When I was a kid, I remember having a conversation with my granddad about property.
I asked him whether he thought property was a good way to build wealth.
He said something I've never forgotten:
“Son, the only thing I wish is that I'd bought the block next to me as well.”
Over the years, I heard similar things from other older people who had eventually paid off their homes.
Their regret wasn't usually that they'd bought property.
It was that they hadn't bought more when they had the opportunity.
That stuck with me.
Especially because, at one point in my life, the idea of owning a house at all seemed completely foreign.
I'd been homeless.
I'd grown up without much understanding of money.
But I always had this idea in my head:
If I ever figure out how to make decent money, I'm going to put some of it into houses.
Eventually, I got the opportunity to do exactly that.
I Didn't Want to Blow My First Real Money
I started building my online business in 2017.
By around 2019, I was finally in a position where buying my first property became realistic.
I'd started earning money I had never really had before.
And I had a decision to make.
I could start buying expensive shit.
I could go and blow my first six figures on a supercar.
Or I could do what I'd told myself years earlier I would do if I ever made money.
Invest it.
So I started looking at property.
I connected with a buyer's agent who showed me opportunities around Brisbane.
This was before the massive property growth that came during and after COVID.
We were looking at things like infrastructure, proximity to the city, transport and areas where there appeared to be room for future growth.
Eventually, I bought.
And I was fucking terrified.
My First Mortgage Felt Massive
It's easy to look backwards after things have worked out and make yourself sound like you had some master plan.
I didn't.
I was only roughly two years into building an online business.
My income wasn't a normal salary from a normal job, which also made getting finance more difficult.
The interest rate I could get at the time wasn't great.
And suddenly I was looking at roughly half a million dollars of debt.
I remember thinking:
What happens if the online business stops working?
What if the commissions disappear?
What if I can't keep earning at this level?
I've now got this enormous mortgage hanging over my head.
It was scary.
But I'd spent years saying that if I ever got myself into this position, I would invest.
At some point, I had to put my money where my mouth was.
So I bought the house.
I lived in it myself for a period as well.
And something changed psychologically once I'd done it.
Property number one was terrifying.
Property number two was still a little scary.
After a few of them, it started feeling more like a game I understood.
I Don't Try to Time Property. I Buy and Wait.
I've never considered myself some genius property investor.
I'm not.
I'm not particularly handy either, so I have no interest in pretending I'm going to buy some wreck, renovate the whole thing myself and flip it for a fortune.
That's not my game.
My philosophy has been much simpler:
Instead of waiting for the perfect time to buy, I try to buy and wait.
For me, property is a game measured in decades.
If I'm buying something, I'm generally thinking about whether I'm prepared to hold it for ten years or longer.
Interest rates will change.
Governments will change things.
Markets will get hot.
Markets will get scared.
Some years will feel amazing.
Other years might make you question what the hell you're doing.
I try to detach myself from as much of that short-term noise as possible.
That doesn't mean every property automatically makes money or that property can't fall in value.
I've personally owned one that has barely moved.
It means that my personal strategy is based around giving good assets enough time rather than believing I can perfectly predict every short-term market movement.
Property Became My Version of Forced Savings
There's another reason property appealed to me.
I didn't grow up around money.
When I finally started making some, I didn't necessarily know what the hell I was supposed to do with it.
Property became a form of forced savings for me.
If I took money I'd earned online and put it into a property, I couldn't just spend it on random shit the following week.
I had a mortgage.
I had commitments.
I had to stay disciplined enough to keep earning and make sure those commitments were covered.
In a weird way, taking on more responsibility forced me to become more responsible.
And because of where I'd come from, buying that first house wasn't only a financial milestone.
It was an identity shift.
People living the kind of life I'd previously been living aren't usually thinking about investment properties.
At one point, even getting approved for a rental would have felt like an achievement.
Now I owned a home.
That felt massive.
My Strategy Has Mostly Been Hiring People Smarter Than Me
One of the best things I've done with property is accept what I don't know.
