Alaya Property

Founder & Principal Buyer's Agent

A free weekly newsletter talking about property investing, savvy money habits and personal development hacks.

Writer

BALI ADOPTION REHABILITATION CENTRE

I’m working alongside my partner to bring more engagement to the social media posts for BARC in an effort to bring more awareness to their mission to save and rehabilitate unwanted dogs on the streets of Bali.

Our work involves:
• regularly posting of creative content
• establishing partnerships with other organizations to bring more awareness to animal welfare in Bali
• managing the donor list and ensuring our fundraisers are successful

Social Media Business Strategist

Telstra

In my role as a Senior Product Manager, I was responsible for finding solutions to very complex problems in the SMS & Mobile industry. Leveraging data was a critical aspect of my role where I developed strategies for billion-dollar companies, with the sole purpose of delivering high-impact outcomes for customers.
Key skills I developed included:
Data Analytics: I made strategic decisions grounded in deep market insights while extracting information from complex data sets (think excel sheets with 100s of tabs).


Complex Problem Solving: The world of SMS & MMS is complex both in its technical nature and in its commercial nature. As the product manager responsible for multi-billion companies, I spearheaded product strategies that were focused on improving user experiences (think reducing scam as an example) and maximizing ROI.


Strategic Planning: I drove long-term roadmaps and portfolio management, ensuring that projects aligned with broader business goals while addressing emerging market trends, which is hard to do with limited budgets and skyhigh expectations from leadership teams. Yet I managed.

Senior Mobile Product Manager

Self-employed

Currently tutoring 8 students (primary and secondary)
Effectively communicating topics to students
Providing constructive feedback to improve student performance

Teacher

Hologo World Inc

Head Of Operations

Billabong High International School, Maldives

I’m an experienced educator currently working in BHIS as a Maths teacher. I’m also actively developing digital content for Hologo and Teaching Tube. We’re currently developing an education product to help schools become more efficient and allow students to learn in dynamic and engaging ways.

Educator and Content Developer

Senior Product Manager - Fixed Products

First rotation - Business Analyst and Project Management
Second rotation - NBN Capacity Planner
Third rotation - Assistant Product Manager

Graduate

Are you worried about buying the wrong property?

Not sure which market is best? Or if you're overpaying?

Worse yet…ever feel like every so-called "expert" is just trying to flog you some nonsense?

If you’ve been nodding along, then I'm glad we're on the same page.

Hey, I’m Adi.

I run Alaya Property, a buyer’s agency that helps investors make data-backed property purchases - without getting railroaded.

You see, I learned long ago that the property market is stacked against everyday investors in Australia.

→ Sales agents work for the seller, not you.

→ Shiny new builds often come with hidden kickbacks.

→ Many investors buy based on hype, not fundamentals, and then it becomes "property doesn't work".

That doesn't make any sense, considering most of the wealthy have gotten that way through property. Don’t you wonder how they did it?

The usual result? Overpriced, underperforming properties that set you back instead of setting you up.

That’s where Alaya Property comes in.

What we do:

We help investors buy smart - so they won’t be relying on the pension later.

→ We deep-dive into market trends, numbers, and long-term fundamentals, because really this is what drives prices.

→ We find underpriced properties with serious potential (not just what’s easy to sell).

→ We negotiate for you so you walk away with equity from day one

And we don’t do it alone.

We’ve got an economist on the team tracking macro trends, spotting suburb shifts before the rest of the industry catches on.

My team is also growing so we have more people on the ground.

This is the exact approach I used to build a $5M portfolio for myself - one that lets my partner & me live a life where we no longer have to worry about money.

We can help you get there too.

Want to find out if we can help you specifically? Here you go.

https://tidycal.com/3e8n2l3/30mins-discovery-call

Adi Chanda

I made *gasps in Indian* $18k in Q1FY24.

Fast forward a year - the same quarter paid off ~60% of my parents’ mortgage.

When they had one, of course - they think they’re so cool with their “we’re debt free” nonsense.

The whole “overnight success” thing is a bit silly, innit?

Because, you see, my little pepito - not a lot happens for a long time, painful period.

Then everything does “all at once” and then people start calling you lucky.

You are lucky in a way - because you're one of the very few who didn't give up before the “all at once” part showed up.

I'll help you build the kind of property portfolio that keeps the pension out of your retirement plans.

Sadly, I had to do my first firing at Alaya Property 🥺

Here are 4 lessons I learned the hard way - so maybe you don’t have to.

1 - Seniority doesn’t equal competency.

I brought them in as our first “senior” hire. I thought experience would solve everything.

But what I actually needed wasn’t seniority - it was depth of thinking and the ability to problem-solve.

You can’t fake that, and you sure as hell can’t teach it. You either have it or you don’t.

2 - Hope is not a management strategy.

Miguel and I ran weekly 1:1s.

