Join us as he talks about his first property that he bought in Lakemba, and how he continued to build his legacy from there. We also dive into his childhood, and what growing up in a small town like Ingham was like. All that and more on this episode of property investory.

Timestamps:
[00:01:25] | The life of a property developer
[00:05:38] | Rivers and Rifles
[00:09:20] | A dream is born
[00:10:42] | A dream dies
[00:15:10] | From sugar to steam
[00:19:26]  | The start of his property journey
[00:26:04] | an 18 week contractual nightmare
 
Resources and Links:

[00:21:37] bought our first unit in Sydney, that was in Lakemba in Sydney. Yeah, we picked that one up for a couple 100,000 back then.

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

I’m Tyrone Shum and in this episode we talk to full time developer Alan Castorina. We hear about his adventures as a pilot, and how he saved up to buy his first property for just a couple hundred thousand dollars. Once he started acquiring properties, he couldn't stop, and we also hear about his worst investment that took 18 weeks to settle.

Tyrone Shum    

Alan Castorina comes from a small town in Northern Queensland. He ventured into a few different industries, like machinery and aviation, before building a successful property development business with his wife. 

Alan Castorina 

[00:00:21] I'm a property developer full time. We do renovations and land subdivisions here in Brisbane. We've been doing full  this full time for four years now. And we're getting we're building a business up we've built a business up to the point now we've got about four or five staff. And yeah, we're enjoying it. My wife, Michelle, she's part of the team and she loves looking after the renovations. You know, the the project management part of it in                                                           either the acquisitions financing and the sales.

[00:01:16] let's talk a little bit about maybe your day to day, you know, what are you currently doing at the moment every day? What's your, you know, typical day look like in the life of Alan's development journey?

Alan Castorina   

[00:01:25] I get up about half-past Five, six. And majority of my day is probably you could probably look like staff, looking after my staff, some staff training. And it's 80% of its acquisitions. So I look after looking for new pipeline stock to bring in because that's probably the hardest part of the whole model. And then all project management services, some subdivisions going, which I've got one at the moment. So it's a matter of just looking after that making sure the team or the consultants are doing their thing, paying the bills, because since you stopped paying a bill and everything stops, and then it's networking. Networking with agents, ringing people up, going see sites. Yeah, so that's my day. And then yeah, and I'll try and finish up by five, which doesn't always happen. And I'll go to the gym, four or five times a week, get a bit of the other parts of my body working. So yeah, and then I'll usually work six days a week have one day off, but it's our I call it work, it's To me, it's fun, you know, im passionate about it so love doing it.

Tyrone Shum    

Castorina always had a go getter attitude. He had big dreams and the motivation to make them happen at such a young age. 

Alan Castorina  

[00:03:03] I grew up in a little town called Ingham in North Queensland, just north of Townsville. It's a basically a cane farm industry orientated town, mostly Italian community. So I grew up with all the good foods, wines. And, yeah, so my childhood dream, I remember was in grade seven at the time, I wanted to be a pilot, an airline pilot. And that's what I did. I end up leaving school learning how to fly planes and I become a flying instructor, did all that. Mostly flew most of southeast Queensland and New South Wales and then I basically did that for 10 years and quit. Landed a job with an airline and I had enough of flying out of living in suitcases and motels, and I quit. And then I was always interested in in machinery, I  liked operating things so I went and worked in industry after that. But always had a passion for wealth because my father was always into shares, he’d be studying… he’d open his notebook out and study the share market. And I've always had that that that passion for wealth. So was always interested in reading books and yeah, things like that. I landed some books on my desk once It was thinking Grow Rich, funny laugh everyone says thinking grow rich. And that sort of led into the lead into the mindset thing. So I ended up getting a job in morph and I basically Ingham. Basically when my my little fella was born back in 2000. Just after 2002 I took a new job in Central Queensland. And this job gave me the opportunity to because it was shift work. I had a lot of time on my hands. So I started reading a lot of books. And getting into property property became really interesting subject for me. That's where I got into it

His childhood sounds almost too good to be true. Filled with picturesque scenery, adrenaline-pumping activities and winding local rivers, he never had the chance to be bored. 

