Property acquisition · Queensland
MC Acquisitions finds, screens and negotiates property, then runs the whole job. For private clients, that is a home or an investment, carried from strategy to keys. For developers, it is a site, screened before it reaches you and ready for a go or no-go.
Private clients
You will make one of the largest financial commitments of your life on the strength of things you cannot see: the easement through the buildable area, the escape hatch drafted into a “fixed-price” contract, the failing balance sheet behind the winning quote. Mistakes at that depth surface years later, priced. I exist to catch them first, which means analysis before listings and thirty years modelled before a dollar moves.
I represent you across the whole purchase. The specialty is the duplex: two homes on one block, one shared wall. One build instead of two, so it costs less than two separate houses, and where the block and design are right, less than the finished pair is worth. That gap is : value you build in, rather than wait for the market to hand you, and it does not depend on the market rising. Designed right, it can also be split into two titles, and I carry that through to registration: two incomes today, or two separate sales tomorrow. Your position and goals come first, then the block, the negotiation, the builder, the contract, and every progress claim through construction, to keys and tenants. The same discipline runs a single home, a knock-down rebuild, a subdivision, or land you already own.
New to the terms? What a duplex, dual occ and secondary dwelling each mean →
Six different situations, six different starting points. Pick the closest one.
Start with the Portfolio Review, $2,000, credited in full against Stage 1 if you go ahead within 60 days. Your whole position in a live thirty-year model: usable equity, cashflow, borrowing capacity, which one is actually constraining you, and whether the next move should be buying at all. Read more →
Start with Lot Vetting, $1,000. A definitive go or no-go on that specific site, with the reasoning, in writing. Read more →
The full four stages, from strategy through to two tenanted dwellings. Start at Stage 1 and decide from there. See how it works →
Build Only. Strategy, builder, contract and build monitoring, without the land search. See the pricing →
Same discipline, simpler product. A standard new build on vacant land, run the same way. See house and land →
That’s the most common one, and it’s what the First Conversation is for. Fifteen minutes, free, and you’ll leave knowing which of the above you are. Book it →
How to read this page
Some people want the thirty-second version. Some want to read everything. You get both.
Each section below gives you the short version. Tap the gold button in any of them for the full reasoning, or go straight to a conversation. Both are completely fine.
A free first step
Most people have never had their property position set out in one place: what they own, the equity sitting in it, and what their borrowing picture really looks like. This free tool helps you get it down, in about four minutes. It is a quick account set-up, then it is yours.
It is the starting point, not the whole job. Seeing your position is one thing. Working out what to do with it, which move, in what order, and what it does to you over thirty years, is the Portfolio Review I run with you ($2,000, credited in full to Stage 1 if you go ahead). The tool is how you begin. Working through the strategy with you is where I come in.
Once your numbers are in, book a call whenever you are ready, or leave it with me and I will come back to you with where I would look first.
General information only. This is a planning tool to help you see your own position, not advice about any property you are considering, and it does not make any decision for you. Sign-up happens on the Gameplans platform under their terms and privacy policy, and we may be told that you signed up through us. See our Privacy Policy.
An 800m² corner block advertised as “dual occ potential”. Take off the front and rear setbacks, both side setbacks, the sewer easement nobody mentioned and the overland flow path, and what is left to build on is 308m². The deal was never there.
None of that is hidden. All of it is public, and all of it is checkable before you commit. It is the first thing I run on any block.
The Two-Title Test
Most of the money in this strategy is not in the second dwelling. It is in whether that second dwelling can one day stand on its own title, and whether creating that title is worth what it costs.
That is the entire test. It sounds obvious, and it is still easy to skip, because the premium for land that can be split gets paid at the contract while the evidence about whether splitting pays there arrives later. I run it the other way around.
Survey, plan sealing, services separation and council charges land in a similar range wherever you are. What two separate titles are actually worth, against one title carrying two dwellings, is set entirely by the local market. Same cost, completely different answer, one suburb to the next.
Where a second dwelling attracts an infrastructure charge, that charge is credited against the charge raised when the land is later subdivided. Build a that raises no charge, and there is no credit waiting for you. The full charge falls due at subdivision instead, and it is a five-figure number.
