11 Apr 2022
Words Staff Writers Australian Property Journal

Rags to Riches to Property Investment

A VIETNAMESE refugee who arrived in Australia on a fishing boat and went on to build a $10 million garbage empire has made the leap into commercial property investment, buying the Jolly Knight Motel in Sydney’s south west for nearly $6 million.

The fishing boat that Le Ho – now 42 – was travelling on broke down, captured by a pirate ship, and then sent to a Thai refugee camp before arriving in Australia in 1981.

At the age of 21, Ho started her first business selling bridal shoes and wedding gowns. In 2010, as the online shopping boom threatened her bridal business – which had grown into six stores – she decided to take over Sydney-based waste management company Capital City Waste Services.

The business was losing $20,000 a month. Ho paid $50,000 for it, and worked 18-hour days from the boot of her car for the first year. Her hard work paid off and in her first five years the business turned over $10 million.

She sold the business and stepped away to care for her ageing parents and has now decided to venture into the motel industry after investing in residential, retail, office and industrial spaces.

She has now paid $5.885 million for the 46-room 1960s-style motel, after falling “in love with the land size”.

“The motel space will only get a lot busier. I intend to spend $1.5 million to $1.6 million to transform this motel with an industrial chic look.”

The property was sold through ResortBrokers’ brokers Jacqueline Featherby and Russell Rogers.

“After speaking with ResortBrokers I quickly realised if I purchased the motel I would be running a business while making a capital gain on the land,” Ho said.

“You meet a lot of interesting people in this role but Ms Ho’s incredible rags-to-riches tale is one of those you never forget,” Featherby said.

“The Jolly Knight presented a great opportunity for a buyer to either purchase a motel in the prime location on the Hume Highway in Casula or as a development site.

“We received an incredibly high level of enquiry on this property and were delighted we could match our vendor with such an enthusiastic and eager buyer as Ms Ho.”

Featherby said the Sydney market is “incredibly hot” with the tightest yields she has seen, and is “definitely a sellers’ market”.