How to Break Free from Your 9-5 by Property Investment | EP114
Fewer than 1% of Australians own more than five investment properties. And within that 1%, some bought five properties in just 24 months, with a portfolio worth over $6 million. What exactly did they do?
If I told you there’s a proven investment formula that lets a $900,000 property deliver $72,000 in passive income every year after 10 years—would you believe it? (7% Capital Growth + 4% Rental Yield) And that’s from just one Property. What if it’s five? What if it’s ten? But here’s the harsh truth: most people will never take the first step. Not because they can’t afford a home, but because they don’t know where to start—or they’re misled by noise in the market, end up wasting 12 to 18 months, and still buy the wrong asset.
In today’s video, I’m going to break down a complete property investment strategy—from why you should invest, to how to precisely calculate how many properties you need to walk away from the 9-to-5 job, and then how to use a professional team to compress the buying process from 6–18 months down to 2–4 weeks. This isn’t just talk; it comes from my own experience, our company strategists’ experience, plus hands-on results from hundreds of VISION members. By the end, you’ll understand your path to financial freedom much better than 95% of people.
Why invest
Most people buy their first home because everyone around them is buying. In today’s social media era, it’s because they see all kinds of creators—big and small—saying you should buy. That’s actually the most dangerous signal, because everyone’s situation is different. Without a plan, without a goal, it’s easy to get confused by the noise and end up buying a property that does nothing for your future.
My favourite way to invest is to make one purchase decision, buy and hold without selling, and then just leave it, the set and forget strategy. That gives me more time to do what I love. I like simple, passive investing—not jumping straight into complicated renovations, knock-down rebuilds, or even small-scale developments. From my own experience and the cases I’ve seen and heard, people who choose the complicated path from the start have a high chance of losing money. If you want to do complicated projects, it’s not too late to consider them later.
The first step in property investing should be “set your goal.” That means asking yourself, “Why am I buying?” If you haven’t thought about it yet, try answering three questions.
Lifestyle. What kind of life do you want after you retire? Do you want to drink coffee in a waterfront house in the morning, travel the world and live in different places, or simply have a big home where you enjoy gardening?
Material goals. Do you absolutely need to live in a fully paid-off luxury home with ocean views when you retire, or is it a modest home where you feel comfortable and stress-free enough? Are luxury cars and watches important to you?
Location. Where will you live? The cost of living in Sydney versus Bali is worlds apart. It could also be KL, Singapore, or even Lisbon.
Do you see the pattern? Underneath these three questions is this core reality: most people don’t want to do meaningless work, and they don’t want to be tied to one place. Yet many of us go to work just to make money, and we still have to show up at the office every day. If the money problem were solved, a lot of people would choose to work less, work from somewhere else, or simply stop. The point is to break free from the fixed hours and fixed location of the 9-to-5 routine. To make that shift with confidence, you need enough passive income.
Before the pandemic, I actually “retired” for almost a year—played golf, travelled the world, took photos, and lived like a local in different places. But in less than six months, I was struggling, because there was no challenge and no sense of achievement. So not long after, I came out of retirement and started a business again. I’m the kind of person who can’t stop working, but I want freedom over when and where I work. Have you noticed our AusPropertyStrategy business model is built the same way? Our team usually meets members via video calls, with no limits on where staff or members are located. It’s common to have a staff member living in another country for a while, a member travelling overseas, and we’re on a video call discussing which property to buy. That’s why our goal is “financial freedom, retirement freedom, travel freedom.”
Wealth targets
Once you know your lifestyle, material goals, and location, the next step is to work out how much money you’ll need each year to live that way. Is it $100,000, $150,000, or $200,000? How far are you from that target now, and how do you reach it through property investment?
First, do a thorough check on your finances. After-tax income minus household expenses minus home and car loans minus your emergency buffer—how much can you save each year? You can’t just guess it. You have to check every bill line by line. You’ll find things you don’t use but still pay for—like a bank account monthly fee you could avoid, or unused Netflix subscription. You’ll also discover ways to cut spending without lowering your quality of life. Think of it as a full audit of your finances. Then you need to calculate a few numbers.
Excluding mortgage repayments or rent, what are your normal annual living costs? That number is the minimum passive income you need for financial freedom. If you’re happy with a comfortable, low-stress life, many people find $10,000 a month is enough—so $120,000 a year in passive income. At a 3.8% rental yield and with no debt, to retire today you’d need to hold around $3.16 million worth of investment property. Because of inflation, that figure will rise over time.
Work out how much you can save in the next 12 months, add your current savings, and that gives you the maximum deposit you can afford. Most people spend at least six months searching for their first property; quite a few spend twelve.
Next, tweak your strategy by age. If you’re between 25 and 40, you’re young, energetic, and can take on more risk. This is when a more aggressive approach helps. Take extra shifts to accelerate your income, or try a side hustle to give yourself a chance at a future wealth breakout. Then consider rentvesting—rent where you live and direct your funds into investment properties. That way you align convenience for work, tax efficiency, and maximised investment returns. The earlier you start, the stronger compounding becomes over time. If you’re in the 40–60 range, you still have time to invest before retirement. Your advantage over younger investors is you’ve already built up some wealth, so your starting point is higher. At this stage, you can consider using a family trust, and especially using your self-managed super fund to invest in property—so you can make the most of tax benefits and maximise your borrowing capacity.
If you have any questions about property investment, please book a free 15-minute discovery call on our website. If you want a team offering one-stop service to help you build a property investment portfolio, achieve financial freedom and retire early, join our VISION Membership by booking a 30-minute obligation-free discovery session to start with. Or to keep it simple, our data-driven buyer's agency service can help. We buy and manage properties for our clients anywhere in Australia. Links to the service are in the description below.
