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🎧 Real deals, real strategies, real results. Learn how to find, fund, and operate profitable property plays from someone who’s actually done it.
Hosted by Andrew Wright, principal of Professionals Southport and a commercial investor who rebuilt after losing a ~$15M portfolio during the GFC, this podcast gives you a straight-talking look at what it really takes to build wealth through property.
Each episode delivers practical frameworks, real deal breakdowns, and honest conversations with high-performing investors and operators across residential and commercial.
But it’s bigger than the episodes. The goal is to build a community of like-minded investors who share stories, swap insights, help each other grow and maybe even do deals together.
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📍 Connect with Andrew: hello@andrewwrightproperty.com.au
Hi, I'm Andrew Wright, principal of Professional Southport, and this is the Andrew Wright Property Podcast. I've built a multimillion dollar property portfolio delivering a seven figure annual rental. And led my real estate team through thousands of sale and lease transactions. In each episode, I share real deals and strategies that will help you find, fund and operate profitable property deals.
The aim of this show is to provide education and build a community of like-minded investors who can collaborate, share insights, and help each other in each other's journeys. You can make excuses or you can make money, but you can't do both. So come and join us.
Welcome back to another episode of the Andrew Wright Property podcast. Today we're talking about an asset class that no one takes seriously, but maybe they should. Car parks. Now, this isn't just about parking. This is about cash flow, land banking, and future development upside. Andrew, I've got a feeling this episode might change the way people think about property investing because I don't think anyone ever considers car parks as one of their strategies.
No, probably not, Adam. It's a bit like that one we did on the truck parking depot and you mentioned when you went to New Zealand you started seeing truck parks everywhere after we did that podcast and probably the same result from this car parking podcast as well. Well,
look, I, it, it. I do this podcast with you, now you've got my mind thinking as I hope we have for, you know, a lot of listeners and I, I do think about things that I've never have before.
And one thing that's always crossed my mind is you pass that, you know, you, you're usually thinking in a city, you know, the, the bigger cities, and you pass that little what is essentially an empty block with some temporary fencing around it and the, the parking available here and it's just literally an empty, empty block.
And I'm thinking, well, yeah. Surely this, you, you, you'd be looking to develop this and build a, but there's obviously a strategy around that and, um, and, and that that's what got me thinking about car parks as a, as a whole. But look, let's talk me through it. What do you actually mean by investing in, in a car park?
What could that look like?
Well, that one scenario you just talked about probably relates mainly to the major CBD inner parcels of land where a developer. Might be paying a whole heap of land tax because typically large blocks of land in the middle of the CBDs have a large land valuation. They're paying land tax and rates and to try and, uh, manage the, uh, outgoings, they temporarily for several years might use the site for car parking, and sometimes they'll manage it themselves.
Sometimes they'll do a revenue sharing. Uh, car parking with some other company that specializes in managing car parks. Sure.
Okay. And, um, let's talk strata, you know, versus, versus freehold. Mm-hmm. You've had an example at your own office where you've, um, you've had some strata car parks that you've, you've generated some, some cash flow through.
Yeah, I,
I've got, uh, 12 car parks in my building in, in Southport. There. For a while there, in the last 12 months, I, I didn't need three of them and I leased them out for $165 a month each, which is five grand a month extra. Um, I've got some tenants in now that just moved in next door, and they're using those three car parks.
But, um, car parking is in such high demand as, you know, everywhere you go. And it, it's just the whole back background as to why this asset class is a good opportunity.
Absolutely.
And we'll probably continue to be more so, because if you think about. There's not much spare land around, and every time someone builds a private building on one of those vacant blocks of land, there's no more public car parking available there.
No. No,
that's, so the demand's only gonna increase.
Increase, absolutely. Mm. And there's, we're only getting more cars as well. I mean, that's it. It's never gonna go down. Yeah, that's right. So, um, but freeholds more what you're, what you're interested in. I mean, strata's pretty easy. If you've got car parks, you're not using them.
Rent them out.
Yes.
