Chris
And if I look at a place and I have a firm decision to say, look, I could actually live here myself, and these are the reasons why. Chances are that someone else will be thinking the same thing. So that's kind of benefit me as an investor because I'm going to find the tenant that I want in the market that I want.

Patrick
And later on down the track, I'll be able to sell that asset to to someone else who'll be thinking along the same line going What going to I know you're listening to the property on. All right, everyone. Welcome to another addition to the property pod. We are back in the studio finally and I'm super excited for today. So Jon.

John
Yeah. Well, I think the with the fact it's been a two week break, we'll just sort of use the fact that it wasn't our responsibility with, you know, it's it's got nothing to do with us. So it's just, you know, good stuff going away. So. But Chris, we've got a special guest to reach out to us actually, which is awesome because you know, became a friend of the pod.

John
We didn't know about it, but he just reached out and said he's just super excited to talk all things investing because it turns out that, you know, him and his partner set a goal few years back that they've just really aggressively expanded a portfolio and like in a very, very short period of time, was able to, I think in the notes and we talk with like six properties, which is insane, absolutely insane and amazing.

Patrick
Like Chris Frates said to me last last week, have all stuck in lockdown and we've covered and, you know, it was amazing. I got the email, I got a phone call from him and then it followed up with an email and the knowledge that this guy has for somebody that just jumped into the investment space is astounding. So we had no choice.

Patrick
We had to get him in a box here today on a Friday just to get this on the on recording. I'm super excited for today's episode. I know it's going to be a cracker we could waffle on a bit longer, but I think we should just jump straight into it. Chris, welcome aboard, mate. Thanks for. Thanks for joining us.

Chris
Absolutely. A pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. And one of the well, I suppose one of the things that's always useful to start is you've prepared one of the best essays of notes for us that we've ever seen. Now, a bit in the sense that people won't see it, but obviously it's just a true reflection of your entire real estate journey up into this point.

Chris
Yeah, it actually makes me nervous, John, because I'm like, are we equipped to handle such a perfect. Yeah, we're we're just giving you tips on how to use the mike. And even then, that probably wasn't very good for the I suppose one thing it'd be really fun. Just to start off, Chris, is it, you know, if you could take us back to day one when you started thinking about this, you know, like what?

Chris
Where were you then? What were you thinking and what was the goal? Or even if you had one to start with, you know? Yeah, absolutely. So. So my wife and I were working full time and we were running a small business on the side. And we both reached a point where we wanted our money to work for us.

Chris
Okay. We had seen people burnt out. My wife has a small business in the wedding industry, and she saw someone go through some pretty serious health scares, mainly due to stress. And at the time, I remember reading a quote from Warren Buffett and he says, If you only have one source of income, you're one paycheck away from poverty.

Chris
Hmm. And so that really got me. So we were working hard and we thought, gosh, there just has to be another way. Hmm. Well, I know there was a man of mine just chatting with a minute ago. We went to school with him, and he he had the very simple he just asked Johnny I'm getting all this confused advice, like, you know, we should wait because, you know, it's going to go.

Chris
I should just just buy and don't worry about it. And my thought to him was, is that I said to him, and I, we're still young, but we're old enough to say we're old enough to remember. And it's sort of the case that you will regret every house you didn't buy and you regret every house you haven't sold.

Chris
And I'm sort of my thought to him was if you're if he's sitting there trying to purchase a block of land, in his case, and he's stretching himself out to the max, where then work becomes nothing but servicing mortgages. That's a really dangerous space. To be in. Right. So I suppose and what you're saying there, where at that point you both working really hard and you're wanting to make sure you don't get to the point where you're observing your friends burning out like just the right course when stuff at we're done.

Chris
And this is sort of where you started to look. Okay. How do we ensure that we're in a worst case scenario, the wheels fall off and we're going to be okay? Is that sort of where the lead into starting to consider investment came into it? Definitely. Because, you know, this was actually around the time where I was in between jobs, not technically on my first day of unemployment.

Chris
And all right. We were looking at we were just wearing pajamas, you know, no pants don't always know pants day. I was on my first day of technically unemployment and we were looking at doing some landscaping in our backyard. You know, we were just focusing on just people, our principal place of residence. No idea about investing at this point.

