When Ian talks about why he does property, it doesn’t start with interest rates or equity positions. It starts on a dusty farm, with not much money but a lot of freedom and one particular family holiday that changed everything.

On that holiday, little Ian met a family who lived full-time on a boat. They weren’t rich in the flashy way. They just had three investment properties, all paid off and they lived off the rent while they cruised around wherever they liked.

No boss. No alarm clock. Just tide charts and sunsets.

From that moment, the dream lodged in his head: positive gearing, paid-off properties and one day sailing around the world.

At twenty-nine, he bought his first home on the Gold Coast, quietly set himself the goal of retiring by forty and started harassing banks. Every time there was a sliver of equity, he’d go back and say, “Can we go again?”

Over a few years he built up to seven properties, mostly bought on 95 per cent loans with LMI, stamp duty and costs rolled into the debt. As long as they were neutral or slightly positive, he figured he was on track.

Then the mining downturn hit. Floods. Stagnant markets. Interest-only loans rolled to principal and interest. Rents fell. Suddenly those “neutral” properties turned negative, the debt sat around $1.3 million and there was no usable equity left.

He was working seven-on, seven-off in the mines just to keep all the plates spinning, living on a boat in Brisbane with his young family and travelling nine hours to work.

The dream hadn’t died… but it had gone very, very quiet.

Cleaning House: The Gold Coast Townhouse and the Mining House

Before he ever joined I Love Real Estate, Ian did something very smart: he started clearing out the deadwood.

His old Gold Coast townhouse had been his first home back in 2007, a simple two-bedroom, one-bathroom place that over time had become a negatively geared rental.

He gave it a cosmetic renovation in 2021, then, once he saw the numbers properly in Ultimate, sold it in January 2024 to pay down debt and free up cash for better deals. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was necessary.
Then there was the mining-town house he’d bought in 2009. At first it was neutral. Then the downturn came and its value sank to the mid-$100,000s. He was lucky to keep it tenanted through the worst of it, but if he’d sold as-is, he would have worn a painful loss.

Instead, he spent around $20,000 on a tight, four-week cosmetic renovation – all coordinated over the phone from five hours away – and lifted the value by about $100,000. That allowed him to sell, pocket around $187,000 in cash and dramatically boost his buffer.

Those two exits were a turning point. For the first time in a long time, the equity needle moved in the right direction. He wasn’t out of the woods, but he was no longer stuck.

Discovering the Tribe – And Moving the Family to “Glad Rock”

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Ian started seeing me pop up online.

He’d been to plenty of free events. He’d read the odd negative comment and was sceptical. So he did what a lot of sensible Aussies do: he watched every free thing he could find on YouTube. Success story after success story. Ordinary people. Farmer’s sons, single parents, shift workers. Eventually he realised, “Hang on. These people are just like me.”

It still took him another seven months to actually join. By then, he was married with a five-year-old son, a three-year-old daughter and another little one on the way. He’d spent a year and a half renovating an eighty-five-year-old boat that became their home in Dockside Marina; his son literally learned to walk on the dock.

But the nine-hour commute to the mines was killing him. He told his wife, “We need to move closer to work… but it has to be on the water.” So they moved to Gladstone – or “Glad Rock” as he calls it – trading the Brisbane marina for a home on the harbour and shortening the commute without giving up the water life completely.

His starting position was pretty stark: years of 95 per cent loans with LMI and costs tacked on, a portfolio that had flipped from positive to negative cash flow when the interest-only periods expired and a ceiling that had literally fallen in on one of his rentals thanks to termites.

That termite-eaten house was sold in 2022 to fund his current principal place of residence. It was time, as he put it, “to find a mentor and do it right.”

Project One – The First Platinum Purchase: A Pool Reno in Gladstone

Ian’s first deal as a Platinum student was a classic “worst house in a good street” cosmetic flip in Gladstone – a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house with a pool.

He was actually at his very first Platinum monthly meeting in Brisbane, still brand new to the room, when he ducked out the back to negotiate on an auction property.

This is what I love about him: even before he’d finished the coffee, he was taking action. He bought the place in June 2024, rolled up his sleeves and got to work.

The renovation was exactly what we teach: new front and rear stairs, landscaping, a fresh internal facelift, but no crazy overcapitalising. The kitchen and bathroom stayed; they just got new handles, a new sink and new flooring.

Four months later it was done and the property sold within two weeks in November. The profit became a weapon, not a trophy – it went straight into paying down debt and building his cash pool.

More importantly, he now had a working “cookie-cutter” he could replicate.

Project Two – Same Street, Bigger Pool, Dodgy Tradie

High on the success of that first flip, Ian picked up another house in the same Gladstone street – this time a four-bedroom, one-bathroom with a shed and a pool, bought as a bank sale after the auction passed in.
On paper, it looked like a repeat play. In real life, it became his “never again” lesson on tradies.

