Stop, Don't Sign That! What Every Retiree Must Know Before Buying Investment Property

0:00 The topics and opinions expressed in the following show are solely those of the hosts and their guests and not those of W FOURCY Radio. It's employees are affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements radio show, programs, services, or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicitor implies shall be extended to W FOURCY Radio or it's employees are affiliates. Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for choosing W FOURCY Radio. Welcome to to Ask Good Questions Podcasts, broadcasting live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at W four cy dot com. This week and every week, we will reach for a higher purpose in money and light, as well as a focus on health and wellness. Now, let's join your host, but Nita bell Anderson, as together we start with Asking Good Questions.

1:02 Welcome to the Ask Good Questions podcast. I'm your host, Benita bell Anderson, and today we're talking about real estate as part of a retirement investment strategy. Okay, so the question isn't just should you do it, but it's how to do it without making any mistakes? We don't want to do that. So my guest today comes from the other side of the world. He's helped one hundred plus investors do exactly that, not make costly mistakes, and he is actually in New Zealand. I would like to invite Hadley Nightingale to the podcast stage.

1:44 Hi, Benita, thanks for having me. Good morning, oh good evening. Were you are. Yeah, I know I was a little bit when we first talked. I was a little bit worried about, you know, because I think you're twenty two hours ahead of me. Yeah. So yeah. The next day, yeah, so it was. Like whoof So okay, well great, it'll all the technology lined up. So let me tell you a little bit about this boy. He's just a few years younger than me. His name is Hatley Nightingale. He's the CEO of New Zealand Property Buyers, which was founded in twenty twenty. Great year to found a company.

2:26 Hatley forget to start things right. Couldn't have lined it up. So in just five years, five plus years, he has grown from a two person operation to a team of thirteen. Is that still correct? Thirteen? Yeah, still correct. Yeah. He's helped over one hundred clients invests smarter across New Zealand. But get this Southeast Asia interesting. But what makes him different is not only the results, but how he got there. So I want to find so Hatley, you drove road trains. What's a road train? Road train is a truck with three or four trailers.

3:08 In Australia, they I can only talk in metric tons rather than imperial so they weighed somewhere between one hundred and twenty and one hundred and seventy ton, which has gone down the road at one hundred ks. Now, so I guess we would say truck drive truck is what mirror? Yeah? Yeah, with with with four trailers rather than one? Wow? Is that legal? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a big it's a big thing. But mind you, like we're in the middle of nowhere doing it. It's not not the middle of regional like not the middle of a city. So he's also worked mines in Western Australia. He spent seven years in the family court system, building one of New Zealand's most respected buyers agencies, and he learned proper already investing the hard way, which I'm sad to say, I've learned a lot of things the hard way as well.

4:06 But basically what that means is that his clients don't have to so welcome to ask good questions, Hadley. Thanks too. They're looking forward to the conversation today. So you didn't come from finance obviously, right, I mean you drove, you drove truck, you worked mines, And how in the world did you end up in real estate? Yeah, I suppose when I was when I left school, I was going to become a farmer. And well I went farming for a couple of years, and it was around the seven eight or six seven period, and then at the time everyone was talking about, hey, look the markets as high as it's ever been.

4:47 It's not going to get me higher than not producing any more land. Get in now. If you don't get in, you'll naviget in. Which and now that I've been through a couple of cycles, it happens every cycle just before things seem to peak. And so that was what I got sucked into at the time. And at the time the banks were lending huge amounts of money as well. If you could fog a mirror, they'd give you a loan. And so I got my stuff caught up there, and that's how I ended up in the road train side of things. But at the same time, it was going people always make money in real estate. I've just I must have just done it the wrong way the first time around. So let's go and find someone that can help me. And that's that's sort of the short story of how I ended up there.

