The Property Market Is Splitting. Are You on the Right Side?

George Markoski It’s been 40 years since we experienced a housing correction this large. And the forces pushing this are unfolding. The problem is the whole industry is screwed now. What does this mean? 98% Of New South Wales housing projects are struggling to secure finance. 1,540 construction firms have collapsed in the last financial year. Property is going to become more scarce. They’re going to become so scarce that’s going to push property prices up. It’s crazy. Hello, this is George Markoski coming to you live for the Positive Property show. The property market is splitting. Are you buying in the right side? I’ve got Adam Albrecht with me tonight. Hello, Adam, and welcome. Adam Albrecht Good evening, viewers. George Markoski Now, I was going to go through some news first, but basically the property market split. What happened before is property investors, they used to buy new, used, all sorts of stuff, but now it’s really split between brand new and used or pre-owned, I should say. That’s the word. And that’s basically because the government reforms and how they’ve actually changed, negative gearing. Adam Albrecht Big changes. George Markoski Yeah. So I saw this article, news.com and this new data shows how much you need by 50 to retire comfortably. So the average super balance of Australians age 60 to 64 are around 413,000 for men and 327,000 for women. So they estimate a homeowner retiring at 67 needs around 6$30,000 as a single or $7$30,000 as a couple to fund comfortable retirement. That’s what they’re saying. So they’re saying that’s all you need. What are your thoughts? Adam Albrecht I like to see the numbers on that. I’d like to see how much money per week you get out of that. George Markoski I’d like to see what they mean by comfortable. Adam Albrecht Yeah, because baked beans every night or. George Markoski That’s what I’m saying, like in the comments. Tell me, do you think you’d be comfortable retiring with one house and $700,000 in your super? Because I thought the old number was $2 million minimum. Right. But also what happens is, let’s say you got $700,000 in your super, and what happens is you can take it as a pension. The problem is each year you take out money from your super and then you got less money to draw from and you’ve only got a certain amount of years to live. George Markoski So if you had $7$30,000, for example, and let’s say you were taking 10% a year out of your super, but you had your super invested in shares, you’re hoping to get somewhere around 7%, but you’re taking out 10%, you can see you’re not going to catch up right now. George Markoski If you had property, a property paid off at $7$30,000, then you’d be getting around about $30,000 a year in rent, and it’d be going up around 7% a year, including your rent going up, but still not enough. Because really, at the end of the day, you need a lot more than that to be comfortable. And I think a couple getting $73,000 a year, that’s not going to be a lot left. Adam Albrecht Well, it’s 7% of $7$30,000 is 51 grand, roughly. George Markoski Yeah. Have to take that and hope that you got the 7% growth, which you haven’t got every year, you know what I mean? Because it can be unstable in some years. So I think, not going to work. Now, listen to this. This woman here, Monique Jeremiah, she’s an entrepreneur from Queensland, and she actually had a lot of issues with her business. So what she did, she started renting half her bed, $31 a month. Adam Albrecht Is this real? George Markoski This is real. This actually happens quite often in London. So London, you can actually go online. If you haven’t got a lot of money, you can just rent half a bed instead of having half a unit. A lot of people rent their beds out there. And she’s like, you know, it’s an arrangement she calls hot bedding. She started doing it during the pandemic after losing income sharing the same mattress with the renter rather than simply sharing a room. She says it requires clear boundaries and seems to be a cheap living arrangement. Look, at the end of the day, it’s better than living in a car. George Markoski If people don’t think the rental crisis is real, it’s real. I mean, people are renting half their bed out. So state of the nation, what’s happening now? The market is splitting, investors are pulling back, and that’s what’s changing. Who has leverage. If you look at this right, it’s been 40 years since we experienced a housing correction this large, and the forces pushing this are unfolding. But basically, why is the property market correcting? Because of our government and because of interest rates. So investor credit growth has collapsed. So if you look at December 2025, investor credit growth has fallen sharply from the peak of 0.95% in December to 0.47% in July. That’s a 52% slowdown. The pace of investor borrowing in just seven months. George Markoski Fewer investors competing for property means more negotiating power for buyers who are still able to act. Now, what’s driving this. George Markoski I’ll tell you what’s driving it. A lot of investors were buying properties that a pre loved, used properties. What do you call those properties? Established properties. That’s the name. Adam Albrecht Second. Second hand. Established. George Markoski Yeah, right now the established property market when it comes to investors has dropped and that’s part of what’s pushing it. And this is the other part that’s pushing it. And this is why the market’s splitting is because of the budget’s negative gearing CGT changes, right? So now investors have 30% less borrowing capacity when it comes to buying