How Aman Built an $11M Property Portfolio in 5 Years

As an investor building a portfolio of $11 million across eight properties in the last five years, what was that flick of the switch to suddenly buying six more properties? The figure itself was not something that I was very fixated on. I was more fixated on the value of the properties as opposed to the number of properties. Is this what you originally envisioned your portfolio would look like from the start? What happened was that once we bought those properties, we were then able to get a quick 30, 40, 50% boost in a short space of time.

I used to not believe in that strategy going back pre-2020, and I decided to look into it further. You need to take the emotion out of it. What would they pay a premium for? What are the things that are important to people? It doesn't make sense on all properties.

It actually is the one that doesn't look the prettiest out of all the ones you've purchased. Business owners and high-income professionals, this episode is for you. Today, we chat with Aman Sethi, a client of ours at InvestorKit, on his journey to building an $11 million property portfolio. He's a business owner who's actually also partnered with an Aussie icon, Brett Lee, famous cricketer and fast bowler, and a global superstar. On this episode, Aman's going to take us through the mistakes and the successes and the tips he has in building such a high-performing portfolio.

Let's jump right into it. Nerd alert! Property nerds, the home for data-driven property investors, where we uncover Australia's hot and cold markets, latest headlines and trends. Aman, welcome to the show, my friend. Thanks, Arjun.

Great to be here. I know we've got a special story to jump into today about your journey with us as an investor building a portfolio of $11 million across eight properties in the last five years with us. But before I go into that, could you tell us a little bit about what you do, the journey you've been on in terms of your profession, your business? Because I'd love to share a bit more about that as well. Awesome.

Yeah, so from our side, Arjun, we've been in business for about eight years now. So with Jigsaw Australia, we've got two business arms. So one is the immigration side, where we do visa advisory for a lot of other businesses as well as individuals as well, covering all the spectrum of visa applications, whether it's business sponsorship, partner visas, skilled migration, the whole remit really, along with complex cases as well. And so we've got a team of lawyers and agents that handle that for us. The second part of the business is more in the recruitment industry and job search coaching.

So we work a lot with the migrant community in terms of helping them get their first jobs in Australia a lot of times, but also sometimes their second, third and fourth jobs. And so, yeah, so we've got a bit of a unique mix where we have staffing solutions as well as the immigration and visa advisory services in our business. Now, I've got to give you guys a big shout out at Jigsaw as well, because a couple of reasons. Firstly, some of our team in the research team, Grace has been supported by your team when it comes to becoming an Aussie and working with us. Secondly, yours truly and my family, you guys helping us.

My dad's an Aussie citizen now, thanks to you and your team. And me, I'm very, very close. In fact, I have to brag about this one. Got the test, didn't even study, just got one wrong, only one. Guys, that's like over 90%.

How many stars on the Australian flag? The Kiwi flag that we've got is confusing. We just got that one extra, I think, or we're missing one. See, even that part I got wrong, but I reckon it was probably that. But I want to give a big shout out to you guys just to say thank you for just a super efficient process on that.

But for those who don't know, this is a pretty cool fact. Yes, in that industry, you're in that from a business perspective, but you've got a unique partner on the journey as well with you in the business world. Talk to us about who you've partnered with in terms of your agency and your business at the moment. Yeah, sure. So yes, we do have a unique partner.

So I'm a big cricket fan myself. And a couple of years ago, we were looking at different options for our business. And we actually, yeah, I bumped into Brett Lee at an event and I started having a chat with him. And he's obviously very passionate about the industry as well as he's a global citizen. And he spent a lot of time in the subcontinent and obviously UK and Europe as well.

And yeah, so long story short, he became our brand ambassador a couple of years ago. And so now he's our business partner and brand ambassador. We work closely with him on various different aspects. We were on a yacht with him actually last week and he'd come down and for the cricket season, he's here in Australia over the next couple of months as well. And yeah, very exciting to have him with us and supporting us as well.

A true Aussie icon, Aussie superstar and a global superstar. Like average bowler. Honestly, like I'm a huge cricket fan as well. Actually, we're heading off to the cricket this weekend, which would be awesome in the Australia. But who are you going for actually?

Who am I going for? See, now you're probably into a tough spot. You know, I'm the citizenship advisory board might be watching. I will hand down say I'm the dirtiest bandwagoner of all time. Whoever wins that.

Basically, right. I like one day you'll see me wearing an all blacks jersey. The other day you'll see me like South Africa won the World Cup. Like, let's go. And I'm like, where does South Africa come in?

Right. I'm a bandwagoner. When Tigers start to win the NRL, I'll let you know. I'll say, look, I was in Westmead when I first came to Australia. It's my first Southern.

