0:00 is commercial property the new black according to Helen Tarrant it’s the next big thing These

0:05 investors are going to see in the next 2 to three years that commercial property is going to have better capital growth than residential The floodgates are going to open and people are going

0:14 to be throwing themselves into commercial property From child migrant to law student and beauty boss

0:20 this tiger mom now plays in the big league and she wants your kids investing before they hit

0:25 year 10 I’m a nation parent I’ll be telling them at 12 that they need to get $20,000 through their

0:31 YouTube channels and through them working to accumulate that and that by the time they’re 15

0:36 or 16 they should be putting that into property already It’s bold it’s fierce and it’s 10 time

0:44 [Music] Hi I’m Tyron Hyde the CEO of Washington Brown the property depreciation expert

0:52 Now I’m a qualified quantity surveyor and also a best-selling author who’s helped hundreds of thousands of property investors over the years pay less tax through depreciation I’m also an

1:00 avid investor which is why I created the podcast series Ten with Ty where I ask the smartest people

1:06 I know the same 10 questions to unlock the keys to their success and hopefully leave a playbook for

1:11 my family and your family too about investing Now this podcast is general in nature and not

1:17 specific to your financial circumstances We always recommend you sit down with an accountant or financial planner before making any investment decisions Now let’s get on with the show [Music]

1:34 Hello and welcome to Ten with Ty If you’ve ever thought about investing in commercial property then today’s episode is just for you My guest is Helen Tarrant She’s the queen of commercial

1:44 property a buyers agent who’s closed over a thousand commercial property deals She knows the pros and cons the pitfalls and the massive potential She wrote a book called Cashed Up with

1:53 Commercial Property Is a co-author of this book with me Secrets of Property Millionaires In fact

1:58 our chapters are next to each other Welcome to 10 with Ty Helen Nice to be here Thank you Thanks for coming Now let’s start from the beginning You were doing a law degree and also running a

2:08 couple of salons at the same time Now that’s not a normal hop skipping a jump to become a commercial buyers property agent What was the progression how did this happen well if you’re Asian that’s

2:18 pretty normal But it’s and the only reason for that is there is like a a select handful of

2:25 uh professions you can only go into So you know uh it’s like law is one of them And um my um I always

2:32 had the same to my parents I always said that you know you guys are really really smart because why have multiple children when you can have one child that fulfilled all your needs and dreams and hopes

2:42 you know I think the reason that I was um a beauty I became a beauty therapist was because my mother

2:49 said to me “Oh you know in Australia everyone’s really practical You have to have a trade.” And

2:55 I was like “Okay so what do I do as a trade?” Um so and then dad said “Well you know I never got

3:03 to go to university times.” And you know I was on the train one day and I saw this girl with all the

3:09 law books and I thought “Oh her parents must be so proud of her.” You’re right And I thought well

3:15 I better go to law school So I had to go to law school and have a trade at the same time So they didn’t set the bar very high did they but what made you want to invest in commercial property

3:24 what was the first step i I went and did some residential education because like all um good

3:32 Asian children you you knew you were going to have to help your parents retire That you were their entire plan You were their entire retirement plan and that that freight train was coming whether you

3:42 liked it or not And when you’re an only child you could just see it coming and whether you like it or not you were going to have to be part of it So I was trying to invest in residential and my

3:52 parents were one of those people that that worked really really hard and then a 55 woke up and said we didn’t even know what retirement is Um I think this is to illustrate how non like financial

4:04 literate they were like how financially literate they were like only like maybe six months ago when

4:09 I was going away for a while I gave dad some money and said look dad put this money into your offset account and he says to me what’s an offset account mhm Yeah And I was like I can’t believe you have

4:19 a daughter like me who teach you how and you have no idea what an offset account is Right so this is

4:24 how financially literate my parents were They knew how to work hard They just didn’t know how to make

4:30 their money grow And at 55 I couldn’t see a way of getting them into retirement within 3 to 5 years

4:36 So I needed a solution And I looked everywhere and commercial property was that solution Mhm

4:42 M So what you helped them buy their first you put their commercial property into their super fund or how did that work i did actually after I did some of my own So I challenged myself So I went and

4:52 bought a property in Sydney in North Sydney for 360,000 So that was my first property in 2012 And

4:59 the reason I started that was because I worked as a salon in a salon Um I was a beauty therapist I

5:05 knew I made rent every single week no matter what happened Right And Bill who was a dirty old owner

5:13 of ours um would come in every week and collect rent from the hairdresser from myself from beauty

5:18 therapist from the the the apartment upstairs and then he would go fishing And I thought well his

5:24 life is pretty good Uh so you know what did you do Bill oh I bought this property originally was

5:30 for my daughter She decided not to continue on as a hairdresser You know I rented it out This is his whole whole entire plan One building was his whole retirement plan And I thought hey you know what

5:39 maybe that’s a way I can get my parents to retire So I got into commercial property started looking There was no education nothing The only book I could read on commercial property was from Dolph

5:48 Daroo and that was about the US And this was back in 20 you know 2010 No there was no education on

5:55 commercial property So it’s like there’s no education on commercial property Um so but I kept looking and I found this property in North Sydney and it was 360,000 and it was 8.6% yield

6:06 and I was like something’s wrong something’s wrong because residential they teach you that you know

6:12 this is your gross this is your negative this is your break even point this is wrong like you’re so positive cash flow what is wrong with the deal right um and you don’t know until you’ve done the

6:21 deal so I was just like just do the deal right just do the deal who cares don’t like just just do the deal let’s see if it works right you got to give it a go like I’ve always been the person