Where the numbers support a split, the lot, the configuration and the approval pathway are all chosen for two titles from the first drawing, and I carry the reconfiguration through council to two registered titles as part of the job, rather than leaving it as a possibility for you to chase years later. A block built without that thought forecloses it permanently, usually for the sake of a design decision nobody flagged at the time.
So the test runs at Stage 1, on comparable evidence for that suburb, before a dollar is committed to land. Sometimes the answer is a duplex built for two titles. Sometimes it is two dwellings on one title, because the split will never pay for itself there.
The whole test, in one lineA block that can be subdivided is not always one that should be.
Not sure whether your block is one that should be split, or one that shouldn’t? That is the first thing I work out, and it takes fifteen minutes to start.
Book the First ConversationIllustrative of method, not advice about any particular property. Infrastructure charges, credit mechanisms and minimum lot sizes differ by council and are confirmed against the applicable planning scheme and adopted charges resolution for the block in front of us.
What the finished asset does
This is often called manufactured equity: rather than waiting for the market to hand you a gain, you create one by putting more usable housing on land you already own. It is a well-established strategy, and substantial portfolios have been built on it. Whether it works on your block comes down to numbers that can be checked before you commit a dollar.
Cashflow also sets the pace of a portfolio. The ceiling on a growing portfolio isn’t your deposit, it’s serviceability: what a lender will let you carry. A property that covers its own repayments barely touches your borrowing power, so the sooner it pays its own way, the sooner you qualify for the next. One purchase becomes the engine for the next, rather than the end of the road.
One block. One contract, one transfer duty assessment, one set of searches and legals. Then two separate tenancies paying rent against it.
That is the whole reason the strategy works. The rent side of the ledger roughly doubles while the acquisition side of it does not.
Lenders count rental income when they assess what you can carry, though they discount it, and how heavily varies from one lender to the next.
So a higher-yielding asset can sit differently in a lender’s assessment than a single dwelling that cost the same to build.
Two dwellings on one title are valued as one asset, and that figure is commonly less than the two halves would fetch if they could be sold separately.
Two titles are two separately saleable assets, with two buyer pools. That gap is the equity a second title creates, and it is exactly what the Two-Title Test above is measuring.
A valuer sets the completed value. A lender decides how much of it you can put back to work. Everything I do before you buy is aimed at putting you in front of both of them holding a block that performs, the right configuration, the right build, and the title structure that carries the most value in that particular suburb.
Because that gap is not the same on every block. Two lots in the same suburb, bought for the same money, can return very different results, and the difference is visible beforehand, in the planning scheme, the charges schedule and the comparable sales. It is measurable, so it gets measured, at Stage 1, before a dollar goes near the land.
That is the job. Not hoping the strategy works, but finding the block where the arithmetic is strongest and then protecting that margin through the build.
General information about how the strategy works, not a projection or a recommendation about any particular property. Valuation outcomes, rental income and lending assessments vary and none of them are within my control. Borrowing capacity, loan structure and equity release are matters for your licensed broker or credit adviser. Tax treatment is a matter for your accountant. Feasibility modelling is prepared on figures those professionals confirm in writing, and the source and date are cited in your report.
From any starting point, there is a way forward.
If you arrived here worn down by the overnight-wealth stories and the freedom sold in thirty-second reels that fill your feed, good. That wariness is discernment, and it will serve you well here. The numbers I count are yours: the equity you’re building, the rent it pays you, and the working years you’re trying to buy back.
Handing someone north of $15,000 on the basis of how well they write is a bad idea, and you shouldn’t do it. So start somewhere small enough that being wrong about me costs you very little, and judge the work rather than the pitch.
Credited in full against Stage 1 if you proceed within 60 days of delivery, so Stage 1 costs a further $2,000 rather than $4,000.
You already hold property and want to know the next move, or whether there should be one. Every property, loan and rent goes into a live thirty-year model: usable equity, cashflow, borrowing capacity, three scenarios side by side, and exactly which number is holding you back.
Including the answer you may not want. If the honest read is that you should hold, reduce debt, sell something, or wait eighteen months, that is what the review will say. I would rather tell you that for $2,000 than sell you an acquisition you didn’t need.
