Property Ladder: Hammer time

Looking back, Jess Boxtel remembers everything changing for the better when she threw her hammer through a wall. “I guess it all stepped up a notch that day,” says the HR manager with a successful side hustle flipping houses with her FIFO-worker husband, Simon. “We’d already bought and sold a few houses by this stage but we had this little cottage in Brisbane and we were umming and ahhing about whether we could do the renovation work required by ourselves.”

Simon is a tradie, says Jess, and he’s “really handy” but “he wasn’t so confident that we could do the major works. But I knew he could do it so while we were debating about whether or not we should take down a wall, I settled the issue by throwing a claw hammer right through the gyprock. “I said: ‘I guess now we have to take it down.’”

Early doors

Jess and Simon’s property investment journey started – separately – when they were both teenagers. “Strangely, both of us bought off the plan in Perth when we were 19 years old,” she says. “I think for Simon, his parents had always encouraged him to put his money somewhere smart. I’d spent periods of my childhood growing up without a lot of stability

so creating that for myself was important to me.”

Both Jess and Simon took advantage of the First Home Owner grants in Western Australia at the time – which not only saved them stamp duty but also supplied a large chunk towards their deposits. By the time they met for the first time when they were both 21, their new builds were complete. “We were living frugally,” says Jess. “I had about $50 spare per week and I rented out each room in that house to try to help with the mortgage.”

Moving away

After a few years, the couple got engaged and moved to Cairns, where they purchased a home with the intention of doing it up and selling it for financial gain. “What we did was largely cosmetic,” says Jess. “But we fixed it up, sold it on for a profit and when the time came to move again, we were hooked. We realised it was the perfect side hustle for our combined skill sets. I have an eye for design and Simon can figure out most of the construction side of things.”

Fast-forward a decade and the couple have flipped six houses, including their most recent project: a two-bedroom cottage on the Gold Coast, where they now live, that they’ve transformed into a three-bedroom haven. “We’ve learnt so much along the way,” says Jess, “including that you really have to live in a place for a while before you renovate it so you can get a feel for how things are going to work.”

The couple once made the mistake of moving into a house in Brisbane with the intention of doing a quick flip and selling it on. “We soon realised it wasn’t really salvageable and might be more of a tear-down,” says Jess. “We still own it but we’re planning to eventually put duplexes on the block. We didn’t realise how extensive the work would be but it’s all a learning experience.”

Building blocks

Investing in property might be something the couple accidentally stumbled upon at first but these days there’s a distinct strategy to the process. “We have a great lender at CommBank – Sarnie – who crunches the worst-case scenario numbers for us when we’re considering a purchase,” says Jess. “Any money we make from flipping a house goes into a fund for the next one and we won’t make the purchase if we can’t make $70,000 to $100,000 in profit within 12 months.”

There’s been some luck involved, too, says Jess – the couple bought a house just prior to the pandemic, which they were able to sell a year later in the midst of the COVID property frenzy for a $270,000 profit with very little work done.

“The big thing for us is to treat the side hustle like a long-term investment so we keep putting the profits back into the houses.” The couple leave themselves a buffer for big renovations if they ever want to do them or enough for an auction deposit if they find something they like. “That’s when we work with Sarnie – she’ll make sure we’re in a position to go to auctions and make decisions for the future.”

Taking cues

When friends tell Jess they want to try property investments in this same way, her advice is to keep it simple and understand your budget. “It’s not easy work but it is rewarding. If you do it with someone else, clearly define and understand your roles in the relationship. Simon deals with all trades and building things and I make design, layout and product decisions. Trust me when I say these defined roles can save your relationship.”

And what of the cottage in Brisbane that copped a hammer to the wall from an impatient Jess? “Simon was mortified. I could tell he thought he’d married a crazy woman. But he says that was the pivot for him because it forced him to do the renovation.” Simon opened the wall and used a salvaged 1960s rail beam the couple picked up for $120 as the focal point of the house – it made a big statement and the rest, as they say, is history. Everything grew from the confidence the couple got from that first reno. “Now, Simon never says no. He just says, ‘Yeah, we can do it – I just have to work out how.’”

Jess Boxtel’s top tips

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