Alan Castorina  

[00:05:38] it was pretty laid back town. We used to have fun doing just about anything. There wasnt any computers back then in the 70s? You know, we Yeah, have fun, just go down the creek, lake fishing. Jumping into the into the local river with all the crocs where we found out now there's heaps of crocs in the rivers we used to jump in. And we never seen them. So we've been none the wiser but I'm sure their there. But I used to love fishing. And you know, because right next to the, the ocean. Really good fish on it. Yeah. And so the cane farm so a lot of motorbike riding. Yeah, driving. Yeah, we drove Well, well, before we were allowed to get licenses in the cain pattocks and got into a lot of mischief. Yeah. So yeah, it was a good little laid back town. And we and funny enough it's rare to say this, but my friends that I went to school with I'm still good friends with them now and whole class is the same class that we had way back when we were children. So really close, close knit community. And yeah, we still meet up to this day.

Tyrone Shum   

Although he was surrounded by farms, his parents worked in different industries. 

Alan Castorina   

[00:07:04] My parents were in retail. So they... my father and mother used to run like an alcohol distribution. Like a Forex and Carlton used to have all the alcohol there and they used to distribute all the alcohol to the pubs and then I had a delicatessen but all my mates had farms, so that's where I got to go and shoot rifles and drive tractors and all that sort of stuff here.

Tyrone Shum   

[00:07:35] Wow, that's exciting. I mean, I have to admit, I've never shot a rifle before I've held one in my hand. It's heavy. You know I don't know what age you’re able to lift one of those things up. 

Alan Castorina    

[00:07:45] they are good fun. A lot of target practices. The local you know, animals are in there, kangaroos and whatever. So yeah.

Tyrone Shum    

Growing up in a small town means everything was within either walking or riding distance. Castorina would ride his bike to school every day. 

Alan Castorina   

[00:08:37] my school was probably about a 20-minute bike ride. Yeah, so it was across town. Town was only 3000 people. So it's a very small town. And we lived on the other side of town. We used to draw a bicycle bike with my mate and go to school like that. Rain hail or shine, there were no buses or anything, Mum and Dad used to get up at five and go to work. They'd be at work before long before I'd go to school. So we had to find our way there. And there's a local, yeah, there's two schools in town. 

If Castorina grew up in a small town surrounded by cane fields and isolated from the rest of the world, how did he become so passionate about aviation? 

Alan Castorina  

[00:09:20] My grandmother and I used to go down to Sydney and in Bellevue Hill, my uncle that I was talking about earlier and we used to go visit him and as like a was probably only eight or nine at the time. When we used to fly down every Christmas and I just got found this incredible machine I wanted…. Driving it. In those days you’re allowed at the front. You’d ask the flight attendant. Can I go up the front for the landing and they’d let you so I sit in the jump seat, back then they had 727’s and 737’s. And I've got the front nearly every, every week, every year that would go up to down to Sydney. And I said, This is what I want to do. And so I just put my head down and said, Well, I need to pass my exam to get some good marks to do this. And I started that dream back in Yeah, probably grade seven, when I was at school. 

With his pilot's license in one hand, and the yoke in the other, Castorina was at the beginning of all his dreams coming true.  

Alan Castorina    

[00:10:47] I started out in Sydney, moved to Sydney straight after school, moved into a little apartment on my own. So that was quite daunting at the time, you know, straight into flight school. I actually learned to fly before I left school, actually, because I got to know a lot of people in, in the town that had aircraft. And I used to just hang around the airport on the weekends, or just go there and watch them strip planes in the in the hangar. And they could see that, that passion. So they took me up. And then eventually, I got to know a few people, I've got my solo before I left school. And so I knew well before I left school, that that's what I wanted to do.

And so then mom and dad supported me. And I said, All right, sounds like this is it? Let's go and find a flight school for you. And that was down in Sydney. At the time. Yeah, but in answering your question what it was like, as a pilot, it's, it's you got to have a passion for it's really stressful at times. Because in the weather, the weather, when your commercial pilot you have to go whether you like it or not, you know, you don't go in the airport shut down, of course was thunderstorms but you know, a really crappy day, you still got to take off take the passengers and it's it's it's a lot of work load times and then and then also to keep up your your currency.

Keep up all your, your endorsements and losses, you have to do regular checks. So then, yeah, that the actual, you know, the actual week might look like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, you're on and then you have Thursday off, you might have to fly Friday, Saturday, then you're off Sunday. So your your week might be changing all the time. So it's not a routine. And you're flying from Sydney to Camberra one day and then Sydney to Melbourne the next and then stop in Brisbane the night after so it's occasionally it's, you know, you're home a lot. And then what job that I was doing, I wasn't home a lot. I was always sort of staying in Darwin for a week, coming back for a day, staying in Mount Iser for another couple of days. And then yes, I was all over the place. I wasn't enjoying it after a while so.

