Bernice has a way of announcing herself before she even speaks.

The first clue is the laugh — full, warm and a little bit cheeky.

The second is her unapologetic love affair with numbers, especially the number eight.

She’ll hunt it down in settlement dates, street numbers, even discounts she negotiates back into an eight if she can manage it.

At first it’s amusing, but then you see how these quirks have helped her keep things playful while working through some very real financial hurdles.

Bernice grew up in Hong Kong, the “good girl” in a strict household where her father didn’t really let her do anything.

So when she saw a chance in 1984 to be a high-school exchange student in Australia, she begged and begged until he finally said yes. Off she went to Adelaide – new country, new language, new freedom. It was the first time in her life she’d made a big decision just for her.

After that year she had to go back to Hong Kong – that was the rule of the exchange program – and dutifully enrolled in a secretarial course. She hated every second of it. Being told what to do was not her thing.

So when she saw another ad in the paper for a tourism and hospitality course in Alice Springs, she followed the little voice that said, “Why not?” and landed smack in the middle of the Red Centre.

She got married there, got her first driver’s licence there and had her baby there. Nine years in Alice, then in 1997 she moved the family to Cairns for better opportunities and education.

Random? Yes. But as she says, “I love random stuff. That’s how the song brought me here.”

Behind the adventurous moves, though, the money story wasn’t pretty.

There were negatively geared properties in her own name, cross-securitised loans, failed business ventures, a relationship that didn’t work out and ten – yes, ten – maxed-out credit cards she used to juggle repayments until the banks finally said, “No more.”

At one point she had a property loaned at 105 per cent and was oddly proud of the fact she’d “got it with no money down,” not realising that “no money down” often means “no safety net later.”

She’s a finance manager by profession – people literally pay her to do their numbers – but like so many of us, she hadn’t applied that same discipline to her own life.

In 2021 her mum passed away. Grief has a way of stripping away the fluff. Bernice looked at her situation – the debt, the stress, the sense that she was always patching holes – and thought, “There has to be something better than negative gearing.”

She tried another property education group; it didn’t click.

Then my face popped up in her Facebook feed. She watched. She felt the energy of the community. And in March 2022 she joined Ultimate and upgraded straight into Platinum. “Straight to the deep end,” as she puts it.

She told her coach, “I want my first deal in four months. On this date. It must have eights in it.”

Impatient, superstitious, determined… and about to channel all of that into something very productive.

Deal One – Zircon Street and the Jackhammer Lesson

The first thing Platinum taught Bernice was very simple: you don’t manifest deals just by loving the number eight. You have to do feasibilities.

Bernice, of course, tried to shortcut the process. She hounded her coach: “Get me a deal, get me a deal.”

Her coach gently kept asking, “Have you done your Feaso? Have you done it properly?”

Between coaching calls, Bernice scribbled in her diary the settlement date she wanted, the amount of profit she wanted and, of course, the eights she wanted baked in. Then she finally sat down and worked through the numbers.

Deal One was a classic “KISS” reno flip: a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a double garage, pool and a big 986 m² block in Cairns. She almost bought it sight unseen – old habits die hard – but thankfully the agent refused to sell without her at least walking through. That alone probably saved her a lot of pain.

The pool turned out to be the big issue. It had a vinyl liner that was sagging and slipping and every pool company in town told her the same thing: “You have to replace the whole liner. Eighteen grand.”

Rather than panic, she did what we teach: she documented it all as part of her due diligence.

She took the quotes back to the agent and said, “These are my real costs. This is the discount I need.” She didn’t get the $18,888 she might have secretly hoped for, but she did negotiate a $10,000 reduction on the purchase price. No eights… but she decided she could live with it.

The renovation itself was a baptism of fire.

Bernice is tiny, but her first serious weekend on site she found herself on the end of a jackhammer, with another Platinum student, Heather, coaching her through demo, patching and painting.

By the end of it, she’d learned two important lessons: yes, she can physically do hard things if she has to and no, she does not want to be jackhammering her way through future projects.

The deal made around $39,000 profit, effectively paying for her Platinum education and then some. The settlement date and payout she’d written in her diary months earlier lined up almost exactly, just in a slightly different form.

As far as “first proper deal” experiences go, it was perfect: small enough not to blow her up, big enough to prove that the system – and her own ability – actually works.

Deal Two – The Esplanade Record and a “Don’t Buy Units” Exception

Having survived her first reno, Bernice went hunting for something more exciting.
She found a waterfront apartment on Cairns Esplanade that had just fallen out of contract. When she arrived at the open, there were about twenty people there. Some were loudly telling the agent, “We’ll pay cash, no worries.”

Bernice assumed she had no chance. Still, she put in an offer at $420,000 with a clean, simple 14-day finance clause and left it at that. That same night the agent rang: “You’ve got the deal.”

The building was older, the downstairs was bare concrete, the bathroom was tired and there was asbestos in the laundry and bathroom. It was exactly the kind of thing I warn students about in a general sense: “Be careful with units.”

But this is where nuance matters. I hate brand-new, off-the-plan, marketer-loaded stock you can’t add value to.

