In this episode he explains how he pulled eight properties off his shelf that had been gathering dust and matched them with an investor he knew well. While purchasing properties at a rate of nearly one a month wasn’t exactly in his client’s plan, it was easily one of the best things he’d ever done for both himself and his tenants. In purchasing properties at 20% to 30% below market value, while one purchase may not make a large increase in an investor’s account, grabbing eight in one year certainly does!

Timestamps:
00:43 | You’ve Got to Have Goals
03:55 | Time In, Not Timing
09:01 | Coming In Under
11:27 | Risky Business
16:03 | Chipping Away
18:26 | Line ‘Em Up
22:26 | ‘I’ll Take Them All’
31:07 | Is West Best?

Resources and Links:

[00:05:23] If you've got a $300,000 property doubling in value, then you make $300,000. But if you got a $3 million portfolio and that doubles in value, then you make $3 million. So the question for any investor is: How do you get to that $3 million mark in the quickest, but also the [least risky] way? And how do you wait and hold on to those houses until that happens? 

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 of Invest Like A Pro we’re chatting with founder and director of House Finder, Simon Loo. He shows us how eight times 12 actually equals something more like $96,000, as long as you’re willing to sacrifice appeal for rental potential. Plus, he explains why bigger plus newer doesn’t always equal better.

Tyrone Shum:   

Loo’s client didn’t intend to purchase eight properties in 12 months, but life— and the property market— works in mysterious ways. He came to him through a broker he works with frequently, and found him to be a perfect match for the dozen properties that had been sitting on his shelf for quite some time, proving that nothing is truly unsellable.

Simon Loo:   

[00:00:43] I sat down with him and talked to him about his goals, what he wanted to achieve. Like most of these conversations that we have, the goal was to achieve passive income. And I explained to him how that could work: How many properties you're going to need to get there, what kind of cash flow you're going to need, the types of properties, how often you need to buy. And he was pretty convinced about the strategy. 

  

[00:01:11] This particular broker that he's working with has developed a massive property portfolio himself in his own right. And similar to me and my initial property journey, I got myself to a point where I had passive income as well to quit my day job. 

  

[00:01:34] Maybe it was the fact of having two people in his immediate vicinity mentoring him and educating him along the way and kind of just showing him the ropes, that enabled him to progress mentally a lot quicker than, let's say, an average investor. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:01:59] There's always the struggle, I guess, when people first start off to jump into investing. It sounds like this person has a want and a need to invest. And he's starting from scratch. And he's ready to go in. 

  

[00:02:10] But then I guess you always go, 'Okay, why is it that some of them actually just take the action, and then do really well, and others, even though they've been given a strategy and a plan, they just sit and 'um' and 'ah' and procrastinate for a little bit longer until they make the jump?' What do you see the difference is here?

Simon Loo:   

[00:02:27] I always say property investing is actually a blue collar job. In the sense that you can analyse and look at data and focus on all these different stats and the economy and all these peripheral elements that could or could not affect the market. 

  

[00:02:48] But at the end of the day, I find just over the years, I've noticed— not find— that the people that tend to do well are the people that just simply consistently take action. 

  

[00:03:00] And there's always a scenario or a situation or something that stops somebody investing in property. I remember very clearly at the start of COVID when all the lockdowns started happening, people were like, 'Oh, you know what, it's too risky. I'm not going to invest'. 

  

[00:03:21] We look back now [and see that] that would have been a perfect time to buy because the market was dead quiet. And then consequently there was a massive boom in every single city, all parts of Australia. 

  

[00:03:31] And then after COVID, I guess all these lockdowns started easing up. There was a floods of buyers back in the market looking for houses to live in. And then investors again— or not all investors, but a lot of investors— were thinking, 'Oh, it's a little bit too hot at the moment. I'm going to wait a little bit more'. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:03:52] You can see the pattern here. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:03:55] Exactly, you can see where it's kind of headed. And then okay, lo and behold, recently, as we all know, a lot of markets have cooled down. The reason behind the markets hav[ing] cooled down has created the new fee, interest rates potentially going up, economy going down, inflation, all this kind of stuff. And once again, everyone— or not everybody, many investors— are thinking, 'Oh, you know what, it's a little bit shaky now. I'm gonna wait a bit'.

