the founders
One client. Two of us.
You came here to see who actually runs the practice. There are two of us. Dan, a Certified Practising Valuer, and Charissa, who runs the deal floor. The next seven scrolls are the long answer.
our why
Two reasons we do this work.
When we set up CHAD, we decided from day one it would carry two reasons for existing, not one. The first was easy to name. The second took a longer conversation.
Both have stayed load-bearing ever since.
The first reason is your success.
You came to property to build real wealth, not paper wealth. Real wealth means time back in your week, real options for the next decade, and freedom from being tied to active income for the rest of your working life. Helping investors get there, one settlement at a time, is what our buyer's agent work funds and what the valuer's lens protects.
Your outcome is the commercial reason CHAD exists.
The second reason sits behind the first.
From every settlement, a portion of the engagement fee you have paid us becomes a donation in your name to Destiny Rescue. The donation is enough to fund the rescue of one child from sexual exploitation. The mechanism is automatic: every property settled, one rescue funded.
The cost comes out of our fee, not out of your purchase or your future rental income.
The donation happens whether you ask for it or not, because we promised each other it would.
Two reasons, not one, because dropping either would not be CHAD.
The first is the engine. The second is the why behind the engine.
Both are real. Both happen on every engagement.
the valuer
From Singapore to a valuer's desk in Melbourne.
Before I immigrated, I lived in Singapore.
Owning property in Singapore is hard. The prices push it out of reach for most people, and the idea of owning more than one is unusual.
From over there, I used to read Australian Property Investor magazine and find it remarkable that everyday Australians could own not just one property but several, build a portfolio on rental income and capital growth, and retire on it.
That was the magnet.
When my family and I moved to Melbourne, I started in a recruitment role. After a couple of years there I was made redundant.
I took it as the prompt to go after the work I had actually wanted.
I went back to university for a postgraduate diploma in property valuations and started at a valuation firm as a cadet.
I have been working in valuations ever since, and the lens is current, not historical.
That training and the years that followed are how I qualified as a Certified Practising Valuer (CPV) and a member of the Australian Property Institute.
More than a decade of bank-panel valuation work teaches you a specific way of reading property. It is not the way most buyers, or most buyer's agents, read it.
A CPV reading a property sees what most buyers and their agents do not. Flood zones, bushfire zones, planning schemes and planning changes, zoning constraints, title encumbrances.
These are the risks a bank's valuer flags before approving a loan, and the risks that quietly destroy investor returns when no-one is looking.
Beyond risk, the lens reads true value. That means separating a property whose price is supported by comparable evidence from one whose price is wishful thinking.
At CHAD, this lens is applied to your deal before you sign, not after the bank's valuer flags it on settlement.
You inherit more than a decade of practice without needing to become a valuer yourself.
the dealmaker
From the CMO desk to the deal floor.
Before Charissa joined me at CHAD, she spent twenty years in marketing.
The last four to five of those were at the chief marketing officer level. Brand, campaigns, teams, and the kind of vendor and stakeholder negotiation that fills a CMO's week.
That background is why she reads selling agents better than most buyers do.
She has spent two decades on the other side of the table from people who get paid to present a polished version of reality. She is not surprised by it. She knows where the missing information lives.
At CHAD, Charissa is the dealmaker.
Once your target suburbs are locked in, she works the local sales-agent network and the local property managers in those areas. She sources properties. She runs due diligence on every one of them.
She insists on the full picture before a property is recommended to you.
The good. The bad. The risk flags a selling agent will not bring up. She looks for environmental risk, housing-commission proximity, flood and bushfire zones, and anything else that could quietly hurt the investment or the future tenant.
You see what she sees.
If a property clears the risk filter, she works with a local property manager to set a defensible rental expectation, runs the feasibility analysis, and builds a comparable market analysis (CMA) to anchor the offer.
When the CMA needs a second read, I add one. Not always. Only when the deal needs it.
When it is time to make the offer, the negotiation runs through Charissa.
She brings two decades of negotiation depth to your deal.
She is who you want at the table when the offer goes in.
side by side
Two founders. Two strengths. One deal at a time.
Charissa and I work every deal together. Different strengths. Same engagement.
Charissa runs the deal floor.
That means property search, due diligence, comparable market analysis (CMA), and the negotiation that turns a shortlist into a contract. It also means coordinating with your conveyancer, mortgage broker, and property manager so the deal moves on time.
The skills she brings are not generic.
Two decades of marketing and sales sharpened how she reads people, how she negotiates, and how she pulls information out of selling agents and property managers that a buyer rarely gets alone. She is strategic. She knows which property to walk away from before it costs you money.
My job sits alongside hers.
I bring the valuer's lens. I read the CMAs Charissa builds, sharpen the offer figure on the deals where the pricing read is tricky, and take the property risk questions she flags out of due diligence. When you want the valuation lens on a property in plain language, I am in the room.
Together, we move faster than a one-person buyer's agency and read property deeper than a one-discipline buyer's agency.
Two reads sharpen the CMA. Two strengths sharpen the negotiation. Two lenses cover dimensions of property risk that no single lens does.
You get both founders on every engagement.
That is the synergy that is hard to copy.
the stakes
Four things we stake on every engagement.
Four things stand on every CHAD engagement.
Stake 01
The valuer's lens, every engagement.
Dan applies the CPV lens to the CMAs Charissa builds, the pricing reads on tricky deals, the property risk questions that emerge from due diligence, and the conversations where you want the lens in plain language.
Stake 02
The deal floor, end to end.
Charissa runs sourcing, due diligence, the CMA, agent and PM coordination, and the negotiation that turns a shortlist into a contract. Two decades of marketing and sales depth behind every move.
Stake 03
Cornerstone™, from day one.
Every CHAD client gets the Cornerstone™ portal. Built and maintained in-house, included from day one.
Stake 04
One settlement, one rescue.
Every settlement funds one child's rescue. The donation comes from our engagement fee, paid in your name to Destiny Rescue.
who we work with
Built for one kind of investor.
CHAD is built for Australians who are serious about building long-term wealth through property, and who want a small, founder-led team in their corner while they do it.
Most of our clients are couples in their thirties or early forties.
Many are building toward retirement on an income that funds the present but does not yet build the future on its own. Many have one or two young children at home. Many are first or second-generation Australian. Almost all are buying interstate, where the data points to opportunities the suburb next door cannot match. A meaningful share are buying inside a self-managed super fund.
If that sounds like you, CHAD was built with you in mind.
A few honest notes on fit.
We work on residential investment property only. We are based in Melbourne, Australia. We work with Australian residents and citizens. We are capacity-gated by design, which means we take on a small number of new clients each month.
If you are looking to double your money in eighteen months, we are not the right team for you.
The investors we work best with build over a decade-plus horizon. They want their eyes wide open on risk. They trust the process, they trust us, and they move when the deal calls for a fast decision.
If the fit is right, the next step is straightforward.
ready?
Now it's a conversation.
You came for the long answer. You have it.
What happens next isn't a sales call or a pitch. It's a five-minute note about you, two real people reading it, and a personal reply on the other side.
Start the conversationDan Kwek and Charissa Lee