Tyrone Shum   

[00:13:17] could understand why. Yes, that's fair. And it sounds like you were doing mostly domestic flights. Did you do any international flights?  

[00:13:39] Yeah yeah just domestic. 

It's amazing how many domestic flights we have. I mean, until Jetstar and all those cheap airlines came in, obviously, is all going back to you know Quantas, and it was ANSET wasn't a back then?

ANSET Yeah…. in Australia TIA.  Back when I started. TIA and ANSET it was

[00:13:47] Yeah, I haven't heard of TIA actually, recently too. And then there was another one. I think Rex, Rex as well was more sort of the regional type of airlines. Seems like a lot of them are sort of closed a lot of their routes off because of

Alan Castorina  

[00:14:00] Yeah, yeah, actually, the regional airlines, the ones that first is fire up in the smaller aircraft. There's some mates of mine to this day that still have their jobs with the smaller aircraft, because they are the ones that they could fill the planes up a lot quicker. In the original rich started up.

Tyrone Shum   

Unfortunately, sometimes childhood dreams turn out to be adult nightmares 

Alan Castorina   

[00:14:38] I like the flying aspect of it. But that was only a very small part of it. The whole job entails a lot of other things. Yeah, like not being from... not being home. And it's a stressful job too, but mainly it was I just wasn't home at all.

Tyrone Shum   

Castorina’s talent doesn't stop at knowing how to fly a plane. He also knows how to operate high-level machinery, and has always been interested in it. So he took the next step in his life and pursued a new dream. 

Alan Castorina  

[00:15:10] from there I went in where I was living was, is a sugar industry, like I said before, so I went and worked at a sugar mill, they had… I got interested in in operating machinery. So I landed a job there. And it was only a sort of a filling job. At the time, I said, Well, I'll just try just to make ends meet. And because I still haven't worked on my direction, I'll just, I'll just quit my lifetime dream. And now I was sort of in limbo and I thought well, I’ll just do something to get the money. And I discovered that I didn't mind this job, it was quite good. It was interesting. You know, there's big boilers, big steam, boilers, there at the time, and I thought, all this could be a career. 

Whether it was long term or temporary, at that stage, it didn't, it didn't matter. I was just feeling my ground. And then I ended up staying at the sugar mill there for a few years, and I've got a kind of, I got up the ladder, became a, you know, a senior operator. And I ended up becoming a trainer and assessor for pressure equipment. So I was teaching guys how to operate steam equipment, and teach at TAFE and do that sort of stuff. Yeah, and then that led me to move on to chasing a bigger, a better job, because where I was living, that sugar mill is sort of limited what I could do. 

So I said to my wife, Michelle was, so let's go, discovering the rest of Queensland see if I can find a better job in the same field. And I had a mate of mine, had ready left at the time. And they went down to Central Queensland, a little place called Villa Wheler. And there was another, there was a few industries there, there's some all centered around mining. And so I went there for a drive with Michelle, one Easter and friend of mine said, Come and have a look at where I'm working here. And I went and had a look, it was an ammonium nitrate plant. So there might be explosives for the coal mines. And I had all the qualifications at the time, and I had an interview with the boss, because he said, Come and have an interview with the boss. I wasn't ready for it. 

I was just going there for holiday for a look. And, and nothing was said at the time and I left, went back and they rang me up and said you got a job if you want to start. And I had, I had a couple of tafe courses lined up with with the guys that work back at the sugar mill and I said I can’t  I'm committed, I made a promise that I’d do these guys courses. And if I can finish that to the end of the year, and then I'll come out to do that job at Christmas time. So that's what we did. That the guys said, Yeah, for sure. We'll let you stay there their current work place, and come and join us. So it was December, the 22nd. We shut the whole factory down in the sugar mill, and then shell and packed our bags on the 23rd and landed in the new job Christmas Eve. So I was part of that new job, And yeah, it was a whirlwind that that year, that's sure.

Tyrone Shum   

[00:18:50] Yeah, that's great to hear another company being so understanding, because it's it was quite a long way, you know, for many months before they could and anything can happen. You could have changed and oh decide I'll go somewhere else. And that's great that they waited for your commitment to come through. 