Rather than convincing myself I can become an expert in every suburb in Australia, I've often used buyer's agents.
I've paid fees that can be around $16,000 for that service.
Some people might look at that and think it's ridiculous.
For me, I'd rather pay somebody who spends their life doing this than pretend I know everything myself.
A good buyer's agent can help identify locations, analyse opportunities, coordinate parts of the process and connect you with other professionals you may need.
That doesn't mean they're going to be right 100% of the time.
Nobody is.
But overall, the properties I've bought using professional help have worked out well for me.
My own focus has generally been more towards capital growth than chasing the highest possible rental yield.
That can create its own problems.
If the rent doesn't cover the property's costs, you need enough cash flow elsewhere to carry the difference.
Then interest rates rise.
Costs rise.
Things change.
Suddenly that property you thought was easy to hold isn't quite so easy anymore.
That's why this isn't for everybody.
I've Gotten It Wrong Too
Not every property I've bought has been a winner.
I bought a property in Melbourne that, years later, was worth roughly what it had been worth years earlier.
Basically nothing happened.
It's the obvious outlier in my portfolio.
But that's investing.
You don't get everything right.
And one investment not performing doesn't suddenly mean property is a scam any more than one successful property means every house in Australia is automatically a great investment.
Sometimes you make a decision and it doesn't work out the way you hoped.
You learn from it.
You keep going.
One of My Regrets Was Being Too Scared to Pay More
I've also learned that something can feel incredibly expensive today and look completely different years later.
I once bought a block of land for around $600,000.
At the time I remember thinking:
This is so much fucking money just for land.
There were blocks closer to the water that were more like $750,000.
That additional amount felt enormous to me.
So I didn't do it.
Years later, the land I bought had increased significantly in value.
But some of those better-positioned waterfront blocks had reached around the $2 million mark.
Looking backwards, paying the extra money seems obvious.
At the time, it absolutely wasn't.
That's one of the strange things about property.
Today's ridiculous price can eventually look cheap.
Of course, the opposite can happen too.
You only know with hindsight.
But if I could go back and talk to myself before some of those decisions, I'd probably tell myself to have a little more courage when the fundamentals made sense and I genuinely had the ability to hold the asset long term.
Online Business Gave Me the Opportunity to Buy Property
There's no point pretending these two parts of my life aren't connected.
Without online business, I probably wouldn't have built the property portfolio I have.
Online business gave me income.
It gave me flexibility.
It gave me time to research.
And eventually, it gave me enough confidence to take some bigger financial risks.
That's one reason I don't look at online business purely as a way to buy nice things.
For me, one of the most valuable things it created was the ability to move some of the money I was making into assets outside the business itself.
The online world can change incredibly quickly.
An advertising platform can change.
An algorithm can change.
A business can have a terrible year.
Something that works today might not work forever.
A house is very different.
You can touch it.
Someone can live in it.
And if I could use income from something relatively new and fast-moving like online business to gradually build ownership in something much older and more tangible, that made sense to me.
Today, property is genuinely one of my biggest interests.
In some ways, I'd probably call myself as much of a property guy as an online business guy.
Maybe even more.
Property and Shares Play Different Roles for Me
I've also invested in shares.
I don't see it as property versus shares.
They do different things for me.
One of the things I like about property is leverage.
You can use a deposit and, subject to lending approval, borrow the remainder from a bank to purchase a much larger asset.
Obviously, leverage works both ways.
If the asset rises, you've had exposure to a larger asset than the cash you originally contributed.
If things go badly, you still owe the debt.
Shares have advantages too.
The barrier to entry can be dramatically lower.
They're generally more liquid.
You don't need a six-figure deposit and a bank willing to lend you hundreds of thousands of dollars just to get started.
Earlier on, while I had borrowing capacity, my preference was to use more of that opportunity to accumulate property.
More recently, I've started putting more money into shares as well.
I like having more than one bucket.
Becoming a Husband and Dad Changed How I Think About Risk
Earlier in my property journey, I had less to worry about if everything went wrong.
