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hey guys, ryan here from onproperty.com.au,your daily dose of property education and inspiration. and today i have back with meben everingham from pumpedonproperty.com who's a buyer's agent and successful property investorhimself. we're going to be talking today about ben's thoughts on how to achieve financialfreedom through property investing and how he actually achieved it himself. --- start of interview ---ryan: so, hey ben! and thanks for coming on today. ben: good day ryan! thanks a lot to have meback. good day guys! great to see you again! ryan: now, ben's going through a really interestingjourney in terms of financial freedom through

property and i've been grateful to be a partof that. first, i want to go back ben and talk about when you started investing, whatwas your original goal and what were your thoughts about achieving financial freedomthrough property? ben: i had two goals. my goal for propertywas to create $100,000 per year passive income and my goal for my business was to - for somecrazy reason, replace my income by 4 times while i was still at work and after i've replacedit by 4 times i'd leave full time employment. ryan: so you wanted a business that you'rerunning on the side to generate 4 times your income and you wanted $100,000 from propertyin order to leave your employment and consider yourself financially free, is that right?

ben: yeah, it sounds even crazy now that you'resaying it back to me. but yeah, that was my original goal. ryan: and look, i think this is somethingthat a lot of people get tripped up on is they think about investing in property andthey think about financial freedom. they think this big dream figure like, what do i eventuallywant to have with my life. i want to be earning $200,000, $300,000, $400,000 a year, be drivingthe ferrari. and they think about this in terms of their property investing and i thinkit stops a lot of people from actually getting started because they like, "well, that's actuallypretty unachievable." so talk us through like what changed for you?because now you're technically financially

free and you did leave employment withoutgetting that 4x from your business and stuff that you wanted. like so what happened foryou and what change did you have to look at financial freedom through property differently? ben: my journey towards financial freedomactually started about 4.5 years ago. so, 4.5 years ago i decided to run a marathonwith my friends. we ran the melbourne marathon and for anyone that's ever run long distancesin a row, with an active mind it's absolutely boring, it's ----. and so i started listeningto some audio programs from jim rohn and from anthony robins and dennis waitley, and thoseold school motivational, wealth-creation type guys. they were talking about their storiesand one of them had a story of replacing their

income by 4 times before they actually leftfull-time employment. and i just sort of, for some stupid reason, put that figure inmy head and that that's what i had to do as well as my goal.and so, that was actually you ryan, again, that i had a sit down with you and you talkedabout your business and basically just put me on the spot and said, "why'd you have toreplace your income while you're working by four times? why can't you just replace itright now which you've done and leave work?" in my mind i've never even thought of that,that was a possibility until you actually said it again, as stupid as that sounds. soyou're probably the instigator there for me to think that it's possible to leave full-timeemployment. and then obviously as soon as

i did leave full-time employment, i got a100% focus on investing in the business, i did get to achieve those sorts of numbersthat we're speaking about before anyway. but i would never have been able to do that ifi was working full-time for someone else. ryan: so the cool thing is that once you didleave, you had all the time you needed to grow your business and to grow your investingand to get to that point. and for people who have been following me for a long period oftime, i was earning 6 figures. i was in a high end sales role selling pharmaceuticals,had an $8 million a year budget. i was making good money and then my business on the sidewas making about $1000 a month passive income. and then i decided to leave my high-payingjob in order to go and work full time in my

business like earning way less than what youcan live off. so i took a big step out there and i took a very different approach. i tooka big risk there. but i was happy to go back to work if i had to.so, my favorite thing when looking at property and looking at achieving financial freedomis actually looking at income replacement and looking at what do you earn now. are youhappy? are you surviving on that sort of money? in most cases, people, they're not exactlycompletely satisfied but they're living off that money, they're living a pretty good life.and i say to people why not set that as your financial goal. is that what you ended upmoving towards or was yours something different to that? do you want to talk us through somenumbers?

