before we came to Australia was in Southampton. And lived local too. When I moved out from home eventually, it was only sort of 10 minutes away from my mum, dad. So all very local.

Tyrone Shum  

She explained what the next few years looked like for her.

Lesley Smith  

[00:11:59] When I left senior school, I decided I wanted to work in hotels. So I went to the local college and did a qualification which covered all different areas of the hotel. So from the cooking through to housekeeping, to reception to the finance. And I've really enjoyed that industry. Even during college, I was working part-time in restaurants, and hotels. And then when I finished the college course, I worked full time in a hotel. And that's when I decided to go on and do the management qualifications. 

I stayed in hotels for another couple of years. And then I realized that the hours really weren't very good for me having to work late at night. And up early again the next morning, really, really didn't suit me in the end. So I moved from there, started working in offices. And then I was fortunate enough to go and work for a large company who helped me move into their finance department. And that's when I started training as an accountant because I really enjoyed numbers. 

I had worked out by then. And obviously, that was very helpful to them as well. So they paid for me to go through my accountant’s qualification. And I stayed working with them until we moved to Australia. So I was quite sad to leave them because they were a very good company to work for. But the skills that I learned from being at college and working in hotels, stood me in good stead for my working life going forward. Because it's always good to learn how to deal with people. And the pressure in hotels of, you know, having to deal with so many customers at once and things like that. That was all good learning for me. 

And I think one other thing with my working life is that I've always, not really had a definite idea of what I wanted to do. I kept it very fluid. So when people talk about goals for like, one year, five year 10 year, I always struggle to answer that question because I'm like, Well, I just want to see where life's gonna take me I don't want to define myself by saying I want to go down this path, because you just don't know what other opportunities is going to come along. And that's what worked for me because say moving from hotels into accountancy, and then doing the property investing. It's all very different pathways.

Coming up after the break we will delve deeper into Lesley Smith’s journey and learn how she got started in property…

[00:18:22] coming to Australia, we could see that a lot of people did have a second property. So I guess we just followed the crowd

how they flipped the property being overlooked by everyone else 

[00:27:33] The garden was overgrown, and people really couldn't see what was beyond that. I sort of in my mind, stripped away all the trees, and could see that there was space down the side of the house 

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

Tyrone Shum    

While most people don’t pick their careers via a tv show, Smith was inspired by one specific show at a young age.

Lesley Smith  

[00:15:04] We had a TV program in England called crossroads, which was all about a motel. I don't know if they ever had that on television over here, did you? And my mum used to love watching that every afternoon and I used to watch it with her. And I guess that planted the seeds of what I wanted to do. When I was a child. I didn't really know what I wanted to do when I left school. And I think somebody just asked me one day, and I just been watching the Crossroads program. So I said, Oh, I want to go in hotel reception. And then that's sort of stuck with me ever since after that. Also, I guess coming from the type of household note we had with money being tight. We didn't really have money to stay in fancy hotels. We used to go camping for holidays, mum, mum and dad loved taking me wherever every holidays, and we did travel a lot with the tent. But we didn't stay in fancy hotels very often. So I think also leaving the school off, right? Probably can't afford to stay in one. So I'll go and work in one, and then I'll be in that fancy hotel environment.

Tyrone Shum   

Since most of her personal journey occurred in the UK, Smith didn't start her property journey until she moved to Queensland, Australia.

Lesley Smith 

[00:16:52] When I was in England, my brother was working for a rental agency at the time. And he did try and encourage me to buy a rental property while I was living at my mum and dad's. He said it would be a very good investment, and he would manage it for me to sort of start getting onto the property ladder. But at that point in time, I was quite happy living at home. 

And I  had started saving up for a deposit for myself to buy a property. And I remember saying to them all if I buy property, I want to go and live in it myself, I don't want to rent it to somebody else. Looking back now I can see the sense in what he was saying. And that it would have been a smart move to have had an investment property while living at Mum and Dads, because I would have had income coming in, in the best of both worlds. But hindsight is good. But I guess he planted the seeds of the idea into my head. 