Um, but Freehold, there's a lot more opportunity, isn't there? Yeah. And, um. I guess you can talk in a city, you can talk rural, and I wanna go through all of that with you. But, um, there's even been scenarios, hasn't there? And this is with big parcels of land where, um, you know, in, uh, investment, the investment has been where they've sold.
Them off basically subdividing land into cast spaces. Yeah. And selling them.
Yeah. They're particularly, um, there's been a couple of examples. One sort of park and fly near the Sydney airport there, where I think they broke down one large, uh, commercial lot into about 800 car parks and sold 'em off for $50,000 each.
And. Um, that, that's all great, but you, you know, my main motivation for talking about this is where you own a chunk of land that's gonna go up over time, rather not just 25 square meter block of land, but a bigger chunk of land. And that's where I think the freehold opportunity is.
Okay. Talk me through this, this asset class.
'cause it's a very simple one, isn't it? And that's, that's a real attractive feature.
Mm
of it.
Yeah. Well, once again, like if you have a, think about the busiest car parking facilities. They're generally in the middle of a CBD somewhere close to employment hubs, close to uh, uh, attraction sporting events, tourist, uh, areas, and that's where you wanna buy a chunk of land that's gonna go up in value.
If you can get a, a, a tenant in there, either overnight parking, short term, or a, a long term tenant. Pay your rent on that block of land, it's only gonna go up in time.
Yep.
You've got no buildings depreciating, you've got no, uh, building insurance. Um, you've got no plumbing and air conditioning problems.
It's basically just a fence and a bit of hard stand.
Yep.
And you've got cash flow coming in. And over time that land's only gonna go up in value. And when the time's right. You can. Add value to the site and get a capital uplift by getting a development application. Sell the property off or develop it yourself to add value.
Looking to get it to its highest and best use.
Yep,
absolutely. So this asset class is on your, on your radar. Yeah. This is something you, you're looking for. So what's your checklist? What, what You know if you are gonna find, you know, a car parking opportunity that. I would assume part of your checklist is going to turn into something else later.
Yeah. Yeah. What, what are you looking for?
Well, Brisbane City, uh, Sydney, Melbourne, the Gold Coast, the prices are so high for land in the CBD areas that the, the rental yield of a car park is just not gonna stack up. Yep. It's probably gonna be just enough to cover your rates and your land tax, but it's not gonna be a great yield say.
In my opinion at the moment, um, if you wanna look at those CBDD areas, you probably need to have a look at a, a syndication with some other people or some developers that wanna build a high rise, uh, and build it pretty quickly. But if you can find a site in a smaller regional city where the land values a little bit cheaper, it makes it a really, really good opportunity.
So we'll talk about one that I bought in NIPS Switch a few years ago, and. Uh, that might make a bit more sense as to how the numbers work as we
pull, pull it out in an example. Sure. Because Mo as we start to, you know, pull this apart and people are listening, I think most people will think it's, it's just parking income.
Mm-hmm.
What are they missing?
Well, it depends on the side, but the b the big, the main part of this is, I like, we'll just go through that, uh, Ipswich example, if you don't mind. Sure. Let's do it. The real numbers do it.
Let's do it. Yep.
Um, I bought that, uh, little car park. There's. 936 square meters. So just a very, very small one.
But it is right in the middle of the CBD. Yep. Um, it, along with the property next door, which I also purchased, had a development approved for a 15 story high-rise building with 160 units in it. So, but it
was, it was a car park used,
particular side. Used
as one
when
you bought it.
That's right. So it already had a, a tenant in there.
It was, it's the ips, which city council, they've been there since the year 2000. So they've. Now been there 26 years paying rent,
pretty rock solid.
Um, my last invoice to them was, uh, $43,000 for the yearly rent on $475,000 purchase price. So whatever that is, I think it's, uh, you know, might be 8%, uh, uh, rental, rental return.
Yep. And, and that site, uh, long term, if they decide to ever move out of there. Um, you know, I'll be looking to get an uplift, um, to develop it either as a high rise building and flick it, or maybe a smaller development that I can actually fund myself. It might just be, you know, seven townhouses and, um, something I can build myself and keep.
