In this episode, Dr. Payn will share the stories of how she went from partying in university, to her getting a PHD in sugarcane chemistry. As well as this, learn about how she got involved in property development and her passion behind sustainability!

Timestamps:
3:09 | Growing Up in the UK
9:34 | Making Goals a Reality
13:19 | Joining the Workforce
15:45 | Aligning Your Values
20:54 | Getting Into Property
32:15 | Finding Your Niche
37:04 | Making Double Digit Returns

Resources and Links:

[1:14] I really believe that we've got an opportunity at the moment where house prices are skyrocketing and there's a real lack of affordable housing. This is a really great opportunity to not only contribute to the solution, but also to make money as well. So, I think it's all really important.

 

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 joined by the CEO and founder of High Impact Property Investments, Dr Dionne Payn. She will share the stories of how she went from partying in university and to her getting a PHD in sugarcane chemistry. Learn about how she got involved in property development and her passion behind sustainability.

 

 

Dr. Payn has a passion for investing in a sustainable fashion. After doing this herself, she now helps others to do the same.

 

[0:40] I am the CEO and founder of a company called High Impact Property Investments. And we specialise in partnering investors that are looking for double digit returns, with projects that provide affordable and sustainable homes.

 

[0:56] I am going to brag; I'm going to tell you about my book. I've written a book called Ethical Property Investing, and that's really about my journey into creating affordable homes as a developer and now supporting other developers that are creating affordable and sustainable homes.

 

How does Dr. Payn go about reaching this goal of sustainable housing in her everyday life?

 

[2:11] I'll share my typical day and then I'll share with you the best days. My typical day goes like this. You know, I'll have, I'll get up fairly early in the morning because I tend to do exercise and meditation and all of that. And then I'll have a meeting with somebody in the US because I'm expanding my business over there. I'll do the mum thing and you know, sort of pack my kids off to school and shout at them to make sure that they've got their clothes on and they've brushed their teeth and they're taking their lunch and they get out the door.

 

[2:46] And then I try and get some work done between nine till one where it's just me focus time. I've got a team, so I always like to make sure that I delegate tasks to them as well. And then in the afternoon, I will have meetings. And that is actually a typical day and my ideal day.

 

[3:08] Sometimes what happens is that in the morning, I sort of try and slide an extra meeting in or I have a few too many meetings. So, then I get frustrated that I haven't got the work done that I need to get done. But generally, the more I'm talking to people, the happier I am. The more I'm sharing ideas, the happier I am. If it's over tea and cake as well, [that is] even better.

 

 

Dr. Payn has built a lot of success in Australia but that is not where her story began.

 

[5:06] I grew up in a sort of small suburban area of the UK. It's nine miles away from Birmingham. Yeah, about nine miles. Yeah, it's actually equidistant. Nine miles away from Birmingham and Wolverhampton. So, we're slap bang in the middle of that and the area is called the West Midlands and the location that I'm from is called Tividale.

 

[5:46] It was really interesting. It was cool. It was fairly quiet. Um, but you know, I don't know, it always felt a little bit too small for me. Like, there was a big wide world outside of that, that really needed to be explored. And I remember, oh, we have the most amazing public transport system and so you could get on the bus and, you know, I don't even know how much it would cost in comparison in Australia. But it was a very low amount of money, maybe like, it was five pounds, so maybe $10 or something like that in today's money.

 

[6:22] And so, you could go from the south of the West Midlands, all the way to the north of the West Midlands in that sort of Cheyenne, you'd call it. And so, you could go really far. So, you could go from Kanak, which was above North of Wolverhampton, and down to as far as almost Stratford upon Avon. Which is, you know, it's still in the Midlands but, you know, sort of [a] bit further down.

 

[6:45] So, you could get on at any train [or] any bus in that area. So, we just, me and my friends from school used to just go and explore. We'd go to Birmingham; we'd hang out in Birmingham. We could go to the airport. I don't know why we wanted to go to the airport, there were some cool shops there. It wasn't like we were travelling anyway at that point. But, you know, we could travel there. We could travel to Stoke on Trent.

 

[7:08] And it was just, yeah, I've always just had that the world is my oyster kind of feel. But, you know, just because I was in one location, didn't mean that I couldn't travel and see other places. And the interesting thing about the UK as well is that even in a very short sort of area, small area, the dialects are different, the accents are different, the way people are quite different. So, a great way of people spotting actually, I really enjoyed that.

