Property Magicians Podcast

In this week’s episode we share our stories and what it’s been like to run a business where we loan people money and they refuse to pay us. We talk a lot about getting out of debt, but we rarely talk about the people that are owed money and how it affects their lives and businesses. We hope that this podcast leads to a deeper conversation about debt and the importance of paying the people you owe.

In this week’s episode we talk to Khumo Nawa from Botswana. Khumo has been in the banking sector for 15 years and decided at a young age that she wanted to be out of the corporate world by the time she was 35, but she started working and forgot the dream. In 2016, she found herself feeling unfulfilled and drifting into depression and ended up leaving her job prematurely in 2017. Luckily, she acquired her first property in 2011, a 2 bedroom house on a piece of land, when she had read Rich Dad, Poor Dad, in the same year (2011) she decided to get a 500,000 Pula loan to build a 3 bedroom house for herself to live in. She rented out the 2 bedroom to a tenant. When she left her job in 2017, she didn’t have enough money to pay the loan because her side hustle and tenant income didn't cover her expenses. She ended up in court with the bank, in February 2019, the court granted her a settlement agreement.  At this point she realized that she needed to plan her finances differently, in March 2019, she decided to go back into the corporate world. She was goal driven and she knew why she was working. She decided she was going back to the working world for 2.5 years. Her first goal was to get rid of all her bad debt, she had a million Pula in mortgage and personal loans. She changed her lifestyle drastically, she went back to the village, because it was much cheaper there so she could direct her money to achieve her goals. She was able to pay off 340,000 Pula in debt in 17 months.  After settling her debt, she ended up with 17,000 Pula free every month. She looked at the village and decided to use a 2,000 sqm plot for 85,000 Pula in the village, which she had acquired in 2013 and decided to build 1 room houses for people in the village. She built 1 block of rooms (each block had 3 rooms) for 75,000 Pula close to a technical college for students and had a waiting list for students for accommodation and rented out the unit for 1,800 Pula per unit. She had determined she needed 16,000 Pula per month to be financially free. She had an opportunity to get a loan, because she named the project her financial security project, to a level where this project can take care of her. She decided that if she used debt, she would want it to be short debt and she could be in and out quickly  She also started a blog and started showing everyone how she was able to use their salary to create financial freedom. She started showing people how they could use their salary differently and attracted a lot of people to the blog and she started coaching and selling products on her blog. She decided that 50% of all her income would go towards her real estate and building her portfolio. At the same time a mall was being built near her property; people started looking for accommodation and she built studio apartments where each block is rented out for 4,500 Pula. She is currently looking for 540,000 Pula for 12 months to build 3 blocks of studio apartments. She is not looking for equity partners, she is looking for people who want a better return on investment than their bank or financial institution can provide them. This is a really incredible episode.

In this week’s episode we talk to Lester Philander, a property investor and the founder of Corp Cafe based in Muizenberg, South Africa.   He started his property journey by making an offer on a property in Mitchell’s Plain, but ended up quitting his job to start his business after getting the initial approval but not the final approval, so the process fell through. A few years later, he and his wife bought their first property to live in Muizenberg and later bought a second property with 3 units on the premises to help family members by renting it out to them. They are now planning to rent that property out to other tenants.   During Covid, he announced that a lot of coffee shops were closing down. So he developed a concept called “rent my restaurant.”   He invested R80,000 into a restaurant, signed a lease and confirmed a lease and then rented out the property to a restaurant owner. The idea was that as a restaurant owner, you would then lease the restaurant with everything in it and you just focus on managing the restaurant and paying them a set fee of R10,000 a month.   The result was great, but he realized that he wanted to make more than R10,000 a month and that Cape Town had more coffee shops per capita than New York City, which means that for a coffee shop to succeed they need to offer a bit more than other coffee shops on the market.   They then started a franchise model (Corp Cafe) where their franchisees can become a hands off restaurant owner (they manage the coffee shops for you), where they buy the franchise for R450,000 and in return Corp Cafe will manage the restaurant and pay the franchisee R10,000 a month (a 24% yield per annum) and reinvest the extra R20,000 profit and leave it in the business bank account for the franchisee to use at a later date.   They currently have 10 stores open and they plan to set up two stores every single month from now on.   This is a really incredible episode.

