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‘How I bought six properties even though the banks don’t want to lend to me and I’m self-employed’

“Everything in my life is for sale except my husband and my kids”, says Jo Vadillo, a time-poor property investor who believes “it is all about the numbers”.

jo vadillo

Jo has built up an impressive amount of equity, while also running two businesses – but has come up against some significant roadblocks in terms of her serviceability and lending eligibility.

She speaks to Phil Tarrant and Vivienne Kelly on The Smart Property Investment Show about the challenges of building wealth while being self-employed, why she’s looking at doing “savvy subdivisions” next and where her best-performing properties are located.

All this and much much more on this episode of The Smart Property Investment Show. Tune in now.

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The Smart Property Investment Show gives you insight, strategies and tactics that every property investor can use.

In each episode, the Smart Property Investment team and its special guests will break down what’s happening in the world of property investment, how it affects everyday property investors and how they can take advantage of it.

Make sure you never miss an episode by subscribing to us now on iTunes.

 

Transcript:

Phil Tarrant: Welcome to the show. Phil Tarrant here. I appreciate you tuning in. Guest today is going to be an interesting one. Vivienne Kelly has joined us back on deck. Vivienne is our editor across our mortgages and real estate products here at Sterling Publishing. How you going, Viv?

Vivienne Kelly: I'm good, Phil, thanks. Glad to be back.

Phil Tarrant: It's good to see you again. I also have Jo Vadillo in. Jo is a property investor which we like, and she's come in to tell us all about her buying experiences over the years, so Jo, thanks for coming along.

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Jo Vadillo: You’re more than welcome. Thank you.

Phil Tarrant: So, you're a property investor?

Jo Vadillo: I am.

Phil Tarrant: What does that mean to you?

Jo Vadillo: What it means to me as a property investor, it's given me a lot of freedom in life. I kick-started my portfolio in my late 20s, and it's grown from there. I hold six properties at the moment. I'm actually renting where I live.

Phil Tarrant: Sorry, you said, "You hold six properties."

Jo Vadillo: I have six properties.

Phil Tarrant: Sorry to interrupt. It's a really interesting term, so you hold six properties. A lot of people say "I own six properties”, or “I have six properties." “I hold six properties” to me it really gives me the concept that you are actually an investor. You see, it's not like an emotional type of thing, is it?

Jo Vadillo: No, look, it's all numbers. Everything in my life is for sale except for my husband and my kids. If anyone door-knocked and said, "We'll give you 20 per cent over market" there's no emotion at all. It is all about numbers. It comes down to numbers purely. My principle place of residence, earlier this year I decided I wanted a bigger and nicer one, so I rented in the same suburb, and now that's being rented out. In fact, I went over on holidays over Christmas, and I actually put our own family home on Airbnb, so it is numbers, it's purely that.

Phil Tarrant: I'm sorry to interrupt you there, but I just thought it was a really interesting turn of phrase, I liked it. So your story, so six properties.

Jo Vadillo: Yes, that's right.

Phil Tarrant: Where are they?

Jo Vadillo: I've got two in Sydney, and I've got four in the Brisbane market.

Phil Tarrant: In Sydney whereabouts are they?

Jo Vadillo: Inner-west, Hurlstone Park and lower north shore.

Phil Tarrant: Were they the first properties you purchased?

Jo Vadillo: The inner-west one was, and I did buy that, as I mentioned in my late 20ss. I wish it was early 20s. I wish I had started earlier, but I did buy that. At the time I had a boyfriend who has since become a husband, but I did do that on my own. I was the one with the pre-approval and we would go around looking at properties, and he was very diligent with me. But every single time we walked into a property the agent would always look at him, and ask for his name, and it really grated on me, so it became a little bit of ‘Girls can do it for themselves’, and I'm really grateful that I got that on my own. We've since acquired the properties as a couple. We have sold a few along the way because we've renovated it, and the numbers were right, and the time of the market was right.

