Its great being able to watch clients grow as you work with them. Clients I have been working with for over 10 years now, lets call them Bill and Carmen, have gotten married, started a family, paid off their home, and ventured further into property year after year.

When I first started with them over 10 years ago their strategy was positively geared property and they had a few properties in larger rural centres in several states. These properties were generating good rental returns, so they didn’t need to put in much of their own salaries to support them, but they weren’t really growing in capital value.

After a few years they decided to change strategy and purchase a block of three units in their home state that were on separate titles. These are generating a good rental return and have grown in value and they still hold these properties in their portfolio.

Next, they purchased a house on a block with enough space to build another 2 residences. Then began the process of developing this into 3 residences, renovating the original house and building another 2 before putting them all on separate titles and selling them. They undertook all the hard work of getting the approvals with the relevant bodies, designing the residences and finding builders, all I had to do was find them the finance for the purchase and construction.

That project went well so they decided to do it again, just a little bit bigger and they have just finished this project. This time they found a block where they could fit 4 residences, it had an existing house and they built another 3. The neighbouring block had been developed in much the same way so there was a good chance council would approve it, but they still had some issues. The main one was council were requiring a storm water system on site that had to filter the water and then pump it back to the street to be drained away. This seemed a bit strange to filter it and then pump it back onto the street and in the end, council removed this requirement which would have cost tens of thousands to satisfy. Finance was more difficult to organise for this one as not many lenders will accept 4 residences on one title, even though they have all been split to separate titles now the project is complete.

It hasn’t all been great news for them, they have had trouble finding tenants at times for one of the properties in a rural centre, and even had one burn down which took over 6 months to get an insurance payout for but they have learnt a lot during their journey.

They’re aiming to complete 1-2 projects a year ongoing to continue growing – all with the help of the team at Clever Finance Solutions!