A solid older unit in a premium location, where you can physically and legally manufacture growth? Different story entirely.

Bernice did her Feaso. It worked. She and her agent, Diane, went to other agents and asked, “What do you think this will sell for once it’s renovated?” The general answer was around $850,000.

So Bernice, in true Bernice fashion, said, “Okay, list it at $850,000.” Diane looked at her like she was mildly insane, but did it anyway.

The renovation was beautiful. New kitchen. Combined and upgraded bathroom and laundry. Fresh finishes that took it from “bit sad” to “I could move in tomorrow.”

When it hit the market, it didn’t quite reach that aspirational top number, but it did sell for $750,000 – with no building and pest, no finance clause, no cooling-off and a ten-day settlement. Clean, fast and, depending on how you count it, around $162,000 in profit.

She also set a record for that end of the building, then later went back and did another record in the same complex. The woman who once maxed out ten credit cards now holds building price records on Cairns Esplanade.

That’s what happens when you combine good Feasos with a bit of brave pricing and a lot of sweat equity.

Deal Three – Turning a Long-Term Rental into Lazy Cashflow

Chunks are wonderful, but they don’t pay your day-to-day bills if you don’t turn them into cashflow.

Bernice had an older property that had been her principal place of residence and then a long-term rental. As a vanilla rental, it was negative cash flow. She kept saying to her coach, “I want cashflow. I want to do Airbnb.” And they kept saying, for about two years, “Then do Airbnb.”

Eventually, she did.

She refreshed the bathroom, replacing a tired tub with a smart new shower and beautiful wood-look tiles. She furnished and styled the whole place herself, then handed the keys to a professional co-host to manage.

No answering guest messages at midnight, no washing sheets, no stressing about pricing – just a management fee and a steady stream of bookings.

The result? That “drag on the portfolio” became her first genuinely positive cashflow property, spinning out roughly $11,000 a year in surplus income while she focused on other deals.

She even earned Superhost status without lifting a finger day-to-day. That single strategic shift turned one of her old mistakes into a reliable income engine.

Deal Three-B – The JV That Nearly Made Her Sick

Not every deal that comes along is meant to be done.

Bernice entered a joint venture with a good friend – another community member – to buy two vacant blocks side-by-side. One lot went into her friend’s trust, one into Bernice’s. The plan was for Bernice to fund the build and they’d share the profits. On paper, it was neat. In reality, it felt awful.

Bernice is very tuned into energy and flow. As the JV progressed, she started to feel physically unwell. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but she knew something was “off”.

During a coaching session, her coach simply asked, “Is it about the JV?” Bernice burst into tears. Yes, it was. The process, the expectations, the way decisions were being made – it all felt misaligned.

This is where a lot of investors freeze. There’s money on the line. There’s friendship at stake. The temptation is to push through, ignore the red flags and hope it all magically works out. Instead, Bernice chose herself. She and Tam worked through the options and crafted a graceful exit.

Her business partner found a buyer to take over Bernice’s block. On paper, Bernice could have made about $20,000 on the land. Instead, she chose to let her JV partner buy her out, effectively giving up that potential profit to keep the friendship intact and her own health from spiralling further.

When a stamp-duty question arose that technically wasn’t her responsibility, she still agreed to cover half, just to get the deal cleanly finalised.

She calls it her “Deal 3B” – the one she didn’t really want to talk about. But it’s one of the most important parts of her journey, because it proves a critical point: sometimes the best deal is the one you walk away from. Especially when your body is screaming at you that something’s wrong.

Deal Four – The Ground-Floor “Witch-Free” PPR

After the success of her Esplanade flip, Bernice found herself casually browsing realestate.com.au one night – as you do – and spotted another apartment for sale in the same building. This one was ground level, with its own private access, meaning she could completely avoid the building manager she lovingly refers to as “the witch”.

The address, of course, passed the number-eight test.

She messaged Diane at some ridiculous hour: “Wake up, wake up, can you get me through this one?” They inspected, she loved it and she signed the contract more or less on the spot. This unit became both her new PPR and her next project – a city-living base she could renovate in stages while still feeling like she was on holiday every day.
Then came the flood.

A water event in the building damaged her fixtures and fittings. When she rang the insurer, they cheerfully said, “Just get contents insurance.”

That’s what many unit owners do – and it’s often not enough. Because her policy didn’t initially include fixtures properly, she’s now wearing a $10,000 excess on items that would have cost maybe $600 a year extra to insure if she’d set it up correctly from the start.

Her message to every investor who buys apartments now is blunt: do not let anyone fob you off with contents-only. Make sure fixtures are covered under the correct policy and understand exactly where your responsibility starts and stops in a strata complex.

That lesson, while expensive, will probably save her – and now you – hundreds of thousands over a lifetime of investing.

In the meantime, she’s painting, styling and slowly turning that ground-floor pad into a gorgeous, income-capable asset she can later rent out, refinance or sell, depending on what the next phase of her life needs.

Deal Five – Saying Goodbye to the Old DHA Workhorse

The last major project in this chapter of Bernice’s story is a property she’d almost forgotten about: a Defence Housing house she bought back in 2003.