a property that’s not the right property. So that didn’t really affect people as much as what it does now. But the fact of it is a 30% drop in borrowing power suddenly drops the market by 30% in the capacity of people to buy. So it’s interesting though because with brand new properties, that hasn’t changed. Adam Albrecht Do we need to explain what CGT means, George, or. George Markoski Yeah, no, good idea. Thank you. Because I really forget sometimes and I appreciate that. So CGT is capital gains tax changes. So basically it’s a negative gearing and it’s had the big impact here, but obviously capital gains tax changes have got an impact also. Now this is a very interesting topic. Jim Chalmers now has changed again, Mr. Flippity Flop. Now, the one thing we can’t get from our government, current government, now the Labor government, is consistency, right? There’s one thing they’re consistent about is being inconsistent. They’re changing things like crazy. And basically what they did just to catch people up is they recently proposed changes to the trust tax. George Markoski Because what happens is a lot of people, business owners and people, they buy things and assets in a discretionary trust and it’s called a discretionary trust for a reason, because you can actually distribute the profits of that trust and the losses under your discretion each tax year. So what happens is, let’s say, for example, you’ve got a family of four and I earn all the money, I’ll pay a lot of tax, my wife stays at home. Well, I can get a discretionary trust, funnel money through her so I can get her tax-free threshold and save in general of the family tax. Does that make sense? Adam Albrecht You can just distribute funds? Basically. George Markoski Yeah, you distribute funds and what you could do is you distribute them to the right person with the least amount of tax. So then you can actually balance it out. Discretionary trusts are an amazing tool. They’re fantastic. But unfortunately the government doesn’t like good tools that help business people and families get ahead, right? What they want to do is they want to tax the shit out of you. And they decided to make a basic 30% rule where we don’t care where you distribute, we’re going to charge 30%, everything made in the trust. Now, what was happening is there was a lot of backlash because now suddenly there’s 500,000, over half a million trusts in Australia that people are actively using, if not more than that. George Markoski All those people are going to have to actually change those assets around and potentially pay stamp duty. George Markoski They’re going to have to hire lawyers and accountants to do all this work. So the government’s just created all this work, all these people doing something that’s not even productive, it’s not adding one thing to anything in Australia. It’s complete waste of time. And I’m very disappointed when the government just makes things happen without even looking at the consequences and then suddenly go, oh, shit, we got it wrong. So what they’re doing is now they’re going to allow a lot of categories to be exempt, like charitable foundation, different things. And, you know, this is actually a good concession, but it’s not enough. What they’re doing now is they’re allowing you now to fix the distribution so you don’t have to pay the minimum 30%. George Markoski I know a lot about this because I got so many of them and they’re very handy. George Markoski What you do at the end of the year, you look at the money the discretionary trust has made and then you send it to the entities and the people that are going to pay the least amount of tax or if there’s any losses, where you can use them so you can maximise your cash flow. So what happens is go to these structures and once you get bigger in property, you’ve got lots of structures and what you want to do is funnel the money the right way through to really maximise your benefit. And it’s just smart tax planning and it takes a lot of effort, but it’s worthwhile. Now, what they’ve done is they’ve literally said, you can’t do this anymore, but they’ve made a concession. George Markoski So therefore, instead of me now of you having to actually move your asset, let’s say you’ve got a house in a discretionary trust and you want to avoid that 30% minimum, you’d have to move that asset. And because you move the asset, you’re going to have to pay stamp duty. Now, stamp duty is a state thing and the tax is a federal thing. So the problem is you Move it. You pay the state government tax on something the federal government forced you to do. So what they’ve done now is given you a loophole where you don’t have to actually move that asset, but you need to assign that asset once and for all, and then you cannot change it again. George Markoski The only way you can change it is if you have a divorce or someone dies. So what does that mean? George Markoski Well, it’s better than paying stamp duty on an asset just to save you 30%, which I think is good. But in actual fact, this is what it means. These things called discretionary trusts are no longer discretionary, and we should change the name to fixed trusts, because that’s what they’ve really done. What they’ve really done is they’ve changed discretionary trust into fixed trust, because there are fixed trusts. And this is exactly the way they work. Now, depending on the constitution of the trust and everything else, you may or may not be able to do this because some trusts have got certain constitutions that don’t allow you to do this anyway. So what does it mean? George Markoski We’re going to have to spend a lot of money on lawyers, on accountants, to be