For much of that period I was essentially making decisions for myself.
That's different now.
I'm a husband.
I'm a dad.
And that changes the calculation.
When I look at taking on another property now, I think more seriously about the downside.
What happens if I have a terrible month?
What happens if I have a terrible year?
What happens if interest rates move against me?
Would buying this property stretch me so far that a downturn could force me to sell another property earlier than I'd planned?
Because if your whole strategy is based on holding for the long term, being forced to sell at the wrong time can destroy the strategy.
Those are questions younger Brodie probably didn't spend enough time thinking about.
I still believe in taking risks.
I've probably got a higher risk tolerance than some people because of everything I've experienced in life.
But having a family has made me think much harder about the difference between taking a risk and putting yourself in a position where one bad year could destroy everything you've already built.
What I'd Tell Someone Trying to Buy Their First Investment Property
First of all, I think wanting to own an investment property is a fantastic goal.
But I wouldn't just rush out and buy the first house somebody shows me.
I'd geek out on it.
Spend months learning.
Look at suburbs.
Look at historical data.
Look at infrastructure.
Look at comparable properties.
Look at how long individual properties have been listed.
Run the numbers and make sure you can actually afford to hold the thing if conditions become less favourable.
Talk to professionals.
And today, I'd absolutely use AI as another research tool.
I'll give AI a problem like:
Here are the areas I'm looking at. Help me compare the historical data, infrastructure, prices and other factors that might matter.
Or:
This property has been listed for this long at this price. What questions should I investigate to work out whether there may be room to negotiate?
Or I'll use it to help me create a shortlist of suburbs or properties to investigate further.
That's the important distinction.
Investigate further.
I wouldn't blindly buy a house because an AI told me a suburb was going to boom.
AI can't know with certainty what a property or suburb will be worth next year.
Neither can I.
Neither can anybody else.
But it's an incredible tool for asking better questions, analysing information, exploring scenarios and helping you know where to look next.
And when the market feels uncertain, I don't automatically see that as a reason to run away.
Sometimes uncertainty can create negotiating opportunities because other buyers are more hesitant.
The listing price also isn't necessarily the price you have to pay.
Get curious.
Do your homework.
Run the numbers.
Get creative.
Then make your own decision based on your circumstances and, where appropriate, qualified professional advice.
The Biggest Lesson Has Been Time
I started buying property because I wanted somewhere sensible to put money I'd worked hard to earn.
Over time, it became something much bigger.
It gave me security.
It taught me patience.
It taught me about debt.
It taught me that investments don't always move in a straight line.
And it reinforced something my granddad had unintentionally taught me all those years ago.
Time matters.
I don't know what the property market will do next year.
I don't know what interest rates will do.
And I'm definitely not going to pretend I can predict exactly what every suburb in Australia will be worth in five or ten years.
What I can tell you is what has worked for me:
Earn.
Don't spend all of it.
Buy assets I believe in.
Make sure I can hold them.
Then give them time.
What Wealth Means to Me Now
The funny thing is, after all of this, I don't think wealth is measured by how many houses you own.
Having assets gives me a sense of security.
It means I can look backwards and think:
When things were going well, at least I made some good decisions with the money.
That's a nice feeling.
But it isn't the point of life.
You can own all the houses in the world and still have noise in your head 24 hours a day.
What difference does the portfolio make if you never feel peaceful enough to enjoy your life?
So my definition of wealth these days is actually pretty simple.
Wealth is waking up without an alarm clock.
It's having some control over your time.
It's being present with your family.
It's having enough security that every decision doesn't come from fear.
And it's having a peaceful enough mind to actually enjoy what you've spent all those years building.
The houses are just one tool that helped me get closer to that.
Important: This article reflects my personal experiences and opinions. It is general information only and isn't financial, investment, tax or legal advice. Property and shares involve risk, values can fall as well as rise, borrowing increases risk, and everyone's financial circumstances are different. Consider getting appropriate professional advice before making investment decisions.