And then when we came to Australia, we decided to buy an investment property because we realized that a lot of people in Australia do own investment properties, in England, it’s quite unusual. People just tend to own their own property. And it's only the very rich who have a second property or more as investment properties. So it wasn't really the norm over there. Coming to Australia, we could see that a lot of people did have a second property. So I guess we just followed the crowd for that. We had some spare income. So we decided to buy our first investment property and create that second income stream.

Tyrone Shum  

It’s safe to say that if Smith never moved to Australia, she wouldn't have gotten into property. So how did she make that life-changing decision?  

Lesley Smith  

[00:18:57] It was definitely a big decision to come over. I think for myself and my husband before we'd met each other we both had ideas about coming to Australia. Now, when I was working in the hotels that I always ended up working in Southampton never had to move anywhere else for a job. But the hotel industry is quite fluid as well and you can get a job anywhere if you want to travel you can get a job anywhere in England or anywhere in Europe anywhere in the world. So I had it in the back of my head that at some point I would like to travel the world a little bit and work in hotels in other countries and Australia was on my bucket list. And for my husband as well. He had desires to come to Australia to live as well. 

So when we met I guess we’re both sort of compatible, that we both like the idea of coming to Australia. We did have a couple of trips to start off with. We came over for a month trip one time, and we both absolutely loved the country. Then went home to England and started thinking about wouldn't it be nice to live in Australia. In the meantime, my brother emigrated over here with his wife as all her family were here. So we came over for our honeymoon in December 2002. Because I really wanted to see how I cope with the summer. Because in England, when we have a hot day, it is a very hot day. And because the buildings aren't really designed for hot weather, I did need to suffer a little bit over there. So, so I'm not moving over there unless I can see whether I can cope for the summer. 

So we came back for our honeymoon, I did end up with heatstroke one day because I spent too long in the sun. But I learned from that. And by the end of the trip, I obviously loved it here. And I just didn't want to go back to England again. But we did go back. And then we started really being serious about putting in an application to move over here. We just loved everything about Australia, we loved the people's climate, the unusual wildlife. And we loved the Sunshine Coast that my brother was living on at the time. And so we decided to take the plunge and actually live over here. And because see the opportunities for much better, the lifestyle was much better. And we were still young enough then to make the most of it over here.

Tyrone Shum  

Eventually, everything fell into place, and Smith found a job that would give her the income she needed to start property development.

Lesley Smith  

[00:22:03] I was very lucky because when we were in England, looking at coming across to Australia, I could see that there are lots of analyst type jobs, which was what I was doing at that time. So oh yeah this will be fine. Now, one thing with people from England, we tend to underestimate the distances between towns and cities in Australia, because England is so much smaller. And when we actually moved to Australia, we found a house very quickly to buy within the first three days of being here, put a contract on it. And we're going to move in three weeks later. And I suddenly, Oh, hang on a minute. So we're going to have bills to pay up, I guess we'd better get jobs. 

And so when I actually started looking for jobs, I quickly realized that all the jobs for the type of role that I'd been doing in the UK, were down in Brisbane, which is about an hour, hour and a half drive from us. And I really hate driving that much. So I'm like, I don't really want to go to Brisbane every day. So spoke to an agency. And they said the same thing. Yeah, they said with your skills, you'll need to go to Brisbane to get a job. But then just out of the blue, they phoned me a couple of days later. So we've had a job just come in, which might be ideal for you know. In England, I'd been working for a large hardware company called being Q, which are very similar to Bunnings. And I really wanted to stay in that sector - doing the accounting - because I'd learned a lot while I was working for them.