working with this. Another great thing, the government just keeps throwing curveballs. George Markoski And the thing is, at the moment, there’s a lot of inflation with what’s happening with Iran and America, war, and there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. And what a government needs to do. A government needs to create certainty, because that’s their job. They create certainty. When you create certainty, you create prosperity. But this government is doing anything but creating certainty. What they’re doing is creating uncertainty. And uncertainty is just not good for business, not good for anything. Because they say one thing, and all these businesses have spent money moving things around, and now suddenly you don’t have to move it anymore. So imagine if you move that, you paid on the stamp duty and now you don’t have to do it. George Markoski So I would say don’t rush into anything when it comes to this government, because they could change. George Markoski So what triggered the investor pullback? Well, policy changed after tax, cash flow fell. So negative gearing, CGT changes, reduced investor cash flow, borrowing capacity, and basically what you’re going to get afterwards. So borrowing slowed sharply. Investors became less willing and less able to take on debt. And fewer investors are buying. So less investor activity reduced competitive pressure. This is what’s happening in the marketplace right now. But there’s another thing happening in the marketplace we want to talk about. Rates are heading higher. Adam Albrecht You think they’ll go up again this year, George? George Markoski Look, that’s what they’re saying. Adam Albrecht Do you want your thoughts on it? George Markoski Well, these are the thoughts, right? Our rates are the highest in the Western world. So my thoughts are they shouldn’t be this high because high rates don’t create a good country, because we need money to flow. Because what happens is when rates are high, money stays stagnant. When rates are low, money flows up to the point where what happened is, in Europe during Covid what they did to make money flow is they gave. Some countries had negative rates in order to make money. Yeah, right. Really? Well, because when you got high rates, what are all the oldies doing leaving their money in the bank, thinking they’re making money? Because at the moment, you’re getting more in the bank than what you were five years ago, three years ago. George Markoski But this is the thing, though. George Markoski The money you get in the bank is always less than inflation anyway, so you’re always losing. So it might look big because back in the 80s, right, you could put your money in the bank account and get 16% interest. That sounds great, doesn’t it? But inflation was 19%, so you’re actually losing money. Whatever interest they’re offering you is less than what inflation is, so therefore you’re losing money anyway. I think rates shouldn’t go up. I think the RBA wants an excuse to put them up. So this is what they’re expecting. The new market expectations for RBA’s terminal cash rate is 4.7%. So a rate hike is actually firmly in the table at the moment because of our inflation. Look at this. George Markoski The CPI surprised to the upside trim mean CPI came in at 3.6% above the 3.5%. Like not a lot of difference, right? George Markoski The RBA’s target is 2 to 3%. So markets reacted immediately. The terminal cash rate was repriced from 4.5 to 4.7 within days. So the risk has shifted. The RBA signalled it is prepared to hike again if upside inflation risks materialise. What does that mean? The RBA is saying they’re ready to hike rates again. And the head of the RBA, what did she do? She’s invested millions of dollars in property recently and she’s in charge of the RBA. Do you think she knows some we don’t? Do you think she knows there’s some rate drops in the future? Because this is what I do. I don’t look at what people say, I look at what people do. George Markoski And as far as I’m concerned, her doing that is a Clear indication that they expect a drop, maybe not next time, but they expect a lot of future drops in the future. They’re going to push the property market up. She ain’t going to be buying property and spending millions of dollars on property if she thought that property price is going to drop. And she knows more than anyone. This is insider information and it’s not legal. It’s actually totally legal to have insider information when it comes to property investing. So our inflation is domestically driven, they say. So you look at housing inflation, it’s running at 5% trim mean CPI is running at 3.6 and market service inflation is running at 4.1. So housing, we know what housing is. George Markoski Property prices are going up. George Markoski I know there’s a lot of media saying they’re going down, which they are. But in general they’ve gone up. The market services is. People selling services has gone up. And that’s usually very rare, but they have to go up because everything else is up. Household spending has grown and this is why the RBA are hiking rates. If you look at household spending year on year, it’s grown 7%. This is the strongest annual growth since June 2023. So this is based on discretionary and non discretionary spending. What does that mean? Well, discretionary spending is things you want to buy. Non discretionary is things you have to buy. Now, I think household spending is running hot. I really think we should be measuring discretionary, not non discretionary. What do you think? Adam Albrecht I agree with you. George Markoski Because if you’ve got no choice, if. You’ve got no choice to buy something,. It’s