Phil Tarrant: We'll get back to that as part of your strategy. So there's two in Sydney currently and four up in Brisbane. Whereabouts in Brisbane are you?

Jo Vadillo: I've got two in Logan, and then I've got two in Moreton Bay, so north of Brisbane City.

Phil Tarrant: What's performing better? The Logan ones or the Moreton Bay ones?

Jo Vadillo: Moreton Bay is performing better. I bought that in my self-managed super fund. Logan is a different strategy, so let me know when you want to talk strategy, I can give you the rundown.

Phil Tarrant: Before we get to the strategy, let's talk about why.

Viv, you chat with people every day about this, about why they invest in property, and I invest in property because a couple of things. I like the game. I like to know that I can be good at it, and that's quite important to me, but I also want to create some wealth. A lot of people you speak to Viv, it ranges from lifelong passions to be a property investor through to?

Vivienne Kelly: It ranges from family pressures, to wealth creation, to just that Australian ingrained notion that you have to have property, to sort of the feel that the other asset classes are a bit volatile. There's lots of different motivations out there, but I think wealth creation is probably the largest common thread.

Jo Vadillo: That's definitely my motivating force. It certainly is, and it's given me a lot of freedom to make a lot of changes in my life. It's enabled me to travel. It's enabled me to invest in other businesses as well, so it really has been a huge catalyst for my decisions in life.

Phil Tarrant: So you talk about it being an enabler. How is it an enabler? Is it a financial enabler, or is it a time enabler, or is it a something else enabler?

Jo Vadillo: It's a bit of both. I've had a complete career change as a result of my property investing. I used to speak to a lot of friends about property investing, and a lot of them were kind of a bit bored by it, possibly because I didn't stop talking about it, and as a result people said ‘You really should get into actually working in real estate’, and at that time I was actually working in advertising in the media industry, and I had no intention of ever going into it as a career.

I couldn't see myself selling real estate, but as a result I actually did go and get my full license, and I became a buyer's agent, because I was already doing pro bono work for family and friends anyway, and for fun, for kicks at night I'd jump on my laptop, and just look at property. It's a passion, it's a hobby, and I love how tangible it is, and even when things go wrong if you've got a bit of an exit strategy, or you can buy and hold, whatever it is, I just feel it's very malleable and it works. It's really helped our futures and set ourselves up quite nice financially.

Vivienne Kelly: Jo, you mentioned that it is all about the numbers, so why is it then that you rent where you live, and that you don't own where you live?

Jo Vadillo: As a buyer's agent, I look at a lot of properties and I don't really want to buy an old one. I've done plenty of renovations. I don't want to live through another renovation, personally. I'm happy to do it if I'm not living there, so the reason I rented was purely because I want a bigger house.

The plan is with our current home, is to knock it down and rebuild. I just don't have the time to do that. It's a long-tail process. The DAs and the fire restrictions of where we are, so I thought, "I want a bigger house. I want more space, and I want a really nice pool," and tick, tick, tick, one landed on my lap, technically, and we moved about a kilometre up the road.

Phil Tarrant: Sticking with goals, so creating wealth.

Jo Vadillo: Yes.

Phil Tarrant: That's good. Why do you want to create wealth? What is the driving force behind that dream in terms of having a better financial future, but your goals, how do they associate themselves with the bigger picture stuff? So a bit of a roundabout way to say just making money is one thing, but is the goal to own 50 properties? Is it to own 100 properties? ‘I want to own that many properties because, therefore, I can do this, that, and the other, and have this income, or cash-flow, which allows me to do XYZ’? How does that work with you?

Jo Vadillo: The ones I bought in Logan, you asked me about the Logan properties and how they're performing, so I’m not someone who has a picture of me and my private jet just yet. I don't even have the goal to have the private jet just yet either, but the ones I bought in Logan, I bought on large blocks of land, and I happened to buy within pretty much days of a Brisbane big downpour where it had flooded. The market dropped. The GFC happened. But I did buy. The two properties I have in that area are on large blocks of land, so I can actually subdivide, and I'm able to put two dual-key properties on the back of it.