 

Dr. Payn’s parents rarely joined her on these trips, but they still managed to have eyes on her.

 

[7:56] It was pre mobile phone days. But you used to have the public telephones, pay phones. So, if I ever needed to get a hold of my parents, and you could do reverse charges in those days as well.

 

[8:18] So that's it. If I ever got into trouble, not that I did, I was a pretty good kid. But I just knew that that was an option. And also, like my heritage is West Indian. So, there was quite a big West Indian migration to the UK, particularly around the Midlands and London and that sort of thing. But it just seemed that, you know, I couldn't escape. I couldn't really escape, you know, sort of family members or friends that my parents would know.

 

[8:46] So, there was this, you know, sort of extended network of sort of semi relatives. Where I couldn't really get into that much trouble because I knew that there were always eyes on me. Which at the time, I kind of hated because it was like I want to get a bit naughty but now, I really appreciate it. Because knowing that there was that community that was there to hold me in whatever happened was actually, it felt good. It felt really good.

 

While growing up, Dr. Payn attended her local schools.

 

[10:41] I went to a local primary school, which was literally just up the road from where I lived. I could walk there in five minutes. I went to a secondary school, which was about a kilometre and a half away. And so, I was there until I was 16 and then when I finished there, I went to a sixth form college, as we called it then. And so, that was when I was 17 [and] 18 before I went off to university.

 

[11:06] And that was in Wolverhampton. So, that was nine miles away and was probably the first time that I did public transport to get to school. Because it was a significant distance and there was lots of traffic and that sort of thing. But I really enjoyed it. It was nice to do something different and the secondary school that I went to was probably a bit more, you know, I just went to a regular secondary school whereas the sixth form college was just a bit more, I'm going to say up market.

[11:50] Very, like [it] had amazing results. One of my Auntie's told me that I should go, and I love my Auntie Fay, so I went and had a look at it and I really liked it. But yeah, it was much more structured and much more focused on results and getting good results. And so, yeah, as a result, I probably did a lot better than I would have done if I just stayed at my local comprehensive school.

 

Dr. Payn had wonderful experiences throughout her time at school and although there’s a lot to choose from, there is one memory that she will never forget.

 

[12:28] I don't know why this memory sticks in my head but one of the favourite times of the year for me in the UK is autumn. Because it's one of the times of the year, the leaves are falling off the trees and it's that sort of back to school time and it's just, you know, it's getting a little bit cooler but it's still a little bit sunny.

 

[12:48] Anyway, myself and my friend Robert Grimes, I think we'd actually skipped school to go to the town centre and we were on our way back. And there was this big pile of leaves that was there that had fallen off the tree. Lovely autumn colours. Anyway, I was just about to go and jump in it and he pushed me out of the way and he jumped in it. There was a big dog pat underneath the leaves, which he stepped in.

 

[13:23] It's just one of those things. Every time I think of him. Every once in a while, he'll be, you know because we're Facebook friends. Every once in a while, he’ll come up in my Facebook feed and I just have this big chuckle. It's like, oh, my friend Robert Grimes.

 

[14:03] And it's funny, it's like one of the most silliest stories. You know, with kids, it's always like, bum jokes. I'm a 44 year old woman and I still laugh at that. Some of those things never leave you.

 

After completing school, Dr. Payn went off to university with a specific goal in mind.

 

[14:36] I had a specific course in mind. I wanted to be a, initially I wanted to be a doctor. And I knew that, sort of by the time I went to sixth form, I knew that I wasn't going to be a doctor. I hadn't studied hard enough. And so, I sort of lowered my sights a little bit and wanted to do pharmacy. But again, it was that age where I was going to school and I wanted to get good grades but I also started partying. So, I had competing priorities.

 

[15:03] So, by the time I left sixth form, my grades were okay but they weren't crash hot really. And so, I went to the University of Portsmouth to do a degree which was half pharmacy and half chemistry. Because I did quite well at chemistry at school. And the plan was that at the end of the year, if my grades were good enough, it was the top 10%, then I could move into the pharmacy degree. And now I think there were like 20 students in my cohort.

