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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.
🔗 Join the community & learn more - leave your email at: www.andrewwrightproperty.com.au
📍 Connect with Andrew: hello@andrewwrightproperty.com.au
Last year I bought seven properties. I didn't use a bank once.
Private money's great.
I absolutely hate filling in an application with a bank.
Problem with property development, cash flow's terrible. You get- Mm. The paydays are great, but it's sometimes it's two, three years in between drinks.
One of the things, um, I love about property is there's just so many ways to make money and-
Naturally, subdivisions make more sense for me.
How many sites can you actually hold when you haven't all got all the income coming in from your existing stock?
So you have to be able to cash fund that, to have the holding costs, or you need to have someone that can.
To find gold,
you must dig through a lot of dirt
Hi, I'm Andrew Wright, Principal of Professional Southport, and this is the Andrew Wright Property Podcast. I've built a multi-million dollar property portfolio, delivering a seven-figure annual rental income, 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
G'day and welcome back to the Andrew Wright Property Podcast. Today's guest has built a career around structuring deals creatively using strategies like long settlements, call options, DA uplift, sweat equity, and joint ventures to control profit from projects without necessarily needing all the capital upfront Carson Bolt is a developer, mentor, and the host of the Unemployable Property podcast, built around the philosophy of find, fund, and develop.
What I love about Carson's story is he didn't just come from traditional background in property development. As you may have heard, he started out cleaning carpets. Today we're gonna go deep into conversation about how to finance development deals, how to structure opportunities creatively, and real-life examples of deals Carson's actually done.
Carson, welcome to the show.
Thanks for having us, Andrew.
It's good to be here. Um, tell us about where you live, your family, and, uh, any interest in sport.
Yeah. Um, grew up in the sticks of WA. Mm. Um, farming background, and then, um, found my way onto the Gold Coast. Met my wife down Byron Bay, and then, um, yeah, trickled up here.
You mentioned I was carpet cleaning. A lot of my, lot of my work was up here and I was traveling from Byron, so we ended up landing here in the end. And then, um, sport-wise, being from WA, love my AFL. So, um, boys play AFL. They didn't really have a choice, but, uh, now I've got them into that, brainwashed them, which is good.
Um, you'll see the Eagles hat, unfortunately, where I'm struggling a bit at the moment, but, um, yeah. Don't
worry, I'm a Titans supporter in rugby league, so I know how you feel .
Well, there you go. But, um, no, no, love, love, love my footy, and, um, yeah, that's, that's it. How many
kids?
I got three kids, so. Three
kids.
Oh, that'll keep
you
busy.
Yeah. Yeah. My, my daughter dances, you know, six days a week and does musical theater and bits and pieces, so, um, it's a pretty busy household running around chasing those three around, pickups and drop-offs, but, um, wouldn't have it any other way, mate. It's good fun,
so. Yeah.
Fantastic. Mm. Mate, um, you, uh, have transitioned from basically having a job, uh, to property development, but now you've already transitioned to a sort of a higher cause in mentoring other property developers.
Mm.
So this, um... I went down to a, um, a function that you guys put together called Find, Fund and Develop down here in Burleigh a couple of months ago, and-
Mm
there's, like, about 500 people there on stage, and you've transitioned in- into education and mentoring people. Tell us about how this Unemployable Property came about.
Well, it's funny, I've been around the, um, the property circles, I suppose, going to all the events, trying to learn as much as, much as I could, and that was great.
It opened my eyes up to what was possible, 'cause you don't know what you don't know, obviously- Mm ... at the end of the day. And, and then after kind of- 10 years of being around that world and everyone just patting you on the back and saying you're doing a great job, we're kind of like, "I want someone to look at what we're doing critically," I suppose.
So we actually, um, Unemployable, uh, media guys were doing some business coaching. Like it was not so much property related, but they'd done a little bit of development, a bit of property, and they're pretty business savvy guys. So-
Yep ...
um, like it's probably not a bad idea to get those boys to look at what we're doing and see, you know, if there's any gaps, have we got any blind spots.
And so we, we basically joined their business coaching for 12 months, and then they kind of got to see what we were doing a little bit. And, um, a lot of people had a lot of interest in property and getting ahead through property development. So we said, "Hey, do you guys wanna, um... Why don't we put on a bus, and we'll just take the rest of the, you know, students around?"
And, um, I think after that they kind of saw what we were doing and just went, "All right." Like the next week they said, "Hey, do you guys wanna, um, run Unemployable property?" And we're like, "Oh, not really." Like they asked us to come on a podcast and we were like, "Look, we just like to fly- flying under the radar.
Not super keen on, um, getting smashed in the comments," you know, like I was... But then at the same time, we've always kind of helped out if people reached out to us randomly. I'd always, um, try to give as much time as I could, but it was actually getting to the point where it was taking up like five hours a week, and I was like...
And then this opportunity came up and we're like, you know what? If we're gonna do it, might as well do it properly because I'm kind of... You know, it w- it was fun, you know, helping out a person here and there, but then you're getting hammered all the time. It was like, okay, I gotta try and find some balance here.
So that's why, um, Unemployable Property got birthed, and we're, um, yeah, like, just still trying to work our way through, you know, talking in front of people on stage, which I'm not overly excited about. But, um, but no, I love, I live and breathe property, as, as you do, mate. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So it's, um... That makes it easy.
So.
Yeah, right. Okay, so like just on that mentorship program, you're still looking for people. List- people listening here, can they still approach you now, or are you sort of- Yeah ... your book's full? What, what's the deal at
the moment? Yeah, we've got, um... Yeah, we're still bringing in, um, people at the moment.
We've got another great, uh, guy that's come on board to help out with the coaching. He's actually a partner in our, um, development business, Salt. He's actually one of our, uh, coaching clients originally. Now he's came on as a coach. Like he's, he was PMing over half a billion dollars worth of projects himself personally for a big company in Melbourne.
So like, I guess where we differ is not just, you know, teach you how to find, uh, a site. It's like we're good at the execution piece. Like Shannon, my business partner, has- Yeah ... civil construction background for 20 years. Yeah. You know, Sam has been a PM finance background, you know? So I think we do a pretty good job on actually taking people through the whole life cycle of development.
Mm. I get people from other coaching programs have rang me up and say, "Hey, I've got this site. It doesn't stack up. What the heck do I do now?" You know? Mm. "I haven't done the full homework." So I think we've got a really good crew to take you all the way through that process because it's one of those games, yes, it's incredibly lucrative, but if you get it wrong-
Mm.
Yeah ...
it can, you can get tipped upside down really quickly. So-
Yeah ...
that's why you mentioned at the beginning of the pod, we do longer terms and due diligence and options and all those things. Mm. It's all about trying to de-risk the project as much as possible.
Yeah.
So,
yeah. Just, uh, I, I, I haven't, uh, you know, had a mentor like yourself in, in this type of program, but-
Mm
tell us about like when you're signing your clients up or when clients are, are looking for your mentorship.
Mm.
Like, the way I see with property development, you can, you can get out early just by getting a quick DA uplift and, and flicking sites.
Yep.
Uh, in your case, you have the advantage of a partner who does civil construction, so you can go to that next step and add a bit more value before you sell.
Mm.