6:29 just give it a go um jump out the plane and then figure out the rest you know you’re either going to die or you’re going to work out on the way so for me Um I bought that property That property

6:39 delivered $20,000 in passive income every single year for 9 years withheld it And we sold her for a million50,000 after co So that is that is that is the essence of commercial property And once

6:52 I started buying the first one I thought hey you know what i’m just going to challenge myself I’m going to replace $50,000 of my income with passive income um from from equity that I’ve got from my

7:02 residential property Let’s see if we can do it So I did it I went out and for 12 months I went and found three properties bought it and replaced $50,000 in passive income That’s after expenses

7:13 after mortgage everything else So I thought okay I can do it someone else can do it Get the course create a course start teaching people how to do it because I started then noticing people

7:22 making all these little mistakes So 2016 became an educator Still the only educator on the market

7:28 that gives free education and information on commercial property in droves like you know

7:33 YouTube channels people can chew through hours of content free webinars all of this stuff right on

7:38 commercial property Um and became a buyers agent in 2017 because uh just my clients said “Well help

7:47 us buy some properties that you’ve been teaching us to do.” And that’s that’s how the journey came about But I’ve actually got a my mother used to say me Ty I’ve got a bone to pick with you And I’d

7:55 like to say that to you too Helen I’ve got a bone to pick with you because you’ve educated too many people Eight 8.6% yield You know last night on your webinar you’re showing that deals at 3 and a

8:05 half% Now you’ve created too much competition You should have been quiet so we could still get those good deals Well how do you how do you respond to that Helen is absolutely the correct uh question

8:16 because I think all my competitors hate it when I have education because I’m educating them to

8:21 look for better deals than what they can present them Um and I I think that the market will got got

8:31 ruined by residential investors coming in with a residential mindset So I educated them They

8:36 understood okay we need to look for higher yields But then they took back their residential mindset and they brought it into commercial and said oh okay well it’s okay if the market’s doing 7% and I

8:49 will just pay 6 and 12% for that property I’ll pay a little bit more because ultimately it’s going to

8:55 grow in the back It’s going to go right So what ruined it was not the education but the investors

9:01 coming in and thinking I can accept a lower yield because I’ve come from a growth background rather

9:07 than a cash flow background So as a result when one buyer starts buying something at a lower

9:13 return at a higher price it starts to set a new benchmark and then everybody else comes in has to

9:18 do that and then you have to undercut the market again at 6% So it actually started a bit of a I

9:24 think it’s a residential push that started a um a bit of um a waterfall effect So I’m actually

9:30 hoping that with more education investors can take a stand and say “Hey you know what i’m not paying

9:35 6% for that I’m the right yield is 6 12%.” And I’m only going to pay 6 and a half% I believe that if

9:41 there’s enough investors who say “I’m not going to pay 6% in this area,” then we can actually work

9:46 towards bringing the yields back up in commercial property I what I don’t get Last night you were showing some deals of child care centers um on this webinar at three and a half% yield Why would

9:57 you buy a commercial property on a three and a half% yield i know they had a long lease and I know there’s great depreciation on commercial property but still I think I look at that and go

10:06 I’ll just put my money in a Commonwealth Bank um CMT account and get 5% Why would I take the risk

10:12 of three and a half% Oh and wealth preservation So one of the things about commercial property if you

10:19 look at the history of commercial property where it came from is that most people use commercial property as wealth preservation and generational wealth So when you So my question to you is if you

10:30 were going to pass on in 20 years time 30 and hopefully you don’t and but say 50 years time

10:36 would you rather leave your child with a property that is negative or gives them 2% return on every

10:45 million or would you like to leave your children with a property that gives them 6 to 8% return

10:50 on every million mhm Mhm 68 But that’s the key question six to eight% but that requires you but

10:58 knowing also when you pass on that that property will give will last a lifetime of your children

11:04 that it’s not going to have a vacancy is not going to have that volatility where your child are

11:10 forced to sell that you’re essentially passing on guaranteed income and retirement to your children

11:17 for the span of their lifetime but I could pass on that million dollars at 5% in the CMT account but

11:22 your child could your children could also go and spend that tomorrow But the child care they would

11:27 just it’s a All right let’s switch gears On this webinar last night I was pretty fascinating You’re pumped for this year for commercial property You You’re saying what a 20% increase You’re

11:36 predicting a 20% increase over the next 12 months What What are you seeing out there what why are you saying that there isn’t enough returns in the market full stop in investments right now

11:46 But commercial offers the one single thing that investors are looking for that I believe that

11:52 we’re faced with aging investors So investors coming into the market aren’t 20 30 year olds

11:57 at the moment right they they are coming in but not in the same drove they did back 10 years ago Back 10 years ago the drove of people coming in in that was a lot more Now there’s less Most

12:08 investors are now in their mid30s to that mid-50s range Right so what happens in that range is you

12:16 can’t afford negative gearing like you you really are you want to increase your your portfolio your

12:22 wealth but you can’t afford to be negative What you need to do is build a portfolio that is self-

12:28 sustaining and commercial property offers you a portfolio from day one that is self-sustaining and that’s why the residential investors who’ve spent 10 20 years building a portfolio now has

12:37 equity is going to shift gears into commercial and buy self- sustaining portfolios Now one of

12:44 the other really really interesting things that’s happened in this market that people haven’t seen and I’m willing to bet on this and I will have this conversation two to three years time okay

12:53 is the commercial property hasn’t even gone nuts yet Right right now we’re seeing the the

12:58 we’re seeing the next level from the first the early adopters The early adopters came in 2016

13:04 to 2019 That’s where the early adopters comes in right after during co people came in but they came