Chris
Right. Right. And I actually we went we were looking at gardens. We were like going for a walk down Lindisfarne. Look, basically perving on people's houses. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad to use the word perfect, because let's try it. That's what everyone's doing. And I actually rolled my ankle really badly. Right? I just tumble down the hill. So I was on crutches for six weeks, and I was basically couch bound.

Chris
And what I ended up doing was consuming podcasts and YouTube videos and a heap of content for about 12 hours a day. Oh, right. A really deep, you know, took a really deep dove into it because I had never understood any of this stuff before. Mm hmm. And I always wanted to, but I always thought, you know, that's a that's something for future Chris to look at.

Chris
Yeah. Yeah, it's the way. Yeah. Chris John. He worries about a lot of things.

Chris
So, look, we and we started talking to a friend who I used to work with. Turns out he he he's an investor, and he was doing it quite successfully. Just kept under wraps. But we found out that, yeah, this is what he was doing, and he sort of mentored and supported us. Oh, right. And, you know, a large part of that journey was self-education for us.

Chris
Okay. A lot of Facebook groups, a lot of podcasts. Podcasts were the best thing for sure. I would just listen to it all the time, you know, and what I'd sort of do along the way. Was I actually had a like a Google Drive word document where I had a bit of a glossary. So every time I heard a term could be capital growth or whatever, one of the word is I'd write it down and I'd start to say people say certain things like commentary about what you should do, what you shouldn't do.

Chris
Then I'd put those comments in the word document and I'd start to to see all these trends and patterns emerge. Okay. And that sort of was a large part to help me figure out, you know, what's actually the real content there. There's a lot of spruikers out there. Yeah, there's a lot of noise. Yes. And I think as a first time investor, it was so hard to try and sift through that.

Chris
Hmm. Well, I know the idea of, you know, it's not now it's like a tick tock expert. Before that, I was Instagram expert. Before that was Facebook expert before there was still, you know, telemarketing expert. So it's the thing is, I suppose when it comes to knowledge, it's very easy to sound intelligent. Mm hmm. But usually those that have a lot of wisdom use fewer words and don't feel the need to complicated with fancy terminology.

Chris
So is that what sort of the idea was is I mean, like PR, for example, you may start off that's just something that you used to say in your primary place of residence you could just say where I live. Where I live. Yep. Exactly. So the it was it then, I mean, you consuming so much damn stuff. The problem is then, is it when you've got too much knowledge, it's trying to actually put that in an actionable plan.

Chris
So is that we're condensing that information to be useful moving forward? Is that where that glossary started to come in handy? Yeah, very much so. Where it really came in handy was figuring out sort of our strategy. So for us, we really resonated with the idea of finding assets that can build through capital growth. Sure. And the reason being was because when we first started, we thought we want to keep our options pretty open.

Chris
We don't want to limit ourselves in. And a lot of people are saying that, like in terms of capital growth, you know, that's where you'll be able to get equity to purchase more property. So for us from that first one, we've been able to generate some equity along the way to fund the other ones. And so that was always the idea.

Chris
But we didn't definitely didn't have all the answers to start with. It's been this evolving process and we as we've accumulated more assets. Yeah, gotcha. So, I mean, we could we could dumb it down. What do I mean with you here you are writing a glossary page. Capital growth. What's that? So basically a capital growth is this idea excuse me?

Chris
Capital growth is this idea that properties will increase in value over time. Sure. And one way to look at it is supply and demand. Mm hmm. And so if you look at a location, I'm going to pick Sandy Bay, for example, and let's say you have a house there that's, you know, valued at maybe 1.5 million. Okay. Over time.

Chris
That's a suburb that people want to live in. And then because they want to live there, the basically the supply and demand equation will change. There's limited supply and there's high demand because of that demand. Basically, people are going to pay more for that property and therefore it's going to go up in value. And that's what we refer to as capital growth.

Chris
Yeah, definitely. So it's just you paid $300,000 today. Now, the current value because of demand in some sense in the area it for $400,000 a day. If there's a hundred grand, you've grown. And so that's your capital growth year. Yep, exactly. Yeah. And it's sort of I mean I know is putting you on the spot there, but I like the idea where rather than you people saying all these terms and you just assuming you'd know what they are, you took the time to stop and learn, you know, because I wanted to just drop an anchor in the sense that I'm going to jump around but today like every different you know, knows what it's important to know

Chris
why you're here because now you both have six rental properties, is that right? Correct. Six investment properties. And you were able to accumulate in how much time? 22 months to wait and see. That's insane. You know, so. So this goes I mean, to be able to act that fast, I can only assume you need a damn well documented action plan.