I'll try and find something little to relate to it. And I'll be like the best fan. So, yeah, political answer right there, man. I reckon this weekend, if my dad wasn't coming, I'd be like Australia. But dad's there.

So I'm going to go India. Let's go team India. But we'll see how we go this weekend. But I made it just coming back to Binger. He such a humble dude.

Like I remember you invited me and a couple others to the club event. And some of our team, Scotty, Scotty Baldwin, actually went out to the cricket SCG and had some time with you and Brett Lee as well. That world of like just the business you're in, migration, Brett Lee's passion in that space. I'm interested to know. I know we're talking about your success in the portfolio and how well you've done that.

How does Brett Lee see property investing, building wealth through property? I knew that was coming. He's trying to pick up a lead. We're getting an intro, right? We're getting an intro.

Introduce him to me too, mate. How does he think of all things property in Australia? I mean, having such success, his career, financially, business. What's his view on things? Yeah, look, I'll be honest with you.

I haven't had an in-depth discussion about property with him so far. But I remember we were waiting for it to go on stage at an event. And he did mention something about property being the way to go in terms of building the future world. So I think, as with all celebrities, in terms of their personal dealings and things, that's obviously closely guarded. So I don't actually know, to be very honest with you.

But I think he's a big believer in property based on that chat. And I was having a chat to him about my portfolio. He saw an article maybe that we got. And yeah, he's definitely supportive, I would say. So maybe worth a call and see how you go from there.

I reckon we've got a net session coming up together soon. You know, get my bowling back into action. Were you a bowler or a batter? Basketball player too. But I actually, like, this is where I get, like, real, you know, emotional.

What could have been? I should have stuck with the stereotype, hey. I think if I'd stuck with the stereotype of cricket, it would have gone a lot better than the basketball career did. But something about basketball. You're a fan of basketball, though.

I'm a huge fan of basketball. Basketball went all right, though. But it was just the worst playing the best teams all the time. So it was like, it was one of those ones. It's like, either get some good game time in a B team.

But then the pride kicked in. And I was like, I would rather warm that bench mightily on the best teams out. But just sit there on the bench. So my basketball career is probably as much as a warm-up jumper, maybe coming off after the game. But, like, not during the game, that's for sure.

At least you're on the team, mate. Yeah, that was my thinking. Be on the team. Let's go, boys. Reps, all that sort of stuff.

But, no, look, you'd actually already had two properties before we kicked off. But in 2020, something switched. So I guess I'd love to know, what was that flick of the switch that took you from going, hey, I've had two properties for many, many years, to suddenly buying six more properties in a couple of years in quick succession? What was that switch for you? I think the switch was that I'd always thought about building a property portfolio I used to not believe in that strategy going back pre-2020 until he kind of said that a few times and I decided to look into it further.

It doesn't make sense on all properties, but it makes sense on higher valued properties doing it this way. And what it was was executive homes, I'll just label it that, in middle ring suburbs. If you have a big budget, and this isn't suitable for everyone, this is like when you're operating at one to two mil budget or beyond, if you go all of a sudden to the inner inner rings, what ends up happening is those homes and that bigger budget, they're actually like entry level homes on those inner budgets, on those inner city rings. And then you have this kind of subpar looking house in a good piece of land closer in, and the yield's really poor, like really, really poor. And so you're just getting smashed with cash flow, but you feel good from a prestige that you're in really, really close.

And then you're all of a sudden trying to do that whole worst house in the best possible area and the numbers aren't quite right. Then you have the outer ring markets, right? Where like Amman's point, you can get 10, 15, 20 in his budgets and position of strength, but then all of a sudden it's a lot to manage, a lot to do. And then if you come to the middle and you just kind of still get your normal home, okay, still the same, there's nothing special here. But when we found we got like those inner slash middle, but mainly middle ring, but you got the executive home, the fifth bed, the third bathroom, the split level, maybe the extra study, the cinema room, something, we found two things happening.

It wasn't inner city prestige land that the dollar per square meters was just wild. And it wasn't like a normal rental where you got the six to 800 a week, you could test it and be like, there's nothing like this, should we try 1200? And in fact, like one of Amman's properties was super high yielding, even at a one and a half mil, two mil value today. Like it just shows that there is this little part in the market where if you do have a bigger budget closer to like two mil in today's terms, you can start to target these properties where you can go, I'm gonna get the nicer property that someone wouldn't necessarily build out far, but it doesn't exist in because it's too big for that type of land. And so this is middle ring executive home that offers you higher yield against the suburb averages.

That was an approach we took. So what drew you to that strategy outside of the numbers? Because I guess I've talked about the numbers side of it. Was there anything that drew you to that strategy outside of the numbers itself? Or was it just purely a numbers play?