5:33 Well, you've said something that I've also said too, and that's no one's coming to save me. Yeah, And so what was the moment think back? What was when was it that you knew that that was crystal clear for you? That was probably only three or four years ago. So I mean, like the yeah, the. The mining and the road trains thing happened because of the farming decision that I've made. Then twenty nineteen, I split with my partner at the time had eight month old daughter, and then that's still an ongoing through the family courts at the moment. But it really got to a point where I went, well, hey, look, I'm the only person that's been here the whole time through this, so I'm the only person that.

6:25 Can get me out of this. You know, I was part of this relationship, so I'm probably fifty percent to blame, and so how do I reflect on that myself and then how do I make myself better to go in and do the things that I can control and the stuff that they can't. I'm just going to leave to the side and let that, let that run out. And I think once I sort of thought about that, and a big part of that was also my male wife going, well, look, we can keep dwelling all this. Stuff, we can move on. We've got a choice to make, which was extremely difficult at the time, but now looking back, was that was the simple thing to do that I should have done years prior. But you don't know what you don't know, right.

7:08 Yeah, I learned a long time ago that I was that I'm one hundred percent responsible for my life. And it took me a while to really wrap myself around that. You know, that I couldn't blame anybody else, And. Yeah, the petty parties and the blaming other people's the easy part, right, because it can always be everyone else's. Fault and everyone else you know, why me, poor me? That shouldn't have happened to me, And the victim mentality is is rife, and it's the it's the easy way out rather than as you say, hey, look it's it's me. I'm I'm one hundred percent responsible for the place I've landed, Right, So.

7:49 What did what do you think it was that? What was the personal struggle that you know, that that you that you realized, oh, I'm doing this wrong? What was it that the do you think that was the quote unquote wrong way to do things? From the real estate perspective? Yeah? Yeah, So, I mean basically, when I figured out that my philosophy had turned from buy some lands, sit on it and eventually it'll all work itself out to interest rates went through the roof, it got harder to get money, job market tightened up, and you know, I went, I had to go to Australia and my philosophy became if I can. At the time in New Zealand, I was doing thing thirteen dollars an hour, which was which is reasonable money. But I can go to Australia and twenty doing the same thing. So I thought, right, I've struck it.

8:45 I've nearly doubled my income by shifting countries. So now all I need to do is stay awake for as long as I possibly can and drive for as long as I can because the longer I drive for, the more money I make, and in that way, that's going to. Get me out of the situation. But then I pretty quickly worked out that you can only do that for so long before your body says to you, Hey, look, this isn't this isn't smart. And I realized I was the only person that I knew that had real estate that was doing what I was doing. So there's if I'm the minority, there's got to be a better way to do this than the people I know. So how do I get myself around some people that they're going to show me how to do things a better way rather than just sticking to the blueprint that I've currently got.

9:35 Well, there might be somebody that's thinking what is she doing talking to somebody that's in New Zealand. And basically, you know what when we originally met, was like, well, we're talking about principles. It doesn't matter where you live in the world. These principles that we're going to talk about today are universal and apply to no matter where you're investing. Right, Yeah, So let's let's get in a little bit too. If real estate is right for retirees, so let's have. Let's think of somebody that might be sixty plus and they already have a nast egg built and is it too late to add real estate to their portfolio? What do you think?

10:21 I think it gets to a point where you've got to be really careful about what you're buying. That if you are going to go and do this in your sixties, that the real estate is not liquid like the shear market the stock market. You want to go and buying the video stairs, you go and buy them. You don't like what's happening, You push, sell, you get out of the market. The problem with real estate is that once you're re in, you're generally in for a long period of time. If you need to get out, you're looking at sort of ninety to about one hundred and twenty days. If everything just went snap of the fingers, listed the house today, got it on the market, sold the next day, you're looking at like it's three to four months around if you need your cash, and then it's a guess as to what that's what that's going to be. So if you if you've got some money that you aren't going to put into it, you see, if you're really selective about what you're buying, and you also need to make sure that you're not leveraging yourself, you know, to.