not really spending, is it? It’s just you have to buy it, right? A petrol processor, petrol, electricity, insurance, your car loan, all that, you have to. But discretionary spending, pizza, going out Friday night, drinking alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, travel, that’s different. So what the RBA are doing, they’re trying to contain people spending and consumers haven’t pulled back enough to take the pressure off. Right. The thing is, when prices go up, you’ve got no choice. The RBA should not punish you if you’re spending money that you got no choice in spending. But also I think it’s good that people are spending. So housing is the inflation problem and the solution. So this is the interesting thing. George Markoski Housing costs rise 5%, right? So inflation stays sticky because of that. George Markoski Then housing inflation is elevated, rates stay high. So the RBA keeps monetary policy tighter constructions get squeezed because higher rates put pressure on new housing supply. And the whole circle is contained in here, creating more housing inflation because The RBA rating hikes and keeping it sticky. So the tool that’s being used to fight housing inflation is the tool that’s inflating the inflation. This is like fighting fire and fire. It can work if you know what you’re doing, but fighting fire and fire sometimes doesn’t work. Now, look at this. This is the Daily Telegraph. Mass exodus of New South Wales developers as 98% of housing projects stall. Now, am I reading that right? Can I read this again? Because I’d like to read this again. George Markoski 98% Of New South Wales housing projects are struggling to secure finance. George Markoski Over the last hundred years, guess what was the worst year for construction firms in New South Wales? Adam Albrecht For collapses or for building collapses? For collapses, yeah. Between Covid and Now the last 12. George Markoski Months, we thought Cobra was bad. Right. 1,540 construction firms have collapsed in the last financial year. Adam Albrecht Yeah. So he’s got 3400 nationally. I think it was about 3300 the year before. So that’s gone up nationally as well. George Markoski We’re literally losing construction companies much faster than we can get new ones. There’s no new ones coming up, we’re just losing it. Adam Albrecht That’s 56 a week. George Markoski Yeah. This is what the industry leaders are saying. They’re saying that Lozengran is construction. Tax and financing costs mean that just 2% of New South Wales projects in the pipeline are securing finance. So wonder if there are a lot. Adam Albrecht Of developers not wanting to start their projects either, because of all the. George Markoski There’s developers that don’t want to start their projects. There’s 1,500 of them that can’t because they’ve gone broke. Then there’s the ones that want to start but can’t get the finance. This is quite the quandary right now. New South Wales got a target to build 377,000 new homes by June 2029. We have the current. That’s going to be pushed out to March 2032. This is the absolute collapse of New South Wales to have the ability of producing dwellings for people living. This is units, townhouses and houses. Because we talked about the Bathla Group last week. 15,000 Properties that are not getting built. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, you know, because there’s a lot of people. There’s 15,000 people, 40. George Markoski I think it’s like 25,000 families affected by this Bathla Group thing. And those 25,000 people would be going, why did I go? George Markoski Bathla Group? Look at these statistics. It almost doesn’t matter who you’re with. In New South Wales, this is more likely to happen to you. This is not a Bathla Group problem, this is a problem Australia wide, but specifically New South Wales at the moment. Right? The problem is the whole industry is screwed. Now. What does this mean? A lot of people are going to get scared and go, well, they’re all going broke. Don’t buy property. Property is going to become more scarce. So scarce. Because Bathla Group, 15,000 properties that may or may not be built. Adam Albrecht $3.5 billion. George Markoski Yeah. They’re going to become so scarce that’s going to push property prices up. It’s crazy. Adam Albrecht And rentals as well. There’s no properties, nothing to rent. George Markoski Rental prices up, it’s going to push rental prices up, it’s going to put rentals up. There’s going to be more competition for rentals. And what has the government done? Nothing. Now what I’d like to do is talk about the GFC, talk about Covid and talk about now. During the GFC, we had a massive global financial crisis. The Labor government was in and they said, let’s help this crisis. And what did they do? They sent a $2,000 cheque to everyone that was poor. Adam Albrecht Wasn’t that the TV? George Markoski This is what happened. What happened was they all went, bought flat screen TVs and we made China rich because they got all our money. And Harvey Norman and the intermediaries, right, Harvey Norman made a fortune. The government policy was the stupidest government policy ever. But what it was is they were trying to appease the voters and get more voters instead of helping the problem. Let’s go to Covid. During Covid we had Turnbull in, right? It was Turnbull, wasn’t it? It wasn’t Abbott, it was Turnbull. Adam Albrecht They were all back and forth. George Markoski Yeah. Anyway, we had Liberals in. They didn’t send out Morrison, it was Morrison. During Covid the Liberal government were in charge. They didn’t send out big cheques to all the poor people. They created Jobkeeper. So therefore business