ben: yeah, definitely so. as i said back,the original goal was $100,000 per year just through property investing not including businessor other investment class income. but what i actually did after speaking with you a yearago or so was i sat down and actually did a budget of how much it would cost me to befinancially free right now. that figure for me, i've got a higher cost of living justbecause i earn a number of properties. and i think that figure was roughly a $100,000per week to keep my head above water and to give myself and my partner about a $100 perweek fun money. and so after doing that, pretty quickly i realized that financial freedomfor me meant replacing my basic living costs, which was about $50,000 australian dollarsper year. and as soon as i identified that,

i realized that i was already 3/4 of the waythere. and after looking at some strategies from some other successful investors, i founda way to redraw some equity in my portfolio to subsidize that extra $12,500 that i neededper year. and so it was a bit of a realization for me that should i actually in my mind iam already financially independent. i'm not living off millions and millions of dollarsper year but i was able to leave full-time employment and pursue my passion which hasbeen exceptional for us and enabled us to do so many things that we couldn't have donewithout it. ryan: and so because of the goal that youhave set, you are actually financially free but you just didn't know it. so it took areset of your mind to say, "hold on, i am

financially free. if i draw some equity anddo some credit finance there. then i can go on to spend more time on what you're passionateabout and income-generating sort of things." and i think one other thing that people getstuck on about is, okay i'm going to invest on property, i'm going to achieve financialfreedom and then that's it. i'm just going to stop, and i'm going to go and sit on abeach in fiji or wherever it maybe and just doing nothing. but then they don't think aboutthe fact that, especially people who are unhappy in their job at the moment, when can i getto the point where i can quit my job? and i can go into property investing fulltime?and once you leave your employment you find that you have a lot of creativity, you havea lot of time to actually invest in things

that are going to generate you an income andthe income-generation doesn't stop after you finish your employment.so talk us through when you quit your job, what happened after that? and what have youbeen doing to create income and to grow your portfolio and stuff like that? ben: so i finished up employment earning about$50,000 australian dollars passive income through net passive income before tax frommy property portfolio. as many people would know from having seen my portfolio, it's highlygeared towards brand new properties and so there's a fair bit of depreciation and otherbenefits that are right off there as well. so i was making about $50,000 a year passiveincome on top of my wage through my portfolio

and then i'm also earning about $20,000 to$30,000 a month at a time through my business as well outside of my wage. so when i hadthe opportunity to jump full-time off wages, obviously it took a couple of months to getsome momentum but my business has obviously now completely replaced my income that i wasreceiving through work by roughly 4 times now so i've achieved that goal but sayingthat, i'm working 2.5 to 3 days per week and getting to spend so much more time with myfamily. we just did a 10-day trip down to sydney, which was really good, completelydived into that market and checked it out, so i would never have had the opportunityto do that. i get to look after paper that i'm working with a lot more and from an investmentperspective, now that i'm constantly active

in the marketplace, i have the time, investfulltime basically, finding so many opportunities that are under market value or off marketlistings and things like that for myself. which again is putting myself for my familyuntil stronger and stronger financial position maybe. so it's completely revolutionized ourlife. ryan: so you're saying that investing in propertynow, like for people who don't know, if they want to see your portfolio, they can get thatat pumpedonproperty.com, can't they? ben: so i just jump on the about page, andyou can see not all the properties we bought are there but there's a few and i should getback in there and update it when i have the time.

ryan: yeah but for people who don't know,ben actually runs a buyer's agency and helps people invest in property and focuses specificallyon investment properties. and so you're talking about running your business now and beingin the market fulltime as a buyer's agent and also for yourself. you're actually findingit easier to find good investment deals than when you were employed, is that correct? ben: yeah, like you don't get much changeat the end of the week from working 50 to 60 hours and same with yourself, i came fromthat big business, corporate background. and so now that i have the time, all the day aweek to focus on searching properties for myself, it's incredible what's out there whenyou get that little bit of extra time. and