And then if you wanted to, you can go the, the next step again, which you're, you're starting to do with this site in Coomera, where you actually do the ground-up construction. So-
Mm ...
are your students, uh, targeting And all of those different strategies, like obviously- Yeah ... some people might not have the funds to do ground-up construction, but where are you trying to push your students to, and is it just purely a function of their financial capacity to go all the way or a quick- Mm
DA uplift and flick?
F- for me, it's more about the feasibility. I'm really unemotional about it. Mm. Um, I think naturally subdivisions make more sense for me. Um, y- your profit on cost, your margins are, are generally gonna be more healthy because the construction piece is so expensive now.
Yeah.
Um, whereas your civils haven't quite had the, um, increases.
Yes, we've had some, but not to the same degree as what some- Mm ... of the built form has, and you get a lot more variations. Like, you can... I know some of the big end of town that have done all the, all the quantity surveying reports, they've done, you know, um, talked to builders, had everything quoted within an inch of its life during the due diligence piece.
Yeah. Get the approved plans, go, and then there's like a 50% increase. Mm. You know, and they've done everything by the book, and you can still get it wrong, you know? Whereas, yes, you can still have that with civils, you can still have, you know, hit rock and you have geotech problems and... But for the most part, you don't get those- Mm
huge swings. Um, so that's why I like land. Um, but yeah, to answer your question- Whatever makes sense. Like some of our smaller deals, we did one that we sold last year where we, we just bought a block, cut in a pad and on sold it. So just for a bit of cashflow, made a few hundred grand- Yeah ... just because it was a sloping bush block that nobody could see the vision of what it could be just by, um, a lot of mum and dads, they're time poor.
So if you can-
Yeah ...
you know, we get paid to solve problems is w- is how I see it, and if it's people put it in the too hard basket, they're the sites that we go after. So- Yeah ... yeah.
Okay, and before we move on to finding and funding and developing- Yeah ... um, I'm curious to learn myself from you, because I'm constantly thinking about my capacity to hold development sites.
So I'm mainly an investor-
Mm ...
but I'm a real estate agent. I do part-time property development. And you're, you're full-time.
Yep.
And I own three sites now which are empty blocks of land.
Mm-hmm.
They're negative cashflow, and just yesterday I wrote out another little, I s- transferred some money to pay for another engineering report that I didn't initially think I had to do, but the council came back wanting more information about this, and the town planner has told me, "Oh, Andrew, you've got to go and get another engineering report on, on the noise that might be affected if you have trucks coming into this place, and another engineer's report for this and this."
And when I first hired the town planner, he says, "Oh, you need to engage en- en- engineers for this and this." And I'm like, "It's gonna cost X." And then you get all these requests back from council, and you've got to go and do all these other reports. So I'm writing checks out to three town planners, and then engineer for this, engineer for that, engineer for that, and there's, there's no money coming in.
But I can fund that 'cause I s- I'm still working hard as an agent-
Yep ...
and I have a commercial property portfolio that brings in income. But-
Mm ...
I'm thinking, well, can I actually afford to hold a fourth development site? Now I've got three there that are just costing me money, and there's no payday yet.
Yep.
How has y- how have you progressed with your business partner, Shannon, and this new gentleman that's joined you as far as working out how many sites can you actually hold when you haven't all got all the income coming in from your existing stock?
It's, it's a good, um- Good question, and it's one of those ones that took me a while to wrap my head around.
So early days, I think like the first eight to 10 projects we did with joint ventures for that exact reason. Like- Mm ... A, I didn't have any money at all. Um, you know, I was a broke-
I've never got money.
Yeah.
It's all gone.
Well, that's right. So- ... you know, it's, it's, problem with property development, cashflow's terrible.
You get- Mm. The paydays are great, but it's, sometimes it's two, three years in between drinks. Mm. So you have to be able to cash fund that and have the holding costs, or you need to have someone that can. So that's why we did a lot of joint ventures initially, where we actually weren't putting in a dime of the money.
We found the opportunity, we'd take an appropriate cut. Early days it was smaller. These days it's a bit bigger. Yeah. Um, and, and then we'd just, you know, execute the project and share in the profits. So- Mm ... so I'd find someone that actually had the capacity to do that. And, and to your point, one of the things that we do with a lot of our coaching clients is making sure that, hey, your plan might say it's 50 grand to get the DA, make sure you put 80, 100 grand.
'Cause there's always those- Mm ... variations, especially during the, um, request for information phase, that none of that stuff's quoted on, it's all hourly rates, and it can add up- Mm ... very quickly, like you say. So, and to that, to the other point, um, on holding a lot of sites, we've got eight sites that we hold now.
We've only got one that's a
JV. Mm.
And all of it is capitalized interest. Um, so we're not servicing- At the end, yeah ... any of the debt. So- Mm ... yes, it's accruing. You're still paying engineers. We're still accruing. Yeah, we're still paying the engineering- Yeah ... consultant fees. Um, so basically we've- We have been paying ourselves a wage that me and Shannon can live on, but we haven't taken a chunk of cash out of the kind of five or six years we've been going full time.
Mm. Um, it's all the profits are just rolled into the next one and we've just been building the portfolio, um, that way. So yes, so that- that's how we've managed to do it, and we've got enough equity and, um, bits and pieces there now to kind of, um, allow some of these private lenders and, and banks to come in, and we can hold sites if we've got the capitalized interest, get the DA approval, and then we generally get a big uplift, and then we can...
That normally has got enough to cover us through- Mm ... construction as well. Mm. So.
So whether you're just starting out, uh, or a billionaire, eventually you're gonna get to a stage where you- you're sort of capped out with, with your capacity to buy. So- Mm ... if you and Shannon and your new business partner, your skill set, one of, one of your greatest skill sets is finding deals.
Mm.
So you, you've got eight there at the moment. If number nine comes tomorrow and you find an awesome deal- Yeah ... are you gonna go and hit Shannon and your other partner up to go ahead with that, or are you gonna try and find a way to add value to another developer and flick it on? What are you gonna do if number nine comes tomorrow?
It, it's a great... So we've been having conversations. So we're working with a couple of high net worth individuals that will either come in as a, as a JV if we find a really big one- Mm ... or we, we have a, um, a gentleman now that's seen what we're doing. Mm. He will actually, um, settle a lot of our sites for us.
We pay him a really high interest rate. And once again, so we've got a, you know, a tap that, um, we're using at the moment. It's, it's a general win-win. He's just got money sitting in the bank where he's- Mm ... not getting a great return, 'cause he's pretty risk-averse, but he's comfortable with what we're doing.
So- Mm-hmm ... he's happy to settle the sites while we get the approvals, and this has only come recently. Now we've got some runs on the board.
Yeah.
Um, or we're actually, we continually on the sell site. So we've typically sold Like 30% of our sites we then sell at DA level. Like literally today, this morning, um, before I came in here, um, we've got a site down Lismore way.
We paid 2 million just under a couple years ago. I just had a bank valuation that got finalized. Just got the draft this morning at 11 and a half million. Mm. So we had a, a massive uplift by improving the DA, and we, we're about to go for a rezoning process. We're looking to flip that site on. Mm. So we're, we're always, you know, we don't wanna be in debt up to our eyeballs, so yes, we can play the long game on some sites, but other ones we'll, we'll drop out, take some, some quick money, and then pick up another site that we wanna develop.