  

[00:04:23] It gets said time and time again, it's not timing the market. It's a time in the market. And the people, including myself, and everyone that I know that has actually developed a large enough portfolio to quit their jobs or achieve their goals is, you should always be looking at your situation. How much you earn, how much you've got in savings, how much equity you have. And you should always be thinking, 'What's my next move? How am I going to go ahead?' And you feel like, 'Okay, cool. I can now actually buy an investment property. What's the area? What's the criteria?' 

  

[00:04:59] Obviously right now, as of today that we're having a chat, it would be ridiculous to buy an investment property in Sydney. Peak. So you look at other areas, look at different places, different types of properties. And your consistency in moving forward, at the end of the day, you just end up exposing yourself to more growth. That's really the bottom line. 

  

[00:05:23] If you've got a $300,000 property doubling in value, then you make $300,000. But if you got a $3 million portfolio and that doubles in value, then you make $3 million. So the question for any investor is: How do you get to that $3 million mark in the quickest, but also the [least risky] way? And how do you wait and hold on to those houses until that happens? 

  

[00:05:51] So with this particular investor, we started off with that right mindset. He wasn't planning to [buy] one every month, almost, because so far we're about eight properties deep within about 12 months. The first one we bought was a really basic home. But it was cheap. It was in Queensland in an area called Logan. Everyone loves Logan.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:06:21] Well, that's where your portfolio is substantially, you invest well and make your money.

Simon Loo:   

[00:06:27] [There's] a couple of consistencies with every single property we bought: They're all off market. [That's] extremely, extremely important. In any market. Up, down, it doesn't matter. By the time it hits the market, it sells. Properties sell very quickly and at a high price, because it's just competition, just like anything in life. So they're all off market. 

  

[00:06:51] Another similarity is that these areas, or these properties, or a combination of both, were completely not sexy at all. A lot of these houses were super old, almost rundown. But they were clean, tidy, [and] rentable, number one. 

  

[00:07:14] And number two, we got them at such a bargain [price] that it justified the fact that they looked... like, pretty bad. And if I look back at this journey and how this journey started and where it's at at the moment, probably the underlying factor as to why this client has achieved what he's achieved so far is because he completely blocked out the emotional side of buying properties. 

 

[00:07:44] And we're all privy to it. Because even though we all like to say, 'Yeah, we're all about numbers, we're all gonna buy property to make money', if you're presented with a house that is just so far out of your depth in terms of your expectations as to what a livable viable property is, physically, it's really hard to take that jump. Even if the numbers are stellar. 

  

[00:08:09] And I've always maintained in any suburb, even the best suburbs in Australia, there's always the worst house on the worst street [or a] main road, and they've got the biggest mansion in the best street. You can make money out of both as an investor if you get them cheap enough. 

  

[00:08:25] So it's kind of just like... look, not all the houses we bought for this client have been just dilapidated dumps, but a lot of them have been. And that's one of the ways that we managed, coupled with the off market notion. [It] is one of the ways that we've managed to pick these properties up quite cheaply.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:08:43] In terms of the market price, how much under the market [were they]? Approximately? [It] does not be exactly every one, but approximately, did you pick it up under?

Simon Loo:   

[00:08:51] I would say in the region of 30 ish percent. 20% to 30% below market value.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:08:57] That's huge. That's huge. I mean, you're already making 30% going in then, basically.

Simon Loo:   

[00:09:01] It is. A couple of things as well. The price points for a lot of these properties were quite low. So a lot of them were around about the $300,000 mark, and we're talking houses on decent blocks of land. $300,000 mark, and for these houses, if they were marketed normally and sold normally would maybe get $390,000 instead of $300,000. That's already 30% below. 

  

[00:09:33] But if you're looking at a purely from a dollar perspective, the $90,000 doesn't sound spectacular. But you have multiply the percentage and multiply [it] by eight in this case, then it starts to become significant.

  

[00:09:48] There's actually a very interesting example. During the journey there was one property that we secured for... I think it was, like, $360,000 or $370,000, or something like that. Off market. And it got to a point where the seller decided to not go ahead with the sale.  

  

[00:10:17] I won't get into the reasons why, because it was a bit of a faff around that situation. But anyway, the seller decided not to go ahead with the sale. And instead, what they decided to do was put the property online and sell it. 

  

[00:10:31] And then literally, within a week, the property sold for $450,000. So we had it under contract for $360,000. And had the seller gone through with it, we would have been obviously able to pick up that deal, but he didn't. So it is what it is. But he ended up selling for $450,000. And for me, that was kind of like real evidence that these genuine deals and bargains exist. 