11:16 A point where it's you know where it's dating and. They've done that. Yeah, it's I mean, leverage is great until you get yourself to a point where you're underwater and it's not quite so fun there. Well, well, what would you say, Well, like, I think maybe that answers the question of what makes real estate different from stocks and bonds is basically, you might be you might be stuck, and you don't want to have like a fire sale. No exactly. If I was advising someone, I would just say, have this be part of a total perspective that you're doing. Yeah, I mean, you don't want all your eggs and one basket and you don't want to turn into a fire south.

11:59 I think that the key, the key part. With it is is like boring, boring tends to make your money sexy tends to cost you a small fortune, and that I think anyone that's selling you the best deal in the world, and this is how amazing it's going to be, and here's all the things that you're going to make from it. That the people that are selling it to you generally are the ones that make the money, not you like It's happened here with off the plan developments likely happens to the States as well. Where developers tell people about how phenomenal something's going to be, you get excited about it, you buy it, and then you find out that it's not as good as what they said it was. There's a slight change in the market. You're waiting two, three, four, five years.

12:43 For something to be built, so your money is tied up for that period of time, and then the end results not as good as what was promised. To the start. What do you think how much capital should somebody realistically have? You know what they're saying, Oh, I've got X amount of dollars that I think I want to diversify into real estate. It's going to depend market to market as to where you are. I think if you are going to get into real estate. As part of your portfolio, where you are you want to be looking at and you're close to that retirement age, you want it leveraged as low as you possibly can aidle to make it hard for the bank to lend your money around it age unless you've got really good income, really good balance sheet.

13:30 But secondly, it's more. So around if you can keep your leverage down so your cash flow positive as cashlow positive as you can possibly get it, then you're getting a return for your money and it takes it out of that weight and hope part of it too. So as you get onto the retirement side of. Things, cash flow becomes really important and the equity less so, but when you're younger, the equities where you grow your wealth, and though that reverses over over time. So let's chat a little bit about like buying property live in versus buying it as an investment. So one of the ways that I think has I've seen work well in the past is like a duplex. Yeah, and especially for somebody that's in the retirement years maybe they're downsizing, right, yeah, and so and so that would and so you'd be there, you'd be able to keep tabs on it, you'd be able to know exactly who's there and what's going on.

14:29 What do you think the difference is between you know, having something that you're living in versus just a pure investment. Well, it depends on income level. So like for me in the house that I'm in now, I live here four days a fortnight. Just situation with with my daughter, but we've got an attached unit that's rented out, and that attached unit covers the more which for most of the property. So if you're in a you're in a situation where. You've got some money, you own a property, you can put a secondary dwelling on there, and you can rent your main house out, then I think it's a great option. Whatever you can do to supplement that income. As you get to that retirement age, then you know that the better.

15:13 I think one of the issues that people have is that if they if they're downsizing from one house to another, and they think they'll keep the house they've just left as a as a rental and then go and buy the downsize is also a risk that you need to look at because generally, your owner occupied that you've been in for a number of years has got next to no debt on it, and then you go and. You buy the second house, but your second house has. Got all the debt that's non deductible, and you're left with a rental property that's got no debt on it. That doesn't make things tax efficient. So that's the other thing to bear in mind too, if it is a case of, look, we're going to downsize, but we're going to leave this one is a rental, you're better off to go and downsize, sell the house, buy a second one, and then if you've got capital left over that you want to deploy back to the investment side of things, then go and use the equity in your owner occupied house to then go and purchase.

16:14 A specific purpose built. Investment property, not your old owner occupied because you love to live in there. Yeah. Well, the opportunity could be very real, but the risks can also be very real. And I had a very really traumatic experience in two thousand and eight where I found out that I had not One of the reasons this podcast is called Ask Good Questions is because I had not known the questions that I should have asked at that point. So let's talk about what can go wrong, and you know, because I think in most cases that's what people are going to want to hear so that they can avoid it.