 

[15:32] So, that meant being the, one of the top two. That came to me a little bit later. By the time I did my master's, I was much more diligent. But really, the partying just took over. I wasn't in the top two and so I didn't do pharmacy, which I actually really appreciate because that would have been a completely different trajectory all over again.

 

[15:54] But, you know, pharmaceutical chemistry, I absolutely loved it. I love the study of it. I did a placement year in year three. So, it was a four year degree. So, year three I did a placement year and I worked in the Agro chemical industry. The company was called Cyanamid, which they've merged and became BASF. And it was the application of what I'd been learning that made it all made sense up until that point.

 

[16:23] So, it's kind of just going through the motions and learning and staying up late and revising and in between partying. But the actual application of it and being in a lab and working with people and understanding the different projects and what was required, it was so cool. It's so cool. I really loved it. Now, there's no way I would work in an Agro chemical industry but at the time, it was such [a] great experience. And then when I went back for year four, I just because I had that understanding and that hands-on experience, I got a much better grade than I would have done if I hadn't have done that work experience.

 

Although she did not achieve the perfect balance, Dr. Payn believes in having a well-rounded experience while studying and working.

 

[17:53] It's something that I'm sort of grappling with, well I'm not grappling with it anymore. It's something I have been grappling with recently, just in terms of what I want for my kids. And I want them to be challenged. I want them to love learning but I also want them to be well rounded people as well. So, for me, it's not all about the academics or the academic progress of a particular school.

 

[18:22] Because I know, being in academia as well, I know how all of that can be fudged. For me, what's more important is that, obviously there's a certain level of intelligence but there's the sort of head intelligence but also the emotional intelligence. Because there's so much that's happening in the world right now. I think if you're too much in your head, that you're not going to be able to solve the big problems.

 

[18:47] Actually I think the big problems have been created because a lot of people have been too much in their heads and not so much in their hearts. So, for me, it's really important to make sure that there is that balance between head and heart. So, that yes we can have like really creative solutions to problems. But there's also the, you know, how is this going to impact my fellow human citizens?

 

After finishing her placement, Dr. Payn finished the fourth year of her degree. From there, she joined the workforce.

 

[19:28] I went to work in the pharmaceutical industry. And that was fun but I was working for a large pharmaceutical company. And I realised that I didn't enjoy being the small cog in the big machine. And my department was great. I really loved the team that I worked with. But it really was that it just felt really impersonal. And I remember one Christmas time where there was a big address on a screen and I just, I don't know, it just felt really impersonal and I didn't feel very valued.

 

[20:03] Because I couldn't be very valued because there was so many other employees as well. So, I just wanted a more intimate experience and to know who my boss was, you know. So, I went and, I'm just thinking that I think I lived in Jersey for a little while after that because I also met my husband at university. He was from Jersey, which is a small island off the south coast of the UK. And so, we went and lived there together for a while and had an amazing time. But I still felt that hankering for getting back into science, going to use my skills again.

 

[20:40] So, I left Jersey and went to do a master's and then we both decided that we would come away. So, we went to New Zealand first of all. I really liked being in Auckland but we had an experience where we came to see a friend. So, we'd moved to New Zealand and shipped all of our stuff over. It hadn't arrived yet but we went to Australia and stayed with a friend in Brisbane, who had been a friend at uni. And he just, you know, his friends instantly became our friends. They were beautiful. And we went down to Byron Bay. My husband realised that he could study at Byron Bay at the School of audio engineering, and that was really significant for him.

 

[21:20] I realised that I could study in Australia and be sponsored to do a PhD. And that PhD was in sugarcane chemistry. Which by that point, I'd sort of done the agrochemical industry, I'd done the pharmaceutical industry, and then I was more into natural products chemistry. So, I could do a PhD that aligned with my values around sustainability and health and all of that. Yeah, it was fun, it was so much fun.

 

Dr. Payn moved to Australia when she was around 25 years old to do her PHD.

 

[21:47] So, that I completed that and that gave us enough points to stay in Australia. The one thing about the PhD though, was that during the time I was there, I could see all of the colleagues and the professionals that were around me that had years and years of research experience. And what I thought was a very stable position turned out not to be. It turned out to be lots of short term contracts and very competitive to get grants.

 

[22:12] There's a saying in the academic community. Publish or perish. And it's very, to me it just felt really icky. For some people, they love it. For me, I didn't like it. So, I decided that, I was at the age then, I was in my early 30s. I was gonna have children instead and then figure out later what I was gonna do. So, that's what I did and then Atticus and Malia came along.