You have a specific block in front of you and a decision to make. I screen it the way I screen my own: title, easements, overlays, assessment pathway, infrastructure charges, soil, services, and what it would actually cost to build two dwellings on it.
You get a definitive answer and the reasoning behind it, in writing, whether that answer is proceed or walk away. No obligation to engage me for anything after it.
From the first conversation to the first rent, plan on roughly twelve to eighteen months. Each stage is invoiced only when you engage it, you stop whenever you choose, and you keep everything produced to that point. Timeframes and payment terms in full →
Fifteen minutes, free, and no obligation to go further. Bring the block you’re looking at, or nothing at all.
Start with a conversationResearch & modelling
I work in the opposite direction to a listing: market data first, then the street, then the lot. Far more lots are assessed than ever reach you, and the whole life of the asset is modelled over thirty years rather than reduced to a single yield figure. The model stays yours, and you are still using it in year fifteen.
The full research and modelling process, data source by data source →
Sometimes the honest answer is no, and you’ll hear it early.
Your broker, accountant, solicitor, surveyor and builder each see one piece of the deal. I hold the whole picture. That means briefing each of them on what matters, integrating their written confirmations into one feasibility, and catching what falls through the gaps between them. You get a single point of contact instead of a relay, advice from the right qualified source, and one person holding it all together.
You deal with me directly, rather than an account manager, a junior or a portal. The person who takes your first call is the person standing on your lot six weeks later, and the one reading every line your builder sends after that. A new-build acquisition isn’t a shortlist. It’s a hundred decisions that compound on each other, most of them made months before there’s anything to stand in and inspect.
The tools and the data sharpen the picture. They don’t make the decisions, and they don’t drive to the lot. I do. I walk the block, read the street, sit across from the builder, and speak to the people who know what is moving in that market. A tells you the fall. Standing on the lot tells you what that fall is going to cost you to build on, which is the number that actually changes the deal.
The other half of this job is people, and that part no platform reaches. Getting a straight answer out of a duty planner, holding a hard line with a builder without souring the relationship you still need for eight more months, knowing when a quote is being managed rather than explained. I spent my working life before this leading teams across twenty-three stores, most of them people twice my age, where the whole job was reading a room and having the conversation nobody wanted to have. That is the part of this work that isn’t in a database, and it is the part I was doing long before I was doing it here.
One licensed specialist. I have built this myself, with my own money on the line, and I weigh your decision with the same scrutiny I bring to my own. So you can make the biggest decision of your year from another state, knowing exactly what you agreed to and why.
This work only goes this deep because the focus is this narrow, which does mean it fits some investors and not others. If you’re not one of them, you’ll hear it from me in the first conversation, before you’ve spent a cent, and that includes telling you the whole strategy is wrong for you.
Private clients · how I’m paid
Paid by the client I act for.
I never take commissions, rebates or kickbacks from builders or developers selling to my clients. On every purchase, I’m paid by the client I act for. It is a term of the engagement agreement you sign, and the fee is fixed and agreed in writing before we start.
I know what it costs to be unrepresented, because I paid it on my own build, in another state, with no one in my corner paid to defend my side of it. I built the service I needed and couldn’t find, and I’ll say “not this one” as readily as “this is the one”.
In the agreement. If I ever took a commission, a rebate or a kickback from a builder or developer selling to you, I would be in breach of a contract you hold.
Nothing bundled. You buy the land in one contract, on the open market, and sign the build in a separate contract priced against real quotes. There is no bundled package price, which means there is nowhere for a developer margin or a sales commission to sit without you seeing it.
Fixed and staged. You engage one stage at a time and can stop after any of them. The purchase price doesn’t change what I am paid, and I am paid only for the stages you choose to take.
No paid panel. Nobody pays to be on my panel. The professionals I introduce you to are there on assessed competence. None of them pays for inclusion. You engage each one directly, at their price, with nothing added on top by me, and any payment connected to an introduction is disclosed to you in writing before you go ahead. You are also free to ignore the panel and use your own people, and plenty will.
Before the price, here is what you can actually verify: the deals I have rejected, the exact checks I run, and my own build in full.
You pay for each stage as it begins, never everything up front. Before each one starts, you know exactly what it covers and what it costs.
When you are ready, the first step is a conversation, not a commitment.