16:57 Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, what's. Your biggest expensive mistake that you think people make? Not asking good the name of the podcast, not asking God, not asking good questions, not asking the right people. And I think when it comes to real estate, people tend to take advice from their neighbors, from their work colleagues, from their family, from their drunk relatives at barbecues, but they won't go and get professional advice around real estate. But if we have like a legal problem, if we have an accounting problem, we generally tend to go and talk to a lawyer, or if someone comes to sue us, we're going and we talk to the lawyer to go, hey, how do I get out of this? We have a tax problem, We go and talk to the accountant about, hey, what can I do here about my tax issue? We have a real estate problem, or we're going to go and get some real estate and we go and talk to the neighbor about it, and the chances are the neighbor hasn't brought anything in ten to fifteen twenty years, if at all.

17:56 Most of the work colleagues are much the same boat. But I think because everyone lives in the house, everyone's got an opinion on on the real estate market what it should and shouldn't do, And so I think that's the key bedit is just getting some really good advice from people. Do you see people trusting the seller's agent. The buyer trusting the seller's agent. Oh, wait, way too much. That's the that's probably the second part of this is that people go to buy a house and the selling agent says, oh, hey, have you been looking for long? Yeah, been looking for the last month or two. Oh awesome. Have you got pre approval? Have you got a budget? Yeah?

18:38 Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're pre approved up to nine hundred thousand dollars. Oh okay, cool. What do you think of this house? Yeah, it's pretty good. I think what we're going to do is we're going to renovate this and we're going to do this, and we might subdivide the back of it, and then we're probably going to sell it in three or four months and try and flip it. And the agent goes okay, okay, yep, cool, thank you. And then you go and offer them seven hundred thousand dollars for the house. And they go back and they talk to the vendor and go, well, hey, mister vendor, the I've got another two hundred thousand dollars up this sleeve. These are the things that they're going to do. I've actually just I've told another buyer what these guys are going to do. So We've also got someone else that's interested now as well. So what we'll do is we'll just hold off their offer for a couple of days.

19:21 I'll get these guys to put an offer into we'll generate a bit of competition, and then we'll get heaps more for the house than what. We would have. And that's that's really you know, the biggest thing is pretending they're your friend. We're thinking they're your friend and they're there to help you. I suppose it's a little bit like Ronald Reagan when he said the most dangerous words are we're from the government and we're here to help. Is a little bit like realized that agent where I'm a selling agent and I'm here to help you. Yeah. Yeah, similar concept. Well, so basically what you're saying is, don't say too much, no.

20:02 No pilets. Look at the house, get an idea of what you think. Agent asks you what you think that the property is worth. I'm not sure at the moment, I don't know what do you think it offer? Look, I'm not too sure. I just need to have a have a look at what else has been sold recently and if we're going to put an offer, and I'll come back to you with an offer. What do you what do you think you do with do with the place? Well, I'm not quite sure. I don't even know where to pay for it, let alone if I even gave you an offer in the first place. So yeah, as soon as you get loose. Lips and tell them everything, that's that's restaking yourself into trouble. Right, Well, do you think that there's certain types of properties that retirees should never buy? Is there some category that you would say stay away from?

20:52 Yeah, I think anything that's like off the planet that hasn't been built yet, that's speculative in terms of how you can and you can buy this. Put your deposit down now. The apartment block is going to be built in six to twelve months to eighteen to twenty four months time, and it's worth four hundred thousand dollars today. It's going to be worth five hundred thousand dollars when it's built. You have a market correction of that time, and all of a sudden it's worth three point fifty. So that too, I have a commercial real estate thing that Yeah, then they're done that on that one too. Yeah, So if it's if you can physically touch it now and buy it now, good option. And as I say, the thing with the retirement side of things is like the cashflow becomes the important piece. So when you've got a long runway is that we want to be buying bigger blocks of land that if we need to do some development and things like that on them, then that's you know, later on down the track. That's fine because we've got time. But the thing we don't want to do is to get into speculative investing. You haven't got to run a long lead time to retirement because things take a long time to correct.