Chris
So when now, like, if you've you've accumulated all this knowledge, I can only assume you might have been really, you know, your wife was really excited by it or she was sick and tired of hearing about it. Where was the point where both of you got on the same page to go? Right, we need to start. It's time to start doing something.

Chris
What did that come about? I'm incredibly lucky to have such a supportive and amazing partner, and right from the start, we've been on the same page. All right. So it's just like, yep, we're team. Yep, exactly. And we've sort of focus on different things. So my wife is really great. She sees incredible potential in a lot of these assets.

Chris
I places, they're a little bit tired or rundown things that are give me heart palpitations. And then I started to act on it. Yeah. Turned out to be the best thing ever. Right. But for me, I really like details. So I was zoom right into the spreadsheets. A lot of crunching the numbers. No, I really love my bookkeeping.

Chris
I don't know what my accountant says. I've missed my calling. Yeah. Spreadsheets made. If I can put a spreadsheet together with some numbers, I'm all over. Yeah. Yeah. Really, it makes me feel busy for the day, so I like this big spreadsheet full of info. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just so cathartic. Is it is a look at pretty this easy?

Chris
Yeah. Yeah, it's sufficient. So, yep, I'm all over that Chris. Yeah. So I look, teamwork was a huge part of it and still is in terms of that plan. Like with our first property, we had a rough idea of what we're looking for in terms of capital growth and asset selection. But it wasn't till we got to the second one we sat down and really not set out a plan.

Chris
Okay. And that really started with this idea of saying, Look, before we get ahead of ourselves, why are we doing like what's our actual, what's the endgame, what's our end game? How what are we going to what do we want to achieve? And then how are we going to do that? So what are the steps? I didn't we didn't have to go into the minutia, into the real nitty gritty detail, but it was just about having a broad and broad idea of saying, this is what we want to achieve, and then you kind of just sorta plot down the goals that you want to achieve.

Chris
And we had about ten versions of this document. It's like this huge, huge, cumbersome, ten page document. Right, right. Got it down into a one page A4 document. Yeah. Yes, it's on the fridge site. You know, it's constant reminder. It's always there know. I love that. Yeah. Having that on the fridge to look at every day to just remind you what the goal is.

Chris
Yeah, exactly. And that's what I say. They say, you know, you're much more likely to actually action things if you do write them down in terms of goals. Well, I suppose revisiting it to like all of the matters I've written goes I don't remember what they like. Yeah, yeah. Because they ended up in that journal like five pages back and like, oh, I guess I'll just write some new ones, you know, but they're having that, that consistent focus every morning where you're both reminded, Hey, this is why we're doing it.

Chris
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Okay. So what was the difference in that process of buying your first investment versus your second one? So the first investor change. Yeah. So the first investment was in an area called Devonport, and it's really quite interesting because my wife grew up on the same street that we bought that first investment property. So she knew the area incredibly well.

Chris
Oh, right. Okay. So my wife grew up on the north west coast and that's where our investment portfolio sits currently. I'm an old Boston boy, so I know the area well as well. Yeah. Excellent. The difference between the first and the second one was that with the first one we we put in a lot of detail. So we really looked at we looked on Google Maps, we looked onto Main on real estate dot com.

Chris
We used micro bibs to try and track affluent score to find the best suburbs and the not so best suburbs because we really wanted to target those sort of middle tier areas. So what what would you how would you describe middle tier? I would say areas that have reasonable potential. Probably cost them. Is that sort of more middle class areas?

Chris
That's at that time. My girlfriends have always described my middle tier, middle tier, potential middle tier. There's a lot of room to grow. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Right. You got tickets on yourself, John? No, that's the point. They sell a ticket so to stay on it. Gotcha. So it's this, but you're not sitting there trying to, um, it's bread and butter of and think of it as totally yeah.

Chris
And that's the thing. We wanted to pick things that we believe would perform well over time, but they didn't. I don't, we didn't want them to be completely maxed out in terms of, you know, completely renovate or anything because we wanted to generate some equity, wanted to do a bit of work on them. So then we could pull out a bit in terms of the first of the second one.