I'm trying to work out the numbers myself. Do I buy and hold? Do I keep it? Do I sell the old one? Do I keep one of the new ones? Then that will enable me to then do the knockdown, rebuild in Sydney, so the numbers do stack up for us to do it in that particular structure.

To answer your question about goals – I don't sit down and say look I want to have 50 properties by the time I'm of a certain age. It is about cash flow as well as I'd like to be sort of cash flow rich as well as well as asset rich. But it is about freedom, and it is about giving my children choices in life. We just got back from the Philippines. We were there for three weeks. My seven-year-old spent his birthday swimming with whale sharks.

Phil Tarrant: That's cool.

Jo Vadillo: It is very cool, and it allows me to do that, so that's my aspirations, and it's about life choices. When I started up my business, my goal for that when I became a buyer's agent, was within a year I’d like my husband to work with me full-time, and we achieved that, so the two of us are now self-employed. We employ other people, and we're very passionate about property, and we really thrive on inspiring other people, also, to get on board. So it really is something that, it's not just waking up, and making money every day. It's also very rewarding. It's rewarding to see people reach their goals, too.

Phil Tarrant: It is good. And longer term is this a portfolio which will hopefully provide for you guys comfortably in retirement, so you can go and do all these great wonderful things? But is it a generational play for you as well? Is your goal to leave your kids a nice big fat property portfolio?

Jo Vadillo: Look, I'd like to do that. It would be a nice thing to have, and I'd also like to do a lot of other – this is a word I struggle on "philanthropic”, I did it – I would like to be able to give back as well.

I do a lot of speaking gigs as well to try and inspire women especially. A lot of women have got a funny attitude when it comes to money, or they've got a blockage, and I do think a lot of them may rely on the fact they'll marry well, or that the husband will look after them. It's almost like it's a dirty word, and you don't have to create wealth just so that you have a fantastic collection of shoes. You can look after your parents as they age. You can give your kids the best education. You can go on fantastic holidays. You can continue investing in property. I've been trying to give that message to people that investing is not just about yourself. It's a journey. I feel like it's a real journey and it's really rewarding.

Phil Tarrant: The word you used initially was it's an enabler, and it enables people to have choice. That's what attracts me to property, and what attracts a lot of people to property. Is this something you are trying to instil in your kids as well? Do you talk to them about money? Do they get it, what you do?

Jo Vadillo: They do, and they have come to quite a few open homes with me. I think they get it. They're young. One just turned nine. One just turned seven, and I've got a two-and-a-half- year old, but they do understand that we're self-employed, and we try and say to them, “Look, if we worked for somebody else we wouldn't even be home at this hour”. It does allow us a lot of freedoms. I try and educate them on what that might mean for them. I'm not setting them up in such a way that they don't have to go out and make it work for themselves, but I would like to see them start investing, possibly on the younger side of 25. I meant that earlier. I wish I had started younger.

Vivienne Kelly: Jo, you've just listed off some positives of being self-employed there like being there for your kids, and being able to go on holidays when and if you want. Are there any negatives, though, being self-employed, and trying to build a property portfolio?

Jo Vadillo: There certainly has been for us, and one of those is the two properties that we hold in Sydney have got an enormous amount of equity sitting in them now. Obviously, lenders don't shine a light on self-employed people in terms of lending them money, so given that both of us are actually self-employed, and you've got to have a good traction of high-income earning for a period of time to be able to get your hands on the money, and show that "Hey, I've got six properties, and I've got three dependents, and I run two companies, and we're both self-employed. Can you please lend us some more money?" It's delayed things a little bit for us.

If I was to replay my life in the last five years I might have just set myself up with some pre-approvals whilst my husband was still in a PAYG scenario. Now fast forward five years we've got a track record now. Our taxes are being done, so now I'm hoping that I'm on the other side of that, and I can show the bank that yes, I can actually pay off what it is I want to borrow.