22:06 If you're in the market for twenty years and you get. Something wrong at year one, by the time you look at it in twenty years time, it's not quite so bad. But if you've got a run right of four years, and say like for New Zealand, like I bought a house in twenty twenty one the tenth of November between twenty one, the market declined on the eleventh of November betweeny twenty one, but it's okay because we had a strategy in the house is now worth more than what it was. But the thing with that though, is if we didn't have the strategy, we. Just aimlessly bought at that the day before the market turned, and five years later we hadn't done anything to it, We're potentially sitting at the same value, if not less than what we purchased it for with the whole oder maintenance issues. So that's the key thing you've got to purchase with a strategy. But as you get older, the lower maintenance that the newer properties that you can get see you're left with with the less headaches, and the growth isn't such a thing to push for. It's more so the cash flow that becomes more important.

23:12 Right Well, when people are getting into contracts, do you think there's red flags? Is there things that people should be looking for that some people might miss that are red flags. I think getting properties checked out with building inspections and things like that, and your council files and your council records are extremely important. You know, there's people like for us that miss out. I've had a client last week that we spent four thousand dollars on due diligence for a property and then she wasn't a happy lady at the end when we found that the roof. There were some major issues there, and there were some waterproofing issues, which was like a two hundred thousand dollar problem to fix. But the focus was was like, well, we've spent four thousand dollars on this.

24:07 This is ridiculous, So how do we reduce that cost next time? Because we can't just keep spending four thousand dollars a pop. And it's like, I get that, and I understand that. But if we've just got and bought the property, you haven't got two hundred thousand dollars to go and rectify this problem. So we were better to spend the four thousand on due diligence up front to find the two hundred thousand dollars problem. Then if I just said. To a look going by it, she bought it, then she would have been a lot more angry with me finding that there was two hundred grands worth of problems later on down the track for skipping a simple step. Well you know, so now we're all freaked out because those are all those are a lot of mistakes that people could make. What what kind of so so walk me through what kind of service someone like you gives to somebody? What does the client, actually have you do?

25:04 Yeah, So, in terms of the majority of our clients get us to go through the whole process for them. So we sit down with them at the start, findance strategically, where they're at in terms of financial situation, what it is that they're looking to achieve, and then we come up with a strategy around that. Are we what types of property are we buying? What are we buying hold? Are we? Are we chasing cash flow? Were chasing equity? What does that look like? Then we work out the areas that they're going to suit that strategy, and then property being the last thing that people go and look at, although that we go and look at. Generally it tends to be everyone goes and looks at houses and hopes everything else fits in along the way. And then so once we've got that and we start to go up to the market, we source the properties for them, take care of all the agent communication negotiation side of things, organize that due the due diligence, go through that with them.

25:56 If there's any red flags there, we point them out. We point them in the right direction. Whereas the first people to say, hey, look this doesn't work, We're better to start the process again then to go through with us and end up with a headache. And then what we then do is if there's renovations, we help them out on the renovation side of things, and then also on the property management. We've got a property management company as well. So for us, it's everything from starting to finish clients' jobs to say yep we like it or no we don't, and know it's fine just as long as we know. Why. So, are you acting as the buyer's real estate agent?

26:36 Yes? Correct, Yeah, okay, but you're like the whole process. It's not just the real estate agent buying the property then helping with renovation. I mean, that's fantastic to have somebody that can take care of all the things that need to be done. Yeah. Well, we started out just on the buying side of things, so we're feed for service and our clients pay, so we've got their best interest at hard as opposed to a vendor, you know, paying an agent. And so it started out just with the buying side of things. Then we had a client that said to us, hey, look you've done a good job for me getting me from where I was to where I am. Now I've got a number of properties if you start managing them.

27:19 If you want to start a property management company, I'll give you fifteen to start with, and then you know you. Can you can go from there. So I came home and told my wife that that's what we were doing, and she was she was a little bit unhappy about the situation. How are we going to do it with? Yeah, yeah, you know, I was like that. And then the same. Guy about four months later was like, Hey, look, if you guys can manage my projects for me as well, then I'll jump on board with that. So that's how that started. But I mean, hindsight being the great thing is like the one path till successful thing should have been the path that I went down, but we probably went too wide too early. They're okay now and things are good, but two wide too early. Having to employ people that were that were highly specialized, people with low revenue just meant that our main business that was doing well was supporting the others as they as they went through or as they grew, as opposed to them paying for themselves organically off the mark. So some lessons learned from the business side of things as well.