that couldn’t operate could keep their team of staff, they could make money. The economy stayed the same because what was going to happen, all these companies that couldn’t operate during Covid because of stupid government mandates anyway. It was just dumb. If you lose your staff, tried to get them back again and starting a business is impossible. They would have gone broke and the whole economy would have been broken, would have been destroyed. George Markoski So there was a big chance that Covid was going to completely destroy the Australian economy and put us in a massive recession. George Markoski But instead what they did is they propped up small business so they could keep paying all their staff and everything went along to normal. So once Covid was over, everyone just jumped back in and we actually became the richest people in the world. Right, Let that sink in. It was beautiful. It was brilliant. Now we’ve got another crisis at the moment, a massive crisis that’s similar to those two things. And really what we need a government that can help these developers produce property. The government produces hardly any properties at all. There’s all these property companies going broke. George Markoski We need properties and the government should get involved and help because if they help these construction firms stay afloat, we’ve still got jobs, we still create properties, we have somewhere to live and it’s going to do a lot of good for the economy. George Markoski Well, instead what do they do? They stop people borrowing SMSF. They decided to tax us more through discretionary trusts, get rid of our capital gains tax concessions. So this government has systematically been dismantling and wrecking the housing market while pretending they want to help it. Adam Albrecht First home buyer what they’re trying to. Put it on. George Markoski What they’ve done. Instead of giving first home buyers a 5% deposit scheme, let’s help construction companies get financed so they can build these houses and people got somewhere to live. This government, really, they just take, take, but they don’t realise by giving you get more back. Right. They suck balls. I just don’t like this government and I wish we had people that were smarter. And the way the Liberals handled Covid was exemplary. Australia came out of Covid stronger instead of worse. Even though we had all that stupid things locking people down. The only state that really got bankrupt was Melbourne. That’s because Labor in power and they just decided to lock everyone down forever because they’re a bunch of communists. Man, I want to rant tonight, aren’t I? George Markoski I promised to release the no go zones and I haven’t and I’ll tell you why. George Markoski Look at this. We had 1,540 construction firms collapse and Bathla Group collapse. 90% Of new South Wales hazard projects struggle to secure finance. This no go zones list, normally what I do is I release this once a year and I’ve planned out the year and it’s very accurate. Unfortunately, the government is changing things so fast they’re gonna change it all. So my list from last week is different now than what it was last week and that’s why I can’t release it. So I’m gonna have to redo it again. Now, what I’M gonna do is I’m planning on doing a website because I have to just redo these numbers, like, often, almost like on a weekly, daily basis to keep it current. George Markoski But I will be releasing this next week or two and I just have to update the numbers because there’s a lot of properties that just come back on my list that have come red because of what’s been happening. It’s just the government and everything else is moving so fast that things happen very quick. I remember I used to be able to release this list and it lasted over a year. Yeah. So higher rates aren’t just a possibility anymore, they might happen. And see, this is what’s happening at the moment. Rapid population growth is reshaping Australian cities. So forecast for Melbourne, I touched on this the other week, is 9.1 million people by 2065. So they’re going to have to add 3.6 million people to Melbourne. George Markoski Now, India has just replaced England as the biggest migrant group in Australia just recently. George Markoski So this is what they’re thinking now, already 700,000 above. So the old projection, we’re already above the old projection. They’re expecting 4.79 million by 2051. We’re already at 5.5 million in Melbourne right now. So this is the thing, right? Population growth increases, housing demand, more people, large population increases, expand. So this is what we’re getting now at the moment, 1100 migrants are being added to Australia’s population every day. So how much is a thousand people? Probably it’s a lot of people. That’s a massive nightclub full of people, isn’t it? About a thousand big, yeah, but a really big one. And that’s the sort of amount of people we’re getting every single day. Like, every day. Imagine walking out every day in the morning, there’s a thousand people walking past you. George Markoski They’re all new, like, hello, welcome to Australia. Welcome to the country. Adam Albrecht Yeah, welcome to the country. George Markoski I love that. Fly back to Australia. Adam Albrecht Yeah, welcome. George Markoski Welcome to your own country. Well, I was born there, Marty. Thank you. So this is interesting. Have you heard about this one? So Gold Coast buyers take on a developer over sunset clause. They paid deposits around five years ago, but their contracts have now been terminated while the homes are almost ready to move in. And guess why they terminated? Adam Albrecht Because the sunset clause. George