Starting from zero? Learn the essential steps to build a successful real estate portfolio in 2025. From securing deposits with as little as 2% to crafting a winning strategy and understanding your borrowing capacity, this guide covers everything you need to know to scale your investments and achieve financial freedom.
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If you're looking at building a property portfolio from scratch, I'm going to show you exactly what you need to be doing in the next couple of months so you can be best prepared to take advantage of building a scalable portfolio.
If you guys are interested, then definitely keep reading.
Now, credibility check: I actually run one of the fastest-growing buyer's agencies, and I employ almost 50 full-time staff. So when it comes to property, we are involved 24/7. We are purchasing anywhere between 20 and 25 properties every single week.
The reason I tell you that upfront is because I know exactly what you need to be doing in order to start from zero and actually scale your way up into a portfolio that gives you the ability to retire early or retire on your own terms.
This is the most important thing: if you're starting early, then you're probably going to end up retiring a lot earlier than most will. But not all is lost if you've purchased a dud property or you've only purchased your own home and don’t have investment properties.
This is the sort of stuff I specialise in—how to go from one property to five properties or go from zero all the way up to 10–15 properties.
If you guys need a hand with that at all, then definitely contact us by booking a FREE discovery call with my Search Property team.
Now let's jump into the four key pillars that you need before you start looking for property. I know it's so easy to just say: Right now, I can jump online and find a property—that's the one I'm going for.
Before we do that—and I know you're excited—there are four things we need.
There are so many things out there in the media suggesting you need to wait 10 years before you have a deposit to buy a house. Things are terrible, and they base that on such old policies.
To be honest, I'm still so surprised when people call us and say: Hey, I'm actually still further away from my 20% deposit; I'm probably closer to about 15%.
The reality is today you can get into property with as low as a 2% deposit.
Now, whether that's a good decision or not and whether it actually suits you is a whole different ball game. But I would go on to say that most people, on average, are buying investment properties with a 10–12% deposit. So, straight away, you know that you're in the market a lot faster than those who don’t have that knowledge.
This is why you're here—you want to start scaling up your net worth, and a really effective way to do that is with real estate. But you need to buy well.
If you say: I live in Sydney, and I want to buy a house that's going to cost me $1.5 million, and yeah, okay, sure, I don’t need 20%, but I still need 10%, and that's really hard.
Well, that's why you need to look outside of Sydney.
You might go to different markets, regional centres, or smaller capital cities and realise that maybe you can get a house for about $600,000. And I know this for a fact because we purchase property every single week.
Before you say: Where am I going to find a house for $500,000 in Australia?—they are available, and no, they're not in mining towns; they are in really good areas that are going to present you with really good growth.
In fact, I purchased a property myself only last week, and it was $600,000 for a four-bedroom place in an area that I expect to grow really well—not just in the next cycle but long-term as well. So this stuff is actually possible.
Depending on how much you want to spend in terms of purchase price, you can get into a purchase price of as low as about $400,000—that's probably the minimum we're purchasing at the moment.
For a $400,000 property, your deposit is about 10%. You'll have all your other fees like stamp duty, buyer’s agency fees, conveyancing fees, and inspections.
To buy that property, you're probably looking at anywhere between $80,000 and $90,000.
You might be in a position where you’ve got $100,000 right now and think: Holy crap, I was always under the assumption that I needed way more than that to get started.
Now, I know you might be thinking: Well, I actually can’t live in the property; I have to invest, which means I’m actually renting.
It’s a strategy called rentvesting.
I still rent now, and I pay a lot of money when it comes to rent, but I make a lot more from my investment portfolio.
What you’ve got to think about is using every dollar to its maximum capacity. It’s not about emotions getting involved. It’s about saying: Okay, if I want to actually retire and I want the 1% life, I need to do things differently; put my emotions to the side for at least the next five years, buckle down, because this is the time to do it.
Now, why do you actually want to do this?
Having a couple of houses or having a couple of hundred houses—you've got to think about what that actually gives you.
Now, I've been in a position where I could have gone heavier in terms of buying more property, more real estate, and having 50 or 60 properties personally. I don't care for that, and they're definitely different to your goals.
Therefore, if you have the intention to say: Well, I actually only need to retire with $8,000, I will have a house that's going to be paid off, how do I get there in 50 years' time?---well, your actions to actually get to that point are going to be very different to someone who says: Hey, I know that I want a dream house that's going to be worth $7 million. I also want a passive income of $1 million.
They're most likely going to have to have different structures, more headaches because they're going to have an accounting nightmare, because it'll be bought under different structures. It is then going to be the fact that they're going to have to outlay a lot more, which in most cases means they're working for a lot longer.
Now, the key question you need to ask yourself is “WHY?”.
Ask yourself: Why am I doing this?
Don't be scared that you've just now committed to this one goal. This can be fluid, and it needs to be. Your strategy will change over time.
When I bought my first property 11 years ago, at about 21 years of age, my strategy was very different to what it is today. So naturally, what you want is to go: I need to be fluid, but I also need to be super logical about this.
You need to figure out:
By answering these questions, you are going to get onto the right path before you go ahead and purchase a property.
Now, purchasing property is only possible if you get access to funds, so financing is a big part of this. This leads me onto my third point.
