Most of the resistance that stops people investing has nothing to do with money. It comes from not knowing. In this episode of Confessions of a Property Investor, Pamela Philips and Michelle White from Chase Wealth Australia break down the objections they hear every day, and where those objections actually come from.
They start with price point, the assumption that a more expensive property must cost more to hold. The out of pocket cost on an $850,000 property and a $1.2 million property is far closer than most people expect, because the running costs scale with the purchase price rather than stacking on top of it. From there the conversation moves to the trade-off people make without realising it: $300 a week towards a car that will never earn a cent, when the same $300 a week can cover the mortgage repayments and holding costs on an asset that grows.
Michelle also walks through what actually happens in a qualifying consultation, why she asks every client for their fears as well as their goals, and why those goals so often change once a couple has had the chance to talk it through at home. Tune in for a candid look at how Chase Wealth Australia removes the barriers rather than talking around them.
Because they are not saying no to the numbers, they are saying no to the unknown. Michelle White describes clients who assume an investment property means finding a second mortgage repayment out of thin air, decide they cannot do it, and stop looking. The decision is made before any figures are put in front of them. Chase Wealth Australia treats that as a knowledge problem rather than an affordability problem, because the objection is built on an assumption the client has never had tested.
No, and this is the single most common misreading in the episode. The day to day running costs of a property scale with it rather than stacking on top of it, so the out of pocket difference between two properties at different price points is far narrower than the gap between their purchase prices suggests. Pamela Philips makes the point that price point is the first objection she meets and the one that collapses fastest once the holding cost is laid out beside the purchase price.
Because that was the last property decision they made, and it set their sense of what a property should cost. Someone who bought a home years ago at a much lower price will often insist on spending only that lower amount now, even though their own home has moved well past it. The anchor is a memory, not a calculation, and it quietly rules out the properties that would actually suit the goal.
It is the same money doing opposite work. The episode uses the example of someone comfortable committing a few hundred dollars a week to a car loan while treating the same commitment to an investment property as impossible. A vehicle takes the money and gives back a falling value. The point made is not that nobody should buy a car, it is that the equity built in a property can later be the thing that buys the car, and the order those two decisions are made in changes the outcome.
Michelle White starts with the numbers, because income and liabilities are what they are and cannot be argued with. The work is in what comes after: the goals, the motivations, and specifically the fears. She asks every client what is concerning them, what they know, what they do not know, and what their past experience has been. The reason for asking is that a stated goal often has a different goal underneath it, and the plan has to be built on the real one.
Because the first conversation gives them the language to have a better one at home. Pamela Philips describes clients arriving at her stage having reordered what they want, most often landing on paying down their own mortgage as the first priority. That is not indecision. It is the first time they have been able to compare options on the same terms, and the plan that comes out of it is the one they will actually stay with.
It means answering the specific thing stopping this person, not delivering a general case for property. Almost every objection in the episode has a resolution attached, and the resolution is nearly always information the client did not have. Chase Wealth Australia stays alongside the client through the purchase and afterwards rather than handing over a property and stepping back, because the questions do not stop at settlement.
"The running costs, the day to day running costs, essentially scale up or down."
Pamela Philips, 2:08
"That $300 a week towards an investment property can cover everything. Can cover your mortgage repayments, your out of pockets, your ongoing expenses throughout the journey."
Michelle White, 4:00
"We remove the barriers. That's essentially what we do."
Pamela Philips, 4:32