 

A PHD in sugarcane chemistry is not something that you hear about every day. Let’s hear what it entailed.

 

[22:54] So, [it is] really, really, really funny how this happened. So, the Cooperative Research Centre for sugar, so big research organisation, money from the government, money from industry as well. And the whole point was to increase the value of sugar cane. So, normally sugar cane is harvested, it's pressed, the sugar gets taken away, you have molasses for animal feed and that's about it. But the idea was to increase the value of sugar cane through using the waste materials for more things.

 

[23:31] So, with the bughouse, which is the sugar cane that's leftover, that can be burned, and it's seen as a renewable resource. There was also talk about biofuels as well. My research was actually looking at sugar cane as a source of medicines for diabetes, which sounds really counterintuitive until we recognize that when you strip a plant and just basically focus on one aspect of the plant and discard everything else, then it makes things out of balance.

 

[24:00] If you consider that sugar cane has compounds in there that not only reduce the insulin spikes, so you know, preventing diabetes also contains compounds that inhibit the bacteria that cause tooth decay and lots of other things like that as well. So, you strip that away and you're left with a sugar which is quite damaging but not without the other things that balance it out. So, that was the conclusion that I had in my research. If we didn't refine sugar cane in the first place, maybe we wouldn't have diabetes.

 

[24:33] But in the process of that research as well, I did manage to find a couple of compounds that hadn't been found before and also some compounds that did have that medicinal effect against the enzymes that are that implicated in the diabetes disease. So, that was really cool. As part of the research team, we got some patents that were taken out over those compounds.

 

[25:01] And then the job of the CRC was to actually sell that to a pharmaceutical industry, which then would have sort of meant money trickling down. Unfortunately, nothing came of it. You know, if you've sort of search on the internet and look for compounds from sugarcane, you'll find my name come up but we never managed to commercialise it.

 

 

Coming up after the break, we hear how Dr Dionne Payn got started in property…

 

[28:30] It was at the time that I had kids and I wanted to be home for my kids.

 

She shares the lessons that she learned while developing properties…

 

[34:50] I had so many learning experiences from that project.

 

We’ll learn about one of her ‘aha’ moments…

 

[11:46] I think that there's a myth that you can't create affordable and sustainable homes and make money.

 

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

 

We’ve explored Dr. Payn’s personal journey. Now, let’s explore her property journey and how it started.

 

[28:30] It was at the time that I had kids and I wanted to be home for my kids as well. Because I just after doing all of that research, I just loved the change from being in my head to being more in my heart around my beautiful little munchkins. So, I really enjoyed that. But the problem was that I wasn't working. 

So, then we were on one income and we were trying to buy a property and we couldn't on one income. Because where I live just outside of Byron Bay, properties were already unaffordable on that one income. I mean, I look at it now, we could have purchased something that was $400,000 which is now $1.5 million. So, it's affordable is a shifting perspective, definitely.

 

[29:38] I mean, you know, that was our thing and so, for us it was about a need. It was how do we do property in a creative way, so that we can get onto the property ladder. And so, my husband and I did some courses [and] did some mentoring. We found a joint venture partner as a result of one of these courses. And that JV partner, he had money but not the time to do developments. And we had the time but not the money to go in and do that by ourselves.

 

[30:08] So, that was our first partnership. We did a couple of projects with him, made money and I just, I was blown away by the fact that I had [or] that we had, so myself and my husband, that we had some agency over the direction of our life. It wasn't just that we were relying on a job, it was that we could actually create money for ourselves. And I could see that if we were able to scale this, and that we would do really well financially. So, that was how we got into property in the first place.

 

One of Dr. Payn’s most memorable property moments was one of her first developments.

 

[30:40] The story that I always tell is that I saw a piece of vacant land and in ocean shores, which is opposite the shopping centre. I just kept walking past it and it had a for sale sign. And by that point, I’d done a few projects and I it was bigger than what I thought, it was bigger than what I’d done. But, you know, [I was] a bit I was like, yeah, I’ll give it a go.