Okay.
Mm.
So you've, you, you've spoken the basic numbers there. You're looking at about an 8% rental. How much? 475,000. You?
4 75. I purchased it for the last, uh. Invoice I send 'em, it's 43,000, including GST. Okay. So it might be 39 grand.
And for, for what period was that?
Uh, for one year. They pay yearly in advance.
Right. And they pay all the outgoings.
Yep.
Um, so, you know, it's about eight might be 8% return, 7% net.
These are amazing numbers that you're, you're actually talking about here. Mm-hmm. Did it have development approval when you bought it? Because I'm guessing not because that is a cracking deal. Yeah. And why would someone be selling if it was
Yeah.
So. That one, there was a morga in possession sale with, uh, three other buildings next door to it. So it wasn't being sold just as a car park. That was basically an add-on to the other three sites. Um. Morgaine possession, they probably didn't wanna sell, but they were forced to sell at that time through financial difficulty.
So I wasn't specifically targeting a car park, but when I had a look at the fact that the cashflow was there for that car park, it previously had a development approved for 15 story high highrise, which had lapsed. I thought, well down the track, it's gonna be a lot easier for me to go down that track again and reignite one of those development approvals to add value to the site again.
So you have done that now?
No, I haven't. No,
you haven't.
I'm exploring that now.
Right.
Um, I haven't got the money to build a 15 story high rise. Yep. And I'm in no hurry to do so with all these building costs going up. But, uh, just last night preparing for this podcast, I was thinking, well, I wonder whether I should try and restart that process.
Uh, and if not, maybe go for a smaller development, like seven townhouses or something that I could actually build and keep for myself. Sure. What would be your decision
making process on when and why? To move from a, a tenant that's paying yearly in advance. Yep. You're getting 8%, um, to make that decision.
No, it's time. Um, what, what goes through your head? In making that decision?
Yeah, there's multiple factors. I guess the first thing that would trigger that would be if the tenant gave me notice that they were leaving. So under a commercial lease, usually they have to give you three or six months notice that they're leaving.
So if they were to do that, they would automatically trigger me to say, okay, well do I want to try and find another car parking tenant now or is now the time to go and spend 12 months getting a, an approval in place to actually. Build a dwelling on the site. So that'd be the main trigger. Yep. Um, the ca if the cash flow was really, really low, like in a lot of these CBD big towns, you might be prompted to get an uplift a lot sooner because you'd actually be having negative cash flow by the time you pay your land tax and everything.
But that particular site in fwi, it's only $475,000. There's very little land tax on that one. So it's, it's got good cash flow. I'm in no rush.
Yep.
Um, but at some stage, I'll guarantee you I will be getting a new development, uh, approved there. Whether I flick it to someone else for a massive profit or build a smaller one myself, we'll just have to do those numbers.
Sure. Well look, I'm sure we'll still be doing this podcast and I'm really looking forward to where, when and if and when that, uh, that happens. 'cause it's gonna be an interesting one to follow. But I want to come back to you this deal so that there are three other dwellings.
Yes.
On. So what were they, and I just wanna know, 'cause that's what you were originally interested in.
I, I'm assuming,
yes. So we did a podcast on this at, uh, 13 to 17, Ellen Borough Street. It might've been the third or Ford Pod podcast. So, yep.
For those who missed that, just give me a
Yeah, sure. So, 13 Ellen Borough Street is a small, single level retail building. It's got three separate tendencies in there, and that is the building.
That I would also probably knock down because it had a previous development application for a five story commercial building. So that number 13, uh, would be the site for a brand new five story commercial building. Now that area is zoned for up to 20 levels.
Yep.
But when the town planning departments of the council look, looks at it, it's gotta fit in with the aesthetics of the neighboring buildings.
And I think the 15 story building that was approved. At West Street is actually behind those buildings and that's why it was approved. But the one on Ellenburg Street, it's probably, uh, gonna be limited to five stories because next door to that, we have number 15 and number 17, which are listed as, uh, places of, uh, significance with the, um, character,
right?