 And she said, by chance there was a small hardware store up on the Sunshine Coast who were looking for somebody to help them with their finance. So it was perfect for me. So I went along for the interview, and they took me on for that job. And they've had a few changes in the meantime. But basically, I'm still working for the company that took over the shop after a couple of years. So I'm still with them now. So that worked really well. So I really enjoy what I do. And the roles changed a fair bit over the years, but I'm still doing the accounting, the accounting work for them, just sort of different capacities, but I still enjoy it. And yeah, they're a good company to work for. So that works really well. So I was very lucky to be able to get a job in the local area doing what I love to do.

Tyrone Shum   

Her first venture into property didn't go as well as planned, but it’s important to remember that everything happens for a reason. 

Lesley Smith   

[00:25:20] So we say we arrived in 2004 and bought our own property. 2006 we started looking around for an investment property, and found one that wasn't far from where we live just five minutes up the ranks, we like to keep everything local, if we can. And it seemed a good buy, it was a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house on an estate, so we knew it would be easy to rent out. So we bought that property. And we held that for quite a few years. But we realized that it wasn't really making a lot of money for us in capital growth, because of being on an estate, and there were lots of new sections opening up. So there was lots of new land around, which made the old land if you like, not coming up in value that much. 

So we started to think that we needed to do something different to make some money out of properties. We found a local mentoring group, which was formed by micronauts at that time. And we went along to a few of his sessions. And so he can really help us with what we wanted to do. So we joined his mentoring group. And he gave us lots of good advice. And we ended up finding, we started looking at the prospect of doing more development side of things, rather than just buying a property renting it out, hold on to it, do a little bit of painting every few years, and then sell it on because see that that really wasn't going to make us much money at all. So he helped us look at the bigger picture. And what was possible to do. 

We found a little two-bedroom house in the centre of town one day, which was up for sale, deceased estate. And I think people were driving past it, I saw the sign outside and it did say, possible development site. But I think a lot of people were just driving past it because it was a little bit unloved. It was bit shabby. The garden was overgrown, and people really couldn't see what was beyond that. I sort of in my mind, stripped away all the trees, and could see that there was space down the side of the house to put in a driveway to the back. And when we looked out designing and everything, it was possible to put a townhouse in the garden. Pretty much. And so we purchased the house, and we say about putting in the application for putting the townhouse in the back. And we would of never attempted that type of project with the help of somebody mental enough.

 And Michael is great for helping us see what the possibilities were there. Then we ended up with a good team around us town planners and a builder and they all helped us sort of achieve the project. And we ended up living in the back house for a while. And then we sold both properties a few years later. And then we sort of looked around at other projects, and then we sort of got a taste for what could be done. [00:28:59] it was definitely profitable. Some of the profit came from the market shift during the time that we owned it because we had it for about five years before we sold it. But I definitely think some of the profit came from what we did adding value to the site as well.

Tyrone Shum   

The property was a subdivision with a shared driveway, so it needed more than one title. 

Lesley Smith 

[00:29:29] it was medium density zoning. The project we actually did they call a small lot subdivision. So the land wasn't subdivided totally into two titles. Through they were… we did we ended up strata titling it. So each property had its own title but as a strata title, and then there was a body corporate across the common area which was the driveway, which the front house could use and the back house.

Tyrone Shum  

Once the property was done, they thought about keeping it, but in the end, it didn’t suit their needs. 

Lesley Smith   

[00:30:12] We did think about holding on to it. And when we originally did the project, we did think that we would hold on to it for a number of years. But we got to a point where the townhouse was feeling a little bit small for us. We had our daughter and, you know what kids are like, there’s lots of toys and things. And to be honest, we loved the location because it was really close to town. But other people had had the same idea as us. And we're starting to build up around us and we were feeling a little bit hemmed in there. So we decided that we'd like to move on. And it was time for a bigger house for us and a different location where there was more open space. So we started looking at other properties around the area, and we were lucky enough to get into an area near the beach, which we'd been wanting to get into for a long time. And sort of a little old beach shack came up for sale that needed lots of TLC. So we were able to get back at a good price. But we did have to sell those two properties to be able to get out. So I guess it was a personal choice to give us our personal lifestyle that we wanted. So we sort of sacrifice those two properties to do that.