Book the First ConversationPrivate clients · fees
It is a lot of money, so here it all is before you have to ask. You know the whole cost before I know the property, and no figure moves afterwards, not with the purchase price, not with how long the search takes. Every stage ends the same way, with every number re-run in front of you and your call to proceed or stop. No bundle is paid up front, either: bundled or not, each stage is invoiced as it begins, the bundle saving comes off the final stage, and stopping means you have simply paid the standard rate for the stages you used.
New-build is the specialty: two self-contained homes on one block, most often a duplex. The discipline underneath it reads any land and any build, anywhere in Queensland, so the engagement can start wherever your position happens to be.
A percentage of the purchase price, commonly 2 to 3%. On an $800,000 purchase that is $16,000 to $24,000, and it rises with every dollar you spend.
One fixed figure, agreed in writing before we begin, priced on the work rather than your budget. For homes and investments, a fee that rises with the price pushes the wrong way, so mine is fixed: the same at $700,000 or $2 million. It buys a different order of diligence: the deal interrogated and run in full rather than just found.
Not an argument that I am always cheaper. On the full acquisition service at $20,000, a 3% fee passes mine around $670,000 and a 2% fee at $1 million. Below those figures a percentage agent costs you less, and I would rather you knew that from me than worked it out later. But cost is the wrong comparison. A percentage fee rises every time you commit more of your own capital. Mine is priced on the work. Negotiate $80,000 off the land and I earn exactly the same, and you keep the $80,000.
Developer site acquisitions are success-based, by agreement. The developer path →
Set the fee against what it guards. A new-build dual occupancy is commonly north of $800,000 in land, build and borrowing. The mistakes that actually hurt are not small ones: the wrong block, a builder who fails halfway through, a contract that lets a fixed price run. Each is a five or six-figure loss, and almost every one is made before a slab is poured. That is exactly where this work sits: finding them while it still costs a fee to fix, and not a fortune.
Before you weigh the fee, see what it is buying. Why dual occupancy is where equity is built in, not hoped for →
A structured read on a single block, whether you’re considering it or already own it. Planning pathway, zone, density, minimum lot size and frontage, and the full overlay profile. Soil, contour, wind classification, and whether services can carry the intended build. Comparable evidence and infrastructure charges. Where you’re buying, title registration, easements, covenants and developer risk.
A definitive go or no-go, with the reasoning behind it.
Every property, loan and rent you hold, in a live thirty-year model we work through together, to find the next move and which of your three numbers it turns on.
A portfolio grows by keeping one thing moving: the ability to buy again. Three numbers decide it. Usable equity: what you can actually draw on, not what the portfolio is worth. Cashflow: what holding costs you, month to month. Borrowing capacity: what a lender will now let you do.
This is not a spreadsheet. Every property, loan, rent and cost you hold goes into the modelling platform I run full acquisitions through, pictured above: a live model projected out thirty years, with your savings, equity, income and borrowing capacity on one screen, flagging the moment the next purchase becomes feasible. Three scenarios run side by side on the same inputs, so hold, buy again, or restructure can be compared on the same footing. Anything carrying tax or lending weight comes from your accountant and broker in writing, and the model stays yours for life.
You walk away knowing which number is holding you back and what the next move is, with the model to check it against as rates, rents and your position change. On a seven-figure portfolio, $2,000 to test the next move before it is made. The deeper strategy work is Stage 1, if you ever want it. This stands on its own.
Presented as a scenario, never an assurance. Figures confirmed by your accountant.
Knock-down rebuild (): an existing house has to come down first: +$4,500
Subdivision to two registered titles: designed for the split from the first drawing and carried through to registration: +$4,000. Lot, configuration and approval pathway are all chosen with the split in mind, because subdivision is cheap to design in at the first drawing and expensive or impossible to retrofit. From there I run the reconfiguring-a-lot application through council and coordinate your surveyor and solicitor to two titles in your name. Two lots outside a community titles scheme mean no for either owner, and each home is insured and sold on its own, a line buyers respond to at resale. Council, surveyor and titles fees, and any infrastructure charges, are paid by you direct, and the split only proceeds where the evidence says it pays.
