Lesley Smith is a property developer and finance officer living in the beautiful Sunshine Coast. Before Smith grew roots in Queensland, she was raised in Southampton, England. In this episode, we follow her life story from the streets of Southampton, through to her college education and finally to the life changing decision to move to Australia.
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!
Timestamps:
00:03:08 | High school in the UK isn't like Hogwarts ?
00:06:47 | There are things worth more than money
00:11:59 | From writing reservations to writing cheques
00:15:04 | Who needs a careers counselor when you have a TV?
00:16:52 | The start of something new
00:25:20 | The Drive-buy property
00:30:12 | Let go of whatever doesn't suit you anymore
Resources and Links:
Transcript:
Lesley Smith
[00:26:17] we started to think that we needed to do something different to make some money out of properties.
**INTRO MUSIC**
Tyrone Shum:
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!
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Tyrone Shum
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.
Personal Background
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.
Tyrone Shum
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.
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Tyrone Shum:
Coming up after the break we will delve deeper into Lesley Smith’s journey and learn how she got started in property…
Lesley Smith
[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
Tyrone Shum:
how they flipped the property being overlooked by everyone else
Lesley Smith
[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
Tyrone Shum:
And that’s next. I’m Tyrone Shum and you’re listening to Property Investory.
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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.
Property journey
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.
**OUTRO**
Tyrone Shum
In a future episode of Property investory, we’ll continue the conversation with Lesley Smith. Where we’ll discuss the lessons she’s learned on her journey
Lesley Smith
[00:01:56] 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.
Tyrone Shum
The tip that saved her $16,000 on one property, and thousands more on others.
Lesley Smith
[00:07:47] give them the opportunity to say yes, if you don't ask, they can't say yes.
Tyrone Shum
The unexpected ways her good habits rubbed off on her daughter
Lesley Smith
[00:17:41] 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.
Tyrone Shum
And that’s next time in a future episode of Property Investory.