 

[31:04] I did the business case, I did the feasibility and I was like, yeah that all works. And so, I bought joint venture partners in to help with that and to help fund that. And then I went a long, merry way to get the bills. And what I, initially I was just in it for the money, really. I just thought we’re gonna make matzah, like we were going to make a lot. So, it was gonna be awesome. And a few things happened. One, my very, like I just put a post on Facebook because part of the due diligence process was do people actually want these 60 square metres one bedroom townhouses?

 

[31:43] So, I did a small campaign with the local real estate agent and put something on Facebook, just saying, look, I’m looking into this I think that it could be good, is anybody interested? And the first person that replied said, this looks amazing, I want to be part of that. How can we make it work? So, we had a meeting, and I was really honest. I was like, I’ve never done anything like this before but if you’re willing to come on the journey with me, then great.

 

For the joint venture partner, it was her first time being involved in property development but Dr. Payn still had trust in her.

 

[32:08] As well for her, her dad had passed away. She had a small amount of deposit and for her, it was like I’ve never bought a house before but I’m really interested in doing this. And I think it was the, she was a partner in a dance troupe that I was part of at the time. So, we’d had quite a few experiences and some crazy wild nights of partying and dancing and things like that. So, we were friends in that sense but that level of trust from her, it was part of the driving factor of when things weren’t as easy as I thought they were going to be, it was like a okay, I’ve got to keep going because I don’t want to let my friend down.

 

[32:48] And then, it wasn’t just one friend, it was other members of the community because by that point I realised, well if she was saying, well, I wouldn’t be able to stay in the community and be able to afford renting long term if something like this didn’t exist. So, as an example, the average price of those townhouses was $350,000. And the median house price in the area was $650,000. So, it was a really significant steppingstone for somebody to give them that level of security and affordability.

 

[33:24] Now, three of those houses were managed by a community housing provider as well. And they were, the community housing provider had the head lease over the property. So, they were able to rent them at 80% of the market rent. And I remember with my joint venture partner just going, partners because there were three of us altogether, and just going how are we going to sell these to investors if they’re only getting 80% of the market rent.

 

[33:48] But we did a case study. It was one of my joint venture partners was an accountant, she did a whole spreadsheet on if the community housing provider is taking on the head lease and there’s no vacancy rates and there’s no repairs to be done and there were a whole load of other things that we could put numbers to. So, when the spreadsheet spat out this number, it was like for anybody that’s investing in this, they’d been mad to not invest in this one because they’ve got all that security from the community housing provider and the return that they’re going to get is pretty close to the return that they would get if they sold one of the regular units.

 

[34:27] So, once we got our heads around that, we were then able to sell them and they all sold like hotcakes. And I recognise that we could actually sell them [and] sell that development many times over. It was just a shame that we didn’t have the stock. Although I have to say that that project was really, really, really stressful. If we’d have had more stock, it would have been a disaster.

 

From this project, Dr. Payn had multiple learning experiences.

 

[34:53] One of them was that the builder went broke. I'd chosen the wrong builder. There were three builders. One of them kind of dropped off the face of the earth and the other two. I chose the one that I chose [but] there was not much in them except that this one that I did choose didn't have as much experience as the other one. But he was really dynamic and I was like, I could see that we could be friends. So, I kind of went for the friend option rather than steady, stable, reliable builder. Who is still building whereas the other builder is not.

 

[35:28] But yeah, I mean, look, he did over promise and unfortunately, under delivered. The other thing about that development was that just in that process of the joint venture partners, I really got blindsided by we can make money from this and there were certain things that were red flags but I just let them slide because I was like, we're not going to be in this project for very long, we can get over this, we're gonna be fine.

 

[35:57] And those little irritating things then became these really big sort of things that blew up out of proportion. But if I'd have tackled them head on in the first place, it probably wouldn't have been an issue. So, again, that was a lesson for me too. It's like number one, work with people that are, that have aligned values and be courageous enough to call something out if it's not working right from the get-go. I mean the relationship between the builder and the joint venture partner as well, was not good. And even before we signed contracts it was bad. And I was trying to just go along and go it'll be alright, it'll be alright, it'll be right and it wasn't.

 

[36:39] So, yeah. So, big, big, big learnings around that. But from those learning experiences, it was valuable because I then got to see if I want to continue doing property development. Because that very nearly took me out of the game but if I want to continue doing property development, I've got to do it in a way where it works for everybody.

