Hot Property

Sydney-based couple SCOTT & MINA O’NEILL retired at 28 after building a $20 million commercial property portfolio in just 10 years. They also set up their own business, to help thousands of others on the same road, and in this edited extract from their new book they share some insight on how you can do it, too…

Thirty-one degrees. Sun on my face. Sand between my toes. Life was pretty relaxed as we lay on a beach on Kos, in the Greek islands. It was 2016 and Mina and I were relishing a six-month break from Australia. We thought we’d hit the jackpot. I had retired from my day job at age 28. At that time we owned 25 residential and commercial properties scattered across four different states.

It hadn’t come easily or by accident, though; we’d worked hard, saved for many years and obsessed over every property decision we made. Thousands of hours had gone into building this portfolio. But we had won back time in our pursuit of a lifelong ambition — to replace both of our incomes so in future we could do what we wanted on our own terms. Now we had taken the brakes off and flown to Greece to eat, drink, visit family and travel around Europe for six whole months, using the passive income we had earned from our properties. It was a deeply humbling feeling.

As I sat by the water and watched the beach chairs being stacked away for winter (signalling it was nearly time to go home), I mentally reviewed our expenses over the past few months. After all our accommodation, plane tickets, eating out and other expenses were added up, our properties still produced more income than we spent. This was our ‘aha’ moment, when we knew life would be different forever. I couldn’t believe it! Our property income was now enough for us to live off — and retire on. It was one of the most exciting moments I have ever felt, because I knew we had ‘made it’ financially. And there was no reason why we couldn’t keep travelling indefinitely. I felt like we had none of the stresses normally triggered by having to go back to jobs neither of us enjoyed.