We had a Slack channel called “objectives” where we literally documented what needed to change.

We restructured tasks and even paid ridiculous amounts to external contractors to lighten their load.

Every week, it was the same line - “This isn’t me. I don’t know what’s happening".

But I kept telling myself to give it more time because I liked them (they also loved dogs which didn't help).

I felt so much shame in being the person who gave up on someone.

But the hits kept coming - wrong names in contracts, pissed off agents, annoyed conveyancers, poor client feedback - even needing 3 separate refunds to clients.

I just kept praying to all the gods it would somehow turn around.

3 - The “it’s all my fault” mindset is silly on these occasions.

My friend, Haley, wrote recently about how she used to take pride in thinking everything was her fault.

I felt like she was yelling directly at me 🥹

I kept telling myself their underperformance was a reflection of our leadership.

So Miguel and I doubled down - more coaching, more patience, more optimism that time would fix things.

When in reality, no amount of training was going to fix a fundamental mismatch.

4 - Avoidance disguised as kindness hurts people.

My final straw was when team members started calling to say THEY were copping flak from agents, property managers and even B&P inspectors 🫠 

I realised (FINALLY) that my inaction wasn’t actually empathy - it was selfishness pretending to be empathy.

My amigo, Ryan Toppin, said something recently that lives rent free in my head now - “keeping someone who isn’t thriving is actually really unfair to them”.

It chips away at their confidence and sense of belonging every single day.

The whole thing has been humbling as hell for me.

It was an awful feeling finally making the decision, but 4 weeks on, seeing the team thrive again - I wish I’d had the courage to do it months earlier.

If you’re stuck in a similar limbo - torn between accountability and compassion - I get you.

But I think you already know the answer, my friend.

I'm hella bullish on the Brizzy market.

And you 100% need to be too, my guy.

First, let’s deal with the elephant in the room.

(And shut up it’s not me, I’m carrying a bit of winter weight okay. I said - shut up.)

→ Brisbane has gone through monumental price growth in the past few years.

So naturally, the sentiment is “ahh but but it can’t go up anymore because it’s already gone up”.

I feel like there’s a “that’s what she said joke in there somewhere” but I’m unfortunately too mature to know where.

Anywhos.

As someone well versed in primary school level economics, I know one thing is for certain:

Low supply + high demand = to the moon

And boy does Brizzy have some astonishingly low supply.

Add to that 

→ the migration data

→ the 100m freestyle in a few years

→ ridic infrastructure spend

→ and the fact that you can still buy a house for less than a car space in Sydney.

You start to see why it makes all kinds of sense.

As a company that buys dozens of properties a month through dedicated buyer’s agents, even WE are finding it to be a tall order.

Because houses are literally selling in less than 6 hours.

It’s absurd.

So yes, I’m confident that Brisbane has a lot of room to move and will go through a second wind effect, where prices will continue to surge due to the ridiculous pressure on the market.

If anyone disagrees with that, I would love to hear your reasoning.

If it’s a sound reason, I’ll immediately change my mind and start my next post with “I'm hella bearish on the Brizzy market”.

That’s thought leadership after all.

Don't correct me if I'm wrong.

But I think most of us aren’t scared to fail - we’re scared to look like an idiot.

My guy, looking stupid is a fundamental part of - nay, a rite of passage, in the investor’s journey.

You’re going to have people that:

→ don’t understand the decisions you’re making and will criticize you for it.

You’ll feel stupid as a result.

→ will project their fears onto you because their past decisions led to unhappy results.

You’ll feel stupid as a result.

→ judge you because you’re making decisions for the betterment of yours and your family’s future.

You’ll feel stupid as a result.

This is why so many of us get stuck in the same old place year after year, because we let the noise of our environment become in charge of our lives.

The ONLY way to get past this is to build what I like to call a “cone of stfu energy” around you.

Only listen to the people who have done the very thing you want to do and block out the noise from everyone else.

Then take all that knowledge and put it to work.

Do that for 6 months in a row, and tell me your life isn’t fundamentally different.

PS - This is me clapping for myself for being such a visionary, while my team looked on - bored & angry. Leadership!

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This was my first “data report” for clients 19 months ago.

If you’ve ever looked at your “early work” and cringed into your soul - me too, my friend, me too 🥹 

Coming across this last night brought a very cliche / very important reminder:

→ Every single one of us has to start somewhere.

Fast forward to today and I have a whole team behind this, where we produce a dozen different reports every month.

What used to take me staying up all night, now happens seamlessly on a weekly basis.

Now, I love me a lesson, so here’s one to hold onto.

Everyone wants Chapter 7 of someone’s story.

But unfortunately you don’t get to skip the messy part. 

You just have to stick around long enough for that terrible cringe feeling to turn into a beautiful craft.

My guy, Seb, is keeellinggg itttt.

Casually winning offers whilst competing with 50+ others 😌

He’s managed to pull off what I can only describe as a miracle.