Mm. So we, we're always looking at it, and the good thing with Sam that's come on board, he's got a really good financial background. We've now, you know, 'cause we all-
He's a very good talker too. He's pretty smooth, isn't he? The way, he's like very professional
when he talks. Yeah, young guy in his 20s, but you know, he's a lot smarter than what I am.
Mm. And like his feasibilities and cash flow projections, we're getting to a point- Mm ... where we're like, we need someone to kinda help us- Mm ... with a lot of this. So, um, so yeah, there's a l- there's a lot of, um, uh, ways to kinda manage it. But we, we don't wanna be debt on debt, so we'll, we'll drop a project if we wanna bring in another one.
Mm. Or we'll find a partner to actually do it with. Mm. Because we're kinda that capacity now. So yeah, to your point, if I find an amazing project, I've either gotta get really, really long terms-
Mm ...
and we'll run the DA, um, where we... And literally we're trying to pick one on up at the moment where we've- Mm
got a two-year settlement is what we've proposed to the vendor. Yeah. And we're looking at buying it in two parts as well to try and help with cashflow as well. Mm. So it's just getting creative with those strategies. Mm. Because, yes, we can't take on another project right now, but if, if they're happy to sit on it two years and we pay an inflated price, then it's a win-win.
Yeah. Yeah. So I'd imagine, um, I was listening on the way here to, uh, Davey Hamilton, Everything Property. He's a, he's a good operator. Great podcast. Well, after you subscribe to mine, subscribe to Unemployable Property- Yeah ... and Everything Property. There's a couple of plugs. And- Yeah ... I was just curious, like, I, second time you listen to a podcast, sometimes you hear things that you didn't sort of pick up in the first one, 'cause you might have been having a m- an other thought or something like this.
And-
Mm ...
Dave asked you a good question. You, you h- bought a site from, um, a lawyer from memory, and it was sort of too big for you to fund at that time, and then y- you basically, uh, asked to, uh, rescind the contract, enter into a new one, and sell it off to someone else. But it wasn't actually your entity- You were basically selling it to someone else for an uplift there and-
Yeah
from a, um, risk management point of view, like have you learned something from that? Because you didn't really protect yourself, did you, in that? You could've just lost the deal.
That's right. And, and sometimes it's people are like, "Well, they can say no." And I was like, well, if they hadn't have... I wasn't gonna do the deal at all if they hadn't- Mm
you know, yes, there was some risk of losing the deal when you're trying, you know- Mm ... swap the contracts out. But I, he wasn't gonna give me an option, so I couldn't have a nominee clause. So there is- Mm ... there is no other real mechanism like you've got in Victoria where you can have a nominee clause and- Mm
swap the contracts out. We don't have that luxury, so there really is no other way. Because even if, even though it was a clean entity and we could've swapped the directorships out or sold the units to- Mm ... an incoming buyer, they still weren't comfortable. Like-
Mm ...
you're telling us it's a new entity, but we don't know- Mm
what the history of that is. We don't know if you- Yeah ... if something's happened. And, and there's always risk.
Litigation
risk. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. 'Cause if you've, if you've done another project in that entity-
Mm ...
then, um, you know, some carryover risk. Even though- Mm ... we could prove it was new, they still weren't comfortable.
Mm. Like, they went, "We'll happily take this off your hands, but it's gotta be a new entity- Mm ... and we wanna kind of have control over it." Mm. So yes, but we also said when we were swapping the contracts, like, "We're willing to go unconditional, but we need to be in this entity." So they were getting the sale.
Yeah. They just had to swap it out, so otherwise it would've been back to the market, it would, probably would've been another, you know- Mm ... conditional sale, and they had- Mm ... something unconditional if they were willing to swap it out, and that's how the deal got done.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Okay. Well, let's, um, let's move on to finance.
Finance is, uh, something that I love talking about. And-
Mm ...
I absolutely hate filling in an application with a bank. Um, I've just done another lease doc loan now, which is the easier of the, uh, easier of the bank finance methods. You don't get tortured with, uh, three or four months of paperwork. It's pretty e-, pretty easy.
But last year I bought seven properties. I didn't use a bank once because I've worked out private money.
Mm-hmm.
And it's just so much easier to do. And tell us about your experience, bank finance versus now transitioning to private money, which is a bit more expensive, but- Mm ... a whole lot more- Yeah
flexible and can get you into some more deals.
Yeah, it was a game changer for us, although I came into it- With eyes wide open because, uh, our joint venture party at the time had a really good relationship with one of the big four, so we had to get pre-sales all the time, and it was a little bit clunky, although she had great serviceability.
So I was used to the, the bank model. And one of the guys that the second subdivision site that we ever bought, the guy was getting wrapped up by private lenders. He, he borrowed money on sh- he, um, to, to do the DA. I think it was like 100 grand. He was paying 4% a month. He was getting absolutely slaughtered on the- Yeah, right
with the short-term stuff, and then he got private money for the actual, you know, for the senior debt for the, for the whole, um, project. And he signed the paperwork but didn't, didn't do what he was going to do, and then they put a cave in on the property and they never act- um, I think I don't know if they actually gave him any money.
They just, they agreed to some terms and, um, we came in and I was just like, man, this whole private game is like- Mm ... you know, wild, wild west. I was like, I don't wanna touch it, and I'd heard the whole loan-to-own sharks, and I was like, oh. So I was pretty off it for a few years. Mm. I was like, I'm never using, doing private money.
And then had some friends, actually one of them that's doing a tower in Burleigh right now, and, um, he was doing smaller projects at the time, and he was just like, "Mate, private money's great." Mm. You know? And, uh, like, "I don't have to pay the bank every month." I was like, "What do you mean you don't have to pay the bank every month?"
Yeah. And, you know, "They don't care about my serviceability." And I'm like, they don't care about your serviceability? Mm. Like, it was just a, kind of blew my mind, 'cause I'm out here doing a consultancy trust, trying to build it up so I can get some serviceability. Mm. And they kind of flipped the game on its head, where it's like, if the deal makes sense, all you need is equity or cash, or if you get a long enough, you know, um, uh, delayed settlement, you get some uplift, you can use that to get into the project.
Um, and then if the, once again, if the, if the feasibility works, the money will be there. Yeah. And so that kind of, once I understood that, I kind of got excited and was like, you know what? If I can just structure deals the right way- Mm ... yes, most people are gonna say no, but there's people out there that are, got this magic number, land bankers that have been saying they want $10 million for the site for the last 10 years, and all of a sudden it's probably worth nine.
You can offer them 10, say, "I just need a two-year settlement." Mm. And they were gonna wait another two years anyways. Yeah. You know? So a land banker's mindset, they're the great ones to go in and get terms. So a lot of, um, Singaporean and Chinese, um, groups that we've b- like, a lot of our longer settlements have been off, you know, a lot of these land bankers that are, got a long-term view anyhow, and they just got that magic number, and if you can get there through any n- means, um, that suits them and you, then, you know, you can get a deal- Mm
over the line. So, so yeah, that private money game is, takes a bit to wrap your head around, 'cause initially I was like, "I'm not paying 10% or..." 13% was our first one. I was like, we... And then I was like, hang on a minute, it's a, it's a very cheap joint venture party. Yeah. I'm giving away 50% of my profits over here, and now I can get into- Mm
a deal on my own.
Yeah.