In this week’s podcast we talk to Nthabiseng Sejake, a property investor and municipal employee from Soweto who works in utility and property management. Her mom is an entrepreneur who owned a shebeen (tavern), which is now a bottle store; her mom also owns 4 properties.   She bought her first property to get away from her mom and have space. She bought her first property (a 2-bedroom house) in Protea Glen after being referred by a client. She got funding from Mastandi to get the property and to get building funds.   She converted the unit into a 14-unit development where every unit rents out for R3,000 a month. In 2015, she and her partner decided to buy another property - she quit her job and invested her pension money to build a 10-unit development, where she rents out each unit for R9,000 to University of Johannesburg students. All her units have washing machines, DSTV, and Wi-Fi. To get accreditation, she had to provide the students with transportation.   She is working on her third property, another student accommodation (a 3-bedroom house), where she will be housing 6 students at first, thereafter she plans to build the development into a development that houses 35 students. She works with an attorney and a digital marketing property company, Bathamaga Property, that helps her find tenants.    This is another incredible episode.

In this week’s podcast we talk to Tim Akinnusi, the CEO of MortgageMarket.co.za. Tim is originally from Nigeria but has resided in South Africa for 30 years. He is the former Managing Executive of ABSA Home Loans, and prior to that he was the Executive Head of Sales and Client Value Management at Nedbank Home Loans.   Tim is a seasoned property finance expert with over 15 years’ experience in the financial sector. Tim started MortgageMarket in 2020 to help ordinary South Africans get the best loan to value.   MortgageMarket is the first online marketplace for home loans to give customers direct access to the Top 7 banks in SA and has done more than 2000 homeloans; they pay customers R5,000 cash back just for getting their home loan through the platform.    MortgageMarket will also help you find a property, understand if the property is priced correctly so you are not over-paying for the property. They also help you get the best deal for your mortgage by being able to compare deals across banks and negotiate better.   MortgageMarket also works with property developers who are buying land in good areas to partner with them to help them make sure they are packaging the properties in a way that allows the banks to see value in what they are offering.   MortgageMarket is also expanding into insurance and bridging finance.    In this podcast episode Tim also shares how to increase your credit score without a credit card or taking on more debt. The higher your credit score, the more like you are to qualify for a home loan.   He lost out on buying his first home for R345,000 off plan because he had too much debt (an expensive car), so he ended up buying his first home for R600,000 and ended up paying transfer costs.   He has started to build a strong property portfolio because he can see properties before they hit the market, from working with property developers.

In this episode- PropDocMom took the commonly asked questions by mentees and some general questions off her Facebook page.   Questions that may seem obvious to a savvy investor or questions you've always wondered about- however never had the time or opportunity to have addressed.   Here's some mentor tips about property management matters, property financing and property structuring.... and more   Take a listen... Leave us your comments and more questions for Propdocmom.   See you on the next episode!

In this week’s podcast we talk to Tinyiko Motileni, who has 3 businesses, one of which is a property business. She also has a Master's in Business Leadership.   She didn’t even know there was anything like real estate. She just wanted to have a side hustle, make money and buy property. Her main aim with property was to be free and to have passive income.   She bought her first house at 24, she bought her house to get passive income by building a property in the back. Unfortunately, her mom passed on in the same year; at work they asked her to move to a different city (East London), so she ended up renting the whole property and she charged her tenant enough money to pay her mortgage because she didn’t know enough about property investing.   When she moved to East London, she decided to buy a house, using the rental budget her employer was giving her. She ended up buying her property with her partner at that time and when they broke up, she ended up losing the house.   When she moved back home, she started researching township properties and he asked her to buy his house; she took all her savings and bought the house and built 5 rooms and asked her brother to help her tenant them.   Her father had left, so she decided to utilize the land and started farming; she realized that her mother had built rooms on the farm, so she started to rent out those rooms.   Through trial and error, she was able to learn that her cash crop is spinach.   She bought her properties cash and is only left with 2 years to complete payment for one of the properties.   In this podcast, Tinyiko also explains how she is building her business with her ancestral gifts and how everything she is doing is guided and for the next generation.   This is another incredible podcast.