Retain and add: keeping the existing dwelling and building a second full home alongside it: +$1,500
Live in one, rent the other: a dual occupancy as your home and your first investment in a single move, with the same acquisition rigour applied around living in it: same staged fees
These attach to either a dual occupancy or a single dwelling.
The same discipline, priced below the multi-dwelling service because a single dwelling carries less complexity. To let, or to live in.
The full house and land page →
Buying an established home or investment? I run it end to end too: your strategy, the search including off-market, due diligence, negotiation and settlement. The fee is agreed in writing before any work starts, based on the property and the brief.
Not every question needs the full engagement. Lot Vetting and the Portfolio Review above both stand alone too. Each of the below is fixed in writing before the work begins.
Come back for a second property and the fee steps down: 10% off the second engagement, 15% the third, 20% the fourth and beyond.
Committing to a bundle costs less than assembling the same stages one by one. Every figure on this page is the full amount payable to me.
All advisory, research, negotiation, contract analysis, build monitoring and site visits.
Your solicitor, building inspector and quantity surveyor are contracted and paid by you rather than through me, which is what keeps each of them accountable to you. I budget the likely cost with you before you commit to a stage. If you don’t have these people yet, I’ll vet candidates and make the introductions. You choose who to engage, and any payment connected to an introduction is disclosed to you in writing before you go ahead.
Fixed fee, in writing. Agreed before we begin. It never moves with the purchase price or how long the search takes.
One stage at a time. Each engaged separately, and you can stop after any of them. No lock-in.
No builder or developer commissions. On every purchase, I’m paid by the client I act for.
Nothing owed for a look. The first conversation is free, and every stage ends with your call to proceed or stop.
Queensland doesn’t have a property market. It has dozens, and they rarely move together.
Raised across the Gold Coast, then three years in far north Queensland, and down the coast since: Townsville, Mackay, and now Bundaberg. Queensland, regional and metro, was familiar to me long before it was a market I worked in, and I still get in the car, because the drive is the job. Where I work →
About Mia
I started working at thirteen, bought my first property at eighteen, and at nineteen shifted strategy, out of established stock and into building two dwellings on a single title, a project built and tenanted by twenty-one. Everything I guide you through, I have first done with my own money and my own risk.
That project was built in another state and never once visited during construction, with a broker in my corner and nobody else. It performed, and I realised a significant equity uplift when I sold it. What it really taught me was how much can sit between buying a piece of land and getting the outcome you thought you were buying.
Before this I spent my working life in retail, through to senior multi-site leadership across twenty-three Queensland supermarket stores. You cannot be in twenty-three places at once, so you learn to read the signals that tell you where to be, and to hear the difference between someone telling you what they know and someone telling you what they would like you to conclude.
Most of what protects a client’s money isn’t found in a database. It’s won in conversations.
I’m here to help you make a decision you’ll still be glad about ten years from now. I’m also a real person you’ll get to know rather than a brand you deal with. You don’t need to be impressed by me. You need to be sure I’m on your side, and that is the thing I’d rather you tested.
The whole story, including why this business exists at all →
The best way to work out whether I’m the right person for this is to talk to me for fifteen minutes.
Book the First ConversationInsights
Plain-English analysis of acquiring well in Queensland, with no recycled market updates. If it’s published here, it’s because it can change a decision.
Featured · 8 min readAlmost every expensive mistake in a new-build dual occupancy is made months before anyone chooses a benchtop. This is where I look before a single lot reaches you, and the upside most investors never plan for.
Read the piece →The checklist
It is the actual screen I run on a lot before it earns deeper work. Forty-five checks across market, planning, site, purchase, builder and contract, with what counts as a pass on each. Leave your email below and it is yours. After that, you will only hear from me when something lands that would actually change how you would buy, a planning rule, a tax change, a market shift worth acting on, and nothing in between.
A free, no-obligation call of fifteen minutes. No pitch and no pressure, just an honest discussion of what you’re considering, and whether I’m the right person to run it. Book a time that suits you, or if you’d rather write first, leave your details below and I’ll come back to you within one business day, usually sooner.
Whatever your starting point, you won’t be judged for it here, not for what you don’t know and not for what you don’t yet have. Come as you are, and bring every question.
Prefer email? mia@mcacquisitions.com.au
Licensed Real Estate Agent (Qld)
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