I was like, I'm crazy. So it's, it's- Yeah ... once you w- wrap your head around it, it is r- really a game
changer. Yeah. One of the things I like about what you just said is that it, it is- Um, a win-win. Like, uh, again, on the podcast I was listening to this morning, you helped a lady. You paid her 910 for a site that, that she only wanted 850.
Mm.
But in return you said, "Oh, can you give us six months so we can add a bit of, uh, value through-" Yeah ... a development approval process?" So you helped- Yeah ... the seller make more money. It was a win-win, and it's not just about ripping people off when you're buying their sites.
Yeah. Well, we had a great relationship with that couple.
I sent them a letter, sat around, had a cup of tea.
Mm.
And like I said, they were gonna pay agent commission. We gave them 60 grand more.
Yeah.
Um, and they had to wait six months, you know, so- Mm ... they were probably in their pocket, you know, 75 grand or whatever it is ahead- Yeah ... um, or more. And, um, it's a genuine win-win.
At the end of the project, once we finished the subdivision, she sent us a text saying, "You did an amazing job. I knew a developer-" Mm ... um, "would buy it. We were never gonna, um, um, develop it ourselves. Um, thanks for, you know, uh, for buying the site off us." So, um, so yeah, it, there is... I mean, people got this perception that these developers are, like, you know, ripping off these little old ladies that don't know what their property is worth.
Yeah. Like, it, I, I've even said to some of these older ladies that we've done stuff, I said, "Look, I'm not even doing a deal until you've got your family in the room."
Mm.
And, you know, and other times we've just said, "Hey, you know what? Your site, what you want, it's probably worth more as a, a, as a, um, a luxury, you know- Mm
um, residence as it is for a subdivision site. Doesn't make sense." Yeah. "I'm not even gonna make you an offer because it's just, it, it, it's not... Y- y- it's worth more as something else." Mm. So it's just doing the right thing. It, if it's not a genuine win-win, we're not interested anyways. Yeah. So, yeah.
One of the things, um, I love about property is there's just so many ways to make money, and you're- Mm
uh, quite clearly a specialist in adding value to land and la- land subdivision- Mm ... as opposed to building high-rise towers or multiple townhouse things. But even within your one area of specialization, when I go through the deals that you've done, there are still multiple strategies where you've managed to add a lot of value.
And if we can just go through a few of them so that the listeners that are interested in land subdivision- Yeah ... can see, like, some of the multiple strategies you've implemented. So-
Mm ...
uh, the easiest one probably is the first one that you did, the, um, multiple lots on one title.
Yep.
And that's how you got started.
Do you wanna just talk briefly about what, why you chose that strategy?
Yep.
And whether there still m- might be deals out there. It happens- Yeah ... um, still, but it's probably getting a bit harder to find.
Early days, um, when I was- trying to work out what strategy we wanted to do. I, I, we didn't have a lot of working capital, and my, my- so I did a JV with my parents.
I took- dragged them along to an event. Mm. And, um, we worked out their serviceability was about half a million. So I was like, it wasn't... This was, you know, 10 years ago, but it still wasn't- Mm ... if you're looking for something with development upside, even then there wa- Yeah ... there was not, like, heaps of sites for half a million.
Yeah. Especially when you're looking around the Gold Coast. So, um, we ended up finding a site. So I was looking for stuff on multiple titles, you know. So especially in Brisbane, you get your, you know, 805 blocks. You know, your, your 10 by 40s. Um, you know, a house sitting over two, two lots. And, um, you remove the house and you can, you know, sell those two lots and hopefully make a profit.
Very simple, easy project. I did one in Moorooka in Brisbane- Mm ... and we made, you know, it was, like, 10 grand to put the services on. The first one you mentioned was in Springbrook here on the Gold Coast. It was on three titles. House was sitting on one title, and there was two vacant titles. So when we picked that up- Basically, I just went to the solicitor and said, "Can you separate the titles?"
Because a lot of people amalgamate them so they just pay one set of rates.
Mm.
Um, and then the moment they were separated, we had it valued. Uh, so we paid, I think it was 355, and we had it valued at over 500,000. This was, like, just weeks after we'd settled on the property. Mm. And I was like, "This is crazy."
So we used that uplift to actually get the construction loan to build two houses on the vacant lots- Mm ... and that was kind of our step into, um, into development, I suppose. So it was a, it's a, it's a great strategy where you don't have a heap of cash. We did one recently in Tamborine Mountain. It was the same thing.
Yeah. It was an old hall and church that was asbestos-ridden. Um, kids had lit a fire in it. Mm. Um, it was all, uh, falling down with termites, and we just knocked the building down and sold the three titles. Yeah. So, like, there's, there's still, um... I was looking at one yesterday in Kyogle. There's a property for, uh, a million dollars and it's on six titles.
So I was just looking at it going, oh, is there a way to make a few hundred bucks, a few hun- hundred thousand just by separating them? It's already got street frontage. Mm. Um, so a lot of the time builders will come in and pay what it's worth, and there's no, especially in Brisbane. Um, but there's still opportunities.
Um- Yeah ... if you're, if you're cutting your teeth and you don't have a lot of capital, it's a great way to get started.
Mm.
So.
And I'd imagine every single one of those deals, uh, you're gonna be using your experience to work out, do we actually build on those separated lots or do we just flick them? And I think you mentioned that that particular one that you did with, um, uh, one into three, uh, you probably wish you hadn't have built on them, and you didn't get that much of an uplift, and it was 18 months of time and effort, and-
Yeah
you might've been better off just flicking it.
Yeah, 100%. Basically, what we spent on the builds is what, what the properties were worth at the end of it. So we didn't make any uplift by putting the build on it. This was in- And spent
18 months ...
and spent 18 months- Yeah ... in a flat market. And up in Springbrook the market was very, very slow.
Down the hill things were starting to move a little bit.
Mm.
And so it was that opportunity cost as well. Like, we could have taken that uplift. In hindsight, if I was coaching someone that bought that deal to me and they said, "Hey, I want to build on those two titles," I'd be like, "Okay, this is what we're gonna do.
We're gonna get a building envelope on those, you know, um, two lots, get it approved, clear the vegetation, make them look nice."
Yeah.
Keep the little cottage, sell the two lots.
Mm.
You've got no, very low debt on that little cottage, rent it out, and we're gonna use that equity to go down the hill. Or sell the cottage as well, potentially.
Mm. Go down the hill and go, and get into another project within six months, three to six months, you know. Because you get in and out so much quicker than what we did, and I got none of that. So that was probably the start of putting me off building. And I've had a lot of... You know, we're doing some construction stuff now, and we've got a lot of friends that have done really well, but I was just like Um, really started to focus on the land component because it's, you're in and out so much quicker and, um, you know, we've, uh, found it incredibly lucrative, so.
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
It's also like, like I, I haven't done a lot of development, but I remember when I built eight, um, eight bedroom, eight bathroom, just a little tiny project in, in, in Nerang, uh, South Nerang Street, Southport, and, um- I was thinking this thing's gonna be done in six months and ended up taking closer to 12 months.
And-
Mm ...
it, it takes a lot of energy out of your main, like what else you, you might've been doing as well. In my case, I was spending time out of my real estate sales business to go and keep an eye on these developers. And I got to a point there where I'm turning up at 6:30 because these plasterers and things are charging you as a subcontractor for so many hours a day and, and they weren't turning up half the time.
