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Simon Cohen and Joshua Meli join forces to help everyday Aussies build wealth through property

Leading property buyerโ€™s agent and Cohen Handler Chief Executive Officer Simon Cohen, has joined forces with Joshua Meli to form CH Secure.

CH Secure is also a buyerโ€™s agency, but will focus on helping everyday Australians build long-term wealth by investing in affordable properties across the nation.

โ€œCohen Handler has always been about helping people buy their houses and investment properties and we really wanted to give all Australians, everyday Australians, the opportunity to build wealth through property,โ€ Mr Cohen said.

โ€œWe wanted to build this business and this platform to enable that.

โ€œObviously, with such a long history in buyerโ€™s agency and long standing experience in real estate, we thought we were the perfect people to do it.โ€

Mr Cohen said it was every Australianโ€™s dream to own property and CH Secure would enable that to happen.

โ€œOne thing weโ€™ve seen people create the most wealth through, in any vehicle, is property,โ€ he said.

โ€œAnd with Cohen Handler Secure, all you really need is $70,000 (for a 10 per cent deposit).โ€

Mr Meli comes to the partnership with extensive experience in residential and commercial property buying and property management.

He said affordability was key for CH Secure, and it would operate in the $200,000 to $700,000 price bracket across the nation.

The agency works with a 100-point checklist, which every property must meet before it will be suggested to a client, including not investing in areas where one industry makes up more than 10 per cent of the job market.

โ€œThereโ€™s really a lot of research and analytics that go behind it,โ€ Mr Cohen said.

Mr Meli said at the moment, many buyers were seeking properties with beach lifestyles after being priced out of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane.

โ€œWeโ€™re currently purchasing in SA, Queensland and WA and weโ€™re looking for areas with lifestyle drivers,โ€ he said.

โ€œRight now, a lot of the areas weโ€™re purchasing in have a beach lifestyle because weโ€™re noticing that, with the affordability factors in Sydney, Melbourne and Queensland, people are looking at moving interstate.

โ€œTheyโ€™re looking for a similar lifestyle to what Sydney offers, so right now we do have a large beach lifestyle focus, along with (areas where there’s) heavy infrastructure spend, so upgrading public transport, schools coming in, hospital upgrades and road upgrades.โ€

Mr Meli said as well as thinking about long-term capital growth, higher yields were also a key consideration.

โ€œInstead of purchasing an investment property in Sydney where it could be a 2-3 per cent gross yield, which means youโ€™ll have to fork out quite a lot to hold onto that asset, weโ€™re looking in areas with 6-6.5 per cent gross yield,โ€ he said.

โ€œThis means our clients donโ€™t have to spend as much holding onto those assets.โ€

Mr Meli said one recent example was a property CH Secure purchased in Mackay and Whitsundays region for $440,000.

The three-bedroom, one-bathroom, two-car garage home is tenanted at $580 per week, which is a rental yield of 6.65 per cent. 

The area is tipped to see property capital growth of 19 per cent cumulatively over the next three years according to Select Residential Property, a research firm specialising in property growth trends, which means the property could make the owner more than $83,600 in equity in that time.

โ€œSomeone with a 10 per cent deposit could have secured this property for just $44,000 plus associated costs,โ€ Mr Meli said.

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Kylie Dulhunty

Former Elite Agent Editor Kylie Dulhunty is a freelance content producer for the Elite Agent audience, leveraging her extensive copywriting and real estate expertise.