Meet Hari for the first time and “commercial shark” is probably the last label that comes to mind.

He’s understated, humble, soft-spoken — and absolutely lethal with a spreadsheet. After more than two decades building analytical models for the Australian government, including tax on property and private wealth, you’d think he’d have every angle covered.

Yet for most of his life he played property exactly the way many diligent professionals do: work hard, buy whatever the bank approves, negative gear it, and hope time delivers the upside.

What makes his story so powerful is that he didn’t start with privilege or a safety net.
His grandparents left China by boat and ended up in Indonesia. Hari was born there, raised with that classic Asian-parent pressure: “You must study. You must get a skill.”

He did exactly that.

He won a scholarship to New Zealand, spent more than a decade there studying and working, then crossed the ditch again when ANU offered him a research position in computing.
From there he moved into data science for the Australian government, modelling everything from tax to private wealth.

Along the way, he did something else very smart.

He watched what property prices were doing. And he quietly started buying.

Fifteen Properties, Lots of Effort, Not Much Strategy

Hari bought his first property in Canberra in 1997, before he even had permanent residency. As a temporary resident, he had to comply with FIRB rules, so he couldn’t just buy a cheap old fixer-upper – it had to be new stock.

He chose something he and his two younger sisters could live in while they studied at ANU, then turned it into a long-term investment.

From there, he did what diligent, well-paid professionals do. He shoveled surplus income into more properties.

In 1998 he picked up another Canberra house. He added a retaining wall, built-in robes and did little revamps over time – all buy-and-hold, all initially negatively geared, gradually drifting to neutral and then positive as rents climbed and the debt came down.

In 1999 he bought in Ambarvale in New South Wales and went much bigger. He demolished about 75 per cent of the original house and rebuilt it as a two-storey home under an owner-builder licence.

It’s now his principal place of residence, sometimes run as a share house when it suits. It’s also his personal reminder that, in his words, “I’m not a builder.” The stress and complexity of being owner-builder on a two-storey house scarred him enough that he’s never been tempted to repeat it.

By 2003 he’d bought a dual-occupancy on one title in Dickson – a classic high-capital-growth asset in a blue-chip Canberra location.

Early on it was negative cash flow; now the front home values around $1.21 million and the rear around $450,000 and the cash flow has swung from negative to neutral and then positive as rents doubled and tripled over the years.

All up, before he ever heard my name, Hari had:

One PPR he’d developed as an owner-builder.

One dual occupancy buy-and-hold.

Thirteen single residential buy-and-holds across ACT, NSW, QLD and WA.

Fifteen titles. Every one of them purchased with negative gearing, worked hard, paid down and left to drift into positivity over time.

He used his PPR for homestays, claimed the tax benefits and did little cosmetic renos whenever something got too shabby.

On paper it looked impressive. In reality, there was no clear strategy beyond “buy more, work harder, wait longer.”

And as he edged into his late fifties, that started to feel… thin.

Finding the Community – And a New Goal

During COVID, while the rest of the country was baking sourdough and panic-watching the news, Hari was online digging into property. He clicked one of our links, watched the ILRE21 Super Conference on Zoom in 2021 and something clicked.

He could see that what he’d done so far had worked, but it wasn’t deliberate. And deliberate is exactly how his brain likes to operate.

So he joined I Love Real Estate.

Then, a few months later, he went looking for the next step. Platinum. Early 2022 he came on board and was paired with Greg as his coach. The very first thing they did was exactly what we do with all long-term investors: pull everything apart.

What’s working?

What’s not aligned with the goal?

And what is the actual goal?

For Hari, it wasn’t about becoming some flashy developer or chasing bragging rights. He was sixty. He lived simply. He didn’t care about cars – in fact, he was happily driving the old car his son didn’t want anymore. What he wanted was income replacement and impact. A hundred thousand or so of passive income would be more than enough for him and anything beyond that he intended to give away. His long-term vision board is literally full of books he wants to write and people he wants to help.

The question became: how do we turn a solid but sleepy residential portfolio into a powerful income engine and then how do we scale that with commercial?

Fixing the Foundation: Airbnb and a Queensland Chunk Deal

The first stage of his Blueprint wasn’t “run out and buy more”. It was fix what you’ve already got.

One of his Canberra houses – a five-bedroom place he’d held for years – was classic negative cash flow if left as a standard rental. So, with Platinum’s guidance, he reconfigured it.

He put in a wall to create a dual-occupancy layout, renovated the bathroom, added a kitchenette and turned it into a flexible Airbnb. Guests can book the two-bedroom rear unit, the three-bedroom front, or the entire five-bedroom house.