13:12 in at like the gold rush they kind of go it was good let’s just buy something right they didn’t know right now we’re seeing serious investors who are going okay we’re early stages we’re going to

13:22 be buying in we’re strategically buying in now these investors are going to see the next two to

13:28 three years that commercial property is going to have better capital growth than residential once that’s been established and there’s transparency the floodgates are going to open and people are

13:37 going to be throwing themselves into commercial property and because what’s happened is last 10

13:43 years we’ve had no transparency The problem with commercial property is there’s no transparency You can’t tell a listing that they’re listing a property for $5 million and you look at um Google

13:53 history or AI data or whatever you got 2 years ago that property was 2 mil How did it become 5 mil you had no idea that during the time they got a new tenant they gutted the premise they did all

14:02 sorts of things and now it’s worth 5 mil There’s no idea why and how you can’t track capital growth

14:09 The other myth in the market is also that during co and all of the economic conditions people was

14:15 going to do far sales of commercial property and all of these um high interest rates were going

14:21 to be putting pressure and people were going to liquidate It didn’t happen We’ve had three rounds of it It didn’t happen the market will show in the next two years or three years is the stability of

14:32 commercial property But this the capital growth that commercial property has will continue to demonstrate that will outstrip residential will now create a frenzy even more in the next few

14:43 years So this is a great buying opportunity When you say commercial you’re talking office warehouse

14:50 and retail or you just talking because a lot of people just say commercial that’s offices Are you saying the whole gamut there or it’s everything so your warehouses your retail your office space We

15:00 do all of that here at Unicorn Transact across the whole of Australia But also some of your mixed tenancies So your your your commercial with your so you might have office space above resident

15:09 uh residential at the back Sometimes those can be repurposed You could have warehouse with showrooms

15:15 You can have um retail above below and office space above So the whole thing um like child care

15:20 for example But co-living is not a commercial property People get this wrong Co-living is not a commercial property Boarding houses are not commercial property from the bank’s point of view

15:29 They treat them as commercial property though and only lend you 70% No So they treat them under the

15:35 commercial banner but they’re not assessed the same as commercial property So they’re part of the commercial division And what they treat how they treat um boarding houses and um and

15:46 co-living is they treat them like Airbnbs So you need to demonstrate two years of your income right

15:53 yeah Okay Whereas in commercial you just show them the lease Mhm And what’s your fa what’s your go-to what’s your favourite commercial resi warehouses or what’s your favourite my absolute favourite

16:04 is taking on someone else’s headache and sorting it out and creating that uplift That’s what I do

16:10 Um personally that’s what I do for some of our big syndication deals Um what I love about it

16:17 is the expertise that it requires And very few people we’re probably one of the only companies out there that can actually do this is look at everything that people just typically go here’s

16:27 the dump We have issues everywhere with this property How do you sort it out and that’s my

16:32 absolute favourite because I know the gains you could get for that Yeah Yeah Now but if I’m a first-time investor say I want to buy a million dollar commercial property right how much money

16:42 do I need to put cash to put to make that deal happen so if you’re in your own business you

16:48 need you may only need about 20% So 200k plus expenses so maybe 250 If you are topped out on

16:56 the other end or you have lots of residential and you have business loans and everything else you can’t service anymore then you probably need somewhere around 350 to 400K So the bank can give

17:06 you a 70% up to 70% LTV on a property without looking at you for servicing Right Right Fair

17:14 enough All right One final question before we get into my world famous 10 with tie questions Helen um these super changes are about to happen okay with uh revaling up $3 million reval

17:24 um taxing on unrealised gains Are you seeing clients wanting to sell property to realise

17:30 assets now or is there any changes you’re seeing in regards to that i don’t think it’s really sunk

17:36 in yet with our clients I think it’s going to take a good 12 to 18 months before that that sinks in

17:42 I don’t think it’s going to create a massive sale Most clients coming into the commercial space aren’t looking for those quick wins They’re looking for that stability of income And look you

17:51 know the taxation of that could be treated as a next generation problem right yeah True true I

17:57 tell you what I think it’s going to happen I think valuers are going to get a lot more work right and they’re going it’s going to be handy to have a hand handy value upper because obviously you know

18:06 if you’re taxing realised gains and they’ve been valued lower well then the unrealised gains aren’t as high are they yeah Yeah That’s right That’s right You’d have to stop bribing your friends who

18:16 are valuers If you like this podcast don’t forget to subscribe And if you do and you leave a comment

18:22 send me an email to tyron washingtonbr.com.au and I’ll send you a couple of my books for free You

18:28 ready to play 10 with Ty Helen so Helen what was your best investment best investment um childcare

18:36 center rundown childcare center in Townsville What tell tell us a bit about it Uh I was uh on not

18:44 compliant uh property Uh the tenant had been there for 20 or so years Bought that for about 400,000

18:51 Did a refurb like I found out things like uh leaking sand pits and how hot surfaces don’t work

18:59 um uh some edges and footings um sail cloth I learned all of these little new things about

19:04 compliance of childcare centers Um cool you know aircons and all of these specific things very much

19:10 to to to childcare centers Anyway refurbish things like rebuild a sand pit Yeah And things like that

19:16 Um then um got the tenant on the 10-year lease sold that property for about 730,000 Cool Within

19:24 12 months Cool So what I’m guessing here is you like you you’re making a bit of money out of people’s hurt Like this is where and I agree like there’s pain is where a bit of profit is

19:32 sometimes right i like to look at the really messy properties because I can see there is value but

19:38 you takes a particular skill set Um so uh normally people have run down their properties I’ve had

19:44 clients who I’ve given them a 9% yielding property and 3 five years later they come back and go here