 

[37:00] One of the challenges that we faced was that the JV partner, one of them, really wanted to push things down on price. And I didn't really like that because it was to my benefit, I didn't, I just let it slide. Whereas now I just see that if it's not a win win, it's not gonna work. It's not gonna work. So, there's no point. So, yeah, it just means that sort of moving forward, it was a great testing ground. Great, great, great testing ground. So many lessons. But moving forward, it has to be the win for the investor, the win for the developer, the win for the builder, the win for all the contractors and the win for the end user as well. If it's not, there's no point in doing it because it's going to come back and bite you in the ass.

 

When she took on this project, it already had approved DA which influenced the type of build.

 

[0:51] I remember in right at the beginning of the project just thinking, okay, can we do anything with these townhouses? Can we add an extra room? There was some real challenges as well in the, getting the valuations. So, because there wasn't any comparable stock, the only stock that was, you know, one bedroom townhouses was 30 years old and in really rubbish conditions.

 

[1:16] So, getting a valuer to come and value it like. They actually, the valuer actually came back and said based on the cost and based on our report, this land is worth $70,000. Whereas we'd got a contract on it for $79,900. And I was like, well, that doesn't make sense. And it's just, for them, it's because they couldn't see the potential but that's valuers. Valuers don't necessarily see that. They just have to work by the numbers and the framework that they're given. They're not entrepreneurs in that sense.

 

[1:50] So, that, I mean that that was challenging, just trying to get the finance sorted initially. And so, in that process as well, we really investigated but what if we did a different design? What if you made it two bedrooms instead of one? And all of those sorts of things but it came down to this is the highest and best use for the site and we just had to get on with it.

 

[2:13] But also part of it was just doing our due diligence and like I said before, making sure that there was a market for it. And that became really apparent. We had about three sales initially which meant that we could start the project and start with a stage of four of the units. So, break it down into stages and then the construction started in the September [or] October and by Christmas, they had all sold. So, that again for me was just proving the market demand, which is cool.

 

 

This project also allowed for her to find what she was good at.

 

[3:18] I wouldn't say I carved my niche only because I never been went ahead and replicated that on my own steam as a developer. I always really wanted to but I found a different track after which I'll talk about later. But your point about the one and two bedroom homes, it's not traditionally been the way that we've been building. We've been building the three and the four bedroom sort of mega mansions. But it's actually the way that we are moving towards because family sizes are getting smaller.

 

[3:54] And people are looking to live on their own. I'm trying to think of the statistics and it's been a while since I've looked at them but there are certainly more and more people that are looking to live in one and two bedroom homes and have that smaller space. So, for example, older people where families have moved away, they're stuck in their three bedroom large homes because they can't find anything. Like, they want to downsize but they can't find anything to downsize to which then locks up those three bedroom homes for, takes them out of the market for families that are looking for something as well.

 

[4:33] So, it's challenging. There's definitely more of a move towards those one or two and smaller space living as well. Which is why I believe that co-living is taking off because it's a more affordable way to live. Which then means for younger people, it provides a more affordable rental for them so that they can save up their money to be able to help them to thrive. And whether that's to save the deposit for their own home or which is getting more challenging and these days. Or whether it's to do investments and so that they can grow their wealth without having to pay 80% of their income on rent, which is what I know people in this area are having to do because of the housing crisis. So, yeah, smaller homes is a good thing.

 

From recent events, Dr. Payn has observed the value of smaller homes.

 

[7:25] We've got the government saying, okay, well, people can take money out of their super for their home deposit. I mean, we did this during COVID and the government did this during COVID. And all that happened was that the prices went up because demand went up and the supply, you know there was more demand than there was supply.

 

[7:48] So, in a very, very recent history, we're seeing that this, making it more possible for people to buy homes isn't working. So, I think, I mean there's part of me that thinks, oh, God, this is really bad and what can we do? Obviously if you've got a bad broken business model, that's not going to work but I sort of look at it and go, okay, well, in this, there's opportunities. And I think one of the opportunities is actually to build smaller, use less resources, use space more wisely, and create more affordable homes as a result of doing that.

 

[8:26] And also, I wonder, and I'm not, you know, I'm an ex developer. I'm not a builder. I'm not, I wasn't particularly good at the construction aspect of it, which is why I relied on my team members for that. But I wonder if there's an opportunity to build more simply as well. So, even in the opportunity to build more simply, do people actually want that? Or do they want the fancy pants homes with the fancy pants kitchens and all of that? So, I don't know what the answer is but I suspect that there is definitely an opportunity here and I'm really interested in the conversations to explore what that opportunity is.