Tyrone Shum   

Although Smith is very successful, she is no stranger to adversity. She shares some of her worst investment decisions.

Lesley Smith   

[00:00:30] We purchased a townhouse, which was off the plan. An estate that was starting to be developed, I guess. So we thought, Oh, this nice idea, get a townhouse there add to our portfolio. This was around about the same time that we're buying the property in town. We were told at the time that the value was expected to increase by $40,000 before it was even finally built for us. So we thought that's a good, good proposition to put contracted off the plan. And then by the time the property’s built sort of six months, 12 months later, we've already made $40,000. Without any money down.  

Yeah, unfortunately, because of the way that property prices went in the area, and there were lots of new builds going on at the time, more land was opened up. That increased didn't happen. And it just really plateaued and was only worth what we'd paid for it by the time we settled on it. It and it took quite a few years before it did increase by the 40,000. So we sort of take that as a sign to sell on at that point and make the 40,000 that we were happy with that there's a little bit disappointing. And I guess sort of lesson learned to not really listen to sort of predictions at the time to look at what's around and not expect things to increase by that much. 

The second worst investment we made was that we bought some managed funds just a few weeks before the GFC hit. And we actually took on a second mortgage to do that. We decided we had spare cash and so yes, take on a mortgage, put it in shares. And we don't have to do anything with them. Now, it's not like a property where you have to do stuff with it, we'll have a little go at the dip our toes in the water with shares. Unfortunately, a few weeks later, GFC came along and they plunged to 50% of what we'd bought them for. So that was quite a lot of $1,000 wiped off in one go. And obviously we're still paying mortgage for the full amount. And it took those good eight years before they were even anywhere close to what we'd originally paid for them. So the lesson we learned from that was even safe investments aren't always safe. So it's sort of a bit of a gamble, whatever you do, yeah,

However, out of hard times comes wise words, here’s the advice that she’d give to anyone currently in a bad investment. 

Lesley Smith   

[00:03:44] Expect the unexpected. And I guess, to always make sure that you can cope. If things don't work out so well. So we were lucky with the shares, we were able to still pay the mortgage that we had on them. If we'd sort of taken on more than we could afford then, we could have been stuck. But now we were able to cope with it. And with the townhouse it was covering its costs while we owned it. So it wasn't really costing us money. Yeah, so you just have to always be mindful of what the worst outcome could be.

Tyrone Shum   

While she’s experienced the downside of investing, she’s also had some eye-opening moments 

Lesley Smith   

[00:04:54]  The aha moment, I think, was when we realized what our mentors was saying to us. So we joined an offer mentoring group, Young Oens, one in Brisbane a couple of years ago. And one thing he always says to us is to give people the opportunity to say yes. And I think with the project that we did it went by that we sort of learned that that is the case. If you give people the opportunity to say yes, then you can get somewhere and move on with your journey.

Tyrone Shum   

Smith explains how she came across the subdivision property that doubled her income 

Lesley Smith    

[00:05:52] We actually found off-market. So we went to see a different property with the agent. But that one wasn't suitable for what we wanted to do. So we were talking to him and explaining what we wanted to do with subdivisions. And he said, he said, I might have another property that might be of interest to you. So I've been talking to the owners, they don't want to put it on the market yet. But if somebody comes along, they're happy to talk.

So we went along to see that one. And that one, was the one that we ended up doing, it went by. So he negotiated with the owners for us, and we put the contract in on it, and we can see the loop. It could be subdivided or had its challenges. But it was a really good one for learning from because it did give us a lot of challenges.

[00:07:05] We put in an offer for it. And they accepted the offer, after a little bit of negotiating backwards and forwards. And then we had the building and pest report done. And that came up with a few things that needed to be sorted out there that we hadn't realized, on the maintenance side, and stuff. So we ended up asking for a $16,000 drop in the price.