Chris
The second one was really interesting because after the first one I, I went more into my spreadsheets and my documents and I put together this like scoring criteria. I had these lists of things that I was looking for and I had a checklist. So we would drive up to the north west coast, we'd look at a property, I'd pull out my checklist, the agents looking at me like I'm a weirdo.

Chris
I'd be impressed. I'll be like, Oh, you got a spreadsheet can I see it? And what was happening was that I start to get really stressed. I was like, Look, we can't find anything, blah. And then there's this with the second property purchase, how it turned out was that we went and fortuitously we went and inspected this property.

Chris
By chance, we weren't meant to be there. And it was a bit of an accidental purchase. And the genesis for for that purchase was when we stepped into that house. I had an incredible feeling to say, we need to buy this house. It was a two bedroom, one bath, 900 square meters overlooking the Bass Strait. Not a blade of grass out of touch.

Chris
This this man was moving into a nursing home and he had kept the place pristine like it was preserved from 1985. And I was like this house has a lot of pride in it. It's obviously been looked after, a little bit tired and needs a bit of a refresh and I just have this overwhelming feeling like we need to buy this house and we need to restore it and give it back to someone who would really like to live in there.

Chris
Okay. Isn't that interesting. You know, the, it's so true with properties that we buy on emotion and justify with logic later. And you know that instance where you're trying to do nothing but logic stressed you the hell out and it probably got you a point of, you know, analysis, paralysis where you just do checklists for so long that it could never be satisfied.

Chris
Exactly. The second you walk in a place and go do it, then, you know, and I know in the investing space, you know, a lot of people say take the emotion out of it. And I understand where that's coming from because a lot of it's numbers game. But at the same time, I think there's only so much that numbers can give you because at the end of the day, what does data represent?

Chris
It represents desirability. It represents where people want to live. And if I look at a place and I have a firm decision to say, look, I could actually live here myself. And these are the reasons why. Yeah, chances are that someone else will be thinking the same thing. So that's going to benefit me as an investor because I'm going to find the tenant that I want in the market that I want.

Chris
And later on down the track, I'll be able to sell that asset to to someone else who'll be thinking along the same lines. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. You know, I think the other thing I see when it comes to intuition is intuitions actually probably more so developed through, um, you know, study and experience. The, the idea that you were going to walk into that house the first time you'd ever seen a house and go, this is what's going to happen visually would probably not.

Chris
It developed over the fact that you've been crafting all these numbers in the past and you've been doing all this research. And then finally you came into a point where then everything aligned to say, Okay, this is the one to go for. Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing around that too, is that with that particular property, like it's in west of and we know that well, my wife knows that area really well.

Chris
Yeah, yeah. This wasn't listed online. There was no address. And she's like a unit when it comes to Google Maps. So she stalked this house and she said, Chris, this is probably one of the best streets in West, all of us in Iran. And so we had the data there to back it up. Yeah, yeah. But it wasn't till I actually stepped foot into that into that house that it.

Chris
Yeah. Got me in the fields. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. It feels like. Right, let's do it. Yeah, yeah. Because all the data matched up right yeah. The the missing piece of the puzzle was that intuition. So, so matching this thing, the one thing I forgot I cut you off was to talk about the goals that you have on that fridge.

Chris
Right? What is, what do they say? So originally our goal was to hit five to six investment properties in five years and we've hit that in 22 months. Yeah. So we've hit our target now. So yeah, at the moment we haven't changed those goals. They're still sitting there at the moment. We're going to sit a little bit tight for the next 12 to 24 months.

Chris
Just keep an eye on things and it's probably good time just to consolidate the portfolio. So ultimately that goal really talks about we want to achieve x passive income by X date yep. And to do that we're going to accumulate these properties with the vision to retire some of the debts. So we potentially wait one to two property cycles you know, with six properties sitting there, we could sell three of them because in one or two property cycles, Touchwood properties might double in value and then that'll pay off the debt for the remaining.

Chris
So then you leave unencumbered with the remainder of the properties. Yes. You both had a good goal that you could both stick together. And you know, it is difficult for a lot of people trying to buy the first property, but I suppose the biggest thing is that you had both, um, you know, had a goal and you both on the same page as that started.

Chris
And I'm curious to know though, because any units you'd mentioned the idea that you'd learned, you've learned from your friends who had tried to borrow again, but they borrowed absolutely everything they possibly could and then bought the most expensive property they possibly could, whereas you guys were a little bit, a bit more cautious about it and didn't stretch yourself as hard as you could.