Phil Tarrant: What's the lending across your six properties right now? Do you have banks, or are they non-banks as the financiers of them?

Jo Vadillo: They're all banks.

Phil Tarrant: They're all major banks are they?

Jo Vadillo: The one I've got the superannuation property in. I've got two in the self-managed super fund. That's a kooky one in Victoria, but it's one of those scenarios, whereby, there was a very small handful of lenders that would lend at the time.

Phil Tarrant: Who were satisfied to lend to self-employed? Because we write a lot about this sort of stuff, and we're very pro self-employed, and self-employed people often struggle with securing finance. They might have very good businesses, but their administration in terms of making sure their tax returns are good and stuff…

Vivienne Kelly: … You’ve got a bit of a smile on your face there Phil. Are you referring to yourself?

Phil Tarrant: Banks are happy to lend me money, but I've be very open about some of the challenges in building my portfolio has been that I don't have the time to get all the stuff together to give it to my broker. That's one of my biggest challenges in growing my portfolio is that I ain't got time to find rental slips, and bank statements, and all this sort of stuff.

There's no reason why the bank won't lend us money, it's just the admin part of it is where I don't prioritise. I'm not too bothered about it to be fair, but when it becomes an emergency I sort it out, but if it's not an emergency, it gets sort of put in a pile.

Jo Vadillo: That's why I'm sorting out my income tax returns for 2015 at the moment. Look, with what you're saying, it took me six months to get our self-managed super fund set up just because they had asked for paperwork, and two weeks later I would react to it, so it keeps you busy.

Phil Tarrant: That's the boring part of property investment, but it's absolutely essential.

Vivienne Kelly: Is there any advice that you would have to other self-employed people in terms of making this process easier or speeding up the boring bits?

Jo Vadillo: I think before they leave a PAYG, or they've got a partner and the idea is that the other partner comes on board, I would certainly look at getting some pre-approvals in place, or having a plan. If you're thinking, ‘In a year's time I might do this’, my advice to them would be review what the situation is now, and see if you can have access to the money, or get a line of credit sorted out.

With being self-employed, the reason I was able to also acquire another company was because I did have equity, so as I said fast forward the five years, that enabled me to actually buy, and invest into Property Women which is another company I'm very passionate about, which educates women on how to invest. So whilst it hasn't closed doors, it's just slowed down the process, and I've had to give away some fantastic property deals that have come to me, but I've been able to give them to clients.

Phil Tarrant: It's the nature of the beast, it's just the way it works. Just sticking on the finance thing, it's always good to shop around. I highly recommend using a mortgage broker. They're the people that know how to navigate the lending landscape which changes on a daily basis, but there are some excellent alternative lenders, if you want to call them that. Specialist lenders is probably a better term. Guys like Liberty and Pepper and Bluestone.

They're all quality businesses, and they're a lot more open to lending to self-employed people – it’s is in their DNA. So just don't restrict yourself by thinking that you need to go to a bank to secure mortgage financing. Speak to your broker because they'll put you in the right way, and if there's a problem they'll fix it. That's what I found.

Anyway, six properties. Do you think you'd like to invest more if the banks were happy to give you some cash?

Jo Vadillo: To be honest, I think the next step for us will be to develop. I would like to go down that path because as a buyer's agent I like to live and breathe what we preach, so if I say to a client, “Why don't you set up a self-managed super fund?” I've been there, I've done that now. I've renovated numerous properties now, so I'm happy to walk into a property and say “This is a money pit don't touch it”, or alternatively “All you need here is just paint and carpet and you can add your value”. I like to live and breathe, but I just see property developing being where I go down that path now, and that's what I would like to do with the existing properties we hold in Logan.

Phil Tarrant: The work that you do with women in finance and buying property, I think that's really cool. Let's talk sort of Mars and Venus type things, right?

