About Real Women

In a word, Rachel describes her parents and her upbringing as ‘different’ and throughout her childhood and adolescence, she yearned to achieve a level of ‘normality’.

Once upon a time, she dreamed of being ‘normal’, owning her own house, having a wonderful husband to care for her and support her, and perhaps a couple of beautiful children to top off the fairy tale.

When she was 17, Rachel was eager to leave the confines of the Caravan and move out into the big wide world – and into a real house! As part of this escape, she married quite young and although it wasn’t a good match, it was a very good learning experience, that has strengthened her character as well as her compassion for others.

Although her fantasy wasn’t quite complete, by the time she was 40, Rachel was working hard, but quite content with life. She felt ‘normal’ with a loving partner, a beautiful loving daughter, two wonderful step-kids, a great career – and a lovely 4-bedroom house (with a large mortgage!)

What more could she want? Well, as she tells the story, it wasn’t that she wanted more, but that she didn’t want less. The ‘What-If’ scenarios became scary….what if she lost her job, what if she wanted to leave her job, what if she didn’t have the money to keep the house when she retired…..?

So in the year 2000, Rachel and her partner John, decided it was time to start planning for their retirement. They confirmed that their employer contributions to Superannuation would not give them enough to live on, even if they both worked until they were 65 or even 70.

They decided to purchase an Investment Property – not surprising that Rachel would want to invest in a house after living in a Caravan of course. But the decision was not so much based on emotion, but rather on logic and a need for a secure form of investment.

Rachel and John purchased just one property in 2000 and by 2005 had managed to purchase a total of 75 properties – and they still hold 71 of them. They specialise in buying and holding positively geared properties, so that the investments pay for themselves.

Their investment strategy has allowed John to leave work in 2002, and Rachel then ‘retired’ in 2004 – twenty years earlier than she had ever dreamed!

Although ‘retired’ Rachel likes to be busy and loves to talk over coffee and lunch and work towards further goals and dreams. As part of her goals to travel more, learn more and earn more, she has some other business interests in addition to the Real Estate Investing including being a Co-Presenter and Director of Real Women Real Estate, and she also owns Kate’s Hairdressing in Glenelg (South Australia).

Rachel says that she has achieved a lot of her goals because she was moving away from poverty and fear. Now she is re-focussing on moving towards abundance and prosperity.

Rachel loves to inspire others to reach their potential and to avoid being one of the ‘normal’ people who will potentially retire with insufficient money to do the things they want to do. She’s enjoying the challenges and the rewards, as she moves towards her own ultimate potential…Join her Mailing List today and be inspired to achieve more in your own life too!

Click here to go to Rachel's site

Even though Debbie’s first properties were purchased for long-term growth, she soon realised that Renovating was going to be an excellent way of adding value and maintaining cash flow. She commenced her first renovation in 2001. Despite the project becoming bigger than Ben Hur, she managed to turn an excellent profit.

As her teaching income was what you would call a ‘hobby income’, she recalls it was mind blowing to suddenly earn 8 times that in such a short period of time. Chris was working 60 hours a week, and a lot of their motivation to increase their income, was to provide them more time and more choices in life. Chris made the choice to leave his job in 2003.

Not everything has come so easily to Debbie; she was homeless at 15 and spent many years searching for an identity. Teaching piano was where that journey started. She set up a business teaching early childhood music to babies and small children and teaching Suzuki Method Piano.

Debbie and her husband had been interested in property for many years, but thought they didn’t have the money. They went to investment seminars and had follow-ups with representatives, who always said the same thing – not enough equity and not enough cash.

Finally with the little equity they had, Debbie went and contracted her first two 2 properties. That’s right she didn’t purchase just one, but two to start, followed by another one week later. She reasoned that she only needed two to be tenanted at any one time, to cover the costs of all three. The trouble was, they did have bad tenants, and only two were ever tenanted! The other problem was that after purchasing those three properties they ran out of equity.

Most people would have stopped there, but Debbie had been bitten by ‘the bug’! Some people like buying shoes, but Debbie loves buying houses! She went to a property investment course and learnt that valuations can be quite subjective.

She found that often you can purchase a property, and it is worth more than you pay!!!! Well, she had purchased three and they must be undervalued, so after speaking to the Bank, she contacted the Valuer and had a formal valuation. She provided pictures of the property as well as information on the area and even recent comparable sales to the Valuer in a document.

The Valuer looked at the information, and just one month after they were purchased, valued them at $30,000 more than she’d paid. That meant that she had another $30,000 to buy more property. With subsequent properties she used this same technique.

Within a short time, other people were asking how they could do the same thing. Rather than doing it for them, she developed a software package called ‘Property Wizard’ to assist others, to use the subjective nature of valuations, and easily present the relevant features of their property, in order to get the best valuation possible. You can purchase it today at www.equityfinder.com.au

More recently, Debbie has undertaken a number of personal development courses including NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) and APEC Business Coaching. She is a Business Coach, providing coaching to both the public and private sector and in 2007 is set to provide the Renovation for Profit segment of the property investment course at Adelaide TAFE.

Debbie loves to help others develop a life of abundance and surety, and she has a positive approach to life.