And it- Mm ... it just can be so frustrating and stressful- Yeah ... turning up, and sometimes I'd be sitting there two or three days and the builder wouldn't even come at all because guess what? The builder's got two or three other projects, and when some emergency happens over there-
Mm ...
you're sitting there, and they don't even turn up for two or three days.
And they can be in- maybe I was not an important client to them compared to some of the other big ticket, uh, building works that they were doing. But-
Yeah ...
uh, things can really blow out, become stressful, and at the end of the day, when the, um, with the ground up construction, when you get that certificate of classification, it's like, oh, thank God it's...
I've been through that. I wanna rest now. Like, that was so torturous.
Yeah.
It's worth it in the end, but yeah. Tell us about, like, do you, you, you, um, have a partner now that does the civils. Yeah. Um, so that sort of eliminates a lot of that risk, I'd imagine.
Yeah. It was great. Like, the first JV that I pitched, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing.
Mm-hmm. Like, I just found a DA approved site, and um, me and Shannon had, had only just met and, um, I was like, "Man, I got no idea what I'm doing. I'd like, I wanna get into sub." Yeah. I'd done a couple of these little title splits and I'd, I did a DA in Benowa for, um, a, a dual occ. Had no idea what I was doing there as well, and designed a house way too expensive, so I just flicked the DA on.
Mm-hmm.
And then with the subdivision, I was like, "Shannon, if you can come in and, um, help manage the construction process, we're adding more value to a, to a potential JV." So I can say, "Look, I found the site. It's a good site." Mm. "We're gonna do... I'm gonna get Shannon to oversee the, um, civil construction." I said, "Mate, I'll give you a cut of my profits."
And he's like, he was working full time and he's just doing it on the side. He's like, "Yeah, I'll, I'll take that deal." Mm. "I wanna get into property development," and that's kind of how that started. So yes, we, we'll look to contract stuff out as we scale. We can't be doing everything. Um, but it's nice having someone in that, um, in that game that you can, well, we can lean on.
But you can develop those relationships if you don't have a, a Shannon in your life.
Mm.
You get a really good civil engineer that can help price things up and do, you know, give you a bit of an idea, talking to some civil contractors as well, get some early engagement. Um, and then if you're in the built form, the same thing, you know, you're talking to a QS, you know, getting a quantity surveyor to g- get a, get a feel for the price or just talking to some builders.
You know, like we say to our coaching clients all the time, you shouldn't tackle a project until you've reverse engineered 10 other similar projects, where you go You know, um, Queensland, you've got PD Online and, or DA Tracker in, in different areas, and you can actually see who the planner was, who the engineer, who the architect was.
You can find out who the builder, civil contractors, and just reverse engineer it. Run a feaso on it, and you'll start to understand, you know, who's doing what and what things cost. You do that 10 times for, let's say, you wanna do a four-lot subdivision, go find four to six-lot subdivisions. You do that exercise a few times and you'll get a pretty good feel for what, what things will cost.
Okay.
Yeah.
Another strategy you've used, uh, on multiple deals is, uh, option agreements, so whether it's a call option or a, or a put and call, and- Yeah ... tell us about how that's allowed you to control sites as opposed to buying them, settling them, paying rates, paying interest on loans from day one, and- What's the importance of the option strategy for you, Carson?
Options are great, and it's a, it's a good tool to have in your tool belt. You just can't use it for every project. Yeah. You know, it, it gives you the flexibility to control a property. Um, if you've, if you've just got a, a straight call option, you've got the, the right but not the obligation to, to have to settle on it.
You can, you can pull out after, let's say, you've got a 12-month option. Mm. And then, um, if you exercise that option nor- normally you settle within 30 days. Mm. Um, but you can pull out during that period. So once again, to the, um, examples you using earlier about having a, um, a land banker, they might... I might say, "Look, I'm gonna take a lot of risk here."
And to your point before, it costs money to say, "Look, I'm sp- it's not like I'm not spending money on this, you know? If you want your magic number- Mm ... give me a 12-month runway, and if I can solve the problems or work through it, then I'll buy it at our agreed price." Mm. Um, it gives you the ability to, you can put a nominee clause in there as well.
Because you haven't actually, you don't actually own the property- Mm ... you're controlling it.
Mm.
You can sell that option document essentially to a third party, where they come in and then take over the option. Mm. I've done that before. And they-
Without ha- you having to pay stamp
duty to settle? Without having to pay stamp duty- Mm
which is the big kicker. And, um, and then they can give you a fee. So that, in that instance, they cut me a check for $44,000 after I'd just finished, quit cleaning carpet, when I was making $50,000 a year, for something that I just facilitated off Gumtree. Mm. You know, a guy was advertising a property, and we were able just to control it and moving on.
So it's a great way to do that. I've used it a couple other times where we've been able to get significant uplifts. Um, and that we got an 11 lotter in a, in a recent, um, 45 lotter that we controlled through a put and call option, so that's kinda like a, an unconditional version of it, of the call option, where you, you have to be able, uh, the, the s- um, seller can make you settle on it.
Yep.
Um, but we had a 22-month call option on- Mm ... on one site. But you still have a due diligence period for, you know, I think in that instance it was, like, four months. We still made sure we were comfortable with it- Mm ... before we went unconditional and committed to the put and call- Mm ... if you like. So, um, and then at the end of that period, you know, we'd nearly doubled the value of the property, and then we could use, get the valuer come in, value the site, use that uplift to come to settle and do, you know, settle the site, and roll straight into construction with us putting in very little extra money.
Where typically you'd be putting in 35% of the total- Mm ... development cost.
Let's, let's, um, go down two different tracks there with, uh, the put and call option-
Mm ...
deals that you've actually done. So step- Strategy one, I guess, is you're getting a massive uplift when you revalue after a DA, which allows you to borrow from the bank because it's, there's up, there's more equity in the land there.
Yep.
You've done that, but you've also had a couple of recent really big offers just to flick the site after you've actually got that DA uplift. Mm. Can you, you're not boasting, Carson, but I'm gonna ask you directly, like some of these numbers are pretty big. Tell us the numbers. Like you've- Mm ... you've received some offers on a a couple of big sites, uh, there with some massive, uh, uplift.
Yeah. And you don't even need to do the civils, you can just flick it.
Yeah. Well, of that, the one that we did settle on, we had a, a very big well-known developer who looked at the site initially, had the, the issues that everyone could see. But because we resolved them, um, during that 22-month period, halfway through they approached us and said, "Hey, can we buy that site off you now that you've fixed the problems?"
Yeah. Um, and he offered us multiple seven figures. Mm. You know, for something that we'd probably spent, at that point, 100, 150 grand with some consultants working through it, so it wasn't like a complete free hit. But I know people that have controlled sites and done, um, less work and, and made really good money.
It's just, once again, finding a problem, solving it. Mm. If you can do that during an option period where you don't actually own it. Like, some of these bigger groups, they're happy to buy sites on 20% margins to kinda fuel, to, you know, fuel the beast that they've created. Mm. You know, and they've gotta kinda keep rolling through projects.
If you've got something, um, they'll happily take it off your hands. Whereas people like some of our smaller developers, it kind of, we struggle to like, "What? You paid that and now I've gotta cut you a check for 2 million?" They don't care. They're very unemotional. They're just like, "Okay, it makes sense."
Mm.