Alan Castorina   

[00:19:04] the fact that I said that I was committed to my previous job, and I didn't want to let them down. They could see the benefit there. Yeah. Yeah. So it opened the next chapter.

Coming up after the break, we explore the worst investment Castorina has made

Alan Castorina 

[00:26:10]  the contract crashed four times

The quick start to his property journey

Alan Castorina  

[24:43] We picked up the 10 in six years

the decision that made him start in the first place

Alan Castorina 

[00:21:18] then we decided to buy some rentals. And that's what kicked it all off. 

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

 

Tyrone Shum   

His new job opened up more than one door, he began reading and that's when his property journey began

Alan Castorina  

[00:19:26] it was with that following job. I started reading, like I said, Before, I started reading a lot of books, property books. I've done a lot of, which I didn't mention before, but I've done an extensive amount of work-study on trading because of being a trader for 15 years trading futures and stock markets, as well. And I was doing that. And in those groups, in those trading groups, those future stock market trading groups, the guys were mentioning about property. Putting your money that you're making, your income and putting it into assets and parking it into there. Because the trading was good, good method bringing income in could be a good wealth generator, but it's good to have some money in assets. Right? And that time I said, Yeah, that's a good idea. 

So I started reading property books and, and I read a heap of books, then and then the mindset books, you know, think and grow rich. Now I started getting really passionate, because, you know, I was, even from day one, I still had, like I said that I still had that wealth that I just wanted to be wealthy. One day, I knew that I wasn't going to work forever. And all these things I was interested in, I was interested in being a pilot, I was interested in driving steam equipment, and all that other stuff. But I knew that one day, I'd be retired early because of my wealth. And so I'd always put some effort on the sidelines, to read books, you know, and we did courses, shell and I did some courses, you know, some small things, then we decided to buy some rentals. And that's what kicked it all off. So we bought some rentals. Bought our first rental back in just right after the GFC end of 08 start of 09, bought our first unit in Sydney, that was in Lakemba in Sydney. Yeah, we picked that one up for a couple 100,000 back then.

Alan Castorina   

[00:21:45] Yeah. And I, we, we said, well, this is our plan where we're going to buy property. And, and then just buy another one and build up a portfolio. Because that's all I knew at the time, or everything I read was saying, this is how you do it. And all our spare money, the money that I saved, because we're really good, pretty frugal at time, because living in a little town. Because Villa wheeler was a similar town to where I grew up. It was very, yeah, there was stuff to spend money on, you could you could just have a good time go camping fishing, and say you have a lot of disposable income. And obviously just pour money into deposits for houses. And just speed it up. We thought, well, let's renovate. Because that's what we were reading. And that's what, and it made sense to us, let's renovate. So Michelle Done a Cherie barber course, come down to Sydney again, and did that. And a lot of those things resonated with us. And I did the course on the decider as well to review it. And so we thought, Well, we'd renovate, lift the equity up in the property, speed, speed it up, drag the money. And back then sure, even straight off the GFC banks were quite liberal. With lending. It wasn't till later on as towards around 10 and 11 when they started tightening and tightening. So we could still get money. So we got a few properties. 

And what we do is when Mum and Dad would come back because they was still in Ingham at the time. I would say I'd ring up mom and say we're buying a property next month settling, we want to get down and renovate it, so, see if they could come down look after the kids for us. Because only Yeah, five and three. And so that Yeah, right they’ll come down. So shell and I drove down or fly down wherever the properties were, and we'd renovate and we'd live in the house to live in that house that we're doing up. And that wasn't pretty because there's dust everywhere and a blow-up mattress and whatever. And we did the place up in three, four weeks, we had a few tradesmen to look after us. You know, do the you know the electrical and the plumbing work Shell and I’d do the rest. And that's where we've cut our teeth in the renovating world.

Once they started acquiring properties, they couldn't stop, until suddenly they had to. 

Alan Castorina   

[00:24:32] In the maximum was bout 13. We got up to 13 picked doing that buy, buy renovate and hold strategy. We picked up bout 10 in six years, six, seven years. It was quite quick, Tyrone but it come to a sudden halt because the banks just shut shop. We just had too much debt at that point.

