Australian Expat in Dubai: Investing Back Home Through Property

There's a lot of information. There's a lot of challenges when you start, but I think you have to just dive in and get the right people to support you, get the right information. You never know when you're going to leave, so you might as well take advantage of the time that you have here. So many people in that space I've seen have that expertise in this other area and think that it's applicable to all areas. When I talk to people, a lot of people have these ideas, you know, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that, but if you kind of stick to property itself, it's kind of stable, so you have that continuous growth, and I've seen that over the years as well.

Arjun here from the Property Nerds show, and I'm back for another expat episode, but this time we're not in London anymore. We're in Dubai in the UAE. It's my last stop as part of the tour, where I've been catching up with Aussies who live on the other side of the world, work here, but they want to invest back home. They want to invest in their financial future. And in today's episode, we catch up with an experienced property investor, Tim, who works in the aviation industry here in the UAE and has been traveling for just over a decade, working abroad, living abroad, but being able to invest back home in Australia.

We talk about his journey to date, tips for other expats, challenges that he's gone through, and some of the things he loves about Dubai and some of the things he misses about back home. So let's go into the chat, chat with Tim, and talk about his property investing journey with InvestorKit and being an expat investing back home in Australia. Nerd alert! Property Nerds, the home for data-driven property investors, where we uncover Australia's hot and cold markets, latest headlines and trends. Tim, welcome to the Property Nerds show, my friend, here in Dubai.

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here. Yeah, appreciate it, mate. I mean, I love just speaking to Aussies from all over the country. I've had a stop in France, then over to London, here for the last stop of the tour in Dubai.

I want to go back to your journey, though, moving here. How long ago was that, and what prompted the move to begin with? In Dubai itself, I've been here since 2020, actually. So I've been here for six years. But actually left Australia in 2015.

So I've been an expat for almost 11 years now. So I would say maybe just to take it back a little bit to the start of the expat journey. In 2015, I was working maybe five years into my career, and I'm in aviation. So within aviation, obviously, it's a global industry. So next steps are not necessarily in Australia.

So in 2015, I applied to a job. Actually, the first place I went to was Qatar in Doha. So from there, I stayed there for a little bit. And then again, I was looking at the next step, and I ended up in Hong Kong. So I was there for a couple of years.

And then switching to Dubai, after two and a half years, I've managed to kind of have enough experiences here to keep me stable and keep me grounded. So I would say the initial purpose of the move was to grow my career. But yeah, I've been here for six years now. You're well-traveled, mate. All the hot expat hubs you've been through.

Was it a career you always wanted to get into? Was this industry what you saw yourself in for some time before doing it? And did you always imagine yourself traveling? Was that part of the plan? Well, traveling definitely was an appeal, right?

You know, when you're young and you're growing up, you kind of think about what you want to do. And traveling and being part of the aviation industry was a little bit sexy. You know, you get to see the world and all of that stuff. So I would say that was always an appeal. I started off more in the business side of things, actually.

I got a few opportunities in tax and business, but I didn't like it. So I kind of went back to where I wanted to see myself in the future. And aviation was really something at the forefront. And I ended up studying aeronautical space engineering at University of Sydney. And then, yeah, then managed to get in the industry, which is also a difficult thing.

And yeah, now we're here. Now, you've still got some roots back in Sydney with property playing a part earlier on in your journey. I want to talk about when you move to places like Dubai, where the lifestyle is pretty special. Obviously, with travel and the experience you have in different countries, you must meet some other Aussies here. And when some of the Aussies that maybe don't invest back home or in property back home and don't get that momentum for wealth the same way you have with multiple properties back home, what do you feel the big differences between, say, the journey you're on versus what they're on?

Because you're out here building a portfolio, still traveling, still working in different parts of the world. But I also see the other side, which is many Aussies who do that but don't build wealth back home. I would say that people in general, and not just Aussies, in many of these cities that I've been, it's kind of transient cities. So a lot of them come and see what it's like, have a step up in their career maybe, and don't really think too far in the long term. So I would say that the kind of living in the moment, living in the lifestyle, living the life.

And I would say that looking back, for me, I've always known that my stance in these places have been short, and I've always wanted to keep my property growing, my property portfolio growing. And I would say that my wealth over time has been supported by my career, but it's really been built by my property investing. So when I talk to people, and a lot of people have these ideas, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. But if you kind of stick to property itself, it's kind of stable. So you have that continuous growth, and I've seen that over the years as well.

