Rachel-Ann Wicks proves that you can’t keep a good woman down. A decade after her first application for a loan was rejected, she’s been a successful property investor, renovator, business owner – and she aims to be even more.
Rachel-Ann started her first business before she even turned 20, because she was seeking a challenge.
“At the age of 19, I started my own promotional marketing business as the learning rate at university was too slow,” she admits. “I wanted to be able to control my financial future and not have to wait around for Prince Charming to take care of me.”
This desire to stand on her own two feet financially also fuelled her decision to go into property investing. By 2007, Rachel-Ann’s business had been in the black for three years and had over 30 employees, so with her career flourishing, she began trying to secure a loan so she could purchase her first property. However, she ran into her first roadblock when banks looked at her situation and immediately said, ‘no deal’.
“The banks only saw risk – I was single, a female of childbearing age and a small business owner. My broker couldn’t secure the pre-approval,” Rachel-Ann shares.
She was too driven to be dissuaded, however, and kept communicating with her broker and her accountant until she finally got that crucial “yes” from a bank two years later – from one of her own clients, no less.
With her finances finally in order, she spent the next few months combing the Central Coast in New South Wales for the right property, before finally settling on a three-bedroom house in the suburb of Bateau Bay. She did some considerable renovation work on the property with the support of family and friends, and the investment wound up generating equity.
Learn how Rachel-Ann leveraged this first investment into a profitable 7-figure property portfolio, in the complete feature article in the July 2019 edition of Your Investment Property. On sale at news agencies and Coles supermarkets from June 6 to July 4, 2019; or download the magazine now.