Chris
Is that is that what enabled you to be able to move quicker? That was a huge part of it. You know, I jokingly say that my wife adheres to the Warren Buffett style of investing. He for Deep Valley and for her like she really likes to identify assets that have a lot of potential, but generally means buying at a lower price point than what we've got the budget for certain.

Chris
Sorry, that what we've been allowed to borrow yeah but buy cheaper not more expensive. Yeah exactly. I mean, you know, to just to give you a bit of a price range, the most expensive asset that we've bought is three 50. Yeah. And we were basically given a budget of four 50 to 500 for each purchase. Wow. Okay. And we managed to, you know, in terms of that like we managed to get properties under 300, usually sitting around the three 30 mark.

Chris
So there are definitely still some incredible deals out there. Obviously the market has moved a lot. So you know buying in Devonport in late 2019 is different to what it is now of course, but at the same time like our philosophy was to not max ourselves out in terms of what we could borrow because we knew we would have more borrowing capacity for the next one.

Chris
Yeah, that's so interesting. I think that probably goes back to the, the story with my mate which was well mate don't or don't get the most expensive damned thing just because you can buy it, because it gives you no room for leverage. So another one or you know, God forbid the interest rates do rise up a couple of points.

Chris
Like then all of a sudden he's working for no other purpose than to pay interest on a loan. Not you know, not, you know, not, not, not both. Exactly. So with so when you were, you know, with that then it's not as sexy to buy the unsexy property, you know. That's right. And people looked at us like we a little bit strange, like, you know, we had some sort of feedback from maybe friends or family that thought okay.

Chris
That's a bit of an unconventional idea. Yeah. Why are you buying that and why are you buying that house? And part of it is being a little bit contrarian and saying this deep value that is that exists there. So would it be another way to price deep valued? I suppose another way to rephrase deep value would be buying something that's potentially under market value.

Chris
And I know that's a trigger word in this current market. I would argue that it's difficult to buy under market value. Maybe what you're buying is the market value. Fair enough. Things are moving so fast, but deep value to me represents a few things it represents a location that's going to be desirable from a renter and also into the future.

Chris
Deep Valley also represents some type of a value add or upside yeah. So that could be the land size, you know, it could be the configuration of the house, could be the straight. It's on. And the other thing I find really important is the X factor know we've always really tried to look for this X factor in our property purchases.

Chris
Okay? And that's generally been, you know, like it could be something as simple as a cul de sac that's very quiet that doesn't have a lot of traffic through it, or it could be, you know, close to amenities or something like that, something that's going to set it apart to its peers in that street. Yeah, because all that area, you know, just for example, we, we are very picky with our assets.

Chris
So when we would go to our trips to the north west coast, we would go up there, we inspect a property, we'd come back home and we'd do that rinse and repeat all the time. So a lot of time invested, a lot of time. So for us, that's a you know, that's 7 hours of driving each day. And so we would literally go off each day and do that.

Chris
So I took a lot of time, but we were really stubborn and picky about that and, you know, touch wood. Hopefully it does pay off one day. But to give you some context around that X factor, we've five out of our six properties have water views. Sure. Because we thought that was something that we believe is really important and I don't know, for me, I just really like my water visa's.

Chris
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you know, we we've had a lot this is happens quite it's a common feedback from owners where they'll go, oh yeah. And this has got water views. And I said, yes, but so does half of Hobart. Well, I don't site that bluntly, you know, you don't because you just immediately insult someone's ego. The thing is, ah um, where the long term perception of that water view is that probably the biggest value.

Chris
So the, and the real X factor return on that might not be for five or ten years. However they always going to have a bit of return on being able to see the water versus looking at a brick wall. You've hit the nail on the head perfectly and that was essentially our vision. We thought we don't when we purchase these properties, we're not looking, you know, entirely how they're going to perform the next one to five years.

Chris
We're looking for a 20 year horizon. 30 horizon, yeah. What's going to happen at the end of that period? Like who will want to buy this house we know that, you know, you can't you can't grow more land, right? Yes. You can't change, you know. So that was something that's super important to us. We wanted to think, how will this perform in 30 years?

Chris
Yeah, and we sell it. See, there was something just kind of mine I was going to dig down. We you talked about property cycle. Now my understanding of that is effectively talking about a doubling in price. Would that be sort of you'd be looking for an end of a cycle to generally speaking, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Because I think the and I know in Tassie that happened 14 years ago.