19:50 you go Can you help me sell it it’s half empty And I’m like what did you do m and I’ve worked with them for 6 or 9 months bringing that property back to full tenency doing all the works they

19:58 didn’t do didn’t want to do bringing it back up and they’re selling it So it it does take a skill

20:04 set Um it’s not hurt it’s ignorance and just let it be because they don’t understand in commercial

20:10 property There’s a tipping point If you don’t do work at that tipping point then everything starts to crashing down Is there one particular deal that you’ve done on behalf of someone else that

20:19 you went “Wow that was a cracker I wish I kept it myself.” Yes absolutely I did it as a syndication I wish I got into it right okay I made our clients 40% return on their money within two years plus

20:29 distributions on top Cool So it was so it was one of those deals that all the funds rejected So the

20:36 small funds looked it was a $7 million deal Our clients came together to buy that deal and um it

20:42 was a international fertilizer company So they had 8,000 meters under roof on like 20 square m,000

20:48 square meters of of um of property and it they had 18 months to go on their lease So on a national

20:55 company on such a big deal like if they were to leave the repurposing will be huge right so I came

21:00 in I looked at the deal and I said look the tenant will renew the tenant will renew as sure as I stand here but they may not renew for 5 years they might renew for three They had their leases were

21:09 like amendments upon amendments upon amendments It was such a messy lease So um we bought that deal

21:15 Um we restructured the lease We got on well with the tenant We bought it at just about $7 million

21:21 and about 600,000 in terms of net rent So about an 8% roughly um return So it was phenomenal And this

21:28 was 2 years ago This was 2 years ago We bought this and then the so our clients got like 7%

21:34 returns after all the cost and everything returns on their money And then we negotiated the lease We

21:40 took you know thanks to friends of the valuer kind we took the rent from 600,000 to 795,000 within

21:46 two years got them to sign a five-year lease then sold that property immediately for 9.275 million

21:54 Wow Now this is one of your syndications was it this is one of our syndications Do you want to briefly run i know this not supposed to be an ad for unicorn even though you got your big

22:00 ad there on one of the side but um tell us a little bit about how these syndications work Okay So syndications is really um trying to get to the higher end where the profit margin where you

22:12 get the three trifectas which is capital growth cash flow and security We get to all three of them

22:17 at the top level That’s where the institutions and the family offices buy but they’re all 20 mil plus deals right um and but they have all of those things in that those deals So you get

22:26 your high yields above sevens You get your really government national international tenants and you get your secure security in the fact that they can’t really move anywhere else So you get that

22:34 high quality you got the land component Taking all of those rating them down to unitized levels of 2

22:39 to 5 400,000 Clients can come in um buy a unit in them That deal is putting together as an investor

22:46 pod People as a pod work together Um we have asset managers and myself we drive the deals to uplift

22:52 the deal or to renew leases and then at the end we look to sell it within a 2 to 5 year period

22:58 depending on the project And in the meantime the client gets cash flow and they get the uplift at the end So best of both worlds Great for those people who can’t afford to buy bigger properties

23:07 but still want that gain All right question number two What’s been your worst investment Helen so my

23:14 worst investment um has been I bought a vacant property hoping to put it a medical tenant in

23:20 there I think at the time I was I was very new to an area and a and a and an agent So I trusted the

23:27 wrong agent on the ground and it was an 18-month period but I could not get the tenant and we had

23:32 about four rounds of tenants that looked at the property didn’t want to pay the rent Even though we offered to refurbish and do all of that in the end we sold it to an owner occupier We made the

23:41 money we bought it for plus our stamp duty back but we didn’t make our gains We didn’t get the

23:47 exponential 40% gain that we typically do for an uplift but because and I wasted two years of my

23:53 time because of um utilizing the wrong people on the ground And what’s some common traps that you

24:01 can tell investors out there to avoid um I saw you on a webinar You you you went through this

24:06 uh contract with a fine tooth comb It was really cool So but what are some of the common traps that you see uh novice investors in commercial property mate buying the wrong yield buying the wrong

24:17 returns Um looking at it as a transaction rather than building a portfolio Here at Unicorn we build

24:23 portfolios We just help people buy properties Um the the the thing is I had this this thing

24:29 um illustrates I’ll show you a story I had someone who called me and wanted a strategy

24:35 session So I booked in a strategy session off our webinar and it was a gentleman from

24:40 um that lives in C Camp Campbell Town in Sydney and he had a friend in ACT and they said we’ve

24:45 we’ve been to a few of your webinars and now we’re going to buy a commercial property All right When someone says I’ve been to a few of your webinars and now I know all the knowledge that I know to

24:53 buy a commercial property That’s already a red flag So I said “That’s great What are you going

24:59 to buy we just want your opinion on this.” Okay Don’t want to engage us as buyers agent Don’t want to We just want your opinion on this That’s fine Um what are you going to buy there is a NAB and

25:08 Bendigo Bank in Mount Gambia that we want to buy for $2.5 million Mhm So I say to them “Oh sorry

25:17 Uh no not Mount Gambia Mount Barker in Mount Barker in South Australia and in Adelaide that

25:23 we want to buy And I said firstly have you been to Mount Barker no haven’t been to Mount Barker

25:29 Do you know where it is yes It’s about 30 40ks out of Adelaide So okay So what’s the yield on

25:36 this it’s 72% and that’s why I’m going to buy How long is the lease it expires next year So

25:43 I’m like how do you know the tenant is going to renew oh well the agent thinks it’s most likely

25:49 going to read you Okay great So you are a novice promotional property investor You’re not going to