Markoski No, no. But why do they really? The properties are worth it. Adam Albrecht The price has doubled. George Markoski The price has doubled and what they’ve done is they’ve dragged it out. Almost finished it, cancelled the sunset clause and now they’ve got properties worth Double. And they’re going to make a fortune. Yeah, I really hope they win this. Adam Albrecht I don’t think they will because it’s in the contract which was signed. George Markoski Yeah, I know, but you look at Australia, we’re based on common law and with common law we got to look at what’s really fair. It’s a very different law to other countries because England common law is actually quite a strong law. And if something is in a contract, just because it’s in a contract doesn’t make it really true. If it’s immoral or not really the right thing to do. Right. Because you know, if they’ve cancelled these people and they dragged out the build in order to cancel on them and make money, not fair. So hope they win. And there you go. That was my rant for tonight. Next we’re going to do a case study. George Markoski And after the case study we’re going to go in our private group and do Q&A. Cathie O’Sullivan, she got a first investment property in Caboolture. George Markoski Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, one car. Paid $550,900. She paid 20% deposit using an SMSF. Settled in October 2025. The market value now is $775,000. Current profit is $224,000. Adam Albrecht There’s nothing cheaper than 775 anymore. George Markoski No, no. The investment property in Denman Prospect, one bedroom, one bathroom, one car, $429,000. Paid $85,000 deposit using equity. So really zero. Settled in November for $429,000. Market value now is $489,000. Made $59,000 on this. And people say you can’t make money on units. Well, this happened pretty quick. Adam Albrecht And that’s a small deposit. $85,000. That’s not a lot of money compared to the more expensive one. George Markoski But think about this. You pay 85 grand and make $59,000. You almost got your money. Adam Albrecht Yeah, yeah. It’s a pretty good investment. George Markoski A pretty good investment like you can’t argue that. And the current total profit is $283,000 in 11 months. So I’m going to finish this thing and we’re going to talk to Cathie. Adam Albrecht Oh, she here. George Markoski Hi, Cathie, how are you? Cathie O’Sullivan Hi, George. How are you? George Markoski Good. Good to see you. Cathie O’Sullivan Good to see you as well. George Markoski Okay, so I just want to talk to you about your investment journey and thanks for joining us tonight. I really appreciate it. Cathie O’Sullivan Thanks for having me. George Markoski Yep. Talking about your investment journey, when did you decide property was what you wanted to do? Like property investing? Cathie O’Sullivan I’d always had an Interest in property. I’m very creative and I have a background in design and I’ve done a bit of interior design and things like that. And my brother works in construction. So we had invested in property and done up properties together over the years but never made any money. George Markoski Okay, fair enough. You’ve done the hard yards. Okay. George Markoski And how did you find us? How did you find Positive Property? Cathie O’Sullivan I had been watching you for years. You’re actually. We have a good friend in common, Rachel in Adelaide. And I met you through her in 2009. And then I watched you grow, I guess George, from there. And then I used to watch your ads, you and Christine, when she wore the red beret. And I’d be like, oh yeah, I probably should get some advice. And then I lost. I’m one of those statistics almost that you were talking about tonight with the bed sharing. I’m probably the growers. What is it the biggest growing statistic of homelessness in Australia and that is women in their 50s. George Markoski All right, yes, I’ve heard about that. Especially the Gold coast. Especially. Yes. Cathie O’Sullivan Exactly. I sold my house in Adelaide at the height of Covid and I would have been, you know, pretty close to being able to work part time and semi retire. But I had to buy back in after Covid and I couldn’t even afford a home. My first purchase was land and I sold that and the government and the agent made more money than me, but it gave me a deposit for a one bedroom apartment. I sold that and everything I owned furniture and everything to leapfrog into a bigger apartment where I slept on a camp bed for six months and then I got a bed but I actually rented that out with the room. Cathie O’Sullivan I didn’t share the bed, I got a tenant in and then I reached out to you and went, George, can you help me? George Markoski That’s right. Cathie O’Sullivan And you went, maybe I can’t. George Markoski Well, there you go. So you ended up joining the programme, coming onto a wealth call, join the programme. And now after 11 months or so, you’ve done quite well. Cathie O’Sullivan Yeah, amazing. When I first started I didn’t have anything in equity because of what I’d lost in that time. And you put me in touch with Aidan, we talked about SMSF. I was so nervous doing that on my own and if I can encourage people, you know, if you’re on your own and you’ve got the right people around you, it’s doable. George Markoski Yep. So having the team around you I suppose was very helpful. Cathie O’Sullivan Was amazing. I remember just being on a call with Aidan and him really giving me a reality check. I work a really intense job in wellbeing and mental health, triage in education, and I’m just about, you know, I’m like, oh, Aidan, I can’t do it anymore. And he’s like, well, if you’re going into