it's not so much the listings that are onthe market, it's more those, once you start building relationships in a certain suburbwhere the agent calls you up and says this is coming on and the numbers were just thesort of ones that you jump on and make you bet your money on straightaway. ryan: while we're talking about that and talkingabout the suburbs, let's talk a bit about your strategy at the moment because i knowyou're focusing specifically on certain suburbs that you've highlighted as hotspots or areasthat you would like to invest in yourself. can you talk us a bit through what strategyare you using now because we have done a video in the past and i'll link it up as to yourearly journey and stuff like that and what

you call your frankenstein house in san remoand that. so, i'll link up to that so people can check that out if they want to hear moreabout your earlier story. how things have hold, what are you looking at now as yourinvestment strategy for yourself and for the people that you're helping out? ben: so basically my strategy for myself isthe same strategy that i've talked to other people about. it's pretty simple. like i'vechanged, from anyone who knows my portfolio, i've sort of flicked a few properties forprofit and things like that. now my strategy's changed to long term buy-and-hold, so it'sa combination of capital growth and long way cash flow. so basically i look for propertiesunder that $450,000 to $500,000 mark. at the

moment, within 15 km of brisbane cbd, there'salso a couple of spots on gold coast and sunshine coast along with north brisbane that i'veinvested in but it's more around properties that'll perform more in the marketplace inthe next 4 to 5 years. it's what i'm particularly interested in right now. i'm still alwayslooking for properties - i like finding like the rough gem, property that 90% of otherbuyers won't touch because it looks like rubbish right now. so we'll jump in there, do a quickcosmetic renovation and that's a super easy way for anybody to jump in the market andmake some easy money or at least increase the property's value to market value but theycould get it a bit cheaper. so the strategy is basically buy-and-hold,accumulate quality properties in quality areas,

areas with historically high growth rates.that's something a lot of investors often do not look for, so look at the 10-year, 20-year,30-year growth rates in a suburb. and that's probably the number 1 particular future performanceof a suburb particularly if there's been no growth recorded in the suburb over a 10-yearperiod or under historic growth rates. i think that's really an easy way. ryan: so do you look for properties that havehad high growth rates over an extended period or do you look for properties that haven'thad that growth yet and might potentially grow. and then how do you find out that longgrowth rate? because i know how to find out up to 5 years but beyond that..ben: historic growth rates are available through

rp data and residex and that go back massive,massive amounts of time but you can pretty easily access 10 to 20-year growth rates.so what i'll look at is 20-year growth rate historically and then compare it to the previous5 or 10 years and generally a lot of the areas that we're looking at in brisbane at the momenthave had really poor growth over the last 10 years, between 1% and 3% per year on average.so, that's a bit of an indicator for me that you can never expect the market to continueto perform how it has in the past in terms of doubling in value every 7 to 10 years.but if an area for me is going to perform at roughly 4% growth per year on average forthe next 10 years, that's the sort of property that i'm interested in buying myself at themoment and helping other people buy if they're

interested as well. ryan: okay, cool. ben: so, just simple properties that tickthose basic boxes. ryan: yeah. so you've actually achieved thepoint where you've become financially free and you've removed yourself from your employmentand i guess your main source of income there, you've built a business on the side. but forother people, who were to become financially free, let's say, from their property portfolio,and then leave their employment but wanting to continue to grow their portfolio, is thatactually a possibility or do you know if lending gets really difficult once you leave yourjob? do you know how that sort of works and

what your sort of needs actually keep growing?because i know a lot of people are scared of actually leaving their jobs if their portfoliois not performing high enough because they feel like they wouldn't be able to borrowagain and grow their portfolio and just be stuck in that position? ben: that's a really good point. pray thatthe global financial crises, if you have left employment and you can continue to find positivelygeared properties like the ones you find for people each month on on property plus - typething. you could've built an endless portfolio or something like steve mcknight did with300-properties-over-7-years type of thing. but these days, if you don't have income,no matter how much your portfolio is worth