Smith knew it was a bold ask, but she was still hopeful 

[7:39] I knew that we were being very cheeky asking for that. But I had it in the back of my mind for Young says about give them the opportunity to say yes, if you don't ask, they can't say yes. So I was sort of like cringing when we were given the agent, the news that we wanted to drop 16,000, who went and spoke to them, obviously, they weren't very impressed with that they would have liked have kept the offer where it was, but they did end up agreeing to an $8,000 drop. 

So we were very happy with that, because I thought they would come back sort of say no it’s an old property, you know, go away. Pay what we want you to pay for it. And that's it. So yeah, if we hadn't asked for that discount, then we wouldn't have got anything. 

Tyrone Shum   

Here’s how they secured their bold offer and how you can too! 

Lesley Smith  

[00:08:44] We showed them the building and pest report. And we pointed out the things that that needed doing, and that's the biggest one, I guess, was the retaining wall, there was already a retaining wall there. And we knew that we'd have to re engineer it as part of the development approval. But the existing retaining wall wasn't a very bad state of repair. 

And in the end, they agree that if somebody else had bought the property that were looking to live there, they would still have to do some work on the retaining wall, and it would still cost them a lot of money to do that. So we were prepared to take an $8,000 discount, because we knew we had to do something with it. And we already sort of allowed for that in our figures. 

Whereas if they'd sold it to somebody who wanted to own it and live there, they might have asked for a lot more discount because it was gonna cost a lot more than $8,000 to fix it even just for somebody living there. And there were some other maintenance issues as well. So we just pointed them all out to them. Even some of the more minor ones. Yeah, sit back up the reason why we were asking for 16,000.

Tyrone Shum    

So just how well did the property do? 

Lesley Smith   

[00:10:13] We purchased it for 550,000. It ended up costing us about 860 in total. So three, just over 300,000 in development costs. That's including everything, the civils, the engineer's fees, town planners, fees, absolutely everything. And then we sold the land for 320. And the house for 537. So we ended up making… we ended up making about 60,000 profit out of it. So we were happy with that. 

Tyrone Shum  

And how long did that process take?

Lesley Smith  

[00:11:08] we actually signed contracts in January last year. So 2020. And we settled on the 10th of March 2020, just before everything went belly up with COVID. So I think you can imagine you mentioned about having problems with the development in COVID era, you can imagine how we felt just going in for our first subdivision knowing all the costs ahead.

 Just before COVID, so we really didn't know what we were letting ourselves in for. 

But we were quite philosophical Balor, we knew it was a good property and could be rented out. So we thought, well, we'll just see how it goes, go with the flow again. And if we have to keep renting out for a while, before we do the project, we'll do that we'll just see, you know what happens. It did take us quite a few weeks to get tenants in there, because everybody just was staying at home, no tenants will want to move anywhere. 

And yeah, we just struggled to get a tenant, which was probably the worst part of it took us a couple of months to get tenants in there. So we were starting to get a little bit nervous at that point of what was going to happen. But once the tenants were in we start cracking on with all…  we’d already put in the application, everything we got everything come sorted during the contract time so that as soon as we settle, we were ready to put the application into the council. 

So we kept everything moving along as quickly as we could, with our fingers paused on the pause button, ready to sort of stop if if we need to, to COVID you know, postponed things. So then we were able to get all this civils done. We had a great team around us, the engineers, town planners, the civil contractors just all worked together very well. And we just really left them to it a lot of the time, and they got stuff sorted. And then we finished all the civils around September time. Yep, we started to pull out for sale at the end of October. And we got a contract from both the house and the land. The middle of December.

Tyrone Shum    

Despite the COVID-19 setbacks, it was still a great outcome 

Lesley Smith  

[00:13:34] they both settled in February. So if you want to take it from the point that when we signed the contract that was just over 12 months, or about 13 months for the project from start to finish. So that was really good.