this, you’ve got to commit. You know, you’re looking at a 10 year commitment. I’m like, what if it goes really well, it could be sooner. He’s like, we can’t talk about that. And it was good to have that reality, you know, And I thought, hey, these people aren’t just glossing over. And like, George, it hasn’t been easy, like even to the point of to get into that property, that ACT property. Cathie O’Sullivan I sold my car and I have been catching the bus and working two jobs for the last two years just to get into that property because I didn’t have the fees, which were $20,000. Adam Albrecht Wow. George Markoski So, Cathie, just really impressed with what you’re willing to do to get where you need to be. That’s like amazing because so committed. Cathie O’Sullivan And you guys have backed me and been encouraging even. I think, George, you found those properties for those of us that didn’t have a lot of equity, you know, like, you just adjusted what you were doing as well to go, hey, we’ve got clients, let’s do something. George Markoski Yeah, look, we’ve got to thank Adam because Adam’s been working on that in the background. Cathie O’Sullivan Amazing. George Markoski And you know, Adam knows everyone in Australia and he’s got a very good reputation. Having him on our team is so important. Cathie O’Sullivan I’m so grateful. George Markoski And look, from selling your car and now you’ve made $59,000 out of that one anyway. Right? So, yeah, now you can buy it back. Right. So I love it. Cathie O’Sullivan That’s the plan for Christmas. I’m getting a car. George Markoski I love it, I love it. So what I want to go back to is your results. So how many properties did you buy? Cathie O’Sullivan 2. And George, they settled within a week of each other. Do you know how stressful that was? Everyone was getting confused between them, even Billie. And like that I was like, oh, no, that’s the other property. And then I was, oh, it was like, oh, Charmaine, I can’t cope. Anyway, it was great. George Markoski How long did it take you? Cathie O’Sullivan What, between joining and having the property settle? Yeah, overall it was about 16 months because I got early. I think I got in the first stage in Caboolture Stone Park and I think it was six, 16 months waiting for that to be built. But then in that time I got equity in my home and that’s when we did the act and that was very quick. And who would have thought that they would have been settling in the same, like within a week of each other. One was the last week in October. October. And one was the. It was actually Melbourne cup at 2 o’. Clock. George Markoski All right. Okay. Melbourne Cup, what a great time to celebrate your properties. And, and now you’ve made. How much was it? $283,000. Cathie O’Sullivan Well, I’ve got a different figure. I’ve got 200. George Markoski You’ve got a different figure because Adam had to update the valuation of the Caboolture property. That’s what I just. Cathie O’Sullivan Okay, I got $238,000. George Markoski Yep. It’s actually 283. Cathie O’Sullivan Drop it. That’s cool. George Markoski That’s cool. Now, I don’t know how long you’d have to work to save that sort of money, but I don’t think you’d be able to do that in 16 months. Cathie O’Sullivan No, not at all. George Markoski No, no. Cathie O’Sullivan Not working in education, I’ll tell you that. George Markoski Not in education. So, you know, you’ve started your property journey, you’ve already got two under your belt. How’s that going to affect your future? Cathie O’Sullivan Look, I’m focused and you know, I think it’s going to be able to free me up. I like, I reached out like, you know, I work, I don’t know, 12, 16 hour days on the regular, you know, and I’m just like, this is not sustainable. I’m getting older and it’s tough and I now I have hope and it’s actually kind of, you know, it’s, it’s sustaining me because I can see the end in sight. I’m actually, my workplace is supporting me to go into senior management so that I can up my income. So they’re giving me lots of like acting roles. Cathie O’Sullivan There’s no space at the moment, but I want to apply for other jobs so that I can up my income to invest again because at the moment I’m tapped out. George Markoski Yep, yep. Cathie O’Sullivan So I think when you say I think it’s going to give me, it’s giving me hope and momentum. George Markoski Great. I love it, I love it. Cathie O’Sullivan That’s awesome. George Markoski That’s really good to hear. And you know what, I’m very impressed that you do whatever it takes, including selling your car, which is like, you know, to get what you need to get. Because, you know, I guess there’s two types of people, you know, people that make excuses and people just make Things happen and you’ll see. Second, you just make things happen. And I really believe that’s going to really pay well for you in the future. Because it’s the hard things that you do that really change your life in the future, not the easy things. Cathie O’Sullivan I made that commitment that night. I joined. It was a really great night online, like just a session like this. And I just, I wasn’t obviously a member and I joined in and then you all said, oh, we’re going in our private members group. And I was like, hey, I want to be in that group, I want to hear that. And I made that commitment in, you know, when, after meeting the Circle of Safety and talking with Charmaine and Aidan, I was like, okay, well, like I can do nothing and do the same and get the same result and be working till I’m 70 or I can be all in. And I’ve been all in. George Markoski Yeah, you’re all in. And it shows. And I just want to say we really appreciate