The homemade concrete pool was leaking. Ian openly admits he knew very little about pools at the time. He was referred to a concreter who promised, “Two weeks, mate.”

Seven months later, the work still wasn’t finished, the quality was so poor it had to be redone anyway and Ian had handed over so much cash he literally ran out of money to keep going.

To make matters worse, he had other deals on the boil swallowing up every spare dollar. That project had to sit, half-done, until he could rebuild his war chest.

But here’s the beauty of buying well: while the pool saga dragged on, the market quietly rose. By the time he’d finally fixed the pool properly and brought the reno up to scratch, the growth in Gladstone values had effectively paid him back.

The deal is now set to make roughly the same profit he’d pencilled into his original feasibility – it just took a lot longer, with a lot more grey hairs.

Now, when Ian talks about vetting tradies, it isn’t theory. It’s scar tissue. And the next time he hears “two weeks”, he’ll be getting references, staged payments and a backup plan.

Project Three – The Cat House: First JV and a Whole Lot of Carpet

Every investor has one horror tenant story. Ian’s is literally called “The Cat House”.

This was his first joint venture with other members from the ILRE community: a three-bedroom, one-bathroom house in the same suburb as his first Gladstone deals, bought at a deceased estate auction.

The photos didn’t convey the full experience. You could smell it from the driveway. Years of inside cats had soaked through the carpet and underlay into the beautiful timber floors beneath.

Ian and his JV partners ripped the carpet out, polished the hardwood floors and did a full cosmetic polish, including a new bathroom and a revived kitchen with a fresh benchtop from Bunnings. Even after all that, the smell lingered just enough that Ian resorted to diffusers to overpower it during inspections.

It worked. The property sold in about five months, with only twelve days on market and delivered a tidy profit of around $35,000. Ian had put in $16,500 cash and his time; the deal proved he could partner, execute and profit with the right people beside him.

He also learned that no matter how bad a house looks – or smells – if the bones are good and the numbers stack up, you can still create something buyers will fight over.

Project Four – The Ugly Duckling with the Laundry Fire

Right alongside the Cat House, Ian picked up another distressed property: the “Ugly Duckling Nobody Wanted”.
This one was a bank sale. The official story was that a domestic argument had ended with someone lighting a pile of clothes on fire in the laundry. The neighbours said, “Nah, the meth lab blew up.”

Either way, the laundry and walls were damaged, there were holes kicked in plaster all through the house and the thing had been sitting unwanted for weeks.

Ian negotiated about $15,000 off the asking price, structured the purchase so it settled the same day as the Cat House and put it on ice until he had the funds to attack it properly.

His original feasibility was based on a resale of around $450,000, using a comparable sale at the other end of the street. That comp is now more like $520,000-plus, which means when he completes the reno, this may turn out to be his best deal yet.

The lesson here is simple but powerful: buy the ugly house on the good street at the right price and time and a bit of elbow grease will usually be on your side.

Project Five – The Worst House in the Street and the Rates Defaulter List

If you ever want a masterclass in creative sourcing, look at what Ian did for his next structural flip.
He got hold of the council’s unpaid rates defaulter list, printed it out and started working through it. Using RP Data and whatever phone numbers he could find, he called owner after owner to see if he could help them out before their properties went to auction. Most never picked up. One did.

The owner had just paid his rates that morning and told Ian he’d given a local agent one week to “sort it out”. The next day, the agent rang Ian saying, “I’ve got a deal for you.” He already knew the property.
He negotiated it at the price he’d planned to offer the owner directly but was much more comfortable having the agent manage the transaction.

The house itself was the worst in a decent street – a four-bedroom, two-bathroom place abandoned for five years and full of “yuck” on the inside. Ian took it on as a structural reno in his second JV, stripping it back and rebuilding properly.

Cash-flow delays and other deals meant progress stalled for a while. Now his JV partner wants out by December, so Ian is arranging to pay him out using the three settlements he has lined up.

It’s not the tidiest pathway, but it shows something important: he honours his partners, even when the timeline gets messy.

Project Six – The Emerald Duplex: Positive Cash Flow Done Right

Not all of Ian’s deals are in Gladstone. In January 2023, just before formally joining ILRE, he bought a three-by-one duplex pair in Emerald after binge-watching success stories and ringing Wizdom Finance to see how much they’d lend him. When they said yes, he went shopping.

He found the duplex the day it hit the market. One side was vacant; the other was badly under-rented at about $230 a week. Working shift work, he couldn’t make the open home, so he did something delightfully old-school: asked the agent to send a contract, filled it out five grand above the list price sight unseen and sent it back.

The agent assumed he was a tyre-kicker until the contract landed in her inbox.

After finishing his shift, he drove out to Emerald during the cooling-off period, ready to pull out if it was a dog. Instead, he found it was much better than expected.

Post-settlement he pushed the rents up to around $350 a side and then again to about $440 a side as the market moved.