Lesley Smith    

[00:14:08] think we were lucky that we were doing the council part in the early part of COVID. I think a few, if it’d been two or three months down the line. I think people were starting to struggle with getting, getting the answers back and the final approvals back from Council. So I think we were very lucky with that timing.

Tyrone Shum  

Smith and her husband have hopes of developing more properties in the future

Lesley Smith 

[00:14:43] We'd like to do another project. If we can. We have taken a little bit of a backseat at the moment. We're helping other people with their projects, some investing some money to keep the money moving. And to help them we were just dumb waiting to see at the moment what good projects come along. We were we are on the Sunshine Coast, the property market has been absolutely on fire the last few months and it seems to be ramping up with no signs of stopping. When you're driving around, you see a for sale sign up. Within a few days, that changes to a sold sign. So you have to be very quick with what you're getting. And it's quite difficult at the moment to get things off market. And to get them a good price because everybody's just trying to get the best price that they can. So we're just waiting our time in the moment. We've got quite a few things going on, personally with renovations around the house and stuff. So we're just concentrating on that at the moment. And then we'll come back into the property project some when we feel ready for

When we come back after the break we discuss a surprising outcome of Smiths property ventures  

[00:17:39]  she was only nine. But she came up with a fantastic list and lots of things that were out of the box that you wouldn't really expect a child to sort of think of.

We learn about the mindset that led her to build a property empire

[00:24:59] the way that I've always looked at things in my life is for it to be a fluid pathway. 

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

Tyrone Shum   

Motivation is a key element to Smiths Success 

Lesley Smith   

[00:16:35] our main motivation is to create a secure life for ourselves and our daughter. She's learning a lot from it. Like being a child, she doesn't always understand why we've got to go to open houses, or why we've got to go to that… buy property again on a Saturday morning when she just wants to stay at home and do her thing. But she is learning a lot from it as well. She's learning the work ethic and that you have to work for your money. And is dependent on what you put in what you get out. The harder you work, the more you're going to get out of something, whether that is money or enjoyment, or, or whatever. She actually was quite funny because when we joined Young's program, he used to give us homework at the start to do and one of the things you had to do was list 10 ways that you could make money other than your normal job. 

And my daughter was like, what you're doing Mommy, what you're doing, I sort of explained to her what I'm gonna do that as well, she said, and she got a piece of paper, and she started thinking and writing. And at that time, she was only nine. But she came up with a fantastic list and lots of things that were out of the box that you wouldn't really expect to child to sort of think of. And I thought that was a really good thing for her to be starting to think out of the box and think about other ways of doing things. And you don't just have to go to your nine to five job. You can do other things as well.

Tyrone Shum    

Smith and her husband learnt a lot from books and their mentor 

Lesley Smith  

[00:19:01]  My husband tends to read the books more than I do. I just got my head buried in spreadsheets all the time. I tend to split the roles that way. There was one very good book that he felt very inspired by. It was called Start Now Get Perfect Later by Rob Moore. And after he'd read that book, he was like, we've got to get a property. We've got to get this, we've got to get into it. This was after we've been on Young’s program for a little while and we had been looking and couldn't find the right thing. But I think you can spend a lot of time looking for the perfect project and then you pass by other ones that potentially could give you lots of learnings and some money as well. And it is very difficult balance to make sure that the one you're getting isn't going to be an absolute flop, and that you're just going to get learnings out of it and no money. But It was really after reading that book that we put the emphasis on really trying to find a property. And then when the one by one came up, we could see that there were options there. So you talked about the exit strategies earlier, we can see that there were quite a few exit strategies for it. And although the money that we were going to make from doing the subdivision, we knew by the time we did the due diligence period, it wasn't going to be fantastic money. Young always likes you to look at doing around 20% return to be safe in the project. And we knew by the when we first started looking at it, it looked like it was going to return 20% by the end of the due diligence, it looked like it was going to be turned about 12%.