  

[00:10:55] Whether it's from the ignorance of the seller, or maybe ignorance from the agent, or maybe they don't care about selling for the highest price, they just want ease. That's kind of key to building this portfolio.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:11:09] Totally. I think that's a really good point that you've made there. And it's so important to understand that for as an investor, when you go into any deal, you've got to make sure that you are going in at least making your money in. Because there's no point buying an overpriced property, because you end up holding onto something that you may not make any money [from] for a long time. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:11:27] It doesn't work. And the other thing is it minimises risk. Like, there's an element of risk with everything that we do in investing. But when you're clearly buying houses way below what they should be selling for, if you had to sell it the next day, I don't know if you're gonna make money out of it. But adding buying [and] selling expenses, all that kind of stuff, at the very least, you're not going to lose any money. So that's an important factor as well. 

  

[00:11:59] So we kept buying properties. Six of these properties were in Brisbane, two of them are in WA, in Perth. And because we were able to buy these properties quite low in value, the yields were quite high as well. So some of these rental yields were around about the 6.5% mark. Just off the bat. No dual living, no granny flats, no weird sort of dual key type setups or 20 rooms or anything like that. The standard three bedroom houses. A lot of them already rented long-term. 

  

[00:12:38] Some of them did require a little bit of work, which obviously, given the fact that you're making $90,000 off the bat, or 30%, if you had to chuck in $10,000 to fix a few things up here and there, [it's] no drop in the ocean, basically. 

  

[00:13:00] It's been an amazing journey. He's keen to buy more. But he's got a priority at the moment of buying a house for his family to live in first. 

  

[00:13:14] And once that's done, then we're gonna keep going. So he's got no intention to stop at this point in time. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:13:22] I should have asked you this earlier at the beginning, just to give a bit of background behind who he is. What's his occupation? Does he have a family? Does he have any kids? Give us a little bit of background behind that so we can just paint the picture of who this person is.

Simon Loo:   

[00:13:39] [He's a] family man. He's married [and has] three kids. He and his wife both work. Pretty high income each. I would say around about $150,000 per annum each. So a household income of maybe around [the] $300,000 ish mark. 

 

[00:14:06] It's a situation where it's quite actually normal. It's not extra amazing in terms of income or anything like that. They've obviously got dependents. And I think this is key as to why getting a super good broker is very important. There's a lot of talk you [hear] now about people finding it hard to get finance and all this kind of stuff. 

  

[00:14:30] I think there are definitely many ways to get finance. And a good broker will be able to direct you through the maze of using the right banks at the right time. Looking at specifically what each property you're buying and the purpose of each property [is]. So if your goal is to pull out equity from some of these initial purchases, then you need to go with a specific bank that's got an easy cash out policy. Anyway, the broker was very important in that. 

  

[00:15:105 [My client is] middle aged, nothing really extraordinary, just a standard family. I think they were just inspired and keen just to get out there and improve not only the lives of the family, but also just build a lot of security. Whether it's a worst case scenario and you don't have a job anymore, or whether it's just for early retirement, or whatever the case may be financially.

Coming up after the break, we get the lowdown on Logan…

[00:16:52] If anyone knows anything about Logan, about 12 months ago, it was still growing quite rapidly. 

What makes properties seem unsellable when they should really be the complete opposite…

[00:18:50] Just so you know, [in] my job as a buyer's agent, I get a lot of properties coming in. Interestingly, the houses that we're talking about that have amazing potential to make a tonne of money are the ones that most of my clients don't want. 

He reveals the total purchase value for his client and the staggering actual current value.

[00:29:04] So cash flow's there, growth is there, equity's there. And for him in such a short amount of time, he's got choices now. 

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

Tyrone Shum:   

When we're going to invest into property, a lot of us need deposits. Since this makes the first property usually the hardest to acquire, Loo explains how his client hopped on the ladder.

Simon Loo:   

[00:16:03] They did have quite a lot of savings. $300,000 a year [combined income]. Unless you're living a very frivolous life, you do end up saving quite a chunk of it. And they came into the journey with a couple of hundred thousand dollars of savings. 

 

[00:16:103 So initially, obviously, we were just chipping away at that, buying each of these properties. But eventually, we started to pull out the equity from the initial ones that we bought. 

  

[00:16:35] It's very integral to everything that I talk about. The main reason why we want to buy these bargains below market value is so that we can pull out the equity pretty quickly, and use that equity to buy more properties down the track. 