I’ve got a lot of mates and stuff, and obviously, females, and I've talked property with both sexes quite a lot, and it's funny the different way that they view it depending on – some on it's based on gender, but some of it's based on your socio-economic background, some of it's based on all this sort of stuff.

The work that you do with women in terms of property, or the perceptions towards property, is there anything that really stands out for you that you just don't think that way, and that's very different to the way men might think about property?

It's a dangerous turf, but it is really interesting.

Jo Vadillo: With women there's a lot of over analysis. I find that a lot of them have over analysed the numbers, and some of them have come to me and said "I wanted to invest 20 years ago”, and they didn't which breaks my heart to hear for them.

Vivienne Kelly: So a bit of analysis paralysis?

Jo Vadillo: Absolutely. They get so busy looking to making that perfect deal that they don’t even buy one. If they had of jumped five years ago in Sydney, they’d be doing really quite well – pretty much anywhere if they had bought in Sydney.

Through Property Women I've met a number of them that are coming out of a marriage. They might be in their mid to late 40s, or possibly a little older, and they say, "My husband was never interested because he came from a mindset where you must pay off the family home first." A lot of the times I find that they've being held back by a partner’s attitude.

With Property Women, women learn differently, and some of them are intimated in an environment where you're asking financial questions, and to put their hand up when there's a bunch of men around. I think that's also another stream of interest that we do have in the company as well that girls just want to ask questions that may seem a little dumb, and they don't want to be seen as dumb. Even a lot of the guys might be nodding, going, ‘Yes, I wanted to know the answer to that, too’

Phil Tarrant: Interesting how it all works. What would be your top tips? We’ve got a lot of females that listen to the show, which is cool. What would you say if they're sitting there thinking, "I need to keep looking. I need to keep looking. I need to keep looking. I'm not ready to make a decision." What's your advice to those girls?

Jo Vadillo: I would like to say ‘make a decision’. Segment your geographic range. Trust your instincts. A lot of people don't, and if you've done a lot of research and it all stacks up, I would say just trust on that, and do plenty of due diligence, but my advice is to actually act on it. Pick up the phone. Don't just sit behind a computer screen. Actually, start talking to some of the agents as well, and really try to physically get on the ground if you have to, or if you have to outsource, look at using a buyer's agent, because maybe that's the person that cracks the whip that actually helps them in the long run.

Vivienne Kelly: There's a lot of people out there as well, Jo, that just don't like to talk about money, and we find that with a lot of the women that we do end up speaking to, they get a bit sort of paranoid or worried about putting themselves out there as a successful woman in property, or as someone who has built up wealth, and they're secretly proud of it, but they don't want to admit, ‘Yeah, I've built up $3 million worth of wealth’, whereas, traditionally we find that the men are much more open and willing to talk about it. Why do you think that is? Why are the female property investors when they do take the leap, and do get started, that they're not sort of out there getting the accolades and attention that they deserve?

Phil Tarrant: Good question.

I don't know what it is. I don't know why women, maybe it's seen as narcissistic, or, I'm not quite sure why men are more proud. I am meeting more and more women who are really successful, but you're absolutely correct. They don't say, “Hey, look, I did make $3 million. My property is worth this.”

It's just a different language, and some of those women I'm asking “Come and speak please be on a webinar for us” because we need more role models, and it wasn't that long ago there was a real estate event in Sydney where there was nine speakers, and not one of them was a female. It does impact, because we all look to role models that we can sort of think, "Well, if she can do it, I can do it, too."

I don't know why women don't and I must admit I personally keep a lot of my cards close to my chest because sometimes people will throw negative comments out there, and it starts to erode your confidence. So if you're at a barbecue, and you're taking advice, or someone’s brother-in-law who says “Oh, I wouldn't invest there”. Take advice of someone who's successful. Don't take advice of some random who has got an opinion on an area that he might have read about once in a paper four years ago, which is now irrelevant. I often suggest talk to people who you want to model, and be like.

