$1.73M Net Equity in 2.5 Years | Sav and Raphael's Journey from Fear to an 8 Property Portfolio

**Sammy Gordon** (0:06)
G'day, listeners, and welcome to another episode of the Scouting Australia Podcast, powered by Australian Property Scout Buyers Agency. I'm your host, Sammy Gordon, and today, guys, we are in for another Cracking Investor episode. And I'm absolutely pumped to welcome into the studio Sav and Raphael. Guys, welcome to the show.

**Sav** (0:23)
Thank you, Sammy.

**Raphael** (0:24)
Hey, Sam.

**Sammy Gordon** (0:25)
Guys, it is an absolute pleasure. Now, Sav, you've been working alongside me at APS for a couple of years now as well. You've both been to all the summits, and I'm actually pumped to have you guys in the studio today and share your story. How are you feeling?

**Sav** (0:36)
Nervous, but I'm good.

**Raphael** (0:39)
Thank you.

**Sav** (0:39)
Excited to be here. You're good? You're ready to go?

**Raphael** (0:41)
Ready to go.

**Sav** (0:41)
That's good.

**Sammy Gordon** (0:42)
You guys have a cool story, and I think some really cool, some really prudent points, specifically around the timing of where we are in the marketplace right now. And we're having a little bit of a chat off air around, you know, what's happening in the marketplace. And, you know, Raphael, man, you were talking about the fact of, there was a long time you guys sat out of the market relevant to a lot of media noise, right? At different times in the game. And there's been different times you almost got in and then didn't because of it. And it happened again and again and again. And it feels like we're in that moment again right now. So I thought it was a really, really sort of prudent sort of thing to bring up almost immediately. The fact of that was a massive thing kept you guys out of the market for a long time. And there's a lot of people who will be thinking that side of things right now.
So I'd love to know even just like starting and kicking off straight from that side of things, what were the biggest things that kind of held you guys back initially? Because you guys, people will be reading the title of this thing, right? 1.73 million in net equity in a two and a half year window.
But there was a solid eight year window before that that you guys thought about doing it and didn't from the mid-20 teens to 2023 Talk us through that.

**Raphael** (1:46)
Yeah, and a few half steps as well, right? And we'll talk to that as also. But I'll start, I guess, because most of it was myself.
And really, lack of understanding of how property and how you make money from property, and being somebody who understood shares a lot more, understood how companies work and ledgers and the likes.

**Sammy Gordon** (2:08)
Can I ask one thing real quick? When you say it was most of you, it was most of you that stalled the investing journey?

**Raphael** (2:12)
Yeah.
So when I was always like, hey, just do it, come on, get on it. You know, you should have property. Oh, we should invest in property, you know? And there's a bit of a story and history behind that as well, which we'll talk to. But for me, it was always just listening to and reading a lot of what's happening in the media.
What the professionals and analysts were saying, it's gonna burst, it's a massive bubble. It's happened everywhere around the world. Look at the bubble. And so a lot of the times you sit there and you read something and you start to walk a particular path and you go, I'm not gonna do that because interest rates are gonna go up. I'm not going to do that because, oh, it's so expensive now, the price is gonna come down. That was the one that I used the most because it was always in the media, oh, the price is gonna come down, the price is gonna come down. And that's thought for a really long, long time.

**Sammy Gordon** (3:04)
I think the interesting part of that, right, and this is something I reckon was probably around about the same time, maybe even a little bit earlier than that, I remember I always used to listen to property podcasts when I was working in the shed and on the farm and stuff and I'd have the headphones or the radio blasting or whatever to get my, to listen to the podcast and stuff. And I remember there was someone, I can't remember who it was, but I remember him saying that he stopped listening to the media 10 years ago. And this was in the mid-20 teens and he'd stopped listening to the media a decade ago. I was like, why? Cause like I used to work on the farm, you were with all the old bloody farm hands. They were always got that, as soon as the news comes on, they blast it and everyone needs to hear everything that's going on.