Not, they're not heritage listed, but they're
something similar.
Some they're not at the state-based heritage level, but with the local council. They're listed as places of, uh, significance that you can't actually knock down.
They don't want 'em gone.
No. So those two buildings that have to be, uh, left there, number 15 is, um, a double story building with a.
An office upstairs and two retail shops below. And number 17 is a, a couple of retail shops at the front, which is used as a cafe, and I've built a large, um, gym out the back of that one as well.
Yep. A great episode to actually go back and have a listen to Absolutely. About that whole deal itself. But obviously that was the deal that.
Sparked your interest in, in car parks and
Yeah.
When you suddenly saw, well, the, the, the bonus if you like.
Yeah.
Oh, wow. And then looked at the lease and, and everything else. And, um,
it's only after, like I was never looking for a car park, but now that I've actually owned it for three years, and I'm thinking, how good is this?
There's no tenants complaining that money comes in yearly in advance. There's no, no, no maintenance. It's so
simple,
isn't it? I haven't spent 1 cent on that. It's just a block of land. Like there's nothing there except for a fence. Um, the tenant's responsible for a hundred percent of the outgoings. Yep. Um, they've fixed a few potholes from time to time and they, you know, but
the land value would just continue to grow.
Yeah. Absolutely. And grow. And grow. Absolutely. It's such a, such a good one. Mm-hmm. Um, look, it's. Now that's that deal. But I've, I've got a question here. Most people, and in that one it is literally just you, you're getting paid for parking, but there are other income streams you, you can get from car parks, isn't it?
And things that people may not have thought of.
Yeah, so the institutional investors in car parking try and develop a multiple of income. So some of it is, uh. Uh, category one would be the hourly and daily parking. So if you go into one of those Wilson's car parks in Brisbane or wherever they are, you'll pay an hourly rate or a daily rate.
Model two is to have a month by month lease. So they might, um, charge, uh, 500 bucks a month or something, which is probably less than they'd get if they rented out by the hour. But it provides a more consistent cash flow with no vacancy.
Mm-hmm.
And those big operators, they'll generally have a multi-story concrete car park.
They're starting around the world now to introduce, uh, electronic vehicle charging hubs, EV hubs. So with all your Teslas and all the other Sure. Electronic vehicles there. Yeah. There's business models out there where the, uh, the company that provides those charges actually pays the rent. It's not the people using them, the paying the rent to the owners of the property.
Right. It's those people running the business of. Electronic vehicle charging hubs, they'll actually pay to put the equipment there that they'll
rent the, the spot on your spot.
Yes.
Right.
And then you can go further on the roof of some of these dwellings. Uh, solar panel companies will often pay to use the, the roof rights if you're, you like on top of the roof to have solar panels.
And in some cases you'll even see those big telecom towers. That are just built on top of a car park and you get a lot of resistance, uh, from councils if they're built on a, in near a residential property. Yeah. 'cause people are worried about the health, bene health risks of being right next to one of them.
Yeah. But if it's in a car park
Yep.
It doesn't really matter if it's on top of a car.
That brings up an interesting one for me, and I love how you think. Laterally, Andrew, you know, when you, you are talking about, you know, these different types of asset classes and how you can, you know, bring in different, um, income streams.
But it reminds me, my local shopping center obviously has its own outdoor car park and mm-hmm. They put up, um. It's not even a proper, a proper roof over it. It's literally just frames with, um, solar panels on them to, to, to charge the, the shopping center. Yep. So
solar,
literally
just,
um,
so we, so I'm thinking of doing that in my carpark and nips switch.
If the tenant moves out, they, I think they call it solar canopy, so it's. Like a carport. Yeah. And on top of the carport, you've got all the solar panels. That's it.
It's literally just framework to hold the, the, the panels.
Yeah, absolutely.
Mm-hmm. So another term I've heard is car stackers. Mm-hmm. What's, what's that all about?
Yeah, well, look, I think, um, uh, about 30 years ago, car stackers started propping up all over Japan because of the shortages of spaces in the CBDs. And basically what they do is, um, allow for cars to be parked on top of each other and, um, from a commercial point of view. Uh, a double A two car, car stacker is probably the way to go.