  

[00:16:52] If anyone knows anything about Logan, about 12 months ago, it was still growing quite rapidly. So a lot of these houses that we bought, even though they were 20% [to] 30% below market value, also experienced a lot of organic growth within the past 12 months. Some of these properties have got maybe 60% [to] 70% of equity or capital growth or both that was readily available from purchase price. 

  

[00:17:24] And if you look at it, again, purely from a dollar perspective, $100,000 is not like the most amazing thing. But considering the fact that we only paid $300,000 to get the $100,000 is pretty high. And $100,000 is obviously more than enough for a deposit, stamp duty, buying costs and stuff for another house. 

  

[00:17:45] So, yes, this particular client did start off on a pretty solid capital position. But at the rate that he was buying, that quickly ran out. So it was definitely a combination of both.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:18:10] And that's the key thing, I think, having a good broker in place to be able to get the finance. Because obviously, you're not paying $300,000 in cash. You're leveraging using the bank's money, you put a deposit down and then hopefully at, I don't know, a 20% deposit, you can start to dig into those deposits. 

Tyrone Shum:  

[00:18:26] And just out of curiosity, did he actually buy these properties one after another? Or did he actually just go and buy a group first, and then once he got the chance to refinance, then he started buying more?

Simon Loo:   

[00:18:36] All of them were one after another. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:18:38] Wow. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:18:40] There [were] probably one or maybe two properties where there was a slight overlap. So we were maybe, like, one or two weeks from settlement. 

  

[00:18:50] Just so you know, [in] my job as a buyer's agent, I get a lot of properties coming in. Interestingly, the houses that we're talking about that have amazing potential to make a tonne of money are the ones that most of my clients don't want. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:19:09] Really? 

Simon Loo:   

[00:19:11] Absolutely. Because a lot of my clients— and rightly so, there's nothing wrong with this— they also need peace of mind. Not everyone can just— especially beginners— go out and go, 'Yep, I want to make lots of money', and they go out and buy an absolute physical, unattractive, old, dilapidated, what appears to need a lot of work type of property to invest in. Especially if you're buying not in your backyard. Thousands of kilometres away interstate. 

  

[00:19:41] So even though our focus [is on] off market, below market value houses, all that kind of stuff, they still want an element of the house being solid. The house being physically not bad looking. The house to be fairly new is a very common one that I get. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:20:03] Let's just dig on that point a little bit or just delve into it. Being new. Why do people want new when you've already paid a premium for having a brand new build? What's the reason behind that, do you think?

Simon Loo:   

[00:20:14] When I say new, I would say sub 10 years [old]. We do get that a lot. People are like, 'I want something that's max 10 years old. And I think it's [an] unjustified preconception that a newer house is easier to manage, to maintain, [and it] attracts better tenants. That's a very big one I get. Who would want to rent an old crappy house versus renting a newer, nicer looking house? 

  

[00:20:44] And obviously, that's completely true. But you've got to realise that completely different rental mounts. There's a house for everybody. 

  

[00:20:56] And like I said, there's nothing wrong with this mindset. Because sleep at night factor is extremely important. It doesn't matter how much money you make, if you can't sleep at night, then there's no point to it. 

  

[00:21:11] Depreciation is another big thing. I always say depreciation benefits are gravy on top. Whether you get $5,000 [or] $10,000, or $15,000 a year of depreciation, it's kind of like, 'Oh, wow, my property was cash flow positive $5,000 in that financial year. I've got this amazing report that's going to help me deduct that and maybe bring it back down to slightly negative cashflow territory, so I pay less tax'. It's just a bonus. You should never invest based on tax benefits. I say this all the time, it's all about making money. It's all about saving money.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:21:46] I think that's also a mindset, even I had that before, I'll admit. I tried to try and keep my tax bracket really low to earn less income, or maybe try and offset as much as possible, but you realise you can only go so far, because you end up hurting your own income. So you've just gonna keep earning as much as you can, [be] happy to pay the tax and pay more of it, because that means you're earning more money,

Simon Loo:   

[00:22:06] I wouldn't say you're happy to pay the tax!

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:22:08] Well, you've got to be happy. Because you've got no choice!

Simon Loo:   

[00:22:11] I think you just accept it, right? It is what it is. It's a cost of doing business. You don't pay tax unless you make money. So I always prefer to make $1 and pay 30 [or] 40 cents, [or] 50 cents, whatever it is. 

Simon Loo:  

[00:22:26] So coming back to that point, when I got these older houses, I actually don't have very many people that would want to buy them. So here I've got this guy that's really focused on making money. And I know he doesn't care about the physical nature of these properties. He got all of them.