In this week’s podcast we talk to Zoliswa (Zoe) Singcu, a mother of two and world traveler who is originally from Port Elizabeth (PE), South Africa and is currently working in Saudi Arabia as a Medical Technologist. She is a world traveler. She bought her first property for her family in Kimberly; she and her husband struggled to get that property. She spent a lot of her time watching programs that have to do with houses and decorations. When she was working the night shift at her job at the hospital, she would look at properties internationally.   She wasn’t even thinking of property investment at that time, but she loved the architecture and the designs. One time, she was viewing properties in PE, and she realized she could afford to buy one of her dream properties. This is how she bought her second property.   At the time, she just wanted to own a property in that estate; there was already a tenant in the property, and she took over the tenant. The property was positive cash flowing from day 1.   She bought her third property in Pretoria when she was getting divorced and some of her friends suggested she leave Kimberly. She bought the house without seeing it, moved to that house and rented out the house in Kimberly, which she has since turned into an AirBnB.   Shortly after buying the third property, she bought 2 units from a developer and a year later she bought another 2 units from the same developer and rented out those properties to tenants and started breaking even.   After buying the 4 properties, she didn’t buy anything for two years, she approached her brother to partner with her to buy land in PE, but he changed his mind because he was scared of losing his money, she went ahead with the sale. Her plan with the land is to sub-divide the land and build 2 houses and resell them.   She then bought a new unit (new development) in Pretoria and turned it into an AirBnB unit, which is doing very well, and that income covers the expenses for some of the properties that are under performing. Zoliswa buys property for different reasons - to make sure that her kids have properties and don’t have to start from zero. She wants to have a lot of properties so that she doesn't have to struggle later in her life.

In this week’s episode of the Property Magicians Podcast, we talk to Palesa Lengolo, a finance professional with over ten years of experience in investments, banking and accounting.   She’s also an author of a book called ‘Stokvels - How they can make your money work for you' and told us that the stokvel industry is a R50 billion (US$3 billion) in South Africa.   She grew up seeing her mom being part of stokvels. She became interested in stokvels when she started working for a pension fund company and learned about investing; she realized that the way the pension funds were working was very similar to stokvels.    The first stokvel she was part of was non-monetary - for funerals, where the members would provide food for funerals, eventually the stokvel evolved and members started sending money.   Her mom then joined a stokvel that evolved into a lending stokvel, where they loaned money to teachers and postman for 30%.    Her work with pension funds led her to connecting with other stokvels at the Stokvel Academy and she asked them if they were interested in investing.   She then volunteered to work with the Stokvel Academy and to teach them about investing and creating financial freedom. She then started doing research on stokvels and property stokvels instantly popped up.   She shares that there are 4 ways of making money in property stokvels: Trust - setting up a trust and investing in assets Fund property deals or be an equity partner in property deals Form a Pty and buy properties under a Pty and the members are shareholders under a Pty Bond - where the stokvel members are paying each other’s bonds     In this podcast Palesa also talks to us about the importance of trusts and structuring within stokvels and explains that as a group you need to have a clear goal for your stokvel.

In this week’s episode of the Property Magicians Podcast, we talk to Thapelo Mokau, a flight engineer and property investor.   He bought his first property in 2019 when he qualified as a flight engineer. He was planning to stay at the property but he attended a real estate seminar where he was told there were a few strategies he could use.   He started with sourcing, where he looked for property for investors. He started by engaging with other sourcing agents and started building a relationship with various people in the real estate industry.   He bought a property in Boksburg that was a buy-to-let, he got tenants to pay money into his bank account and then used that track record with the banks to show that he was receiving money from tenants and also receiving his salary.   His second property was a multi-let in Kempton Park - he explained his requirements to a real estate agent and everything went well. He is planning to use the cash flow from the property to build and extend the property so he only uses bank money to buy the property. He explained that his strategy is to grow his asset base and use different avenues to grow his portfolio. This is another educational podcast.    Tune in!