You know, if it was on the market and you're asking, you know, what you're asking now, we would buy it, so the fact that you got it cheaper and we've gotta give you a check for $2 or $3 million, they don't care. Yeah. Like, and it's, it kind of blows your mind that-
Mm ...
that whole world's out there. But once again, if it's a 20% margin and you've found a project on 30, 35, 40% margin, then you get to-
Mm
flick the ticket in the middle.
It's interesting, isn't it? Because those people buying those sites, uh, uh, probably employ their own building teams, and they can get that margin with the building, so- Mm ... the fact that it's already got a DA uplift doesn't matter as much to them. But for you- Yeah ... and I, w- where, where our, our skillsets are, are finding good deals and we're not builders-
Mm
it's, do you think it's fair to say that if you just go online, uh, probably 99 out of 100 sites that are advertised with a DA approval, there's not a whole lot of value in them because they're actually valuing, they've already got that uplift. Yeah. And one, one of the things I like about you is you look for problems.
Mm. That's where you add the value. You overcome problems and challenges with sites, and that, that's the key to your success, isn't it?
Yeah, 100%. Yeah, you're right. A lot of DA approved sites, they're selling on the market for a reason. Sometimes people are, are just trying to, you know, offload some sites to, to make a few dollars.
And, and like I say to our guys, if, if you're gonna do a DA flip, you've gotta make sure there's enough margin. Mm. If you're doing it as a strategy, there has to be enough margin for the next person coming in. Mm. And a lot of these sites, they just don't make sense. So, um, yeah, you've gotta be really careful- doing that as a strategy.
Um, there is margin but, you know, like, it's incredibly lucrative. I know, um, some developers that that's all they do. They actually don't even develop anything. They just go out there, secure big sites for, you know, um, manufactured home parks or just, you know, um, secure some of these big subdivision sites, just piece the deal together and then- Yep
sell them on for eye-watering amount. You wouldn't, you wouldn't know they exist because they're just mum and dad people- Yep ... like you and me that are- Mm ... just out there making things happen, and it's just, uh, it's crazy. Yes, we make probably, um, two to three offers a week to buy one to three properties a year.
Yeah. So it's a, it's a numbers game. Mm. It's just a, you know, I'm very unemotional about it. If someone wants 4 mil for the site and I think it's worth two and a half- Mm ... I'll make an offer at two and a half. Mm. You know? And on our board, half of our sites we've bought six to 12 months later, where the market's conditioned the vendor.
Sometimes that's the best way to negotiate, is just to leave it and let the market- Absolutely ... tell them that it's overpriced, and then just staying in touch like, "Hey, we're still here," you know. Um, and sometimes they come back around.
Mm.
So.
Um, I'm just having a guess here, Carson, but I'm probably guessing that you haven't bought a site that's already D appro- DA approved, because you wanna get that uplift.
Is that true, or have you bought some sites? No, we
have. We've, um, I've bought- multiple sites actually. So the, the first two that we bought, um, a three lotter and a four lotter in Worongary- Yeah ... um, on San Fernando Drive, um- Mm ... on the Gold Coast, were both DA approved. Um, which was great for my early learnings because I, once again, I didn't know what a DA was, let alone- Mm
the whole process. So it was, it kinda helped de-risk it, and it was a, it was only just enough margin in it. It was a very flat market when APRA was doing its thing in, it was, uh, 2017 when we bought that site, um, with a joint venture party. And it, it made sense, but it had a lot of issues once again. Mm. To your point, it was on a lot, really, really steep site, so a lot of people, um, didn't like it.
So yeah, and then the one where I told you the guy was getting wrapped up by that private lender- Mm ... that was the second site, was literally next door. Um, so both of those, the second one came to us off market. The first one was off, was on market but had a lot of issues at, it, so w- we were comfortable with putting in some extra fill.
We made that slope a bit better, and that's why it kinda made sense. And another site we bought y- um, on the Gold Coast, it was, it had a DA approval for 20, uh, I think it was 23 townhouses. We went and turned it back into a land subdivision, um, because we just think the profit on cost, the margin was actually better as a land sub- The overall number was less, but you don't have that huge, you know, uh- Capital outlay
yeah, capital outlay- Yeah ... to do the construction. Yeah. Uh, actually another, the, um, there's another townhouse site recent that we bought. We've, we were gonna turn it into a six-lot subdivision. We ended up doing the 30 four-one bedroom units, but they were DA approved sites, but we've changed them back. So yeah, to your point, most of the time...
Actually, we've actually bought a few DA approved sites. Um, we got one in, uh, the 11 lotter in Jimboomba. That was on the market for- like six years, but they wanted so much money. It wasn't till the COVID boom hit- Mm ... and we were kind of watching the prices that we jumped on it. Mm. And once we had it, a 15-month option and, you know, we kind of rode that uplift because we could see- Yeah
the market was moving.
Mm.
So that's why that one made sense. And the 45 lotter, um, was also another DA approved site, but it had... The first line of the DA said, "You cannot develop this until the poultry farm is, uh, decommissioned." And we were, uh, 2- 250 meters from the poultry farm, and you have to be 500 meters from the poultry farm.
The problem was the DA was gonna lapse in two years, and, uh, the poultry farm had a lease with Ingham for seven years. So the DA was gonna be lapsed. That's why nobody picked up the site. So we went and got a, uh, an ODA report done, got the, um, the buffer zone reduced to 250 meters and unlocked the site. So- Mm
yes, we've bought DA approved sites, but they've all had w- issues- Warts on them ... and warts on them- Yeah ... that we've had to resolve. So it's not to say that DA approved sites, you just, you just gotta be eyes wide open because, to your point, the majority of them aren't gonna work.
Okay. Yeah. So what I've just learned from you there is- Mm
if you're gonna buy something DA approved, if you're a builder, you got your margin anyway, that might be fine, just pay fair market value. But- Mm ... if you're a developer, you've either got to provide further uplift, or- Mm ... most importantly, I think what you're telling me from your experience is make sure you buy from a motivated seller, even though it has a, a DA in place and that uplift has been there.
So someone who's- Yeah ... been on the market for six years is probably getting closer to being motivated to sell.
Yeah.
Yeah, 100%. And they've probably had a bit of feedback from the agent that, "Hey, this is not worth as much as you think it is."
That's right. Once again, that, the old land bankers, they were happy to wait on it.
They actually carved off the block, that, that 11 lotter, the one that was on it for six years. So the DA was live in perpetuity. Mm-hmm. 'Cause if you stage it, once you've carved off a bit, it, it doesn't lapse.
Yes.
So they were happy to sit on it and just wait, and, um, that's why we were happy to facilitate a deal there.
And we actually cleared the trees and, and als- and changed the DA- Mm ... and did lots of things before we settled. 'Cause once again, to your point, the cool thing about property is basically what two people agree to, within reason, you can do. Yeah, yeah. You know, which is, which is awesome. So...
And you've got examples, uh, with your experience, uh, not just, uh, with options, but going to normal contract but with a long settlement, which gives you- Mm
time to provide an uplift. Can you tell us about a deal that you've actually done, just normal contract but with- Yeah ... a long settlement?
Yeah, that, um, that four lotter where you said the, um, the agent said it was worth 850 and, um, we ended up paying him 910, that was just a six-month settlement where standard contract.
Once again, we were, we were DA approved before we, before we settled on the site.
Mm.