25:55 You’ve been to a few webinars and you’re going to sink $2.5 million into a place you’ve never

26:00 been to don’t know just looked on Google Maps just because it has a has a tenant that’s a bank tenant

26:06 and that the agent said is most likely going to renew That’s got red flags so in everything right

26:14 so I said to him “Okay let me break this down to you Um you think Mount Barker is like a Camden in

26:22 Sydney right just out of Sydney.” He’s like “Yes.” I said “No Mount Barker is not like a Camden It’s

26:29 like a regional town driving between Sydney to CRA where your friend is at the moment.” He’s like “Oh

26:35 okay.” That number one Number two never negotiated with a bank Do you know that banks at the moment

26:42 are actually pulling out and signing shorter and shorter leases no Do you know that just for seven

26:48 and a half% yield that there when they vacate being a regional area the supply of tenants is

26:58 about 10% of what a metro metro city would be So to get another tenant to replace the same rent

27:03 as the bank will probably be highly unlikely considering they’ve been there for so long

27:09 don’t know that right now I said to him the true way of really doing that is not a seven

27:15 and a half percent If you were my client I would never put you into a property like that especially your first time and one who spent 2 and a half million right i would be looking

27:23 at buying that property at a 9% yield because it’s regional and it’s got a bank There’s a risk

27:30 that they won’t renew and plus the other rents might come in low I would be buying that at 9%

27:36 working through and negotiating by giving them incentives and estr which could take six months with a bank um we’ve negotiated with an app we know how long it’s taken to get a new lease

27:45 um get a new lease and then selling that back into the market for a 7% yield when I have a new 3 or 5 year lease I said that’s the game not the game of buying that as a seven forget a 7 and

27:56 a half% because what you’re going to find is the bank will play hard ball and you’re the little person they’re the big person they’ll play hard ball you’ll cave in your rent will drop and it

28:05 ends up in a 6% yielding property in Mount Bark and you’ve just lost 500,000 on the value of that property Also a lot of those regional banks are purpose-built They’re pretty unique buildings that

28:14 kind of are made for banks right then you also got the safe involved as well There’s got to be etern

28:22 Yeah So that’s the pitfall like been people who been to a few webinars think okay great I can now

28:27 go and buy What does someone say to me you pay for it either way just whether you pay for it

28:33 in real education paying a professional or you’re paying for it in education by [ __ ] it up Yeah

28:39 I like Larry like when you see a deal say it’s on a 5 plus 5 lease and it’s coming to you’re in the

28:45 fourth year of the first term of that lease right why would anyone buy that to me it’s like well the

28:50 reason that the guy is selling is he knows the tenants’s going to leave right that is my number one red flag with commercial Is that right not always Um I think the thing is a lot of this is

29:01 another thing that comes down to it is um a lot of people who are commercial property investors want

29:08 to sell and they go I’m going to sell that’s it put it on the market that’s it right they never spent time tidying up that property if they had spent 3 months tidying like going back to the

29:17 tenant to renegotiate the rent or the lease giving them some intent to get them on a longer lease looking at all their pest and building issues and tidy all of them up they can get a property their

29:27 pricing could go up by 20% pet but they don’t actually do that It becomes a trigger-happy

29:32 scenario Like I spoke to a client who wants to sell her property because she goes “Oh I think it’s a dud.” And I’m like “How do you know have you tried leasing it out have you tried selling

29:41 it um have you tried tidying up that property so that you can give it the best option to sell?” And

29:47 she’s like “No.” I said “But you’re telling me you want to do residential flips why don’t you first start out with doing your commercial like you’ve got a property here tidy up the lease go and get

29:56 a new tenant and then sell it Right so I think the what happens in those stages is that when

30:04 you’re talking about you know people are on that expiring lease term and everything else is that it was a trigger-happy decision to sell rather than a conscious decision to sell And if you’re a

30:14 savvy investor you could actually be picking up a really great deal because knowing that most people will walk away from that deal Question number three what has been the most valuable investment

30:24 advice you’ve ever received tell them Look at the property of what it could be rather than what it

30:29 is now So what it is is most people see now All they want is now right but if you could take a

30:35 property from good to great then that should be your journey of property ownership Not that you

30:41 want to buy great now You could go to an auction house and buy great now but you’ll get 3% That’s

30:47 what they’re paying for They’re paying for great you But you could buy good for 5% Make it 7% in

30:52 the great and then sell it for you know 3% Right that’s the good to great journey Yeah I like that

30:59 I like that All right Question number four What’s your ideal portfolio mix my ideal portfolio mix

31:05 has our three fundamental strategies which is cash flow growth and uplift So you got to have cash

31:11 flow you got to have anchor cash flow and that will probably be somewhere sitting about 40 to 50% um growth will probably sit somewhere around 20 to 30% with 20% to 30% of uplift right and but

31:22 in different assets classes or you just talking all different different types different types of asset oh across Australia across Australia So because there’s certain things that will only work

31:31 in different states and won’t work in the other states So things that work in ACT won’t work in

31:36 Melbourne Uh things that work in Brisbane won’t work in Adelaide So very very specific to the area

31:42 But what about shares crypto or are you just purely are you purely commercial if this is this is where you’re asking me about the portfolio I thought that was just a um around property But

31:50 if it was a diverse portfolio definitely I think that you know people should be having 20 to 30% of

31:57 their their their um investments in other forms So whether it’s shares um trading investing in

32:04 businesses that grow are are really key And also um you know um also in your trading something

32:11 liquid right because you never know you might find a really really great deal that you need to liquid

32:16 liquidate Yeah All right Question number five How if you you’ve got a couple of kids now if one of

32:23 when one of them turns 20 and they come to you say “Mom I’ve got $20,000 How should I invest it?”