But for our situation, we were prepared to take the plunge and give it a go and use Rob's philosophy from his book of start now get perfect later. We're glad that we did the project. Obviously, we don't know what other opportunities we missed out on by doing this one. While it was quite a challenging one being a sloping block, and the retaining wall, and a few other sort of features of the engineering on it. So was very challenging, but it did offer lots of learning for us. And now having come out of this one, so we came out with 60,000 I think I got my figures wrong early, which isn't very good being a numbers person, but being the cost of actually around 250. 

eah, so we made 60,000, which to us that worked out 8% in the end. So it wasn't a huge profit compared to what a lot of people make out of projects. But we think coming through the COVID year, we were very happy to make that amount of money, because at the start of last year, so by March time, nobody really knew how the future was going to look like. So we were happy to come out of it and the learnings that we've learned from are taken to the next project, and we know that our next project is going to be so much better and smoother, because of what we've learned from this one, so that was absolute gold.

In Hindsight, Smith wishes she had been braver earlier in her journey 

Lesley Smith  

[00:23:27] I think I would have said to myself to not be afraid to give it a go. And to give people the opportunity to say Yes. I think 10 years ago, we weren't so confident at putting ourselves out there and asking for things, and asking people to give us a go and to get properties cheaper, all that type stuff. And I think also, to try not to let opportunities pass by there have been some project, particularly in property that we were too scared, I guess, to go into. And I think, you know, looking back and again, hindsight is good. We know now that they might have been a good investment. So hindsight is always good. But I guess not to beat yourself up about the things that haven't gone so well.

Tyrone Shum   

Smith shares what she’s looking forward to in her property development journey

Lesley Smith    

[24:51] I think the endless opportunities that there are in property. And as I mentioned earlier, the way that I've always looked at things in my life is for it to be a fluid pathway. And not to become fixed on, we must do things this way, this is what's going to happen. This is where I'm going to be in five years. So again, with the property, we sort of take opportunities as they come, not to become fixated on, I'm only going to do subdivisions, or many gonna do renovations, again, is to find balance, because you can then end up being jack of all trades and just jumping around from here to there and not learning the skill sets that you need properly. So you have to be careful of that. But to also take opportunities as they come along, and not, not let them pass us by.

Tyrone Shum
[25:46] Leslie, you've shared a great story. You've been along with this property journey, and also the developments that you've done as well. How much of it do you think is because duty intelligence, hard work and skill, and how much of it do you think is because of luck?

Lesley Smith   

[00:26:24] I think there is an element of luck involved. Sometimes timing goes your way, sometimes it doesn't. A lot of it's probably about being in the right place at the right time. So without women by project, we would never have known about it unless we went to the other property inspection with that agent. A lot of it. I'm not sure necessarily about skill. But I think a lot of it is listening to the advice of other people that know better than you so so we've had some great mentors along the way. 

And in Young's group, there's a lot of other experienced people doing properties. So we've been learning off of them as well. And if you take their advice, then they've done it all before they've made the mistakes. So you're less likely to make those mistakes, you can still make mistakes, and you do still have to make your own mistakes to a certain extent to be able to learn from them. But I think it's just all about surrounding yourself with the right team as well. So we were very lucky. Maybe it was luck. But the town planners that we used all those years ago, doing the third strata title property in town. We've stuck with them all the way through. So we've got a good relationship with them now. 

And they put us in touch with the engineer, she's been very good as well. And then she put us in touch with the civil contractor. So everything just fell into place. So you could say there was an element of luck involved in that element of choosing the right people, and really listening to them and taking their skills and expertise on board, and letting them do what they're skilled at. And then we just sort of made it all happen, I guess, you know, we were just there. Putting the money in and how can we sort of coordinate it all.

Tyrone Shum  

Thank you to our guest Lesley Smith for sharing her amazing story on Property Investory.