There is no point going onto Realestate.com or Domain and saying:
It does not matter if you can't get finance. Before you jump into thinking about what house to buy or where to look at, you need to think about what you can actually afford.
I would strongly suggest that you go out there and speak to a mortgage broker because that's how you can accelerate this entire process.
In Australia, we've hit a new record high when it comes to how many people are using mortgage brokers. It's now 75% of all purchases are being made through a mortgage broker, and there's a good reason why.
What most people were doing was going to the bank and saying: Well hey, this is the bank I bank with, so that's who I'm going to get the loan with.
You realise there are so many lenders and so many other banks.
Therefore, instead of you going out to each one of those—and chances are, the policy will change by the time you get to your 30th one—you go to a mortgage broker. You outsource these things because it's actually free for you to use, and they get paid by the bank.
For them, they really have no incentive to push one bank over the other. They just need to get you the best outcome for the goal that you're after.
I will always urge you, as well, to keep in mind it's not just about interest rates. You need to go beyond that.
If you're still questioning: Hey, how do I save 0.1% on my interest rate?, this isn't for you.
If you're trying to scale up a portfolio, you need to look at:
Chances are, that lender is not going to give you the lowest interest rate.
Now, we've got a brokerage partner that we use for 95% of all of our clients. If you want to get started with your borrowing capacity and understanding that over a quick call, book a call with the RefyneLoans team. They sit in our office, and boy, we do have a lot of fun discussing strategy.
4. Your Risk Profile
This is by far the most important, to be honest.
You need to know how much risk you are willing to take.
If you're someone who's really risk-averse and just wants to have your own house and probably just passively invest into Exchange-Traded Fund (ETFs), that's okay because you're still doing something.
However, if that's the case, then this strategy is not for you. You're not really after a scalable portfolio. What you're after is: Hey, I'm okay with retiring at 65, and I'll have a nest egg that might be worth some money, and that way, I can just rely on myself.
If you were to do that, especially if you started in your 20s and 30s, you'll retire really comfortably. However, there are some people watching—and it might be you—that are thinking: I want more than that. I want to be able to retire in my 50s if I choose to, and if I do work till 60 because I love my job, I want to be able to retire filthy rich, not just comfortable.
In that case, you need a scalable portfolio, and you need to understand what risks you are willing to take.
I've sat across the table from people who have $10 million in the bank, and they say, "Well, okay, I want to take this comfortably, and I'll buy one property every year." Then, I've had other people who literally want to buy as many as they can, have an emergency fund of about $10,000 to $15,000, and, as soon as equity is available, they use that, repeat the process, and come back to us.
In 2024, we've had over 10 clients who have gone past their fifth and sixth properties, and it's so exciting to see that journey over only a short period of time. They started with nothing and have now reached a point where they're making passive income. Their equity growth in their portfolios is well in excess of $200,000 to $300,000 every single year—and that too is tax-free.
This is why it's so important to get all of these things aligned before you jump into the new year.
Now, you might be reading this in the early months of 2025, but just know people have read this as soon as it came out because: They're getting ahead of the curve.
Most people think about New Year's resolutions and goals halfway through January. Then, you get into the swing of things, and before you know it, it's March.
If you're among the select few, you're going to get started in December. You'll also know that I want to partner with certain people who are also thinking the same way. Are they the people just taking early Christmas breaks or going to Christmas parties?
I advocate for a lot of fun, but to be honest, I prefer working on this.
I work on my machine, especially when things become quiet. I look forward to the two-week shutdown because I get to do some real deep work. That's the time I focus on my personal planning when it comes to my own wealth and strategies for the following year.
Now, if you do this well and want to start from scratch and scale up your portfolio, if you're in a position to purchase in Q1 of 2025, I have high confidence you'll have enough equity in your property to purchase again in Q4 of that same year.
That means if you purchased for $500,000 in Q1 and purchased again for $500,000 in a different location in Q4, you'd have about $1 million worth of assets if you started from zero.
This means if you conservatively had 5% growth in your first year, you'd make $50,000 in 2026.
Now, that's just based on 5%. We know the national average here in Australia is closer to about 7–8%, but let's assume it was 5%.
If you did this for 20 years—purchasing just two properties next year—and said: You know what, I'm not going to do anything else, in 2025, you'd build enough equity to purchase your second property. That's it. You call it quits. You go invest into ETFs, maybe buy some Bitcoin, chill somewhere, and go on holidays.
That same $1 million worth of real estate in 20 years' time would be worth $2.65 million. That means you'd generate $1.65 million over the following 20 years, and you had nothing else to do. That would average out to about $80,000 every single year, tax-free, because it's equity.
You're not selling, so you don't pay tax on that. The only time you pay tax on it is when you sell, and in this case, you're probably not selling anyway. By that point, you're likely positive cash flow by about $30,000 or $40,000 as well, putting you in a really strong position to retire on your own terms.
I hope you guys have learned so much from me in this article. I'll catch you guys in the next one.
Thanks, guys!
Disclaimer: Search Property Pty Ltd (SP) does not provide financial or investment advice and does not hold a financial services license as defined in the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth). Any advice given by SP is general in nature and does not take into account your personal circumstances or objectives, financial situation or needs.
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