Former mining engineer Jane Slack-Smith swaps explosives for property game — shares secrets of her investment success
Jane Slack-Smith was standing on a mine site rigged with explosives when she first began sharing property advice. Now she’s built herself a multimillion-dollar portfolio.
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Jane Slack-Smith was standing on a Queensland mine site rigged with explosives when she first began sharing property advice.
It was a remarkable evolution for a woman who had never even imagined she would own a home.
These days, she owns five across a multimillion-dollar portfolio. At one point, she and her husband, painter and sculptor Todd Simpson, had eight.
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While the Melbourne resident misses the days when she was setting charges as one of the first Australian women to become a mining engineer specialising in explosives, she’s found a new rush — helping people blast their way through Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
Five years ago, Slack-Smith was diagnosed with Cushing’s disease and underwent surgery on a brain tumour.
Soon after the operation she was chatting to a few nurses who were planning to buy a house. “In recovery, half an hour after waking up, I ran my first masterclass for first-home buyers,” Slack-Smith says.
“I ran others for hospital staff for the next 10 days.”
It was a high point in a post-mining career where she measures her success by the people she helps, rather than the amount of rent she pulls in each year.
“I reached a point where I was in Central Queensland waiting for a blast to go off and I was teaching the miners about property investment,” she says.
“As an explosives engineer, you always think, ‘What’s the risk assessment of blowing up a mountain?’
“If you can’t minimise the risk, don’t do it, that’s what I took to property investing.”
She credits her husband with motivating her to look into purchasing property.
“I was a carefree 28-year old,” she recalls.
“I was never going to buy a house.”
Simpson was a university student mowing lawns in New Zealand when he was inspired to begin his own property investment journey after meeting a client, aged in their 20s, who owned several houses.
Another major influence on Slack-Smith’s life was her mother, who always told her daughter “she could do anything but fly”.
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When Slack-Smith bought her first property21 years ago, it was in her own name and with a $25,000 deposit.
“I was very much of the view that a man is not a financial plan,” Slack-Smith says.
Before purchasing, she educated herself on property investment, reading 120 books on the topic, attending courses and setting up computer spreadsheets to collate data on suburbs across Australia.
After extensive risk profiling she bought her first home: an 1860s terrace in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton. It cost $425,000.
She then borrowed $50,000 as a personal loan to renovate the property.
Her husband purchased the house next door, in his own name, and proceeded to renovate too. “It was fantastic, we never had any disagreements over interior design,” Slack-Smith laughs.
While working full-time, they helped each other renovate, sleeping on a mattress in the kitchen while bedrooms were being painted, and eating microwave meals for six months before the new kitchens were completed.
After nine months, Slack-Smith’s renovated Carlton house was valued at $700,000.
In 12 months, she refinanced to access the home’s equity and bought her second property, this time in Sydney.
Using this system to finance each purchase across six years, Slack-Smith and Simpson built their combined property portfolio up to include homes in Carlton, Sydney and New Zealand.
With significant experience in property investing under her belt, Slack-Smith started giving advice on the subject to friends, family and colleagues.
With her property career in full swing, Slack-Smith left her explosives job behind and became a mortgage broker, and has been named Australian Mortgage Broker of the Year twice.
In 2012, she released a book titled Your Property Success with Renovation: 2 Properties + 1 renovation = $1 Million in the Bank and founded Your Property Success, a property investment education company which has taught tens of thousands of people about Slack-Smith’s copyrighted property investment plan of action named the Trid3nt Strategy.
She’s honed the strategy over the years, usually buying under market value in an area with a lot of renters and renovating straight away to add to the home’s value and increase rental returns.
High capital growth areas are her focus and she mitigates risk by having a cash buffer in place in case of unexpected situations such as the recent 12 interest rate rises, losing a tenant or even losing your job.
When Slack-Smith’s son was aged five, he described his mother as “a fairy godmother because she makes people’s dreams come true”.
While she and Simpson started investing with the end goal of building financial security for their family, the property portfolio has provided other benefits, such as allowing her husband to focus on his passion for art.
“Because of the property portfolio he could pursue painting full-time over 15 years,” she says.
Slack-Smith understands many Australians are having trouble buying a house in the current market.
“I’m very aware of the fact it sounds like being a ‘one per centee’, talking about property investing when a lot of people are facing financial difficulty,” she says.
“It may seem difficult for people to invest in property at the moment, especially while they’re trying to make ends meet from day to day.
“The reality is with new technology, new initiatives and things like fractional investing, I’m very positive there will be innovative ways in the future where Australians can have their own great Australian dream.”
These days Slack-Smith teaches people the basics of a positive money mindset, reflecting, “the best real estate to invest in is between your ears”.
While she loves her career helping others buy homes, there will always be a part of her that wants to be standing around with a bunch of miners in outback Queensland.
“Nothing relieves stress more than detonating a blast at the end of the day,” she laughs.
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