Even though we paid him 60 grand over, we had it valued just under 1.2 before we settled. It was a fast- Mm ... track DA, and we were able to get that approved. We've got one at the moment down Byron in a town called Bangalow.
Um, we've got a settlement, we're still in DD right now, but we've, um, it's, we're like 99% sure we're going ahead with it, and we'll settle, um, just before Christmas, so we can hopefully get it DA approved or at ve- at least very well progressed.
Mm. Mm-hmm.
So, um, once we settle on it, it's only a, a short holding period, and we can demonstrate to an incoming lender like, "Hey, this is what we've lodged."
Mm. "
It's going ahead. Here's the RFI from council. You know, it, it's, we've got a few things we're massaging, but- Yeah ... it, it's working." So the, 'cause time is money, and, like, holding costs will kill you, so by having those delayed settlements, um, can be the difference between a feasibility working or not Yeah.
Okay, and, um, just, uh, moving on, you have a, a larger scale, uh, joint venture at the moment which you probably didn't have enough money to do yourself where the, uh, joint venture partner has contributed the land.
Mm-hmm.
This is, um... It's just really, I, I find this really exciting to talk about deals where there's a deal there, but, like, you think, "Oh, geez.
There's no way I could ever have enough money to buy this block of dirt," but- Mm ... you've found a way, um, now. Maybe you've got a bit more credibility, more runs on the board, and someone trusts you to do this. But- Mm ... this is really exciting to me, is thinking bigger and, and doing deals that seem too big to be in your- Yeah
um, potential. Tell us about it- ... 'cause I, I love this.
Yeah, like, there's a vendor at the moment who's been trying to kind of get this site approved, um, and been four or five years battling away for a busy profe- professional. Owns a very successful big business, and it's just, he's been sitting on it for a long time.
So we've... Is considering, um, surrounding developers have been making him offers, and we heard about the offers that it was being made, and we said, "Look, yes, you could sell it for that number." And it was a big, big number. We're talking, you know, multiple, you know, eight figures. And we said, "Or why don't you let...
We'll buy it off you, um, at 100 and, you know, $40,000 per lot of what we get approved. We'll run the approval." Um, I said, "You pay for it because..." Uh, so he's paying for all the consultant fees, uh, but we're actually increasing, we're putting in the sweat equity to actually increase the value of his property.
So it's, you know, let's just say it's worth 20 now. We're gonna say, "Look, we'll get the approval, and then we're basically gonna pay you 30 for it, and we'll do the work to get that." Yes, you gotta put in the million dollars to get the approval, but we're gonna pay you an extra 10. And you're considering the 20 million- Mm
dollar offer over here.
Yeah.
We're gonna then, you know, pay you the, the 30 million-plus.
Mm.
And then at that point we're gonna joi- joint venture. Mm. And we'll pay you that 30 million out of the profits, and we'll split the profits on, on top of that. So there's- Yeah ... you know, potentially $50 million profit in that deal- Mm.
Mm ... on top, after paying him 30 million. Yeah. So he's getting an extra 10 million than what he thought, plus another 25 million. So he's like- Yeah ... $35 million ahead, you know, of what he was going to sell it for, which was already a- Mm ... really great win.
Mm.
He's waiting another five years. Like- So f- from him it's, it's a genuine win-win, you know?
Mm-hmm. So it's like we're w- getting a, a great outcome, and you can see we've got some experience now to kind of do this- Mm ... do this kind of thing. And, um, you know, uh, if it's, if it's a win-win then, you know, people, people are open to it. So it's just- Mm ... being open to asking the question and taking someone on a journey and, you know, if you've, uh...
And, like, we haven't done anything to that scale, but this is the best thing about property development. Go employ the people that have.
Yeah.
So we've just gone upgraded the town planner, upgraded the engineers, you know, find a team that do this scale development-
Mm ...
and, and, and engage them to do it. So there's an expert for every area.
Mm. So we've, you know, we've never really looked at big urban design plans before because it's a 250 lotter. We've normally just got an engineer, a, a surveyor to scratch up some plans. Now there's, there's different layers to it and different scales and- Mm-hmm ... infrastructure that needs to come in. But, you know, once again, we just employ a team that has done it before and, um, happy days.
It's a win-win.
What I- So ... Carson, what I love about that story is part of happiness in life is about performance and growth and something like that. Like, I can imagine if I was in your shoes- Mm ... you'd probably be going home at night and thinking, "Wow, what a great deal. We learned something new. We're helping someone.
We're making money out of nothing. Someone else is contributing the land." And what satisfaction you must feel. Instead of going spending your own money to buy a site and risk all that money, you found another way to do a bigger site-
Mm ...
grow your thinking, and back yourself, uh, to go and do it. Do you feel happy?
You must be happy about doing a deal like that. It gives you a buzz, surely.
Oh, yeah. Like we, we love, I love the chase. You know, I, I say property owner's like modern-day gold mining. There's a, you know, you... It's kind of like looking for that next nugget. I love the, the chase and the excitement- Mm ... of the, of, of the deal, but, um, yeah, I love the partnership as well.
Like- Mm ... the, the vendor's like, "You know what? Um- I'm stoked that everyone's getting a lick here. Yeah. You know, like, and the, the bigger the deals, the more commercial generally the person is anyway. Mm. Like, and it's, um, you can kind of take them on a journey and they can see the win-wins. I li- I like dealing with business people as well, so.
Mm. Um, but yeah, look, I... It's great, but it's, it's ear- early days as well, and I've, I've learnt in this game. Mm. I've had two unconditional contracts fall over- Mm ... in the last little bit, so I've, I've learnt not to celebrate too early. Um, you know, getting a deal over the line is great, and, but then, then the work comes, so.
Yeah,
right. But yeah.
So there we- Yeah ... a bit of philosophy there. To find gold, you must dig through a lot of dirt. And I can tell you, I haven't known Carson a long time, but he is such an easygoing bloke, but he's like a duck on water. He looks cool and calm, but underneath, those legs are paddling like crazy.
Like, he's very busy, he's t- working on lots of projects. And Carson, I, uh, just before we go on there, like, um, you have sort of transitioned one level further now with this site in Coomera.
Mm-hmm.
Um, because I say you're looking to transition a b- one step further because you're looking to hold some property and generate passive cashflow, and that's an, another exciting sort of transition where-
Mm
instead of starting every year with zero income, you're actually- Mm ... starting to look at building a portfolio where from day one you've got passive cashflow. Yeah. So tell us about your transition there into this new 34 one-bedroom site in Coomera.
Yeah, well, as I admire what you've, you've done and be able to create that passive income.
That's always- Mm ... the, the end goal, right? But I, I had a mentor say to me early days, "If you've got a choice between a cashflow positive property or a deal that's gonna make you a chunk of cash, grab the chunk of cash." Mm. 'Cause it's easier to buy, buy a commercial property at a, you know, 6, 7, 8% net yield potentially- Yeah
than it is to find a million bucks deal. So we've, because we've got, we got good at finding the chunks of cash, we've just continually did that, and we knew that at some point we'll pay the tax and just- Mm ... buy a couple commercial properties and it's done. Mm. So 'cause we, so we focused on cr- generating the projects.
Mm.
Um, and now we're transitioning into, uh, we've, you know, we've come across this site where it was a, a one acre medium density site, and we were like Once again, not a huge fan of built forms, so I was like, "Uh, let's just do a six-lot subdivision, community title subdivision." Um, it's what we're comfortable with, what we're doing.