She’d never even seen it when she purchased – she just signed the contract and trusted the program. For years it quietly did its thing as a long-term DHA rental. The loan, however, hadn’t been used particularly strategically and post-ILRE Bernice could see it for what it was: a chunk of equity tied up in a property that no longer matched her current goals.

With the lease ending in mid-2025, she made the call to sell. She organised for the tenant to move on, then orchestrated a cosmetic renovation as a new JV with Diane.

While Bernice was going through a tough patch physically and mentally this year, Diane essentially project-managed the whole thing – tradies, paint, finishes, styling. It was a partnership built on trust and complementary strengths.

The transformation was stunning. Fresh interiors, thoughtful styling, everything done to a standard that made buyers fall in love the moment they walked through the door.

When it hit the market in October 2025, forty groups came through the first opens and they had about six offers within days. A contract was signed in three days at an excellent price.

The sale released cash she can now use for future deals, cleaned up an old loan and marked the end of an era: Bernice no longer has to carry legacy properties born from the “just hang on and hope” phase of her investing life. She’s curating her portfolio now, not just accumulating.

The Scoreboard – And the Woman Behind It

In three years as a solo investor in the ILRE community, Bernice has done five substantial deals, plus one very wise non-deal and completely transformed her financial trajectory.

She’s gone from negative cash flow, tangled cross-securitised loans and ten maxed-out credit cards to a position where her portfolio is in much better shape, her cash flow is positive and her equity has more than doubled – almost tripled – from where she started.

She’s learned to refinance sensibly, to turn old properties into either chunks or cash cows and to stop using credit cards as a pseudo-strategy.

But if you ask her what she’s proudest of, she doesn’t say “$162,000 profit” or “record price on the Esplanade.”

She says:
I left a relationship that wasn’t working.
I took on all the shared debts, then found a way to clear them.
I rewired my mindset so I no longer believe I’m “not good enough” or “can’t do it.”
I’m building a legacy for my grandson Archie, not just for me.

I Love Real Estate’s 12 Week Transformation Program helped her peel away a lifetime of conditioning – the “be the dutiful daughter,” the “don’t make a fuss,” the “you’re not enough” soundtrack that had run in the background for years.

Now, when that old voice pipes up, she has new stories to answer it with. Deals she’s done. People she’s helped. Risks she’s taken that paid off.

She’s a single, divorced woman in regional Queensland, a brand-new grandmother, a full-time finance manager for now and a full-time investor in her soul.

Her goal is clear: leave the job, gain full freedom to choose when and where she works, travel to sixty cities by the time she turns sixty and pop down to Melbourne whenever she likes to smother Archie in kisses – even if she doesn’t love the Melbourne weather.

Her guiding principle these days is “effortless”. Not “no effort”, but living in alignment with the right path, where things flow instead of constantly grinding. If a deal or JV makes her physically ill, she walks away.

If a property lights her up and the Feaso works, she goes for it – even if there’s a “witch” on the body corporate and she has to plan a tactical ground-floor escape route.

More Important Than Property – And Why Property Still Matters

Bernice will tell you it’s not all about money.

She strives for excellence in whatever she touches – renovations, styling, the experience she creates for the next person who buys or stays in her properties. She wants people to walk in and feel cared for, not just see an “investment product.”

She values connection with her coaches and peers as highly as any spreadsheet win. That’s why she calls Platinum “educational and fulfilling” – it’s not just about learning tricks; it’s about having a village.

And yet, property is the vehicle making all of this possible.

It’s what turned maxed-out credit cards into chunks of cash in the bank.

It’s what turned a tired PPR into a profitable Airbnb, run by someone else.

It’s what paid for her education, her mindset work, her ability to say “no” to bad deals and “yes” to travel.

It’s what will one day finance Archie’s opportunities, with a grandma who can teach him how money and property really work.

If you see yourself in her early story – juggling debts, patching one card with another, sitting on equity you don’t know how to access, feeling “not good enough” because you made some bad calls – let Bernice be your evidence that you can rewrite the whole script.

You can be the finance manager who finally does her own numbers.

You can be the person who once bought sight unseen who now insists on proper inspections and feasibility studies.

You can be the impatient, number-eight-loving investor who learns to combine intuition with solid strategy and ends up setting price records instead of maxing out cards.

Bernice did it. In three years. While working full-time. As a single woman, in a second language, with plenty of old baggage to unravel.

If she can, you absolutely can too.

“It’s not all about money to me. It’s connecting with people, doing a really excellent job and making a really good product for the person who’s buying my properties.”

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These stories and the results in them were captured at a specific point in time. The real estate market and the investing strategies used to succeed are constantly changing. The achievements and results of these investors may have changed since these stories were recorded. Each of these investors engaged in in-depth training, coaching and mentoring to be able to achieve these results. Their results are not typical and should not be taken as a guarantee of the results you may achieve. Your personal results will be in-line with the training, education and hard work that you personally conduct.

“I’m working towards leaving my full-time job so I can gain the freedom to go wherever I want.”