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Women in Focus - Kerrie Kerr

Find out why this month’s woman in focus is 2009 Property Women of the Year.

Before property investing

Kerrie used to work in tourism and hospitality up to the year 2005. Her work then included TAFE teaching, Function Management, Corporate Travel and also running her own Conference Co-Ordinating Business. After finally completing her Bachelor Degree in Business, she decided to devote her time to expand the family's property portfolio.

A Lasting Gift

It was her parents who first inspired Kerrie to start with property investing. Her parents had always been interested in property and had bought a few investment properties during their marriage. When her mother died, she received a small inheritance which she used as a deposit on two properties in Brisbane. It was her way of turning her mother’s gift into something memorable. And a lasting gift it turned out to be for it was her start to something bigger.

A Loving Support

Kerrie is lucky to have her husband’s full support in property investing. He was the one who encouraged her to continue with property investing. The result: “We had accumulated properties in Brisbane and regional NSW (total of 9) in the decade up to 2005.”

He is also the one who ultimately pushed her into expanding their portfolio when she finished her degree which resulted in Kerrie deciding to work full time expanding the families property portfolio.

A Successful Property Investing Journey

“I love the concrete nature of investing in property together with the tax advantages and potential to improve each property. As well as it being satisfying to build up a level of expertise in the one area, property investing still allows one to have flexibility and creativemess to enhance each investment's potential"

In less than 4 years, Kerrie was able to add 4.1 million of property investments in their existing portfolio. She turned these properties into high cashflow investments providing a gross income stream of $355k pa and added equity of $1.25 million. There’s still more to come once the subdivision and strata titling has been achieved.

Kerrie believes that she managed to do all these through skills that women naturally have such as time management, tight budgeting, communication, marketing, attention to detail and the ability to juggle.

“The best part is that it has been done whilst working from home with the freedom and flexibility to be involved in my family’s everyday life. There are so many facets to property investing to master and develop that every day it continues to inspire me to learn and do more. – not a bad way to spend each day!”

Kerrie's Property Investing Words of Wisdom

Make property investment choices that suit your personal risk aversion – my investments to date have been rather low key and low risk but in percentage terms have gained terrific capital growth and outstanding cash flow.
Be mindful of how your investment strategy will work for you if you are successful as well as if it’s not. A dear friend, Bill Richardson prompted us to consider this many years ago and it has proven true most of the time. Often success brings its own issues to consider, such as how much time it will take and the lifestyle changes that may have to result. My furnished rental property business is a case in point as it created a position and became active rather than passive. Rather than letting the cash flow it created go, I opted to continue adding to the portfolio so that it grew to a point which warranted employing an administration assistant.
Include in your planning multiple exit strategies so that you can sleep at night.
Once you perfect a niche market – repeat it. Although it’s not widely exciting, I love the way you can continue to improve on a given formula. Using the same strategy (purchase a block of flats, renovate/furnish/strata them, increase the rent, have them revalued, borrow more money and start again) there is always ways in which to improve the concept either through better renovation techniques, renovating to a different market, reducing your expenses, reducing the timing. I thoroughly enjoy the figure side of the work and keep detailed spreadsheets on every project and use these as my goals and motivation to improve.
I’m very much a buy, improve (through renovation, strata, subdivision) and hold investor. I don’t see any point or need to sell. One can achieve more financial growth through having properties revalued and utilising the increased equity to purchase new investments, than selling and having to pay agent’s fees, selling costs, capital gains tax, and bank fees.
Conduct a S.W.O.T analysis on yourself. A S.W.O.T analysis is a simple yet very powerful analysis applicable to many aspects of life. S.W.O.T are Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
- Analyse your “Strengths” and at times push yourself outside your comfort zone to achieve more
- Analyse your "Weaknesses" and surround yourself with a team that replace and supplement these
- Be ready for all "Opportunities" – educate yourself, read property investment articles, attend workshops specific to your interests and do your research and finally...
- Be aware of the “Threats” – know the issues that may negatively impact your property investments and be proactive to withstand them.

Renovations

Below are some of the renovations Kerrie has undertaken. Kerrie will be speaking about DIY Property Management at out our next One Day Workshop in Melbourne in September click here to find out more