your attitude and your work ethic and you’ve really done it. What would you say to people that are watching this now wondering about our programme, wondering what we do? Cathie O’Sullivan Look, I’d say if you’re thinking about investing in property, then get the advice. Don’t do it in the dark, don’t do it in your own. The support is here with Positive Property. And I think, you know, but, you know, I would say, George, to people, it’s not easy and. But don’t be scared of doing it on your own either. I think, you know, often our case studies we see a lot of couples doing it together and I just think, want to encourage people that, you know, don’t think, oh, just because I’m on my own or, you know, I don’t know what to do. The right people around you can give you that confidence, I think. And like I said, like, you know, like I’m saying now I’ve got. Cathie O’Sullivan I feel hope and I feel motivated and yeah, I’m willing to make sacrifices, but I don’t feel like I’m doing them in the dark. Yeah. Because the results will follow through because of the team. George Markoski Yeah, absolutely. And I suppose you came along to Thursday nights and other people inspired you and now you’re doing this for others. Cathie O’Sullivan Yeah, yeah, it’s true. I remember coming along Thursday nights and thinking, I’m asking lots of really what I realise now, naive questions and no one was answering. And I was like, that’s because I like, oh, you’ll soon learn. You’ll soon know. It’s true. Because you find out more and more every week. George Markoski Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, Cathie, being part of our community, love your work ethic and I love what you’ve achieved so far. And I look forward to watching your journey as you go along. Adam Albrecht Yeah. That’s unbelievable tonight. George Markoski Thank you. Adam Albrecht I’m inspired as well. What’s up? So what sort of car you’re looking to buy yourself? Cathie O’Sullivan Oh, my gosh. I would love a ute. HiLux. That’d be amazing. George Markoski So Australian, Cathie. Such an Australian thing. Cathie O’Sullivan But I want to tuck, you know, the surfboards, paddle boards, camping. Adam Albrecht I love it, I love it. Cathie O’Sullivan Yeah, that’d be awesome. George Markoski Excellent. Cathie O’Sullivan Anyone got one for sale, let me know. Thank you so much. George Markoski Thank you. No worries. Okay, here we go. Adam Albrecht That was. That was unbelievable to listen to that. George Markoski Yeah, I know. Adam Albrecht Never heard someone so dedicated and so eagerly, totally move forward selling a car. It’s a big effort. George Markoski Absolutely. But you know what? We had one member, she actually put signage on a car to get some. Adam Albrecht Money and that worked. George Markoski And she also rented out a room, an Airbnb, and that helped her get in the property market. So, you know, it’s. Everyone’s got different ability and different things. And the key is you got to work with what you got to improve your situation. What I was going to do is I was going to do a bit of Q&A and then we’re going to go into the private group and talk more about what’s been happening with developers and different things like that. And a few updates from Adam. So who is building properties if 97% of New South Wales housing projects struggling to secure finance? Good question. What do you think? Adam Albrecht So it’s not about the big developers, like, they’re big sites like you know, your high rise and those sort of things. It’s not your actual residential houses as such. Your mum and dad investors, they’re still getting loans, but they’re just. Your big projects are not getting off the ground as easy. George Markoski Yeah. If it gets any worse, does the government become the developer of last resort? Adam Albrecht They haven’t done it in the past. I don’t. George Markoski No, no. Funny enough. Interesting question because the government used to actually produce, like 10% of Australia’s housing supply. It was called government housing and that number has. It was called housing trust, government housing, but that number’s gone right down. They’re producing less than 1% or something now. It’s crazy. So they’ve lost the ability. Rachel said Labor in Victoria destroyed our once most liberal city. Yes, they did. I mean, Victoria was an amazing city. It seems like they made the middle class rich during Covid by mistake and are now trying to crash the middle class. Yeah, well, the Liberal Party made the middle class rich, which is their job. And the Labor Party took it off them and gave it to the billionaires, which is their job. Great run. George Markoski Worst government ever. Yep. George Markoski New South Wales government aiming for modular building quicker than traditional building on site will be interesting. Adam Albrecht Yeah, but it’s about the same price. George Markoski Well, harder. I mean, a good friend of ours, he actually created a factory to do modular building, didn’t he? And he’s a very smart builder. I don’t think it worked for him, did it? Adam Albrecht No, he shut it down. George Markoski He shut it down and he spent a lot of money. Millions. Millions. Millions. A lot of comments saying, Cathie, love your story. Great work, you’re a champ. Power of the structure, the community. Aussie Steve. No way. You’re 50. There you go. That’s about Cathie. You got a fan there online, Cathie. Adam Albrecht I know. I was going to say, is this a dating show too? George Markoski You do? Okay, so look, we’re going to go in our private group now and talk a bit more shop. So everyone watching our live, thank you very much and we’ll see you next Thursday night.