If you’ve been following the Melbourne market, you’ll know all about Pakeham.

We’ve been buying there for 9 months and dear god, is it absolutely frenetic there at the moment.

But somehow, Seb managed to buy a house for…$655,000 in October of 2025 lol

Here’s how I think he did it:

→ He speaks French. I would sell someone my house on the cheap if they spoke French. Because rawrrrrr.

→ He played mind games with the agent and vendor and bamboozled them into handing over the keys.

→ Did I mention he speaks French? Rawwrrrr. 

I don’t mean to be Bollywood dramatic, but I can’t express just how ludicrous that number actually is.

To buy something with a 6 in front is purely silliness.

It takes exceptional people skills, deep local market knowledge and the ability to work under insane pressure when there are 50+ others circling the thing you want.

As a result, this client is going to wake up in 12 months’ time and realise that he’s sitting on AT LEAST $100,000 of equity:

→ He can use this to buy another property, without using any of his own cash.

→ He can start a business, and look at boosting his take-home dineros.

Or a host of other things that his financial planner + accountant advise him on.

I can confidently say that his life has fundamentally changed from this moment onwards.

That’s kind of what the right first investment does for you.

It opens doors you couldn’t even see before.

Man I love this shit.

Oh and Seb, my man, you’re one of MY best investments this year 🙂

You know what no one ever tells you?

That leadership is sort of like finding yourself nude in public, and oh boy is it cold out.

I’m trying my best not to let my insecurities drive my decision making.

This article by Jason Andrew (big fan btw) captures perfectly what I’m desperately trying to do - let go of control and build a legacy of leaders who will carry the Alaya torch forward.

For quite a few months, and even now on occasion, I find myself fixing shit because it’s “just easier”.

➝ I find it difficult to not provide a solution when there’s “an obvious fix” swimming around in my head.

➝ I find it hard to just sit in the discomfort of "empowering to find a solution”, and trust that the team will figure it out - sometimes better than I ever could.

Although a 100x better than it used to be, I still find myself making low-level decisions which will rarely move the needle forward.

The irony of my inability to let go is that we’ve likely stagnated in many parts of the business because I’m the neck of the bottle.

Why?

Because I’m scared.

This is hands down the most I’ve ever cared about something. 

Every client, every team member, every person even loosely connected to us is someone I find myself thinking a lot about.

You mix that kind of overbearing care with a neurotic control freak nature, and you find yourself with a business equivalent of a molotov cocktail.

In rare moments, I’m absolutely convinced that no one else could possibly care as much as I do. 

So I “just jump in real quick”.

The article talks about being stuck in the middle of the pyramid - doing work that feels productive, but in reality all it's doing is keeping me from doing the real work - building leaders, not fixing problems.

If I had to be even more honest with myself, I think I know the deeper issue.

It’s trust.

I know I trust my team. I let them make client decisions without ever getting involved. 

But I’m not sure I fully trust myself yet.

➝ Trusting that I can help them grow into the kind of leaders I know they can be.

➝ Trusting that I can step back without everything falling apart.

A lot of days (I think), I nail it.

Other days, I still find myself stuck in the middle, just like this article said.

Jason - great article, my good sir. 

Please try not to yell at me through the screen next time.

This stuff is hard ok 🥹

Open article: The business owner pyramid: Why most founders are stuck in the middle by smartcompany.com.au

The business owner pyramid: Why most founders are stuck in the middle

Only ~16% of properties made it to clients 🥹

Translation = we rejected 5 out of 6 because they were mierda.

Property, unfortunately, is very much a numbers game.

As a company, we get literally 100 of properties across the country sent to us by dozens of agents.

127 to be exact for this fortnight.

After a thorough due diligence and CMA (where you compare house prices) process, that number drops to a measly 20.

Wahhhhh 😩

So in effect, we spend FAR more time rejecting properties (107 of them) than actually doing anything meaningful with them.

There's just so much shite out there in the market, my friends.

There are properties:

→ on main roads or near major arterials - big no no.

→ on train lines / near power lines / schools (because kids are annoying) - bigger no no.

→ near graveyards - I’m not superstitious, but I also wouldn’t want to live near graves. It’s kinda creepy.

We painstakingly go through 35 of these checks - every single time, habibi.

It’s a lot of effort, but it’s also the reason our clients pay us to do the deed for them - it's shit, painstaking work.

Because a lot of the time, it’s not just about chasing some big magical capital growth win - it’s also about avoiding a big mistake.

If I had to boil it all down to a single quippy line - our job is the quiet, unsexy discipline of saying no 5 times, so the client can rest easy with numero 6.

If you’re doing this on your own, I wish you good luck, my friend. 

You’ll need patience, data, and the grit to walk away when every brother & sister is shouting “deal of the year”.

taplio

The Battle

Adi Chanda

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Sam Calabro

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