32:28 What would you tell your child i’m a nation parent I’ll be telling them at 12 that they need to get

32:34 $20,000 through their YouTube channels and through them working to accumulate that and that by the

32:40 time they’re 15 or 16 they should be putting that into property already right my kids already in my

32:48 YouTube videos turning up to inspections and I was telling my son who’s 11 I said to him “Look

32:54 you got to learn these things.” I already made him sit into one of my seminars I said “You got to learn these things because one day you’re going to be doing this It’s part of the business.” Yeah

33:01 I loved you last You made me laugh I loved this last night You’re saying some kids take their some parents take their kids to Disneyland or whatever I take them on inspections to Mount Gambia Yeah

33:11 I have I have taken them to inspections in Mount Gambia Yes definitely Yeah [Applause] Do you own

33:19 an investment property washing Brown has helped over 250,000 property investors pay less tax

33:25 with the depreciation schedule Visit washing brown.com.au to pay less tax today [Music]

33:34 Question number six Now you’ve just turned 50 You’ve got no money and you’ve inherited

33:40 $500,000 Um how would you tell someone to invest that $500,000 and you’re not allowed to say put

33:46 into one of your syndications i would say to them take $250,000 buy something that is going

33:53 to give you a cash flow base that’s going to give you some money for you to live on right um then take the 250,000 that you’ve got spare and put it into an uplift property where you can make

34:02 250 into 400K Grow that over the next 3 to 5 years till you till you get a pile of a million dollars

34:08 in cash Divide that million dollars by 500K into a set and forget Continue to build with your 500K

34:15 You’ve got a 10ear horizon Um you can shorten that into 7 years but you got to really plan for for 10

34:21 years And if you do that you can retire within those 10 years between 100 to 150,000 in passive

34:27 income with that Is that a common scenario of a client comes to you at the moment like with the elderly generation says I’ve just got this money What I do with it is that does that happen all

34:36 the time i build portfolios all the time A clients come to me and go this is what I have I said great You know what my specialty is i dump on top of me everything you have right everything you have and

34:47 tell me where you want to go And my brain just goes bang here here here Move these pieces start doing this Here’s your pathway Implement implement implement and you’ll get there Because there’s a

34:57 few levers you got to pull at any one time But um if someone comes to me and says “I’ve got 50K and

35:03 I want $500,000 in passive income in 10 years.” I’m going to say “No that doesn’t work.” Right but

35:08 if they’re a doctor who says “I’ve got 500k I can I’ve got equity of 2 mill that I could access to

35:14 in the next couple of years and I want to retire a million dollars in passive income in 10 years time.” I’m like “That’s absolutely doable I can actually baft out a strategy and a blueprint for

35:23 you to do that What’s the Do you have to tell like with commercial because obviously you need a fair

35:28 bit of equity right is there a lot of is it do you have to turn a lot of people away in your business

35:34 i actually don’t think so I actually think that um that what I’ve learned from syndication and raising money and we’ve raised $18 million in the last two months right on our syndication

35:44 um is that there’s so much money out there for the right deals so much money like like it’s not

35:51 it’s the deals right if you were young and in your 20ies and you had zero money if I had no

35:57 money tomorrow my knowledge would be all I need to get back up right all I have to do is put the deal

36:02 together and then pitch It’s all about pitching and getting people investors into the deal Have a carried interest in the deal and you’ll be back on your feet right so you actually don’t need money

36:12 You need knowledge the knowledge because there’s so many people in their 50s like I’ve got clients

36:17 who are doctors surgeons pharmacists who so busy right they just can’t they can’t um they don’t

36:24 have time right and we say to them “Here’s a really great deal you should do XY Z this is why.” Okay All right Just do it right or this is the rest Just give me 10 minutes of your time

36:32 and I’ll show you what it is And that’s it Right there’s so many busy people that have cash that are ready to invest You just got to bring them the right deal And if you’re young and have no money

36:41 that’s the way you get started Interesting All right Question number seven If you could go back in time what would you tell your 20-year-old self about investing buy more properties Buy industrial

36:52 properties because co’s about to hit and that’s going to change the trajectory of industrial properties Yes Yes Has that changed has that maxed out do you think i think it’s pretty it’s probably

37:02 six months to go at the peak till the peak Fair enough I guess the other thing I interesting um

37:07 I I think you touched on it last night in the webinar was in relation to construction costs

37:12 right and it’s really it’s getting hard I was listening to a um big builder the other day called Watpack I don’t know if you heard of them but they was saying that with the Trump’s tariffs steel and

37:21 aluminium they can’t they’re struggling to price jobs because they don’t know what’s going to happen in that in that in regards to the tariffs on those things So there’s when I was younger when

37:30 I was starting as a quant there used to be thing called rise and falls contracts right So you would say okay well we’re price we’re allowing $2,000 a ton for steel If it goes up to 3,000 well the

37:40 contract needs to move with that And I think that might come back into play particularly with what’s happening in America I think so Well I’ve had and this is why property is going to become so um so

37:51 much part of some of some of the family offices and also the high net worth allocation of wealth

37:57 um well spending is that some of them are in the e-commerce business and some of them like I’ve had

38:02 um cuz I miss a little bit in the you know whole VC world and and the more you the higher end world

38:08 and they have they said like when Trump signed that things coming out of China was going to get that you know that that tariff right they had 120 $ million on a boat coming into the US

38:20 They had to turn away and go back to China It was cheaper for them to dump that than it was for them to bring it on shore and they could not afford to make another order because they just didn’t