Chris
So you had 2001 or 2003. We've really had it from between 20 and 15 to 20 and 21. So you know, you think about that, that's 14, 14 years or so before that sort of those things cycle through. Um, now it'd be great to say that prices always double in every 30 years maybe you may and you may or may not have to pay $1,000,000 for a property in Ulverston overlooking the water.

Chris
There's to say. But what I think is a danger spot I suppose is that everyone's been an expert over the last few years and the danger of that is to always think that everything's always going to be good, right. All the time. Um, it seems to me that you acknowledge the fact that you've bought it at an opportunistic time, which has been greatly to benefit, but you didn't buy because you're out of fear of missing out or because you wanted to time the market you bought when you could at, at the price you could with a property whose numbers made sense.

Chris
But on exactly we that was a huge part of our plan, you know, making sure we had the opportunities there to strike when the iron is hot. Yes. But also be part that was getting the finance sorted at the back end. So instead of doing it in a linear fashion and saying, okay, we're going to do probably one, then two, then three, then four, we looked at our finances, we got things in order so that we could buy two at the same time.

Chris
Interest, very close succession. Okay. It was a nightmare with paperwork and having to liaise with different providers but you know, in large part we were pretty much back to back to back with a lot of stuff. And we just thought we, you know, we under no illusions, we know that this is unprecedented times particularly for Tasmania. Sure. And we know this is not going to last forever.

Chris
So we thought, okay, if we are going to execute our decisions against our plan, this is the time to do it. We'll see even then that and it's a fair objection. You know, people go, what's easy when you've bought it at the bottom of the market and fair enough, you know, um, that said though, is it even if you are buying today, the rules don't change?

Chris
I don't think the rules change at all. Yeah, it really comes down to the fundamentals of property. Yeah. And so it's that thought. Well I mean this is pretty bloody good lessons to take out of it since well don't, don't go to the broker with one in mind. Go to the broker with two. Yeah, exactly. That's all right.

Chris
Well if we are going to make this work okay, well, we're going to need to borrow more money, but maybe we have to adjust the price values that we can look to buy. But we can leverage two from the same homework than we would just one that's pretty damn good. It saves some time. And but one thing I'd have to I want to ask, like, I can only there's obviously a big sacrifice of your time.

Chris
Like you said, you drive in a, you know, back and forth, back and forth. What else have you both sort of sacrificed from today in terms of, um, nice things, I guess you could say. I like to you both with this plan in mind, say, look, we're going to delay getting the caravan now in lieu of our financial plan.

Chris
Is it? Well, what were the sort of sacrifices you guys had to leave made along the way? That's a really good question. Thankfully, we've both been relatively sensible without consumer spending. My wife has always been of that mindset for me, not so much. So a bit of my back story is that I was the kind of person that would always sort of shout drinks or buy dinner for everyone, and I'd always put on the credit card right and this was like, you know, about 20, 15 to sort of hit this point where I was actually in about 40 K of consumer debt yep.

Chris
In there. Yeah, yeah. It's always at a date so easy to get access to credit. Yeah, yeah. And so for me, financial literacy is now something I'm super passionate about because I sort of hit this low point and I develop the spreadsheet. That's probably where my love of spreadsheets come from. Developed a spreadsheet where I'd plot out each fortnight how much I needed to pay back.

Chris
And so I worked really hard and aggressively to pay that off. Alright, so that gave me some really great lessons around money management and I'm really grateful to have that opportunity because if someone says, look, you know, you've just got privilege being able to get all these properties, I can say hand on heart, look, I actually went through some struggles myself and I really understand what it can be like.

Chris
Well, the other thing, if to fall in the back of Ghana, you got privileges. Well, it's such a I think it's a really ignorant, insulting term because it actually gives no credit at all to a personal story or struggles, and it gives no acknowledgment of the discipline and sacrifices that are made for someone to be able to have it progressed themselves to a really good position.

Chris
Absolutely. It's really interesting because like, you know, the caravan or the car, like I personally don't need that stuff. You know, I have a 2007 Toyota Corolla with a couple of chips in the windscreen. That's great for me. It's reliable. I love it. But I don't personally need anything fancy a all. So, you know, I guess having that mindset really helps around I'm not going to use the word frugal because I think that's a different word.