or generating, you're still not going to stackup serviceability-wise. so i'd say if your dream is to continue to build your portfolio,continue to work or start your own business and if you've built a portfolio that set thatstage where you can walk away from everything, just build a portfolio right so that it'sgoing to continue to look after you without you being dependent on any future source ofincome. it's a bit tricky when you start your ownbusiness because generally you need to use tax returns to service a loan, but there'sa lot of ways around that. any good financial planner, accountant or mortgage broker wouldbe able to help you get a load off loan within about 6 to 12 months of starting a businessso it's not a make-or-break type thing if

that's what you're thinking you're doing. ryan: yeah, i was talking to a mortgage brokerthe other day who was saying that someone is out there who will take 1 year financialinto account rather than looking at 2 but obviously people need to speak with a mortgagebroker about that one. so basically in the current situation, it'spretty difficult to get a loan unless you have employment or if you have your own businesson the side. so the passive income that comes in from the property portfolio, the banksaren't happy with that or they don't look at that. and i know you're not a mortgagebroker or a financial adviser so obviously this can't be financial advice or anythinglike that. but can you shed any light for

people on that situation? do they just excludethat completely or what do they take into account? ben: in my situation, i'd definitely takeinto account that extra money that i'm making from my property portfolio as serviceabilitybecause i'm only earning $50,000 a year through my portfolio. based on the amount of debtthat i currently have, the fact that if it was only that $50,000 that i'm looking atthen there's no chance from there that i'd be able to go back to the banks and continueto move forward without additional income. but for example, if somebody had a $100,000or $200,000 of passive income coming in through per year through their portfolio, there'dbe the potential for the banks to consider

that completely differently to how they'dconsider me at the moment. and that's got to do with loan value ratios on your property,current interest rates at the time or what the banks, setting the median. so at the momentthe banks are still considering how much money you can service based on the 7% interest rate.it has nothing to do with the right serviceable value at the moment between 4% and 5%, interms on the way they're doing the numbers. ryan: well, next thing, if someone is eitherearning the same 50, 60 grand a year passive income but they own properties that are fullypaid off so they don't have any debt at all, will their serviceability and their abilityto get a loan can be very different from someone who has a million or two in debt?

ben: absolutely.ryan: so it really does depend on someone's personal financial situation and so i guessthe lesson from that is, just because you're financially free doesn't mean you should leaveyour employment. that could be a good opportunity for you but you should speak to a financialadviser, speak to your mortgage broker and see down the track that if i did leave, ifi did want to grow my portfolio, what sort of situation am i going to be in? so beforeyou make any drastic decisions, get advice and know well how this is going to look downthe track. what are my plans for the future? ben: yeah, i'd love to add something to thatactually. i was text messaging a good mate of mine i went to school with over the weekendand he's on a ridiculously good salary package

like earning over $300,000 per year. he'sjust bought his second property and he was asking me how we've done what we've done andi sent him a simple question back. and he asked what strategy he should use and i saidthe strategy doesn't really matter. what matters is do you love what you're doing in your dayjob? and if you love what you do for work, there's absolutely no reason why your strategycan't be more along the slow burn-and-buy-and-hold type of property and just wait for that wealthaccumulation. i think the people where income replacement really works for is people likemyself. and a lot of other people, there are a lot of my friends who didn't love what theydid fulltime in their day jobs and maybe that's not because of the work they're doing, itwas just because their nature is go out and

work for themselves or go do something else.and so that's a huge one. if you're enjoying what you do, then your strategy can be completelydifferent. but if you don't enjoy what you do, income replacement in the shortest periodof time is definitely worth consideration. so you can jump, as ryan and i both do, investin property and love it and i could sit on a couch if i wanted to all day. but now i'mout there helping people and finding my passion which is property investing is my full timejob as well. it's not like you just stop working and you just start doing exactly what youwant to do on a day-to-day basis. ryan: yeah. and i think i know that for myselfwhen i left my employment that even though i was working 50 to 60-hour weeks, there'sstill a lot of time after you're working in

the night so whatever. but i just felt likeit sucked all my creativity because i put so much into my job into what i did that ijust felt exhausted at the end of the day. and mentally i just had nothing to give tomy websites, nothing to give to my business. and i found that after i left, i still worklike a standard week, like 36 to 40 hours a week... ben: me too.ryan: i'm flexible on that. some days i start late because i do swimming with my son. otherdays that i start super early and finish early, so i've got that flexibility. and so workingfulltime, you're probably still working pretty solid hours as well...