28:27 Well, that's good. So can you tell what a good property is going to look like on paper before you ever go take a look at it. Yeah, hundred percent. I think we've been doing it now for just on twenty years, so you get a bit of a gut feeling and a bit of intuition over that time as to what's going to be good. But I think now with very different story Back in two thousand and five, two thousand and six, when the Internet wasn't there or to the same degree as what it is ow. You know, and to go. And find out and investigate properties, you more or less had to go to the town or the city to go and look at them physically and walk through them and get an idea, as opposed to now with council maps.

29:15 With the research you can do on properties online, obviously the photos and the video walkthroughs, it gives you a pretty good sense of where things are. And like I said before, that doesn't eliminate the due diligence around the building inspections and things like that, but it just helps to go, hey, look, this could be a good one. Let's investigate this some more, or based on flood mapping and socioeconomic area, this isn't good, Let's move on to the next Well. It seems like this should be able to help you, you know, kind of evaluate in a smart way so that you're not buying a money pit.

29:56 Yeah. Yeah, You've just got to use all tools available to you to eliminate that. And I think it's getting easier to to do that due diligence and easy to look into all these things, especially with AI. You know that that definitely helps as well around you know, finding out information and cross checking information. You obviously want to verify all about yourself, but in terms of the stuff that it would have taken you hours to sift through, that the A I definitely makes a lot easier today. I know that back in the day and in my different real estate ventures that I've had in my life, sometimes there was a lot of spin around doing it yourself and not having an agent. Yeah, and so why would you say, the smart investor would go no, no, no, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to have my buyer's agent. Why why why are they What are the things that make it really worthwhile to have that agent?

30:57 You know that you're side by side with. Yeah, I think we'll go back to the like the court lawyer analogy, and you look at how well people do when they self represent, uh, and they don't tend to self represent anywhere in there. As well as what they do with a lawyer. So like from a negotiation, From a negotiation standpoint, you know, someone comes to you and you're talking with an agent through me, and they they say, you know what you should buy? I think about this, and you can you know exactly what they're thinking. But you've got a bit of theater and you've got a bit of there to to play your your client off against you know what, what's actually going on, whereas you know, you go, I don't really know about that. We're just going to have to think about it. Well, i'll see, I'll see what I can do. But when you're the face of that and you're trying to you know, like you and I are having a conversation now and I'm trying to tell you that I'm not quite sure because my wife doesn't might not agree with it. It doesn't quite wash the same as what it does with with someone independent. The other thing is to like we're in the market all day every day, so we know exactly what's going on, we know who the people are to deal with. We know who the people are to stay away from. We've got inside information that other people don't get. I was talking to a lady yesterday who said to me, I've been asking all the agents for where all the off market deals are and they just tell me they don't exist.

32:18 And I said, I was like, well, they won't exist. For you because you've got no track record with these people, and you know, they just want to see you to market so that you can compete with with everyone else. They don't want to help you out and get you over the line. So I mean there's deals that people never see the light of day because they come to us first, because they before they go anywhere else. And it also too, because of the length of time we've been doing this. There's no one there's no emotional attachment in this. For me, it's it's another house. And people are like, oh, well, just we'll pay this much. It's like, well, no, we won't. There there will be another deal that will come up next week. And I think that's that's the thing. As people get you know, there's the fear of missing out the kicks, and they overpay for a.

33:04 Place in a twelve months time. They go, oh, paid, I paid one hundred grand too much for this. This is ridiculous. Well do you think there's universal principles that that you know, so because you know I'm in I'm in the United States, you're in New Zealand, is there some principles that might apply it no matter what country you're in. Yeah, one hundred percent. I mean the guy that I took my real estate course from he was from Nebraska. So yeah, so he's from Nebraska and then he comes down to New Zealand to teach us about real estate and we had. The same So his trip is a business right off. Yeah, well there's there's that too, right, So yeah, he came.