Chris
But just living within your means that's really what it is. And so for us, in terms of what we sacrificed, well, we sacrificed a lot of stress. There's a lot of headaches that was challenging our entire world for a couple of years. Was more or less consumed, too. I find that. So, you know, there's no illusions that it's an easy ride.

Chris
And I think it's a bit of an analogy for life, but you have to work hard. There's no other way around it and you'll get out what you put in. Yeah. And I guess one thing is it's still the you know, people get well, you know, I work really hard and there's you know, people are and I don't think none of us would say that every everyone's position is equal and every little piece of advice is equal to each individual.

Chris
You know, if you're for those that are just really stuck in the fact that no matter how hard they're working, just in that one particular way, that it's going to produce a positive result, I think in some ways, though, is that there are little bits that we can change in our selves over time, that it may take ten years for a person to do the same.

Chris
It might take someone ten months. I think, though, that when especially when it comes to property investment, when you hark back to those goals that you have on that fridge, it's this little reminder that goes no matter how crap things are right now, no matter how hellish things are for us right now, together as a team, we've got a goal.

Chris
We're going to go for it. And every little every little element that you make, either just you don't buy this here, you create a little spreadsheet here you learn another little thing here. You know, it was amazing that you guys were able to achieve, you know, you know, accelerate this process so quickly at a really opportunistic time. But you could have been the same person who didn't do any of this stuff.

Chris
And the idea it was all good for you because you bought back then, but a lot of people could have bought back then but didn't buy back then. So the dispositions is a result of, you know, disciplined research, hard work and action and, you know, taking action on, you know. Yeah, um, so it's that, I mean, it's so cool to have you here, mate.

Chris
I think, um, because one of the things that I think we really ought to have you back because we just covered so much and very little bits of paper to me, I'd never even recall to be. We've got a few friends of the pod and mind if you're, you know, keen to come back and I suppose be fun to um, over time to talk about a lot more nitty gritty on specific for those that are interested in learning, you know, the, the reason why you bought one specific property and we're not doing a broad overview of who you are on your terms.

Chris
We'd love to have you back. Of course I'd love to. I mean for me the most fulfilling part of this is actually these conversations about being able to share these experiences and sort of affect change for people that might be on the fence or might see something on Facebook and, you know, and just want to jump in there and do it.

Chris
It's like, okay, well, sort of slow down a little bit because the great thing about properties that no one strategy is the same or so many variables and what, what will work for me might not work for someone else. Yeah. And so I will share my experience and I hope that people are able to take or glean insights or bits of information from that that can help with that strategy.

Chris
And for me, I'm really passionate about this stuff. So I definitely would love to do that. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks, Alison. Thank you. Well, it's official. My life has been a waste of time. Yeah, I spend too much money, so I like all the nice toys with the caravan and the trucks and stuff. But man, Chris is portfolio. That is an impressive journey in such a short period of time.

Chris
I really think the to me, the the idea, the goals and the fridge is probably one of the biggest takeaways from that from my perspective, because it just it's focus is what everything he's going to do on a daily basis. And it's like if they've got a joint joint vision to say, hey, this is what we're doing and they're not in conflict, I think that's an awesome thing for him.

Chris
He's bound to do carry through, you know? Well, I think today's been a real eye opener to someone in the investment space and how they've got into the marketplace. I'm super excited to get Chris back over the next couple of months. He seems pretty keen to become a new member of the show. Yep. And I think we have to say, look at Simon physically.

Chris
There may be a new knowledge kicking down yeah. Yeah, exactly. You might have a fanboy here, you know? Oh, well, we're probably going to wrap it up because this episode's going a little bit longer than Noel, but it was just too much good content not to have it. So yeah, we'll get Chris back. We'll get him on to talk more about investing in property in the marketplace.

Chris
And once again, everyone, thanks for listening to the show too. Next time she's about. So you guys, you have been listening to the property both recorded and edited by 41 full media house in conjunction with the full and full property code. This podcast is general information only and the thoughts of views expressed is the opinion of our panel and listeners should always seek then use their own investigation into any topic we discuss to ensure they fully understand their own situation.

Chris
It does not constitute and should not be relied on as purchasing, selling, financial or investment advice or recommendations. Expressed or implied, and it should not be used as an invitation to take up any agement or investment services. No investment decision or activity should be undertaken on the basis of this information without first seeking qualified and professional advice.