Meighan Hetherington shares a great story about how she discovered the fascination of becoming a property investor and how she now shares that passion with other investors.

 
Transcript:
Kevin:  I’m going to feature an interview now with someone I haven’t spoken to for quite some time, Meighan Hetherington, who is a buyer’s agent from Property Pursuit – PropertyPursuit.com.au.

Meighan, happy New Year. Welcome to the show.

Meighan:  Happy new year, Kevin. It’s so good to talk to you again.

Kevin:  Yes, it’s been a while.

Meighan:  It has been. It’s been busy.

Kevin:  Well, that’s good. I want to talk to you about the market and about a number of things actually, but I’m really interested to hear from you about your own philosophy. I know you’re a believer in property. Why did you get involved in property investment? What started all that off?

Meighan:  It was actually back when I was at uni, and my father had a really strong interest in it. He just was a little bit risk-averse and actually didn’t take any action, but it instilled in me that interest in how to make money from property and how to research property and how to make it work for me.

It was back when I’d just finished university, I’d got my first full-time job, and I said to my brother and my father, “Let’s do this. Let’s get a property going.” And we did our first one together.

Kevin:  Those conversations around the kitchen table, did that frame that in your mind – hearing there about your dad talking but not necessarily taking any action?

Meighan:  Yes, and I think it’s one of the reasons that I really like the work that we do. It helps people take what might be an idea or a research phase that they’re in and actually take it through to completion and build a portfolio or buy a new home.

So that actual next step of having the confidence to take the action, I think that was the thing that I really wanted to make sure that I got started on quite young. And I gave up a lot to do that. I didn’t do any overseas travel and I really cemented myself in Brisbane by making that first purchase, but something that was really important to me was to get that financial stability quite young.

Kevin:  Tell me about that first deal with your dad and your brother. How did it come about? Where was it?

Meighan:  It was in Gordon Park, about five and a half kilometers north of the CBD in Brisbane. At that time, really that was considered a bit of the outskirts of Brisbane. This was in 1998. I was renting a property across the road with a couple of housemates and I kept saying to my dad, “That’s the kind of property I want to buy.”

It was across the road. It was the high side of the street. It was an old workers’ cottage that clearly hadn’t had any work done to it for about 80 years. Eventually it actually came up for sale, so it was a deceased estate. The sign went up, and the next day, I put an offer in.

It moved quite quickly from then. There were a lot of things that we did wrong on that first purchase and a lot of things that I learned. I think that collection of experiences has been quite valuable to me.

Kevin:  Did you get into that with a view to turning it over, or do you still own it?

Meighan:  No, I actually turned it over. I was working in corporate at the time, and when I got transferred to Melbourne, I sold that in its entirety to my brother. We were at 50/50 ownership in it, and my dad had put his house up as the equity so that we could borrow all of the funds to purchase it. We released his equity quite quickly. We did some renovations and were able to release his portion of it.

I sold it to my brother, and my brother sold it on the open market actually when I was a real estate agent I think in 2002. The view was to hold it, but I just wasn’t financially in a position where I could do that and live in another state.

Kevin:  Did he give you the listing?

Meighan:  Yes.

Kevin:  Well