38:29 know with a writer of his pen he could wipe out the entire wealth Where is that wealth going to go they’re going to put that into real property where they could touch feel it right so this is

38:38 why some of these shifts are going to come into property that we’re not expecting Interesting All

38:44 right Question number eight Uh what legacy do you want to leave your family or your community helen

38:50 I came to Australia at probably the lowest end of the of the the spectrum right first generation

38:56 migrant My mother has $70 on her We struggle to put food on the table I I want to leave this world

39:03 at the top tier right traveled all the way through so I understand how not because of the money but

39:09 because what I know what I want to know experience what it is like But I want that my legacy here in

39:14 Australia is to raise the the financial literacy level of every Australian so they actually have a

39:22 conscious understanding of what it takes to retire and have the light and have a planning and have a

39:27 blueprint of what they need to get to retirement and what they can do uh postretirement comfortably

39:33 right and for some people that’s traveling to Europe on first class every year For some people that’s just a trip to Thailand on you know in May whatever the holiday specials are It doesn’t

39:42 really matter what it is right as long as they know conscious and building towards it So they don’t wake up at 65 and says “I’m going to retire next year.” How what am I going to live on i don’t

39:50 know $20,000 a year Who knows right so that’s my passion terms of legacy to my children Um

39:57 what I’m going to leave them is when they are old enough I’m Asian We don’t leave them with anything We give it to them while we’re alive right so what we do by the zero yeah by the time they are adults

40:10 they will have digital assets they can do whatever they want with and that’s you know that may be um you know knowing how to speak in front of cameras have their own YouTube channel have they

40:20 be able to do all the me navigate AI all of this stuff they’re going to be able to put together so if they wanted to become a digital nomad and go off- grid and do all this and build businesses

40:29 they can if they want to become an architect and sit behind a desk for 9 to 9 to9 Fine that’s fine

40:34 Whatever they want but I will give them the enough digital assets to get them started and then the rest is up to them Are they showing any interest in property or they’re too young they

40:44 were I’m an Asian mother They don’t get a choice Although I can’t call you tiger mom I think is

40:50 that I actually don’t care what results they get at school I just like you We would expect you to

40:55 be I expect you to be starting your own business soon Very good It’s like it doesn’t matter if you

41:02 fail at school It doesn’t matter about that math test But you know what we’re going to watch this video How Mr Beast is How Mr Beast became Mr Beast Very good Very good All right we’re getting to the

41:13 end Number nine What does success look like to you Helen for me you look pretty successful but what does success look like to you i think it’s really interesting Success um what success means to me

41:23 is actually being treated equal and being able to have being able playing on equal playing ground

41:29 Okay So that that is something I’ve been fighting for in every space of my career I was never the

41:36 chosen one Never the chosen I was never chosen to be on stage Never chosen to be um to to you

41:43 know run a this business Never chosen to be to be I was never the chosen one for for for let’s say a

41:49 client a client The thing is commercial property is a maledominated industry It’s a white male

41:54 dominated industry So I’m an Asian female right to be an Asian female playing a white male dominated

42:00 industry you have to outperform outlast do better than everyone else And you’re never the chosen one

42:06 And you have to be okay with that But they’re always going to look at you and look at someone else and go you know what i might go with them Yeah And then that’s okay right so you have to

42:14 fight harder and do better right on stage that’s you know like that necessarily they won’t chase

42:22 you because you’re the Asian female right but that’s okay Just create your own stage right so um to be able to have an equal playing field would be a really really great success to be say hey you

42:32 know recognize the things you’ve done the hard work you’ve done and to be able to to you know open that floodgate be really really good I would love the association of commercial property and

42:41 Helen Tarrant so that’s what success looks like to me when someone thinks of commercial property they think of Helen Tarrant that’s what I’m working towards and I guess to build lasting memories

42:50 and experiences with my family so question number 10 Helen now the reason I started this podcast was because I saw my father lose all his money In fact I was in a commercial property deal funnily

43:00 enough Um and so that’s what this podcast’s about So Warren Buffett is quoted as saying “Rule number

43:06 one in investing never lose money.” Rule number two never forget rule number one Helen how do we

43:12 never lose money as investors i’m going to counter that with another saying Alex Hamosi said “If you

43:18 want to make $100 million you have to lose $10 million If you want to make a billion dollars

43:24 you have to make you have to lose a hundred million to start with It’s the education the price you pay for education right that you have to lose right so um so I guess my answer to that

43:37 is you can’t if you live your life avoiding losing money you would ever never play in the big leagues

43:44 You have to take a gamble and say win or lose I’m doing this and what is my worst case scenario so

43:52 we’re running wealth hacking life right that’s a $100,000 to put the ads people in the room What’s

44:01 the worst case scenario it could be complete flop You guys could show up Um we could not have the

44:06 sales in the room We could not have people show up Um you could just reflect really badly on me

44:12 I could lose $100,000 That’s the worst case scenario right what’s the best case scenario

44:19 that it’s a defining brand We kicked off something We love being there with all the other speakers Everyone learned something and this is something that is a good theme that we can continue on for

44:29 years to come and build on it right is the upside better than the downside if you don’t have 100k

44:36 probably But but the upside for me is a hell of a lot better And every time I think of the upside

44:42 versus the downside Um yeah like when we put our latest indication together we bet the farm

44:50 I bet the entire company everything else I had everything I had onto that deal Right we settled

44:57 that deal 5 minutes to 5 on the day the vendor was going to pull the deal because he was such

45:02 a dick about it Right he wouldn’t give us the bank called him personally and said “We will settle it first thing in the morning.” And he says “No.” Really if the bank personally calls him and say

