5-step plan to build a property portfolio that earns you $3k a week

With over 40 years of combined experience as property investment advisers and buyer’s agents, advising thousands of clients, we’ve seen firsthand how chasing a big portfolio can leave you asset-rich, income-poor, and tied to underperforming properties that hold you back from the lifestyle you set out to create in the first place. So let’s break it down.

Why do people invest in property?

At its core, it’s not about the bricks, the titles, or the bragging rights at BBQs. People invest in property for freedom. Financial freedom. Time freedom. The freedom to live life on their own terms – whether that’s spending more time with family, travelling, or simply removing financial stress from your daily life. In our words, it’s about achieving what we call “lifestyle by design.” This is the whole purpose of investing: to create a life that’s meaningful and fulfilling to you.

The real question: How many do you actually need?

Truth is, you don’t need 10-plus properties. That’s absurd. In fact, most people can achieve financial peace with three to five quality properties, if they’re purchased smartly and structured correctly. The secret isn’t in quantity – it’s in quality and strategy. And that’s where our five-step property investment formula comes in.

The 5 essential steps to retire on $3k a week

Think of this like seeing a good doctor. They wouldn’t jump straight to treatment. First, they get the full picture. Then they diagnose, plan, and only then do they act.

We apply that same logic to property investing.

Step 1: Clarify your situation

Before you can build a plan, you need to ask the right questions: what’s your current financial position? What are your income, expenses, assets, debts, and risk tolerance? What does your ideal future look like?

On a practical level, it means gathering key details about your financial story. This includes setting short-, medium-, and long-term goals and defining how to turn those dreams into tangible objectives.

Step 2: Evaluate the information

This is the diagnosis phase where your goals meet reality. This involves forecasting cash flow movements over a 40-plus-year horizon. This is because successful property investment hinges on effective debt management and balancing income and expenses over the long term.

To evaluate effectively, focus on these three areas:

1. Committed money basics: Your essential spending

2. Surplus money: What’s left to invest?

3. Your bucket list: Your most important life goals

Remember, success in property investing isn’t guesswork – it’s a science.

Step 3: Plan a tailored strategy

Now it’s time to map your route. This is not a cookie-cutter approach. Your plan should be tailored to your needs and goals, your income, your risk profile, and your timeline. This stage includes two components:

1. Strategy: Your fully tailored and financial roadmap that defines and documents your goals, objectives, and the reasons behind them.

2. Tactics: The specific, timed actions to take at every stage while providing the flexibility to handle any challenges along the way.

This is where we reverse-engineer your desired outcome – $3,000 a week in passive income – and build a strategy that gets you there.

Step 4: Implement through decisive action

A plan means nothing without execution. Too often, we see investors dive headfirst into asset selection without working through the crucial groundwork in the first three steps. This is where you take action – buying the first property, setting up the right loan structure, managing your cash flow, and building your asset base step by step. With a clear roadmap in hand, you can take confident steps towards your goals while avoiding the guesswork that leads to very costly financial mistakes.

Step 5: Manage your progress

We’re playing a long game here – 10, 15, even 20 years. Markets shift. Life happens. And you’ll need to adjust along the way – without losing sight of the goal.

The good news? With the right tools, you only need around 10 hours per property, per year, to keep things running smoothly. From tracking your budgeted surplus to monitoring local rental markets, you can ensure your portfolio remains aligned with your long-term goals. It’s important to remember that property investing is a process, not an event.

We group these five steps into three core phases:

1. Opportunity (steps 1–2): Understand where you are and what’s possible.
2. Action (steps 3–4): Execute your plan with confidence.
3. Review (step 5): Make adjustments and stay on track.

So why don’t more people do this?

In short: noise. Between spruikers pushing off-the-plan units and “gurus” selling dream results, it’s easy to get distracted by hype and forget the fundamentals. Worse still, many people buy the wrong asset, at the wrong time, in the wrong order – throwing off their cash flow and putting their overall wealth position in jeopardy. And in the worst case? Human nature takes over, they second-guess themselves, procrastinate… and never get started at all.

But here’s the truth: you don’t need to be a mogul. You don’t need to own 10-plus properties. You don’t need to “hustle” your way to financial freedom. You just need a clear, tailored plan and the discipline to stick to it. That’s the real path to $3,000 a week… and the life you actually want.

Bryce Holdaway and Ben Kingsley are co-authors of How to Retire on $3,000 a Week: The Property Couch’s Playbook for Passive Property Investing.