That flexibility means higher occupancy and much stronger yields. What would have been a drag on his cash flow is now a positive contributor.

Then there was a problem child in Queensland – an older house with asbestos, a dodgy carport and a list of issues as long as his arm. Initially he’d wanted to hold it long-term, but it just kept chewing up time and money. Greg and Hari made the call: clean it up and chunk it out.

He removed the asbestos carport, upgraded the electricity meter, replaced the rotting timber gate with Colorbond, painted eaves and ceilings and did a series of repairs and maintenance.

He didn’t swing a hammer himself; he used an agent to coordinate trades so he could stay focused on his day job and bigger-picture plans. With the work done – and a bit of natural growth thrown in – he sold, banked the uplift and freed the capital for what he really wanted to do: commercial.

Alongside these, he quietly knocked over eleven cosmetic renovations across his older resi properties – fresh paint, new bathrooms and kitchens, the usual suspects.

Many of those homes were purchased when they were thirty years old; now they’re fifty-year-old houses that need love if you want good tenants and strong valuations. He treated them less like “set and forget” and more like the valuable assets they actually are.

By the time that clean-up phase was done, his existing portfolio was yielding more, valued higher and – importantly – ready to support the next phase.

Falling in Love with Commercial: The First Perth Deal

Hari will tell you he used to be scared of commercial. His mum had a commercial property. He’d helped manage it and seen the vacancy risk, the headaches, the “what if it sits empty for a year” scenarios.

Without proper knowledge, it felt too risky. So he stuck with residential and quietly worried.

Once he joined us, it stopped being mysterious. Commercial wasn’t scary anymore; it was logical. Cash flow focused. Numbers driven. Perfect for a data scientist who reads yield graphs for fun.

His first proper commercial buy as an ILRE student was in greater Perth in 2022: a dual-tenancy asset with strong leases, purchased below replacement cost in a market where population growth was running around 2.8 per cent – well above the national average of 1.6 per cent.

High depreciation, sensible tenants, under-market rent and a city just as the cycle was turning.

Because he bought well and because Perth did what Perth does in a growth phase, this single asset ended up with an uplift in value of around 825 per cent on his initial equity and a passive positive cash flow of roughly $23,000 a year.

Some of that came from rising rents; some from natural capital growth as yields compressed and prices rose faster than incomes.

In plain English: he picked the right horse, at the right time, in the right paddock.

Copy, Paste, Improve: Commercial Cookie-Cutter in WA

Once he’d done one, he did what all good investors should do: he repeated the pattern.
Deal Two in greater Perth was another dual-tenancy commercial, again below replacement cost, again with strong leases and solid depreciation. This time the uplift in value sat around 675 per cent on his equity, with another approximately $22,000 a year in positive cash flow. Same city. Same macro story. Different site, different tenants, same cookie-cutter.

This is the heart of what Greg meant when he said commercial had become Hari’s “cookie-cutter”. We’re not talking about random shops; we’re talking about a deliberate pattern:

Growing regional or metro locations with strong population data.

Assets purchased below replacement cost.

Under-market rents with clear upside at lease renewal.

Multiple tenancies where possible to spread risk.

It’s not glamorous. It is wildly effective.

Multi-Tenant Magic in Queensland

Once he was comfortable with WA, he turned his attention to Queensland.

He bought a multi-tenant commercial property in Kawana and Rockhampton – effectively a mix of units in a regional growth corridor. When he purchased, a lot of tenants were at under-market rents or on their way out. That was exactly what he wanted.

Over time, he deliberately let weaker tenants go, refreshed the spaces and brought in stronger occupants at current market rates.

The result? A 440 per cent uplift in value and around $42,000 in positive cash flow from that one asset alone. Multi-tenant meant that even when one tenant left, the others kept the income flowing while he upgraded, re-leased and lifted the overall rent roll.

It also stretched his risk profile in a healthy way. The first couple of commercial deals were “plain vanilla” dual tenancies.

With more knowledge and confidence, he stepped into more complexity – more leases to manage, but more buffers if something went wrong.

Northern Queensland: Thinking Ten Years Ahead

In northern Queensland, he picked up another commercial property on below-market rent. From day one, he wasn’t just thinking, “Can I bump the rent a bit?” He was thinking in decades.

Could the building be reconfigured into multiple tenancies under the one roof line? Could an existing mezzanine be reinstated to create more leasable area? Was there scope for a change of use to, say, large-format retail or a showroom that would command higher rates per square metre?