Vivienne Kelly: Do you find that Phil? Do people give you push back about your property portfolio and the decisions you're making when you're at barbecues and chatting away about it?

Phil Tarrant: Not really. The irony of it is that I talk about it really openly, and that's always been the backbone of Smart Property Investment, is that we created the product because I'm a journo, Viv’s a journo. You always get these stories, and the stories are always too glamorous and perfect, and you just look at them and just think "That's not true, they're hiding stuff." So the premise of Smart Property Investment was “Let's talk about property in its real sense”. You don't get rich overnight by investing in property, and if you do, you're being so risky that at some point in time you're going to fall on your face.

We wanted to talk about the realistic aspects of investing property. It's hard. It's a hard trudge. It takes time. You don't flip. All these type of things, and it annoyed me that there were all these glamour stories, so hence the reason why we started building our portfolio, and talking about it so openly.

In terms of feedback, most people get inspired when I talk about it, because I don't have any super-duper secret strategy. I don't have any tricks. What we do is very, very simple. We find under market value properties in areas which are affordable, that have prospects for growth, and are either neutrally geared or thereabouts. We look to manufacture equity.

It's not hard. It's not difficult. It's very simple what we do. The strategy is simple and if we run out of properties or the market has changed and we can't do it in one spot, we'll go somewhere else, and try and achiece the same thing. Speak to people about property. Speak to people who know what they're talking about. Don't speak to the naysayers.

Vivienne Kelly: It sounds like you're sort of hanging out with the right people then.

What I find when I talk to some investors is that they do get a lot of negativity when they start investing, and people say "You're making the wrong decision. You shouldn't be doing that." A bit like what Jo said. "Don't buy there. I read in the paper that XYZ is going to happen." So it sounds like maybe Phil you’re associating with people who are helping you, and the right sorts of people. What I often say to investors when they say that is "Look, maybe you're just sort of not hanging out with the right people."

Phil Tarrant: If you're hanging out with the wrong people, you're probably one of those wrong people as well. I'm time poor, so I made a decision to use trusted advisers to help me build my portfolio. They can do it. Buyer's agents, accountants, mortgage brokers, etc. And they can do what I need to do to invest in property more effectively than I can ever do, and they can keep focused and dedicated to it. So look for help. Associate with people who can inspire you, who can energise you, who can motivate you, and if you do those things, and just keep your strategy simple, and don't go into too hard, or over your head, you're going to do well in property. It's not a crazy secret. I imagine you guys talk about this all the time, don't you, Jo? It's not a magic bullet investing in property. It's just about being smart.

Jo Vadillo: Absolutely. It is, and a little tenacity, keep at it. If you don't get it at that auction, go to another one. Keep keeping at it.

Phil Tarrant: Enjoy the game, it's good fun.

Jo Vadillo: It is indeed.

Vivienne Kelly: So next five years, what's the aim, what are you doing property wise? Any investment goals?

Jo Vadillo: I want to dip my toe, I should put half a leg, I think, into the developing pool. I want to go down that path. I want to explore it, whether it's just doing savvy subdivisions. This is probably in the Queensland market, not in New South Wales, and exploring that. Possibly the work I'm doing is less renovation, elbow-grease stuff, but it is more about keeping that land, do we build here? Do we do that? So it is more paperwork.

Phil Tarrant: It's a common goal for a lot of investors. We’ve got a reasonably large portfolio, and they're just cookie-cutter properties. There's nothing exciting about them. There's some upsides in them, but you get to a point and you go, “I can just keep building a portfolio with these type of assets that sit within it, or I can start being a little bit more creative”, and a lot of people get attracted towards development.

I look at that opportunity, and I think, “I don't have the time to even contemplate and think about doing it”, and I'm quite happy in nice and safe and doing what we're doing right now. But if you were to go down that path, which I think is great to explore that and advance the way you invest, what do you think you need to do, personally, to prepare yourself to make sure that it's as successful as possible – because a lot of people that start developing end up in a lot of trouble?

