This investment strategy is extremely powerful for three core reasons:
1 It works fast, meaning in three to seven years (note well: there is no magic get-rich-quick formula). It's unlike the transitional property investment strategy most Aussies apply, which is to buy and then either hope and pray the market rises over time or get their hands dirty doing a bit of renovation to increase equity.
2 It can be used time and time again. It's not a one-time strategy that depends on having the right property, location, size and features. It can be applied to any property, from the most modest to the grandest, in any location and at any time.
3 It can be replicated again and again, because it depends on minimal deposits and makes the money do the work, not you!
So how is this book different? First, I am crazy passionate, even downright obsessed with property investment, as you'll discover. I want to inspire you to reach for what you want in life, and to show you how property investment can get you there.
Second, I have read just about every book out there written by an Australian property investor — you name it and I've read it. And most other authors don't actually share how many properties they have bought or, even more important, whether they still own them and how this has contributed to their financial position. Most of these books are produced by people in their forties and fifties who don't tell us much about their own property deals. What did the figures look like? How did they help them achieve financial freedom? Are they investing in property today or simply reciting strategies they learned five, ten or 20 years ago when property values were half what they are today?
I grew up with a single mother whose only source of income was a government pension. We lived in public housing in one of Sydney's most impoverished neighbourhoods: Mount Druitt. I'll never forget where we came from — the housing commission, food stamps, Salvos furniture and clothes, the endless arguments, tears, stress and embarrassment around the lack of money. I'm sharing this with you so you know I started at the bottom. While most property investors out there had family help in the form of finance or advice, no one in my family even owned their own home, let alone an investment property. Many people we grew up around didn't have stable jobs either. Everyone was either renting or living in public housing and struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table.
A common attitude shared by my friends and me growing up was that anyone with money was likely doing something either illegal or immoral, or had inherited it from rich parents. I thought it was impossible for someone like me, without resources or connections, to make money and create wealth — to change the cards I'd been dealt. But I discovered I was wrong. Part of me knows that if it wasn't for our struggle and financial pain, I wouldn't have been inspired to take the massive action I did.
Over the past ten years I've been on a property investment journey, a mission to transform my family's situation. The fire in my belly was sparked by the frustration, pain and feeling of hopelessness of growing up poor.
From starting out living in a housing commission rental in Willmot, Mount Druitt, making an annual wage of less than $26 000, I now have a property portfolio valued in excess of $12 million. With an annual rental income of more than $600 000, that's over $10 000 gross per week. In this book I'm going to share as much as I can of my amazing journey in order to help you achieve your own goals!
I've always been quite competitive, in sports and in many other areas of life. For me the property investment game is no different. If you're to make a success of it, you must be willing to work hard, but first you need to learn and understand it, and one place to start is to read books like this.
Successful property investing generates a snowball effect: for most people it starts slowly, but when using the right strategy, the momentum builds and your portfolio soon gets bigger faster!
Over the past few years, I have used the knowledge I've accumulated to help many others invest in property. You can learn more about this on our website, dilleenproperty.com.au, or watch some of the thousands of hours of free property investment videos on our YouTube channel, Dilleenproperty.
Property investment is my passion (along with basketball — go Lakers!). I have dedicated my life to it. I hope this book ignites a fire in your belly and inspires you to begin your journey or adds fuel to the wealth-creation fire you're already tending! My journey has not been easy, but I have learned so much along the way. This book provides all the information and resources you need to create the life you really want.
PART I MY STORY
As you'll already have gathered from my background, I'm not your typical property investor, and perhaps partly for this reason, over the years my story and strategies have been featured by multiple media outlets. Many people have reached out to tell me how my story inspired them. Because if I could do it with my initial disadvantages, they realised, then surely they could too. This feedback always makes my day! So after some consideration I decided to begin this book with a brief account of my own personal story.
My message here is simple: it's to never allow the personal challenges you start out with determine the trajectory of the rest of your life. Whatever your circumstances, your future is not set in stone. Only you have the power to create it.
If you have grown up around motivated people who work hard in a stable job and provide for their family, you are luckier than you might realise. But if not, it's never too late to break the cycle. Resisting societal expectations and peer pressures is not easy, nor is breaking poor cross-generational financial habits. Taking control of your life and educating yourself is the first step.
If you want to dive straight into the nitty-gritty of property investing, feel free to flick to Part II. If you'd like to learn a bit about my upbringing and the journey of acquiring my first ten properties (with all figures and details), then read on.
CHAPTER 1 Breaking the cycle
My parents met in Escondido in southern California and got married in their early twenties. My mum had grown up there, the youngest of three siblings, in an average American lower-middle-class family. There wasn't much money. She finished high school but never went to university. No one in my entire family had been to university. I didn't even know what university was until my teens.
My father grew up in Brooklyn, New York. When he was 17 years old he enlisted in the navy, lying about his age. He was sent to Vietnam, where he was wounded and got a silver star for saving others' lives. Mum told me he had a lot of problems after he came home.
Thirteen years after getting married, they moved from the US to Sydney. My father had big dreams of getting rich through multi-level marketing schemes and various other plans, but they never seemed to work out. Dad was a self-employed welder. Later he worked for a company, but the pay was very low. He always wanted more. At the dinner table he'd say how we should always save 10 per cent of what we earn so we could build up a good amount of savings in 10 years. He really wanted to get ahead financially, but no matter what he tried, he just didn't get there. Even when my parents were together and very poor, Dad faced a massive tax debt when he tried to work on his own.
My parents had three children. I was the youngest, born much later than my sister and brother when Dad was 45 and Mum 41. I remember lots of financial stress — my parents were always fighting about money.
Hard times
We lived in a rough area in Mount Druitt. For those unfamiliar with it, Mount Druitt is a lower socioeconomic suburb an hour's drive west of the CBD that has long held a reputation for crime, drugs and domestic violence. But it was affordable and my parents were able to buy a house there in the late 1980s for $50 000 and settled