Tyrone Shum   

Although he’s experienced the stress of having too much debt, his worst investment experience was actually due to a matter of circumstance 

Alan Castorina  

[00:26:04] a house that we've done up at beautifully renovated house. And the contract crashed four times. And it's looking back, it's probably wasn't a big deal. But at the time, it was. Because every time a person would buy it, it crashed because of something minor in the building and pest, or the finance that couldn't get financing. And it dragged down to something that should have sold in a couple of weeks, took like, took about 18 weeks to sell in this current market, which is the markets quite hot. And and it's quite easy to, to start worrying about things that aren't there, you know, creating things because had a good team. We had a great agent on board. He was doing the best he could and it's just circumstances. So that and that in the end it sold. Had the fourth buyer come in absolutely love the place said yep, this is for me. And so the key point there was that we just didn't find the right buyer. All the all these building and pest and finances, were just excuses for the buyer to pull out, I think, you know, and they weren't really keen on the house to start with. But when you buy a house, and you lock it up for 14 days, 21 days for you to do your due diligence. You know, he locked the lock the seller in as well. And you can't put it back on the market? No, well, no one's interested in that, so to speak until that. So anything bigger than that, I've had a few others, but nothing major that I can think of little things like that.

Tyrone Shum   

[00:28:00] So basically, once a buyer has committed to purchasing, you know, both have agreed to exchange a contract to going on next exchange being the cooling-off period. It's basically those two weeks that is locked in and until they've made that final decision. There's not much you can do. So that's why it could potentially keep dragging on if they keep crushing the contract. 

Alan Castorina  

[00:28:18] yeah. And when you can have a backup contract, but buyers are reluctant to do that. Because, you know, it's it's, yeah, it's not there for them, its not in the taking. If they're really keen. Yeah, but I've found that a lot of buyers rather move on and look for other houses then deal with that one.

Tyrone Shum   

Selling the house took longer than usual, but the renovation was pretty quick

Alan Castorina   

[00:28:50] This one took a while because we bought it just before Christmas. And we were doing, we were doing a boarding house conversion at the time, we had all our tradesmen there, so we didn't have any spare guys. And the tradesmen just went really busy leading up to the end of last year because of all activity. And so we said, well, let's just go on holidays because we had enough for the year. Let's go on holiday. So we put it on hold and we finished it like February, so mid February. So it took us probably about two months that one there. So I bought it end of end of November, the first week in December, and then it took us till mid February. By the time we got back, you know, got all the tradesmen back on board again. And we had it on the market towards the end of February.

Tyrone Shum   

[00:29:45] And what was done to the property?

Alan Castorina    

[00:29:46] everything, everything the whole thing. It was in a big mess. The previous owners, let it go. So we just did two new bathrooms, kitchen floors, paint throughout. New fencing, landscaping outside the back. The back had a big pool that was green, turtles and everything fish swimming in it. And piles of rubbish at the back. It... I had to bring a mini excavator into to demolish the pool. But because there's so much rubbish there we decided to get a big excavator. 20 tonne excavator in there to do the job, which took us down it took us a day to do. So he demolished the pool and cleaned up all the stuff and grabbed the rubbish and put it in the truck. And it was about four trucks of rubbish got taken out. Yeah, that was a big job. And there was this carport, this patio at the back. Home makeshift built was built by the previous owner and the cement. And because this excavator had to come in, we had to demolish that as well. So that added to the costs of the renovation because I had to replace all that. So there was something we didn't see coming, because we've already bought this place. So yeah, so that added probably about $15,000 to fit the renovation out. Fortunately, the because the market is good. We picked it up on the other side.

Tyrone Shum   

He found the house through an agent and took it off the hands of a struggling couple. 

Alan Castorina  

[00:31:46] Through an agent. And yeah, so basically the owners had to get out the bank was starting to become an issue for him and they said, Well, we better sell before the bank takes over and sell and we were there and the place was such a mess it’s basically inhabitable, it was pretty bad. And we went in with a cash offer and said we'll buy it now. Because the actual structure of the house was really good. We went up in the ceiling,  I did all the inspections and up in the ceiling was great. There was no termites at all, surprisingly enough, cause there was so much rubbish piled up on the outside of the house. Good. Everything was good. So you could see the potential there. 

In a future episode of Property investory, we’ll continue the conversation with Alan Castorina and discuss his current development schedule 

Alan Castorina  

[00:03:17] we've been doing, you know, averaging between six to eight projects a year.

The development that fell through

Alan Castorina  

[00:10:25] And they said the least 400,000 to do this place, get it back to what it should be.

The books that helped him get here

Alan Castorina  

[00:21:12] Stephen Covey's book, the seven habits of highly successful people.

And that’s next time in a future episode of Property Investory.