 

[9:01] What I can say, though, is that the need for affordable housing, the need for co-living, the need for these smaller dwelling places, that need isn't going away. So, we do have a really good opportunity for that and certainly as investors, investing into projects that are giving double digit returns, that's a win. For the developers that are creating these developments and as long as they're being innovative and creative and using space as well as they can, then they can win too. And then the end users can win as well because they actually get homes that suit the way that they want to live.

 

[9:39] So, rather than having lots and lots of dead space and having to heat and cool it and having these really badly insulated properties that are costing an arm and a leg to heat and cool because of rising energy prices. Maybe this is the opportunity to just bring it all in and be able to do more with less. Maybe this is the lesson in all of this.

 

This project was also when Dr. Payn had an ‘aha’ realisation.

 

[11:18] I think that the really key thing for me was in that particular development was and I've alluded to this all the way through the conversation but as an investor, I was able to make double digit returns on the money that I put into the project. And I was able to do something that was really spectacular for the community and really helped out the community. Albeit on a small scale and I would have loved to have done more under my own steam.

 

[11:46] But I think that there's a myth that you can't create affordable and sustainable homes and make money. If you're going to do that then you're basically relying on charity. Well, the opposite is absolutely true. The opposite of that is the truth. The opposite of that is you can provide affordable and sustainable homes; you can do it in a way that benefits the communities around you and you can make money doing that as well.

 

And I think that that myth is actually robbing us of the opportunity to create more affordable and sustainable homes and to do that in a way that helps people and the planet to thrive. Because if you've got the impression that if I put my money into this affordable housing project, I'm not going to make much money so, therefore I put it into a traditional housing project where I'm going to get much more and then more of that is going to be built and then more of the inequality that we're seeing is going to be present.

 

When talking about inequality, Dr. Payn does not just mean housing affordability.

 

[12:48] I'm talking about homes for people with disabilities. There's a lot of young people with disabilities that are living in hospitals, which is absolutely not the right place for them, or even old people's homes, because they can't find property that is accessible for them that they've got full use of that where they can move around, that's specifically designed to meet their needs. So, that's an opportunity where there is definitely money to be made in that.

 

[13:17] And then you've got, you know, we talk about the climate crisis. The construction industry and the way that we build our homes and maintain our homes is a really big contributor to climate change. So, if we can build in a way that we're producing homes that are really energy efficient, where they produce more energy in the homes than they consume, then we've got like a decent chance of actually getting through what's happening in the world right now.

 

[13:44] You know, as somebody that lives in the Byron Shire, we've been very heavily impacted by the recent rains and devastation by floods. Thankfully, where I live wasn't affected, not by the flooding anyway. I'm dealing with mould at the moment. So, I'm demoulding my house and that's been boring, I have to say. But I'm very grateful that I wasn't flood impacted. So, I will definitely say that but I can see very clearly that we're dealing with the effects of climate change. And there's a whole city of Lismore where I think like 22,000 residents are basically living in mouldy, mud covered houses and the city centre itself is dead, there's no shops that are there.

 

[14:35] So, I put a post on Facebook a little while ago saying are we seeing our first climate refugees? I know people that have just packed up and gone, I can't stay here and I can't be here. They, there was a flood in 2017 and a flood this year as well and it was so much bigger than what it was before. It's happening, it's here. We're sort of seeing, we're at the effect of it and so I think we've got a real opportunity rather than to shy away from it and go, oh, God, it's all too hard. We've got a really good opportunity to make this work and I think it's probably the last opportunity that we have.

 

 **OUTRO**

 

In a future episode of Property Investory, Dr Dionne Payn will share her property development strategy…

 

[17:59] I'm an ex developer. I'm very happy to say that. Just in terms of my temperament, I'm much better at the relationship side than the development and the project management side.

 

We will hear about how she is on track to produce $1 billion for ethical property projects…

 

[27:44] Well, I was very, very, very systematic.

 

We will learn about the resources that she used at the start of her journey…

 

[31:05] I made the connection quite early on that property development and personal development go hand in hand.

 

And that’s next time on Property Investory.