I wanted efficiency, it less is more for me. What was your thoughts? Look, it was largely a numbers play. And I think the way that we looked at it was that we have this property at worst, it's gonna rent at this level, which is say the normal level within the suburb. But because of the uniqueness, there's a potential for that property to rent at a much higher level as well.

And that was the risk that we knew that this is the best case scenario, the worst case is still the normal. And I think, yeah, we went for those properties that had that potential. And some of them lived up to that potential, some of them still came back as normal. But the ones that lived up to it, suddenly you have a high value asset where the yield is much higher than what an asset of that value would do. And I think that's where, yeah, we kind of talked about that tactic.

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And now let's get back into the show. I mean, just looking at one of the properties you purchased for 1. 175, when you originally purchased that property, it was renting for 900. Which is solid. Yeah, it's solid, but now it's renting for 1,250.

That's pretty good. But how important to you is it that you don't sacrifice yield for quality? Yeah, I think it has to be a mixture of both. I mean, yield is important, especially if you're gonna buy multiple properties. If you get your cashflow in trouble and you can't really afford to keep buying, then you have to stop at a certain point, right?

So I think yield is critical. But of course, the quality of the property, and that's why we engage with Arjun and the team, right? So we always had that peace of mind that when I went to Arjun and his team, they were always doing all those checks and we're not gonna buy an asset that is not of the highest quality in any case. So I think that was one of the key reasons why we've had this relationship for so many years and we leave the quality part to Arjun to work out for us. Yeah, well, sitting at 11 mil worth of assets, I mean, even on a conservative growth rate, 5%, you're looking at 550,000 a year compounding growing your wealth.

I mean, how important is that to you as a business owner to have your business generating the cashflow but then have the wealth building in the background? Yeah, look, it's really critical. I mean, to have that base and having the assets that do have the capital growth over time, I think it's critical for peace of mind and understanding that overall from a holistic perspective, the wealth is growing. So I think, yeah, it's been a large part of the reason that I am able to take a bit more risk and able to invest a bit more in the business because I have this base that I've set up. And so that's a big factor for sure.

Well, mate, you've always, credits to you, you've always had great success from your corporate career to then your business. You've earned well, you've done well financially on that aspect of your growth in career. And then I think of many other high-income and professionals and business owner professionals because there was a point in your investing journey where you had just the two properties for many, many years. What do you think holds back many other high-income professionals, business owners from really like scaling up their wealth when they're also in those strong positions, but they don't? Because you're on the other side now of that.

What do you think holds others back? I think it's, you know, it's hard to talk for everyone, obviously, but it's just the mindset thing as well. So a lot of people, they like to have, you know, cash in their bank and, you know, those things. And they feel that, you know, with property, it's not always a positive net at the end. Sometimes there is, you know, that gap there and they're, you know, risk averse on that side.

Or sometimes, you know, people are risk takers in certain areas of life and not in others. So I think it's a really tricky one to say why it holds back some people that like to, you know, do more in the share market or crypto these days and as opposed to property. But for me, I think property is the vehicle that I would say is the most consistent, stable for long-term wealth generation. And it's about, you know, having that five, 10, 20 year plan in place that if you invest in property, the right property and keep at it, you know, in 10, 20 years, you're gonna be in a really strong position because of leverage. And that's the way that I've always looked at it.

And for me, you know, the volatility of the share market or crypto, that's not something that sits well with my personality. I prefer the, you know, the more longer term game from that perspective. And that's why I've gone down the property side. You know what you've done there? It's made me just think of like how you simplify it into two parts.

It's like really that long-term view of investing and what it's done in the past. But then secondly, you're turning it into routine. I feel so many high-income professionals and business owners, they don't look at routine because they're so used to like the roller coasters that come with business. And they're so used to, I'll wait until I hit this and then. I wanna hit a home run.

I'm gonna buy this one asset and it's gonna do everything for me. Or I'm gonna wait until I can buy something crazy. And then it's like so much time goes in this roller coaster of ups and downs and changes in emotion. Now, you've had, like any of us in business, have had quieter years. That happens in business.

When those years, if applicable to you, has happened, how has that property portfolio made a difference to you in those quieter years? Yeah, definitely. So the thing with the property portfolio is that because it's growing in the background, like say whether it's 5% overall or 10% overall, or if there's a big boost, then that equity access that you have allows you to have those buffers in place. So when you do have the quieter years and things happen, there's government regulations or there's external factors that come into play. And so that allows you to have that buffer that if you do need to utilize a certain amount of cash from the property portfolio, then you can go and access that cash.