Your Game Plan™ is a property plan that is tailored to your personal circumstances, goals and risk appetite. We create it by combining thorough research, rigorous risk reduction assumptions, data and machine learning.
Whether it's a single investment, your family home or a long-term investment strategy, we will give you a clear and comprehensive plan for the property you own—a Milk Chocolate special we like to call the 'Game Plan™'.
The purpose of the Game Plan is to help you best understand what your next move can be, and how that may impact your long-term financial position. Think of a Game Plan™ as a useful guide, a roadmap that exists in the background, giving you insight into what is possible with what you have.
How it works
Each Game Plan™ consists of different types of events—purchases, renovations or builds and sales—over a period of 5 to 20 years. Purchases can include both residential and commercial investment properties as well as family home purchases.
If you already own existing property, during your Game Plan™ preparation we will assess the health and potential of those properties and propose recommendations to hold, renovate or sell.
Flexible by nature
By no means are you made to lock yourself into the same plan for many years. We focus on the first event e.g. an investment purchase with a renovation, and then each subsequent Game Plan™ event thereafter has the potential to change.
Before each new event in your Game Plan™ timeline, you can update, pivot and tweak accordingly to suit your changing circumstances or market conditions.
Cash flow is king
Having a bunch of money upfront is essential to start investing, but the thing that is often overlooked or undercooked is the budget required to cover any additional expenses each month. Simply put, the more money you can spare each month to put towards holding costs, the more we can do with your investments. It’s a very important aspect of property investing, especially if you have a modest initial cash investment.
If you have a Game Plan™ that is focused on capital growth, the chances are you will own one or more investment properties where the monthly expenses are higher than the monthly rental income. These are called holding costs and the monthly flow of money in and out is called cash flow. The intention here is that the total holding costs add up to be way less than the capital growth of each property over time.
Our assumptions consider everything
Each Game Plan™ goes into incredible detail, and includes a set of assumptions to help ensure the most accurate outcome possible. To give an indication of the scale of our analysis, there are 135 assumptions built into our models. For example, from CPI, capital growth and interest rates assumptions, to invasive plumbing assessments in purchase costs and vacancy rate buffers in cash flow summaries.
For each property, we factor in an extensive set of purchase costs, holding costs and estimated renovation costs. All subsequent fees have been included across purchase, estimated building costs (if you're looking to build) and property management to create a complete picture.
The Game Plan™ process
Part 1—Review your options and select your Game Plan™
We will create three options that take a different approach, providing a range of outcomes
Either pick a preferred option or provide feedback. You have the opportunity to make changes to your investment amount at this point also.
If changes were required, a revised Game Plan™ option will be sent to you for review.
Approve your Game Plan™ and subsequent first purchase.
Part 2—The first purchase is underway
The first property search begins when we activate the brief.
Follow our progress on your search tracker, then review and approve two rounds of extensive research on our recommended property.
Track our progress from negotiation through to settlement.
If a construction project is included with this purchase, track the progress from design, planning and construction.
Once finished, track portfolio performance on our platform.
Part 3—Review and adjustment your Game Plan™
We notify you that another purchase is possible when enough available equity is reached.
At this point, if your circumstances or market conditions have changed, you can review and make adjustments to your Game Plan™.
Your next property search begins when we confirm and activate the brief.
Part 4—Ongoing
This process continues on—purchase, uplift, manage, build capital, repeat—and before we embark on each new property purchase, you get to review and adjust your Game Plan™ if needed.
We constantly monitor your property(s) performance, providing recommendations where necessary.
Types of purchases
Residential investment property
A property purchase that is intended to either grow in value, generating equity and/or a passive income if the holding costs are less than the rental income.
Family home
This is your primary place of residence. The reason for buying this is driven by your personal needs as an individual or a family. The process we go through to find and recommend is focused around your preferences for the home itself, and its location.
Commercial investment property
These are typically included when high rental income is required and generally feature in each Game Plan™ where passive income is the focus.
Generally, commercial property is an office or retail space.
We occasionally recommend industrial properties in circumstances where funds permit, as they are generally more expensive.
Want to know more? Have a read of our annual Commercial property analysis report for 2021
Types of construction projects
Cosmetic renovation
This includes things like modernising kitchens and bathrooms, repainting, sanding floors or replacing carpets, adding internal joinery and so on. If this is for an investment property, we tend to recommend standard fixtures and neutral palettes to suit a broad range of tastes. If it's for a family home, well, the sky is the limit!
Structural renovation
These are more involved and complex projects that increase the spec of the home by adding rooms, they generally cost more but can generate higher capital growth.
We do this in two ways:
1. Remodelling the internal layout of the property without changing the overall footprint,
2. Extending the existing footprint.
These projects often require a longer planning phase to allow for council DA approval, architect and structural engineers.
Granny flat
For properties that have the space, adding a ‘granny flat’ can be a great way to supercharge both capital growth and rental income. They have the flexibility to work as a separate income stream or be combined with an existing dwelling’s income.
The granny flat is added to the existing title and is usually a self-contained free-standing dwelling ranging from a studio up to two bedrooms. We recommend these when passive income is the focus of the Game Plan™.
Want to know more? We recently published an article discussing the power of the granny flat. Click here to read
Small subdivision
We define a small subdivision for a property that goes from one to two titles. The new title will have a new house build—either free-standing or duplex—and the existing dwelling can either be renovated or knocked down and rebuilt.
Each can be held and rented, sold or used as a family home, depending on the Game Plan™. More possibilities, more options and more potential to generate capital growth and rental income.
New build
This one is pretty straightforward, it applies to either a land purchase or a property purchase where there is an existing dwelling that is viable to knock down and rebuild.
Milk Chocolate’s in-house build team will design and construct with skill and care.
Large subdivision
A large subdivision is similar to a small subdivision, except the existing land is split three ways or more, creating three or more separate dwellings. The same as above applies but the input and output are bigger.
Selling a property
Property sale
Sometimes we recommend selling a property as part of a Game Plan™. When a client comes to us with an existing property in their portfolio, we will assess whether the property is suitable for their strategy, or is underperforming. If so, we would recommend selling.
There are also situations where a property purchased through our Game Plan™ is intended to sell at a later date, in order to use the cash for a bigger purchase or to simply liquidate that asset.