 

[00:23:20] Every time I got this deal, I was like, 'Wow, that's actually a really good deal'. The house is a bit old, all this kind of stuff. It's not amazing. But I had very few people to send it to, so he got all of them. And then when he saw these houses, [he was] like, 'Wow, Simon, that's a bargain. Alright, done. Let's do it. Let's go for it'. We ended up with eight in 12 months. 

  

[00:23:44] Again, this isn't me telling people, 'You need to drop your guard and just buy all the dumps out there'. But the focus is more about numbers. And it's okay to balance that out with some of the physical attributes of a property to give you peace of mind. There's nothing wrong with that at all. 

  

[00:24:03] But I think it also comes with time. The more experience you get with owning properties, maybe you start off with a few nice looking properties. But after a while, what really hits home is sitting on your computer late at night one night, looking at the bank statements coming through, looking at the property management statements coming through, and realising what actually affects me in my sleep is how much this house is costing me and how much rent I'm getting. And also how much it's worth versus how much I pay for it. That's really the bottom line.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:24:34] Exactly. At the end of the day, you're not going to be visiting that property every day, you're not going to be driving past it I assume. All that matters is as long as [you have a] good tenant in there [who] pays the rent, and it's not going to fall over, that's all that really matters at the end of day. 

  

[00:24:49] Because just imagine you build up a portfolio of 20. Who's going to have time to manage all that? That's why you start hiring external parties to manage all that as well. And you already know that in your own position as well, because you run your own property portfolio as well with your own property management.

Simon Loo:   

[00:25:04] Look, they’re livable. Clean, tidy, but they're older. There's nothing wrong with that. I price the rent accordingly, the people living in it, the renters, they're very happy because then they don't expect a nice product, they were happy for that. And the trade off is they pay less rent. So everyone's happy.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:25:28] In actual fact, sometimes I think the older properties are better. [It] just depends on where you buy and what you buy. I mean, I used to look at the older ones, like the brick houses. And even though they didn't look nice, they actually a lot better than our current constructions. 

  

[00:25:40] Because at this point in time, a lot of the builders and developers just from my experience working in that space is that it's about time and speed. They can deliver something quickly, they would find the lightest, cheapest material possible to be able to just construct it. Gone are the days now where you build double brick homes. There's no such thing, it's too costly. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:25:59] Not even that. It is kind of that as well. Like, I've noticed— and everyone noticed this as well— some of the more newer building methods that builders or development companies, especially when they're building houses on mass, for like a massive project marketing type scenario, they're using prefab materials. You always hear about pretty average workmanship, they're putting up these houses in a very short amount of time.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:26:30] Like, in a week. I've seen a whole set of townhouses just built out, like basically, they're just bringing it in, it's all panelled up, they just join it together like a jigsaw puzzle. And it's like, 'Wow, how'd they do that?' But it's pre-made.

Simon Loo:   

[00:26:43] And I think it's apparent now. I mean, you hear it in the news, the quality is not great. Within not even years, like months, you start seeing cracks. You start seeing [things] start going wrong, this hasn't been put in properly, all that kind of stuff. 

  

[00:26:59] And it's not even that as well. I think a lot of the newer properties are built to much more affordable cost. Building costs are so high. People have very strict budgets now housing prices are high. So they scrimp on the inclusions. They scrimp on the living spaces. They scrimp on the land sizes. I mean, a lot of houses you see now are 200 square metres.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:27:28] Crazy. I don't even know how people live in those smaller places.

Simon Loo:   

[00:27:32] That's another argument where newer doesn't necessarily mean easier maintenance, lower maintenance, or anything like that. In some cases, it actually means more. If anything, the house has been standing for 20 plus years, and still is in decent condition. It's proven itself. It's probably going to be looking pretty similar for the next 20 years if nothing happened in the first 20 years. 

 

[00:27:55] So you kind of just have to think about it logically, again, unemotionally. It's not about you living in the [house]. You probably won't even see it during the entire ownership, from buying to selling. But what really matters is more than numbers. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:28:14] So let's just run some quick numbers since we're talking about that now. How much was the portfolio? Let's say you purchased, on average, [each property for] about $300,000. How much is it in terms of costs? And how much do you think it's gone up by [in] the last 12 months?