Did you feel property was an attractive vehicle because of your knowledge or experience with it in the past? Was it for savings because you knew you had to just send something back and hold it? What was it that made it appealing as a vehicle itself? As a vehicle itself, well, I mean, I came into expat life with already a couple of properties under my belt. So I already knew the mathematics of it, the theory of it, and the growth that comes with property.

So it was just a matter of applying the same in a different, obviously, environment with being an expat and treated differently for tax purposes and all of that stuff. So it was more the fact that I had that experience, and I just wanted to use my expat time. In general, you earn a bit more when you go for these stints, right? You earn salaries a little bit different to Australia. So I wanted to take advantage of that salary and invest it in the right vehicles, and property was just something that I was experienced in.

What about the challenges that come with property investing? Was there a few things that you're like, okay, this is pretty different now. I'm an expat. Yeah, definitely. So I would say that obtaining finance, it's the thing that keeps you going in the property game, and there's challenges with that being a domestic person in Australia.

But I think the challenges are even greater when you're an expat because they're looking at your salary from a different source, and they don't fully understand the tax implications. So you probably know in Dubai there is no tax implications. So when you're reporting your gross salary, it's actually your complete salary. It is your net salary. And I understood from some of the banks that there's different rules that they apply to that to minimize their risk.

So they may not take your full salary, et cetera, et cetera. So I would say that I had challenges getting the finance throughout my journey. I would say that also, obviously, you're away from Australia, and you don't fully grasp the market. So that's when you need a little bit of support to understand what's happening in the market. Traditionally, for me, I've invested kind of in my local area when I first started out.

So I first started out when I was 25 or something like that. That's awesome to get in so young, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Well, it was due to my parents. So my parents helped me, and we looked in areas where we grew up.

So that's how I was shaped. But being an expat, you don't have that proximity anymore to the actual properties. I would say, though, that having moved around a little bit and also having different stages in life, you kind of understand what properties people need, right? So myself, as someone moving into a new country with just my wife, I'm okay with an apartment, right? With someone who's having kids, and especially in a place in Dubai, I'm looking for a bigger space, which is close to a park.

So you kind of have that understanding as well, and you kind of apply it from here to the Australian market as well. So some rules followed, but then some was like, yeah, I don't want to backyard it again and again. I needed to get that diversity. But what's interesting, when you talk about those challenges of the lending fund, it's like, oh, I'm not getting taxed right now, but us Aussies want to treat you like an Aussie, and we want to tax you. So we want to be like, let's just tax your currency.

And that place, it did okay. I sold it in 2023, but I would say that probably didn't do as well as what I expect my last purchase to do. Because with my last purchase, I see all the research, I see all the data, and I trust the professionals to kind of have done that back-end work for me. So yeah, in terms of selecting the property itself, there's a little bit of a difference compared to what we experienced in the past and what we applied in the past. I think the biggest thing I'm noticing is like, you're seeing a shift in your approach.

And I reckon the approach now is matching your career approach too. Because it sounded like before the approach was gut feel, opinion, seek similarity, that's familiar as well, family. And then it's quite surprising because you're the engineering expert, right? Like you're the guy with the brains in the space. And so I give that as a compliment to you because so many people in that space I've seen have that expertise in this other area and think that it's applicable to all areas.

It's like the opposite. It's like the same with me. Like I could not survive that day in your world and be able to understand to that depth. So it takes a lot of that ability to reflect and go, you know what? I don't want to go off family, opinion, background, like similar.

I want to go and use research data. How comfortable or comforting was that approach for you? Because that's very similar to now what the approach you take for your work and what you do there. Yeah, it's comforting in the sense that I trust numbers because numbers is part of my work. I also can let go a little bit because I've had the experience of seeing the growth.

And even though I would say, you know, I didn't pick properties necessarily on data-based heavy research, they still grew, right? They still grew. Now I'm looking at it more like, okay, if I have the data and someone's giving me the data, I expect to have that higher growth. And that's what's exciting to me about using professionals. That's what's exciting to me about being in the game of property investing for another 10, 15 years because hopefully that will all pan out as it's supposed to.

But yeah, it's a little bit more like also easing of the mind, right? Like you're just kind of outsourcing that worry to somebody else to make that decision, to help you with that decision. And numbers is a perfect platform to base that decision on. Absolutely. Thinking about your next move in property, before you act, get the facts.

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au and download your free copy today. Link in the show notes. And now let's get back into the show. Talk about strategy now, not so much the property, because the property we've purchased for you now diversifying the portfolio. But you had our portfolio strategist Kit work closely with you and he's been staying in touch to help you go from a property to now a portfolio beyond what you guys have purchased.