45:11 “Hey mate we just don’t have capacity today Settle $20 million right today We’ll do it first thing in

45:16 the morning.” to say no that’s like pretty bad you pretty bad right so that’s what the kind of

45:22 vendors were dealing with the whole time um but it was a great deal and you know I could have lost a

45:28 lot of money in that I could have lost a lot of investor money in that you know like but now you

45:33 know like ever since that deal like deals are now flowing to us people calling us go hey got this great deal right do you want to put it together so we’ve now you know one strip we’ve done a

45:42 we’ve defined a reputation and we’re moving up now there’s always a bonus question on Ten with Ty Um

45:49 because all the other questions are on the website so it’s not that hard The bonus question to you is why would I buy into an unlisted fund when I can buy something like Centuria office fund which is

45:59 obviously on the stock market um which is trading at $1.24 has a net tangible asset backing of $1.74

46:06 and a yield of 8.6% The other advantage of buying something on the stock market is I can easily sell

46:12 out when I want to whereas an unlisted fund it’s a lot harder It’s mostly to do with association

46:18 right in this modern era of people investing people want to know like and trust So they want

46:23 to know that they participated in a development of a building They want to know that we’re part

46:29 of that deal that particular deal A charter and hall is you are one of 10,000 In an unlisted

46:35 property deal you’re one of 10 one of 20 one of 50 right that it’s a personal connection to the deal

46:41 to the person that’s doing it right the returns ultimately is better because if you take it as a

46:48 long stretch over a five or six year deal because the uplift at the end if you have the skill set is better whereas you will get the steady income Steady income is great for people who retire but

46:58 remember a proportion of our generation is not looking to retire They’re looking to level up and a charter hall is not going to level them up Right it’s going to keep them at level Right

47:08 if you’re in your 60s and you’re retiring and you just want an 6 8% return after tax and stuff

47:13 that’s great But if you’re in your 30s and 40s and you want the exponential jump to put in something

47:18 for 300k and get 500k back a charter [ __ ] isn’t going to do it for you Oh I’d argue that it could

47:24 because these these some of these funds have been hammered so much that you know Century Office fund

47:30 used to trade like four bucks now dollar$1 dollar24 it could come back and obviously the reason why it’s gone down so low is because people feel like the offices you know co hit and

47:39 it got hammered right but people will go back to work and the other thing about those those funds is like what we talked about before they’re not building any more offices Centuria office fund

47:47 put on their annual reports there’s no more office supply coming on the market in two years time so it will be absorbed which will then increase the price the share price I would have thought you

47:57 would hope you would hope right because this is the thing it’s it’s the calculator returns versus banking on hope and pray right it’s the residential versus commercial argument coming back

48:05 to that because in residential people buy hoping that because of historical growth they’re going to get future growth right that’s that’s the the way it goes But in in the commercial space it’s like

48:14 okay well they’re not building anymore for 2 years but what’s going to happen after that right it’s

48:19 like 10 years ago people forgot that every second warehouse in Sydney was vacant right 10 years ago

48:26 people could build enough um office spaces to fill this to fill demand in Melbourne Today there it’s

48:33 a waste It’s a ghost town right so we tend to forget So you know like and the other thing is

48:39 control and relatability It’s like yes you can be in Centuria but do you how much control do

48:44 you have and the direction they’re going to take on their management board they don’t don’t have any but you do have a diversified portfolio across many different states of 15 different buildings So

48:53 you are limiting your risk there as well though again but you could do that by investing in different properties and different deals right and again it is about the capital uplift that

49:02 you get versus stability right and they’re two ch different different things if someone is a

49:08 developer versus someone who wants to buy set and forget they’re two different mindsets and we can

49:13 talk about this at the upcoming wealth summit hacking um event would you like to so uh just

49:19 for those out there I’m speaking at one of Helen’s gigs soon this is June What’s the date today june the 3rd So it is the first uh event First event’s 15th of June in Brisbane um followed by Melbourne

49:31 on the 17th and the 21st in Sydney So the world hacking event is bringing together a collection of people in the world creation space to uplift you to the next level We’ll have professionals

49:40 there like Tyrone yourself um we’ll have uh people talking about asset protection as well as all the

49:46 things to do with trading property uh and leveling up to the next level in terms of your wealth

49:52 creation journey Firstly thanks for coming on and but where can people reach out and uh contact you Helen and need help if they need a commercial property so helentarrant.com uh you can find a

50:01 lot of information about myself unikorn.com.au So unicorn with a k (u n i k o r n dot com.au) you

50:08 Unicorn with a K uh is a great place to be able to put in some details on our website and find us there Where’ the name Unicorn come from with a K I woke up one day and says “I’m going to call my

50:18 company Unicorn.” And I’m going to call it with a K And the reason for that is I’ve always just done that Just woke up and go “Yep this is what I’m going to do it.”

50:26 um so Unicorn the reason for that is every client comes in the door their dream property is a 10% yielding property to a national tenant with development potential under a million dollars in Sydney That’s not achievable It’s never

50:35 going to be achievable It’s unicorn So that’s why I decided to call the company Unicorn The idea is build a unicorn portfolio rather than look for the unicorn and spelled it with a K because we’re

50:45 in the era of people having one word businesses with an unusual letter So hey why not the C was

50:50 taken Make it a K Love it Love it Well I’ve loved this I could talk commercial property with you

50:55 for about a week I reckon Um and I will at this wealth hacking summit So thank you for coming

51:01 on Ten with Ty I’ve really enjoyed it You’re a wealth of knowledge and thanks again Thank you Ten with Ty is brought to you by Washington Brown the property depreciation experts [Music]