Jo Vadillo: I'm going to start small. I'm not going to go in and do a six townhouse development, because I already hold the land that I want to work on. I've got a house that's sitting there. It's neutrally geared. That will be where I start. I'll do that subdivision. I'll build the property, making sure that the cash flow is still there, it's still working for us. I'll just start small, and build on it. I'm not envisioning that I'm going to be doing skyscrapers at this point because I want to do small stuff. I want to be involved. It is the game and I do love it and I do enjoy it, so I do want to be actively involved, and just before I launch into anything just ensuring that I've done all my due diligence as best as I can.

Phil Tarrant: It’s all about research.

Just going back to your property really quickly because we've got to start winding up. Six properties. What's the total of value of the portfolio? You said you keep your cards close to your chest.

Jo Vadillo: I just started to tally this up the other day. It's over $4 million. I'm not sure of the exact figure.

Phil Tarrant: You've got a lot of fat in your Sydney properties, I imagine. What's your LVR across your portfolio, do you think?

Jo Vadillo: Across all of it, because Queensland ones did flat-line for us, I'd say you're looking at about 65.

Phil Tarrant: It's reasonably conservative, depending on how you view the world. And it’s a neutrally geared portfolio?

Jo Vadillo: Completely, especially with interest rate changes.

Phil Tarrant: Does it put any money in your back pocket at all?

Jo Vadillo: It’s minimal. There's always a hot water system that breaks. I never have any vacancy issues, in any of our properties, that very rarely has happened, but there's things that break, there's things that happen, so by the end of the year when it all peters out, I'm not buying a car with the leftovers.

Phil Tarrant: But you're sleeping well at night.

Jo Vadillo: I'm sleeping well at night, and I'm going to the Philippines for three weeks with my kids during school holidays. I like that.

Phil Tarrant: That's good, and all the properties are managed by managing agents?

Jo Vadillo: Completely. I absolutely endorse property management. I know a lot of people who want to do it themselves, but like you, Phil, I'm really time poor. I don't do it as well as them. I don't want to go to tribunals. I don't want to chase anyone for money. I've had some kooky requests from our tenants, but it doesn't come to me direct.

Phil Tarrant: You're six properties in, but you've bought more properties because you've sold. We'll get you back in at some point, and we'll chat about that stuff, but if you could go back to your late 20s when you said you started buying. If you can go back to then and could give yourself one gem of information that you wish you knew then that you know now, what would it be?

Jo Vadillo: Start earlier. I mentioned that. I was probably one of those over-analysers. I went and looked at many, many opens before I jumped. Retrospectively, I probably jumped at the very peak of the market. It was 2003, so that was the highest, but the property has more than doubled now, with zero vacancy issues.

Phil Tarrant: Sounds good.

Anything to finish up with, Viv?

Vivienne Kelly: The only thing I wanted to say was, we've gotten a lot of feedback on the show so far about how there has been a little bit of a lack of women, and lot of that is coming from women, so I'd like to issue the female listeners a challenge that if they're dissatisfied with the female representation on the show, send me an email [email protected], and put yourself up for the show, because we'd love to have you on. Jo can tell you it's not scary, it's a lot of fun. Come in and just have a chat, and then they'll be more females on The Smart Property Investment Show.

Phil Tarrant: Absolutely concur. More women on the show, that's what we need. I'm sick of just speaking to blokes all the time. Great, well, Jo, I really appreciate your time coming in. It's been a real pleasure. Stay in touch, and we'll get you back again.

Jo Vadillo: Sounds good to me, thank you very much.

Phil Tarrant: Viv, thank you, good work.

Vivienne Kelly: Thanks Phil.

Phil Tarrant: Thanks for tuning in everyone. We'll see you again next week. Remember to check us out at SmartPropertyInvestment.com.au. We're also on FacebookTwitter, and all those other things. You can follow me if you like on Twitter @philliptarrant or as Viv said, you can email us at [email protected]. We'll see you again next week. Thank you. Bye.

 

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