33:47 Down to New Zealand to teach us about real estate. But it's the principles are the same, like by undervalue for some appreciation, depending on where you are, cash flow is going to be king or you're going to need some equity. Buy in suburbs that are in the above the bottom of twenty percent and below the fifty percent median of the suburb or the area, so that you're going to get some growth. And it's like it's. The basic stuff like that that's regardless of whether you're in New Zealand or whether you're in the States or Europe. If if you can sit and you can hit, you know, find out strategically what you're looking to do, then find the areas that suit that strategy, and then look at property as the last thing you'll have yourself, right as opposed to, like I say, people just stop looking at houses because that tends to be the first thing that people do, and then hope that the rest falls into place.

34:44 Right. I mean you're basically talking about a system and a process. Yeah, Well, I think everything's I was very anti system and didn't quite understand it for a long time, but as we're sort of growing, that's that become something that I've had to become more acquainted with. But basically, everything's a system or a process, and as soon as you don't have one, things go sideways for you and things get a lot harder than what they should be. Well, how do I want to do a little bit more of a on a personal note too, You're a young dad, right, yeah, tell me about your family.

35:26 Yes, So I've got an eight year old daughter, so she's she's just turned date. And then I've got and then that was with my former partner. I've got my now wife, we've been married for a couple of years now, and I've also got a held he now he's an eight month old an eight month old son as well, which is keeping us, keeping us on our toes, plus our dog, so that between the four of them keeps us, keeps us occupied. And then as I said, I live between two cities in New Zealand. The week that my daughters with her mum we live in Auckland, and then the weeks that I've got my daughter, I moved back to another city for a week to spend time with her, and so a.

36:10 Little bit of single parenting in both houses. But we we're making it work, how you know. So a lot of times I remember, probably when I was about your age, and I'm bumbling around trying all these different things that I wanted time freedom, I wanted to be in charge of my time. You know. How how do you think building this business has shaped how you think about legacy and time freedom and being able to be with those kids and with your wife. It's still it's still tricky and it's still challenging. I definitely haven't got it locked in. It's definitely helped that we're at the revenue that we are now, and that we've got a team that that I don't have to be on the like people are dependent on me, but they're not dependent on me for the delivery. So like, you know, I spend most of my time now, I'm talking with a team, dealing with like strategically, what are we going to do, how we're going to go out things, on boarding new clients. That's predominantly where I spend most of most of my time as opposed to the delivery side of things. So if something comes up like yesterday, for example, my daughter has gymnastics at four o'clock on a Wednesday, So it's like, right, cool, I just crossed my calendar out from four to five.

37:28 It's important to be there. Yeah yeah, well it's the question she asked me every Wednesday that she's with me. You're coming this afternoon, right, I mean yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you know, it's just about being able to cross those times out. It's like my son's swimming, you know, he's eight months old, but it's cute to go and watch, So it's it's good to be able to have those options just to go, Hey, look it's time blocked out for me to go and watch him. Not that he'll ever he'll ever remember it, but it's you know, it's an important thing for me to be able to go and do. Well. One of the things that I know that I've seen as a complaint is people say, oh, this just becomes a second job. You know, they want the financial upside of the property, but they don't want it to become a second job, which they really shouldn't. What's your advice around that.

38:20 Get a good property manager. Yeah, I mean that's even for my properties. I've got one not far from here, but our company manages it. I've seen the tenant from a distance, but I've I've never met her because the other thing that happens with that that house there I managed myself three or four years. Tenant was a lovely lady. She was paying well blow market rent, and then she'd missed some rent. In one stage, she didn't pay for two or three weeks in my car. She's a struggling mum. I then found out that she had four four teenage kids that were seventeen, eighteen nineteen living there that weren't working. And so like I look back, now got all I was doing, and I just wipe her the week or two weeks rent off because I felt sorry for her.