Starting capital
Right now, if you want to buy an investment property in Australia, you can still find standalone houses in regional towns for $300,000–$500,000. But in larger regional hubs and cities, you’re basically looking at $800,000 as a starting point, and a decent entry-level house is $900,000 and up. If you go by median prices, Sydney houses are around $1.7 million, and Brisbane, Perth, and Adelaide are all over $1 million. With a 20% deposit plus stamp duty, for a $900,000 property you need about $240,000 in cash. Even a $500,000 house in a small town requires about $130,000 in cash. So if you don’t have these cash reserves, chances are you’ll be kept outside the gate of property investing. What you can do is lift your earning power and find every way possible to put together a deposit. Sitting around hoping for a market crash so you can “buy the dip” is not realistic in Australia. Even if there’s a brief downturn, you may not have the courage to buy. I can’t pick the exact market bottom myself, let alone someone buying for the first time.
Execution strategy
Once your strategy is set, it’s time to execute. Many people choose to do everything themselves; others prefer to let professionals handle the tasks. The outcomes can be completely different.
If you do it yourself, the biggest cost is time. From what we can see, it takes an average six months to buy your first property. Quite a few people look for two years before they finally buy, only the price isn’t so friendly by then. A 20% rise over two years for the same house does not surprise me at all. On a $1 million property, that 2 years time costs $200,000. If you also end up buying the wrong asset—for example, a house with unauthorised structures in the backyard, or something that isn’t a growth property—then it’s even worse.
Next is the learning cost. Where can a buyer learn? Social media—watching different creators. Long-form videos are better. Short-form platforms are full of misinformation and hype. I'd say 80% of it is misleading.
If you use a professional team, those two problems are solved. I can’t speak for other companies, but in ours we start by understanding a client’s full financial picture and setting goals. We help with structures like trusts and self-managed super funds, we arrange finance, we find quality stock—and we can get it done in two weeks, four weeks max. The time and learning you save is worth far more than our fee.
Some might ask, “If I insist on doing it all myself, is it possible?” It’s possible. As long as you can manage the following, you can become a property investing heavyweight and handle everything on your own.
Put in serious hours to learn. There’s the 10,000-hour rule: after 10,000 hours of study and practice, anyone can become an expert in a field. If you work 9-to-5, study two hours on weeknights, and eight hours each day on weekends, that’s 26 hours a week. In 384 weeks—about seven years—you’ll be an expert. If, like me, you work full-time in property investing and put in 60 hours a week, it takes 166 weeks—just over three years—to reach that level.
Build a professional team. Property investing requires specialists. You’ll need an excellent mortgage broker, accountant, solicitor, and a financial planner. Suppose you find the right people; beyond paying their fees, you’ll need to communicate one-on-one with each of them, and they’ll need to talk to each other and align before you can move forward. You need to have very strong coordination skills.
Broaden your scope. Your investment view needs to cover the whole of Australia and all property types. You need to understand different taxes and laws across the states and territories, the pros and cons of holding property under different entities, and in which situations you can borrow more. In practice, you’re absorbing the knowledge base of those four professionals and using it in combination. To be honest, in nearly 20 years of my career, I’ve barely met anyone who has mastered it to that level.
Building wealth
Let’s assume you buy a property worth $800,000 with a $160,000 deposit and a $640,000 loan, and it grows on average by 7% a year. After two years, it’s worth $907,000. You ask the bank to revalue it and lend 80% of the new value—$725,600. Pay off the original loan and you’re left with about $85,600 in cash. Add a bit more and you can buy the next property. Keep going. By year seven, when you’re purchasing your fourth property, the deposits from refinancing the first three are enough to cover the deposit. That fourth property is your balance point—after that, you can keep buying without tipping in any out of pocket cash. So in the first seven years, you will feel a bit of pressure; beyond that, the pressure of buying is gone.
Another issue is cash flow. When we source properties for clients, we generally look for yields above the market average. If Brisbane’s average is 3.8%, we aim higher than 3.8%. But in today’s market, breaking even on cash flow is very hard. At 80% LVR on a standalone house and renting out for long-term, it’s almost certainly negative cash flow—Darwin is a possible exception. But there are ways to improve cash flow.
Lower your leverage. Drop LVR to 70%, or even 60% if needed. You can always find a balance point. Keep in mind, though, while lower leverage boosts cash flow and reduces risk, in a rising market it also materially reduces your net returns.
Switch from long-term to short-term rentals. I run a short-stay company, so I know how it works. For properties suitable for short stays, gross rent is usually about double that of long-term—1.8 to 2.2 times is normal. It can lift cash flow significantly. The risks are seasonality—quiet and busy periods—and less stability than long-term. Also, not every property suits short stays. Tourist areas, growth corridors, industrial/business parks, and suburbs near city centres tend to work better.
Use tax offsets. If your salary is high and you’re buying new builds in your own name, combining the tax savings can often bring cash flow close to break-even right now.
Wait. Rents rise too. For example, a property that rented for $600 a week two years ago at a 4% yield might now rent for $800 a week, with interest rates lower, naturally improving cash flow. You just need patience.
Most people won’t become experts in property—maybe because of time, maybe because of capability. Our solution to all of the above problems is the VISION membership. You don’t need to study, assemble a team, or widen your scope—we provide an end-to-end, fully managed property investment service.
Many people ask when’s the best time to buy. The best time was yesterday; the second-best is today. Look at Australia’s property price history. Short term, there are ups and downs. Long term, it’s been rising. That’s the simplest summary of the Australian property market, and you need to ride the upward trend if you want to reach your goal early.
Watch the video version of the blog on YouTube.
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