The lease renewals might be two years away, but Hari is already mapping out three, five and ten-year uplift options.

That’s the difference between a passive “set and forget” investor and an active commercial strategist: one waits for the market; the other nudges it along.

The Post Office That Paid for Its Own Upgrade

One of my favourite Hari deals is a deceptively simple one: a post office business centre and parcel hub in greater Perth, purchased in 2024.

He bought it for around $640,000, again just before a solid wave of growth. Australia Post is the tenant, it’s effectively a national covenant and they pay all the outgoings.

Since taking the lease, they’ve even added a canopy at the back for parcel handling – at their expense – which improves the functionality of his asset without costing him a cent.
Small, steady, guaranteed income, strong uplift – and all chosen not by “vibe” but by a data scientist who knows how to read a spreadsheet on population trends and yields.

Supercharging the Super: SMSF and Beyond

Because he’s sixty and thinking long-term, Hari hasn’t ignored his super.

He’s already gone unconditional on a commercial property in Victoria inside his SMSF – another carefully chosen asset that will quietly grow and spin off income into his retirement years. Settlement is just around the corner. When it lands, that will make eleven commercial purchases since joining ILRE, on top of his existing residential base.

Add in one chunk deal, one Airbnb conversion, an accessible bathroom renovation on his PPR and eleven cosmetic upgrades across his legacy properties and you get a sense of just how busy he’s been since 2021.

In total, he’s now done twenty-five property deals with separate titles – fifteen pre-ILRE, ten commercial plus extras post-ILRE – and the quality of every new deal is better than the last.

The Scoreboard – And What It Really Means

Before he joined, Hari was doing very well… for someone flying mostly on instinct and hard work.

His portfolio had grown nicely in value over decades and as rents rose and loans were paid down, the cash flow turned from red to black. But it wasn’t enough to confidently step away from work.

Since getting strategic, the numbers have shifted dramatically.

He has almost doubled his equity position. His positive cash flow has jumped from around $49,000 a year to roughly $226,000 a year – more than enough to replace his government salary and then some.

For a man who lives simply and has no desire to drive anything his son would actually approve of, that level of income is ample to support himself, his family and, as he says with a smile, “generations to come”.

But ask him what matters most and he doesn’t start with the money.

His updated vision board is full of other things: photos from a worship cruise in the Bahamas with his son a year after his wife passed away; his mum being baptised; Christian worship leaders who inspire him; and, tucked in the top corner, a book he wants to write to share his knowledge.

He genuinely believes that 95 per cent of what he builds financially will not be for him. It will be given away, passed on, used to help others.
That’s why he’s so hungry to learn. Not for ego. For stewardship.

More Important Than Property – And Why Property Still Matters

When I look at Hari, I see a beautiful blend of head and heart.The head part is obvious: data science, machine learning, tax modelling, yield compression, population curves.

He’s the kind of student you can point in the right direction and say, “There – go,” and know he will drill into every line of every feasibility until it sings.

The heart part is quieter but stronger. He is driven by faith, family and contribution. He wants to write. He wants to teach.

He wants to help other people – especially migrants and ordinary Aussies who were never taught how money really works – to understand what he now understands: that you don’t have to grind your whole life away for a wage if you’re willing to learn how to make property work for you.

And this is where property comes back into the centre of the story.

Because property is the tool that lets him do all of that.

Without the commercial deals in Perth and Queensland, he’s just another government analyst who’ll work until he can’t.

With them, he’s a man who can choose when to retire, who can fund his son’s future, who can support his mum, who can underwrite the cost of writing the books he wants to write and the causes he wants to support.

He did a fantastic job with what he knew early on. Then he humbled himself enough to say, “I want to learn more,” joined a community, let a coach challenge his assumptions and used his analytical brain not to stay stuck in fear, but to get comfortable with new strategies.

If you see yourself in his story – diligent worker, decent portfolio, lots of effort but not much strategy, a little fear of commercial, maybe a little too close to retirement for comfort – let Hari be your encouragement.

You’re not too late.

You can fix what you’ve got. You can sell what no longer serves you. You can learn new tricks, even at sixty. And you can absolutely use property – especially commercial, when it’s done properly – to replace your income and free you to focus on what really matters to you.

Hari’s done it with quiet faith, a sharp mind and a very big heart.

The question now is not whether he will replace his income. He already has.

The real question is: what impact will he have with the freedom he’s just created?

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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.

“If we don’t own our life, life will own us.”