How important has that strategy been for you and how has that helped you in terms of where you are today versus where you want to be? Yeah, that's a good point. Actually, that's what we struggled with a little bit before, because strategy is an important thing and we didn't know ourselves what our strategy was, right? So we thought about passive income, we thought about increasing the capital growth, the capital of the property, etc. But it wasn't so clear to us as it is now of what we want to do in the future and the options that we have in the future.

So yeah, so shout out to Kit. He's kind of helped me understand what triggers I can pull. Let's say once I finish my expat journey and go back to Australia, what opportunities there could be for me and what I need to do in the meantime, as long as my expat journey continues and how to prepare myself for that. So, you know, we've talked a little bit about the commercial property, we've talked about what happens when I sell my property here and that type of thing. So yeah, it's really interesting to have that sounding board to, although I understand, I've listened to past podcasts and I've understood strategies from different guests and all of that stuff, it's nice to have that person to, okay, this is my particular exact situation, what strategy can I apply to get to X?

So yeah, it's really been pretty important. That's actually a really important piece. What you're saying is something many people don't realize. They think that using a buyer's agent means I want to buy a property, someone buys it for me. But what we really are is from the expat perspective, especially a property advisory, which is now we want to build the strategy first, reverse engineer the end goal, because even whilst you're working and living overseas, it doesn't mean that you're just doing it to transact.

You're doing it still for a goal. Otherwise, why invest at all? Like you're doing it for a goal. So take that goal, reverse engineer how many properties, buy when, when to hold, when to sell, and then you're able to come away with a property specific plan and be able to say, okay, I'm clear. Does that remove a lot of weight off your shoulders?

Because I imagine when you're living and working overseas and thinking and balancing between life here and life at home one day in Australia, there must be a lot of pressure on the shoulders of like, am I investing enough? Am I doing enough? How comfortable, does that make you feel a lot more comfortable? Yeah, for sure. I mean, as somebody who's living outside of their home, you would always question when is the time to go home, right?

So it's probably- You're missing the coffees, yeah? Yeah, exactly. Sorry, Dubai, you've got amazing food, but Aussie coffees, can't beat it. Yeah, for sure. My parents always bring the coffee when they come here, the coffee beans.

Yeah, so it's always in the back of your mind, when is the time to go home? So having a partner with you to help you make use of the time in between really helps a lot. And at the same time as well, you never know where life can take you and your career could take you somewhere else in the next few years as well. So you have to concentrate on that aspect of your life and taking away the whole basis of financial freedom and everything and giving that to, I mean, allowing someone else to advise you on that really reduces the burden because then you can concentrate on family, you can concentrate on your career. And I don't have to spend all my waking moments thinking about what's happening with my strategy, with my property, because you kind of have a plan in place.

Yeah, and in your case, the opposite moments because of the time zones, right? So luckily you don't have to do that anymore. But mate, I want to understand, so if you're meeting another Aussie here and they've been here for some time and you've had the success, you've had building wealth, what tips do you have for them when it comes to other Aussies who are here, working here, earning some great tax-free dollars as well, but they want to make sure their wealth is being built right. What tips do you have for them in terms of their wealth being built? I think you have to just go for it.

There's probably, you know, there's challenges when you start, let's say that I haven't started anything and I don't know about the whole investing scenario. There's a lot of information, there's a lot of challenges when you start, but I think you have to just dive in and get the right people to support you, get the right information. And I think most of the time things will work out. And yeah, it's a short time, I would say, if I meet people, someone here in Dubai, you never know when you're going to leave, so you might as well take advantage of the time that you have here. Yeah, give it a proper go, don't hesitate, don't sit back, because time flies really quickly, doesn't it?

Yeah, six years now here, so it's... Wow. And 11 years as a... Well, what have been your, if you were to say, like your top two or three favorite things that you've enjoyed about your six years here in Dubai, what would you say it is? Dubai is a great place for convenience, mate.

Really good, huh? Yeah, it's a really, really great place for convenience. And probably the other thing is that coming from Australia, you're transported now into more of the middle of the world, and the opportunities of that geographic location for travel is probably something that's not easily replicated for Australians. You know, we have access to many places, and I've been to places where I never thought I would go to, and probably that would be the biggest thing, I would say, would be, yeah, one of the greatest things that I've had. Any staff deals that you've been getting as well as a result of it?

Any special perks? Yeah, I mean, we work for the airline, so it's been... Also, that helped. Awesome, awesome. Well, what about if you were to flip it now and go the one or two things that you miss about home outside of coffee, because we already discussed how good that is, what are one or two things that you really miss about back home?

I would say the environment, right? It's the fresh air, right?