Uh, if you've just got a vacant block of dirt, you can double the capacity of your car park. E
explain That to me
does look, well, it's look like, it's just like a, an a bit of equipment that's like a hoist and it'll actually just, you just park it in. Um, if you have a look down at Runaway bay there, they use it for the boats as well.
You just sort of whack it in and the voice sort of lifts it up and, uh, they can turn it around like this.
So is this more for long term parking rather than
short term then? Yeah. Yeah. So it takes a little bit longer to park the car when you've gotta use a hoist to sort of move it around. So it's probably more suited to residential or, um, uh, office tenants that are gonna park at there and leave it all day.
Probably not so much people jumping into a retail store for 10 minutes and then getting in and out.
This is a really interesting one to me. I, I don't think I've seen it. I don't think I've heard of it. Um, is it. Is it common in
Australia? No, it's not common. I, I had some properties in, uh, in Southport, um, a block of units that we was marketing a while back that had some, and our guest on the podcast, Paul Yon, a couple of weeks ago, was forced to use them.
Uh, in one of his developments when the council said he only needed one car park for each of the two beds, and then they turned around and said, oh, you need two, and there just wasn't enough room there. So instead of cutting down the number of units, they just sort of dug the, um, basement a little bit deeper so they could fit in enough space for these.
Car stacker. So you could actually meet the two car park requirement on the same little bit of land. This
on a residential piece
of, yeah. Yeah. In a residential apartment building downstairs in the basement. So if he didn't have that car parking idea, he would've had to cut down the number of units he built because.
The council forced him to have two car parks for each of the two beds.
Look, we're gonna go online and we're gonna find some pictures of these things and we're gonna put them online here for our viewers. So, 'cause I've got no idea what these things look like, so, um, I'm sure a lot of other people listing out, so, we'll, we'll put it up there if you're listing, it'll be on the screen now.
Um, have a look. 'cause I, I can't even imagine what these things look, do you know what, what, what they cost? Yeah,
yeah. I've seen them and they, it is just like a, a little tiny. Uh, rectangle, sort of a steel frame and, uh, up, up there, go exactly like that. So how, what was that sound, Adam?
I I imagine like a, like a, uh, a
rollercoaster or something? Yeah, yeah. Probably.
I'm thinking of like, up, up a rollercoaster, you know, to get it up the, up the top. But, um, no, that's a, that's a really, really interesting one. So, um, but look, in terms of car parks as a whole. Any risks, anything investors should watch out for or, or think about?
Yeah, look, the, the main one is to make sure that it's actually, uh, you're legally able to use it as a car park, as I said. I mean, you're not gonna be able to legally do that if it's residentially zoned land. So you gotta make sure that it's zoned for that. The, there is not a lot of opportunity to buy these things.
Like I've been looking online for three years and there's not a lot that comes up online. So when you see one, you better jump pretty quickly because there's, there's not a lot and there's probably gonna be less and less in the future, and particularly in central CBD areas as sites keep getting built on and there's just less and less available, which long term makes it even more exciting because the rents can only go up.
Yep.
A lot of councils around Australia too are, uh, becoming a little bit more relaxed on the car parking requirements for new private buildings. You know, if you're building a, a development closer to a train or a tram, um, in many councils they're saying you don't need as much car parking, but you know, that's just gonna increase the, um, requirement for public car parks.
That's right. And the price you can charge for rent, et cetera, cetera, et cetera.
Absolutely.
Now, a really exciting asset class to, to be, um, a part of how, you know, in terms of overall strategy, you are in a lot of different asset classes and, and so forth. How does this fit? Into a bigger portfolio.
As I said, like if you wanted to be all, all just into the car parking business, um, you, it is gonna be pretty hard to acquire enough to sort of scale up a big portfolio because they just don't come up.
No.