My business partner was like, "Where else are we gonna get a medium density site where we got a chance- Mm. "... we, we bought it pretty well? Um, why don't we just..." I was like, "Okay, well, guess let, let's try and do some built form as well and do some, you know, maybe some one-bedroom units that we can keep." So we're like, "Okay, well, let's do a three-lot subdivision at the front, and then we'll just keep the balance.
Land will be unencumbered, and then we'll do it." And then we're like, "Oh, we got enough projects happening, stuff it, let's just do the whole thing." After we had the pre-lodgement meeting, council were so supportive of it, so we lodged a DA for 34 one-bedroom units. Got approved in three months. Council are actually really keen on affordable housing at the moment.
Um, and we're providing a product type that nobody's doing. If you go to Gold Coast and look at new one-bedroom units, I think they start at, like, 780.
Mm.
You know, 800, 850, like, that's the starting point. For me, there's al- existing stock-
Mm ...
um, but if you want new stock. So for us, we looked at it and went, "Okay, we've got two blocks.
We've got a block of 14 one-bedroom units and a block of 20 one-bedroom units. If we can sell the 20, we've worked out we'll have about $2 million debt on the, on the, um, on the front 14." And, you know, there's, be, you know, obviously great cashflow at that point- Mm ... 'cause we just had a rental appraisal of 650 a unit.
So, you know, uh, yes, there's gonna be some, some, some debt, but, you know- Yeah ... you got 14 units at a very low debt, then, um-
Mm ...
we'll be, it'll be great. And then we've got that equity that can still draw down on. So we wanna start- Yes, we'll do some commercial deals at some point, but if we can keep some stock along the way, we're at the point where we're like, "Okay, let's, let's try and keep, keep some of our, um, stock as we go."
Yeah.
No, that's, that's-
Yeah ...
to me, like, I just can't wait to see your progress there. And if I can give a plug to one book, I mean, everyone's heard of Robert Kiyosaki, but the best book I've ever read is Cashflow Quadrant. And, uh, after reading that book, it's not about, oh, can I make a million or $10 million next year in my job?
It really, that book really sh- teaches you to think along the lines of, if I don't work next year, how much money have I got coming in from my property portfolio or my share portfolio? And you're on that track now to-
Mm ...
have X amount of income coming in next year before you get out of bed. Yeah. And if you can continue, uh, upping that figure and just keep track of it, it's just so exciting to actually go down that track and you're already starting that, getting your big chunks-
Mm
but putting it into assets that produce passive income. And probably just as important is you're probably going to, um, have a, a risk management there around not doing what my dad did, because he stuck to the development thing and he built some blocks of units and had a win, and he built a bigger one. Mm.
And then he put all of his assets into this big property development- Mm ... because he had a couple of wins, and the market turned, he lost everything.
Yeah.
And by putting a little bit aside into some cash flowing properties- Yeah ... you're probably not gonna make that mistake, Carson.
Yeah. I was lucky enough to live in Byron Bay when the GFC hit, and I'm grateful to have seen property, especially at the top end of the market, like- Mm
Byron Bay ha- half price sales at the top end. You know, Efraim Island, I remember seeing the ads, you know, paid 3 million, now 1.4. Yeah. You know, like the, the top end got slaughtered. Like, your- Yeah ... your cookie cutter stuff, not as much, but- Yeah ... so I'm very mindful of that. And if you, you know, a lot of people talk about the 18-year property clock and- 18, yep
you say, okay, it's about now. And so we, we, we constantly have this conversation in our office, like if a GFC hits tomorrow Are we good? So we've structured things that we're comfortable with our debt levels, and we could ride out a, a four or five-year period if we needed to- Yeah ... with what we've got on right now.
But we're very mindful of that, so it's, it's a good point that you made, 'cause we don't wanna get into this, um... 'Cause w- like I said, we just pay ourselves enough to live on. And my, my wife spoke to, um, someone the other day and, and they're like, "Oh, uh, yeah, my, my brother is a property developer as well." And she's like, "Yeah, we're gonna get to a point and then we're gonna take some off the top."
He's like, "No, no, the deals just get bigger and bigger." Like, it never- You know, you never actually make any money.
Yeah.
Um, but we've made a conscious decision that what we've got on the board at the moment, we're gonna try and take some off the table, buy some passive income, you know, assets, so we're kind of-
Mm.
We're good.
Mm.
You know? Um, and then we'll build again from there, like, as, as a phase two. So we've been going hard. Like I said, we haven't taken a chunk of cash. We haven't taken one dime- Mm ... for the last, you know, uh, 10 years basically out of the pro- We've just reinvested it all. Enough to live on. Um, and then we'll, like I said, we'll try and, you know, get a bit of passive income, get that sorted, and then- Mm
build off there. 'Cause you're right, it's... I've seen a lot of people, greed kinda gets in the way, and you- Mm ... like you said, you have one win, you go, "Oh, if we can do 10, let's do 100." Yeah. And, you know, it can all unravel very quickly. I, I've seen in some of these, um, property communities, um, there was a, there was a guy that had a few wins, was raising money off, you know, investors, and I watched a, a young guy in his late 20s lose $30 million of Mum and Dad's money in, in one property group.
Ouch. And I watched it happen in front of me. We were getting the phone calls as it was happening. But, you know, people lost half a million of their super, $200,000 of their, all their savings. So I've seen it go bad, and I've... And I'm, um, grateful to have, I guess, seen some of that carnage happen in front of me, so we're very conscious of that.
Mm. But yeah, it's a very important lesson to make sure you don't just, you know, get too greedy and get ahead of yourself.
Yeah. So. Yeah, that's good advice, Carson.
Yeah.
Carson, um, wrapping up now, um, you, um, find, fund, develop, um, you're teaching people now. Mm. If people listening to the podcast, uh, wanna contact you, how should they find you?
Yeah, if you Google Unemployable Property or on any of the socials- Mm ... um, yeah, send a, send a PM or reach out to myself personally. Um, yeah, so we've got a, a great little program there that kinda takes you through the- Mm ... the A to Z, and you've kinda got access to one of us as a coach, as a coach to kind of hold your hand for that process.
It's, like I said before, the good thing about this game, there's an expert for every area, but you still need to be the orchestrator. In the early days when you don't know what you're doing, like, um, you know, you can fast-track that significantly if you've got someone holding your hand, and that's kind of, you know...
I think most of the time we're telling people not to do deals as well, so it's the deals we talk people out of as, as well- Mm ... 'cause if you do one wrong deal it can, it can be painful. But yeah, reach out to us, um- Mm-hmm ... and I'm happy to point you in the right direction and yeah.
Okay.
So.
Well, look, I can say safely from, uh, knowing Carson just a short period of time, it- it's great to make money, but if you can do it with people that you like, um, and people that you enjoy spending time with, um, it's easy to recommend this guy.
He's just a good bloke. Um, he's got plenty of knowledge. Get in touch with Carson if you're looking for a mentor with, uh, land subdivision in particular. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Right Property Podcast. Press subscribe. I haven't got enough subscribers, funnily enough. Subscribe to Unemployable Property, and, uh, tune in on the next podcast.
Thanks, Carson.
Thanks, Andrew. Appreciate
it. Thanks, man. Thanks for listening to the Andrew Right 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.