When he sold, the duplex was bringing in about $45,000 a year in rent, making it a very attractive positive cash-flow buy for the next investor.

For Ian, it was another strategic offload: more cash in the pool, less exposure to one mining region and proof that he could create and then crystallise a strong yield deal.

Project Seven – The Executive Unit That Sold for Less Than Half Price

When COVID lockdowns hit and Ian found himself confined to his room at work for three days because he’d been in a “hotspot”, he didn’t waste the time. He opened the laptop and started asking the question, “Who will lend me some money?”

He found an online lender, got approval and bought a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit in Gladstone for about $190,000.

In 2013, when the building was new and the boom was in full swing, those same units had sold for around $450,000.

The lowest sale in the downturn had been about $160,000. He was buying the recovery, not the hype.

He used it to entice his wife north: “We’ll live in this one while we get set up.” It became their principal place of residence for a year, then an executive rental at $500 a week.

Now it’s under contract to settle on the first of December, turning that little “lockdown purchase” into both a lifestyle stepping stone and a very handy equity release.

The One He Keeps for Love, Not Money

Not every asset in Ian’s life is optimised for return. There’s a house in a tiny town of about two hundred people that perfectly illustrates both what not to do and who he’s become.

At one point it was rented to a mining company for about $600 a week. Then the mine changed hands and axed all their off-site rentals overnight. He tried Airbnb, but in a town that small, it didn’t really work.
These days a single mum with three kids lives there. Her husband is in jail for domestic violence. She works two jobs and still struggles to pay the rent.

Ian could push. He could sell at a loss. Instead, he’s effectively said, “You can stay as long as you need to,” and quietly accepted that, for now, that property is his charitable contribution.

The Boat, the Kids and the Bigger Why

Today, Ian’s external numbers look very different to when he joined. He’s offloaded underperforming stock, freed up big chunks of cash and doubled his equity position.

There’s still a little negative cash flow from old baggage, but nowhere near what it was.

In his first year in Platinum, while working full-time shift work, he’s run seven deals through like a machine – worst houses in good Gladstone streets, agent relationships on tap, auctions tackled with confidence and a repeatable reno template that works.

His reno profits now run through a consultancy trust, which means he’s not just making money – he’s building serviceability for the day he finally walks away from night shift. He’s already left the mines and now works at the other end of the train line in the port, home every night instead of every second week.

But the thing he talks about most isn’t any of that.

It’s his kids.

He knows our bodies aren’t designed for permanent night shift. He feels the toll. His driver now is simple: get to the point where he can take his kids to school, pick them up, take them to sport and be present while they’re still little.

The boat he once lived on is now his quiet office; he sleeps there after night shifts and dreams about the day he can take the family up to Lizard Island and beyond, not just on borrowed annual leave, but on his own timetable.

There’s also a street in the Philippines on his heart. The green two-storey house in the photos is his wife’s family home; the rest of the street is full of renters with very little.

He and his wife are working with an NGO to fund university education for kids from that street, because in the Philippines a degree is often the only way out of poverty.

His flips in Gladstone will help pay for students half a world away to sit in lecture halls instead of being stuck in dead-end work.

From Harassing Banks to Owning the Plan

When Ian first started, he chased property on assumptions: that values double every decade, that a little bit of negative cash flow is fine, that the bank knows what you can afford.

Now, he buys with strategy. He sells with purpose. He knows how to turn a stinking cat house into a twelve-day sale, a fire-damaged ugly duckling into his best deal and a rates-defaulter eyesore into a structural flip that will pay out a JV partner and still leave him a chunk.

He’s learned the hard way to vet tradies, to structure joint ventures properly and to keep his cash pool sacred.

Most importantly, he’s learned that the dream of living on rent and cruising on a boat doesn’t come from wishful thinking and seven random properties.

It comes from doing the right deals, in the right order, with the right people and backing yourself enough to get educated and take action.

He’s forty-seven now. The original “retire by forty” deadline has sailed.

But the life he pictured as a kid – properties providing income, freedom to be with family, time on the water and the ability to help others – is no longer a fantasy. It’s a work in progress with a very clear path.

If you see yourself in his story – the over-leveraged loans, the old mistakes, the night shifts, the quiet guilt about past decisions – let Ian be your reminder that you can start again.

He started as a farmer’s son who met a family on a boat and thought, “I want that.” Now he’s building his own version of that life, one ugly house and one smart deal at a time.

“We want to try and help the kids in the street in the Philippines, so they can go to university.”

Book A FREE Blueprint Call With One Of My Advisors

Discover how YOU could create a new and exciting life with our unique real estate system to create passive income forever.

Schedule your exclusive, personal Property Genius Blueprint Call today and create a customised plan to potentially never worry about money ever again.

Book Your FREE Blueprint Call Here

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 watched every single success story and I thought, these people are just like me.”