39:06 But the problem is is like I was enabling the situation because her kids who weren't working and were there and they all had no money. As soon as they gave them notice to leave, they all had enough money to fly to Australia, so they weren't helping their mom out there. She was behind on renting or other bills, but they had enough money to leave the country when they were they were forced to move out of the house. So your good property manager get them on top of it, and then you're not emotionally attached to it. Yes, there's a cost to it, but you know, for twenty thirty forty bucks a week, you're not going to get someone that's on call twenty four hours a day to do your accounting, to fix your maintenance issues, to deal with the tenant headaches, and getting them out if you need to get them evicted.

39:53 So it's you know, it's cheap in the scheme of things. Yeah, Well, what's the one thing you wish every person knew before they ever buy an investment property? What's what? Where? Where should they start? I said, by buy something that's boring, Boring makes your money sexy is expensive. Uh, And it's the It tends to be the same with with most things in life. If you go for the most the sexiest thing you can possibly find, they tend to be the most expensive thing. So you know, borings where you where you make your money, you tend to have less issues. They tend to be less expensive, less maintenance, less speculative. And and just go and if you just start to go out and talk to some people that have been in the game for a while, go and talk to some people that are on your side, who are in the game day and day out. Go and talk to a broker to get some feedback on you know what you can do. Because I think that's the other thing is that you know, people just go and talk to one bank and the bank says no, so they give up hope, as opposed to only talking to a broker that can give you a few different options and see where you where you can go. Because that was like a belief I had earlier on in the piece, was all my parents said, I just broke.

41:10 People go to brokers because they can't get lending in the bank. And then I since learned that the brokers we're extremely handy people to have on your side to get your finance when you know when someone's either said no to your or or things are tight or you need some different options, So the broker being a really good first step. And then who else they've got that they can introduce you to. Well, do you work just with New Zealand clients or do you have any international clients? Yeah, about fifty percent of our clients are international, So people that are looking to buy in New Zealand. We've got a number of expats that put their money back here from the Middle East, from.

41:55 Asia the time in the United States. Yeah, and yeah, no, we also deal with some people from the States as well back back into here too, So yeah, there's there's there's options there. And then we're also looking into potentially some property management stuff, uh and the States as well in the next next couple of years. Well, how how would someone who wants to learn more about you find you? Best places? On Instagram at Handling Nightingale or our website which is New Zealand property buyers dot Com. And the other thing that I'll just remind everyone on my website I always have a little profile about the guests, and so you'll be able to find information about Hadley there on on my website where I have all that information about guests. So, wow, our time is gone, Hadley.

42:50 So I think what we want to say is before you sign anything, ask some good questions and make sure you're starting with that system and that process. Right, Yeah, one hundred percent. Ask some good questions, get some advice. Even if the advice costs you a bit of money. You better to get a You better to pay for that early and find out that things aren't right rather than pay a lot of money and go, oh, finally, I'd spent five hundred or one thousand dollars to figure that out earlier, I would have saved myself a holiday, held ache and time. Well, and I just want to remind everyone to subscribe, leave a review, do all those kinds of good things.

43:31 Share this with somebody who's approaching retirement thinking and thinking about real estate. Right, So any final thoughts, Hadly. I think that the main thing is, as I say, go and talk to some people, ask some good questions, and just remember who's on your side and who's not, and who's there to sell you some stuff I think is the key piece. And everyone's going to have an opinion about real estate, but you need to go on and find the opinions that the rot ones that they're going to help you. Well with that, I want to thank you for joining me today. This has been enlightening and I hope that it's been something that really gives people some things to think about. So read that, thank you and yeah, so with that, we'll just say thank you so much for joining the Ask Good Questions podcast and we will see you next time.

44:26 By right, today's episode is over, but we did Ask Good Questions again, didn't We don't miss out as we broadcast live every Wednesday, six pm Eastern Time on W four CY Radio at w fourcy dot com. Joined Benina bellend'ersing next week for more conversations with experts on finances, retirement, behavioral finance issues, health and wellness. And more. Until then, remember to ask good Questions