Um, I, I've been looking, I've, I saw one that came up in North Queensland recently, but um, it had massive, um, easements underneath it. It might have been some sort of massive drains and. The engineering around building on that down the track. You could use it as a car park, but trying to get approval to build on it, um, made it, um, too big a risk to me and I walked away.
And, um, it, it's, it's not gonna be easy for people to buy a lot of sites, but if. If you've got this seed planted in the back of your mind that, hey, a block of land in the CBD that can cash flow and you can build a high rise on it down the track.
Yep.
Um, you'll, you'll know when, when the opportunity comes up to jump on it.
Sure. I wanna ask you, um, before we, we wrap up, you've had a lot of. Um, experience with, you know, um, a approval applications. Mm-hmm. And, and that, and knowing what is likely to get through. What ab what's your advice for someone who doesn't, who finds something like this? Mm-hmm. But would have no idea. And it, you know, approvals take a long time there.
There's a lot of to and fro, there's a lot of red tape, but you've gotta jump on the deal quickly. Yeah. Yeah. You don't, what, what's your advice to someone who really doesn't have. Thinks, okay, this is great. It, it ticks all the boxes as a car park. Yep. But ultimately where my big win is gonna be is, is getting that approval.
How do they know? How can you know? What can you look for?
Sure. Well, step one in the process, uh, and exactly what I still do today is Google a town planner in that area and give them a ring. Now, most town planners are hungry to get appointed. For a nine month task to sort of get a development approval through, that's their business.
And most of them will gladly spend 10 or 15 minutes of time on the phone telling you what the potential of that site is. So don't waste their time on 20 different sites. But if you've done a little bit of initial homework on a site and you think that, wow, I could get some great cash flow on this one as a car park and down the track, it could be a high rise.
Um, do your initial due diligence yourself, and when you get to a point where you don't think you have the skill set to analyze it anymore, ring a town planner and a town planner will set you on the right path. And if it looks good at that stage, get the property under contract with the due diligence clause and that'll give you a bit more time to.
Talk to an architect, a town planner, and or the council and engineers if necessary, to see if what the potential of the site is.
Would you ha, I know this one's a little bit more complicated because of the other dwellings.
Mm-hmm.
But if we can forget those for a minute, and let's just say you'd found this, this car park.
Mm-hmm.
And you thought you couldn't get. An approval through for further development.
Yep.
Would you have still done the deal as a car park?
I wouldn't because it was a month by month lease, even though the Ipre city council had been there since the year 2000. I did a, a lease dock loan on that one and I got, I actually, I did a full dock loan.
And I was able to get a loan with the other, the whole four buildings together. But usually I buy commercial properties on a lease stock loan, and the banks won't look at something with a month by month lease.
Sure.
If it had a three or four year lease on it and the yield was right, absolutely I would've bought it.
Yep.
Fantastic. Mm, excellent answer. Look, this has been an absolutely fascinating episode, A, a, a, a really eye-opening one, I think. And, um, and one, I think a lot of people will completely rethink car parks. Mm, after, after hearing this very simple assets, but with serious upside when you, you understand how to, how to use them.
So, uh, but. Pretty scarce by the sound, sound of things as, as well. So, um, and, um, if you have listened to a few of our earlier episodes, um. Probably truck parking is an easier thing to look for. So, uh, if you haven't heard those, go and have a listen to those because, um, there's a couple we've done on them and, uh, they're, they're very attractive.
But, uh, look, if you got value from today's episode, you know, please do follow the show. Do share it, um, you know, uh, let people know out there that this, um, this show exists. And please do visit the website. Andrew Wright property.com au. Sign up there with your email. Get um. Get updates. This is about creating a community of like-minded investors who help each other, um, where we can, uh, talk.
Andrew's always open to talking to any of his, his listeners. Do reach out with an email and, um, look. We look forward to, um, chatting to you on the next episode. Andrew, once again. Thanks very much. Thanks, Adam.
Thanks for listening to the Andrew Wright Property podcast. This is all about building a community of like-minded investors who can share real life stories, experiences, and collaborate with a view to helping each other.
Join us. Get in touch through the link in the show notes. I look forward to you joining me on the next episode.