Simon Loo:   

[00:28:30] In terms of total purchase value, [we're] looking at maybe around about the $2.7 million mark. In terms of the actual current value, somewhere between $3.8 million to $4 million at the moment. So within 12 months, about $1 million or $900,000 ish worth of growth or equity, if you want to call it. And the yield at the moment is around about the 6.4% mark. Across the board. 

  

[00:29:04] So cash flow's there, growth is there, equity's there. And for him in such a short amount of time, he's got choices now. He can choose to keep going, which he actually is. But he can now also choose to— if he wanted to— consolidate some debt. Sell down some of those initial ones that [have] grown quite a bit. And with a profit from the sales, part of the funds in the offset accounts of the other properties that he has, or simply pay them off. 

  

[00:29:38] And if you think about it, let's say conservatively, the net income for these properties is $300 a week. And when I say net income I'm minusing things like council rates, property management fees, insurances and other holding costs. 

  

[00:29:58] $300 a week times just three properties paid off is around $900 a week already. And that supplements an average income. $45,000 take home, which works out to be about $70,000 salary. 

  

[00:30:21] People have a thing where they think, 'Oh, I'm never going to buy eight properties' or, 'I'm never going to get myself $1,000 a week of passive income'. Here's a guy that came from probably a slightly better financial circumstance. But he went hard. Eight properties in 12 months is probably something that I wouldn’t recommend in terms of aggressiveness. But if you give yourself a two year timeframe or a five year timeframe, you can see how it's not something that is not even difficult, but not even super risky, either. You know what I mean? But it really comes down to buying the right types of properties. You can't just buy a property and hope and pray that's going to happen.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:31:07] And last one I wanted to mention before we wrap up is you mentioned he's purchased two properties in WA. What's the reason for jumping from Queensland to WA now?

Simon Loo:   

[00:31:14] A couple of things. Land tax is a consideration. The other thing is simply that WA, Perth, as I'm sure a lot of our listeners are realising, is starting to pick up. It hasn't started yet, it actually started already. But it's probably in its teething stages in comparison to something like Brisbane. 

  

[00:31:44] So I think for this client, it was more like an exposure to both markets. So there were a couple of reasons. The yields in WA are a lot higher, because we're starting from quite a low base as well in terms of purchase price. But it was just about being opportunistic. If you can make money in an area like Brisbane, up until a certain point, the same would apply whether you're buying in Perth, whether you buy in Adelaide, Sydney, Melbourne. 

  

[00:32:17] But timing is key. So obviously, Sydney and Melbourne don't make any sense at the moment. I'd argue that Adelaide is pretty much... a lot of it has happened. A lot of growth has happened in Adelaide. So based on fundamentals, I'm not seeing a lot of people moving to Adelaide, I'm not seeing a lot of businesses or companies setting up shop there. So you kind of have to think it's a little bit limited there. 

 

[00:32:43] Whereas areas like Perth were getting more owner occupier activity. It's starting to diversify a little bit more away from the whole mining thing that it's always been known for. So a lot less reliant on mining. Factors like a lot more interest from overseas, being in the same time zones as a lot of Southeast Asia being only four hours' flight away. I think I think I mentioned this in another episode. There's a lot of scared money off the back of COVID, off the uncertainty with a lot of economic stuff happening in China at the moment. 

  

[00:33:23] There's a lot of demand from these areas looking for Plan B. They're buying up in areas like Perth so that if something does happen, they can move. Escape. So there's a little bit of that happening as well. And I don't know if you've ever been to Perth, but it's just very pretty.

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:33:43] I haven't been, but my parents recently went there and they just said beautiful. I got them a cruise down the river and they said, 'This is amazing'. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:33:49] It's a pretty place. Maybe because it's west and the sun hits different. The beaches, everything is very, very [pretty]. And the culture in Perth is very laid back. If you walk in the CBD in Sydney, you'll see a lot of suits and ties and all that kind of stuff. 

Tyrone Shum:   

[00:34:07] People rushing. It's very fast paced. 

Simon Loo:   

[00:34:09] You rarely see that in Perth. Most people are just wearing shorts, even business people. So I think all those all those reasons [are] why we're in Perth at the moment. Diversification [and] land tax is probably the main thing.

Thank you to buyer’s agent Simon Loo, our guest on this special episode of Invest Like A Pro presented by House Finder. 

Also, for being a loyal listener of the podcast, I’ve asked Simon to offer a free 1 hour strategy session normally valued at $500 to help you put together an actionable property plan.

To get your free strategy session, simply visit housefinder.com.au and fill out the contact form, or call Simon directly on 0415 626 342 and quote “Property Investory”.