ben: yeah. ryan: but it's not about financial freedomso you can just relax. because i think a lot of people would actually get bored doing that.but it's really financial freedom to be able to push you to one of your passions or topush you to what you want to do. and i think that's what i really want to get across todayand i've said that before the interview that i just want people to understand that financialfreedom doesn't have to be a ferrari in the garage. it doesn't have to be millions ofdollars per year in passive income. it can be income replacement. it can be just freedomof time to do what you want and to do something that brings meaning to you and to your familyand make a contribution to the world that

you want to make.and i feel like you are the perfect example of that because you're now doing what youwant and you now have that passion for your job. you haven't stopped but you've got thatbaseline financial freedom. if everything was to go pear-shaped in your business oryou found yourself unemployed or won't be making any money for some reason, your family'sstill supported and like my guess is that for you, that just gives you a lot of securityto say well, i'm going to shoot for the stars and try and do something because even if itdoesn't work out, my bills are still paid. is that correct? ben: yeah, that's exactly it. like i'm scaredof not being able to pay bills, fear's a big

motivation for me. it definitely works. itdefinitely gives you that, as you said, flexibility and freedom to pursue what you really wantto do as opposed to making decisions based on fear or survival, i suppose. ryan: yeah. and i think it makes a big differencewhen you're married as well. like for me, for my wife, security is a much big issueto her, making sure that bills are paid and stuff like that. and kudos for her for lettingme step out when i was earning 6 figures to earning like a thousand dollars a month andworking through that and taking that risk. yeah, for a lot of people who wouldn't wantto take that risk so i think building a baseline in financial freedom is a great result.so ben, let's tell people a bit more about

your business, where they can find you becausei've had a lot of people contact me that i've actually sent through to you and that you'vebeen able to help out. so tell us about your website, tell us about your buyer's agencyand what you do to help people. ben: yeah, sure. my business is www.pumpedonproperty.com.so in a nutshell, we're a buyer's agency that really helps people - first-timers, establishedinvestors, buy quality properties in good locations at or below market value. we reallyspecialize in two things. i suppose in a city, all within 15 km of sydney and brisbane cbd.and we're also really good helping people build properties particularly these dual occupancyproperties at the moment that are getting 6% to 7% rental yields with the depreciationbenefits in good locations. m

y business is really simple and generally,after talking with ryan a couple of weeks ago, we've made the decision to focus on helpingabout 5 people per month. really, really get the right outcome in terms of their next propertypurchase. it's not just property, we provide strategy assistance and support and basicallyhold your hand so that you can learn along the way as well as know that you're gettingthe right outcome at the end of the day. ryan: cool. and if people want to have freestrategy session with you, where should they go to get that? ben: and so again, just jump on the websiteand then hit the contact us box and book your strategy session in. as ryan has set up meetingwith a lot of the guys on onproperty class

community at the moment which is being awesomeand we'll actually help 2 or 3 of those people buy properties this month which is reallyexciting as well per se getting the right properties at entry level process in somereally good suburbs, tips for some growth buy, people are a lot smarter than me at themoment. ryan: and if you guys do let ben know thatyou came from onproperty then i will get a referral fee for that as well. you can tellhim that. look i'm not fast and i love working with ben and personally chose him as my buyer'sagent to recommend. so i love sending people to him regardless but if you do, let him knowso i could get a referral fee. so thank you so much ben for your time. thankfor a bit of your whole story and that mental

shift that you went through and i hope thatthis kind of clicked something in people's minds where they can think okay, maybe thegoal is a head set for myself were a little bit lofty and maybe there's another way thati can achieve what i want. and yeah, awesome. ben: thank you so much ryan. thanks a lotguys for your time. have a good day! ryan: alright!