A 28-year-old Waramanga woman has traded a high-paid real estate job and a new home in Coombs for a nomadic life in a van and it’s all thanks to TikTok.

Sofia Ligeros was born and bred in Canberra, picked up 16 awards working at Independent Property Group and owned her first home at 22. She gave it all up to become a nomad and, after amassing 1.2 million TikTok followers, Sofia now gets paid to travel full-time.

The irony is beautiful – quitting a real estate career to have no fixed address. It’s also ironic that this Gen X reporter is writing about TikTok when it’s just onomatopoeia to me.

When I caught up with “Aunty Sofia” (her handle on social media) she was at an auction house waiting to sell her van, in which she’s racked up 60,000 kilometres traversing around Australia.

The former Stromlo High student is about to head to New Zealand to create more content for her loyal followers (who’ve so far given her 66.2 million likes).

Sofia shares her remarkable journey with Canberra Daily.

“I started {in real estate] when I was 18, I loved it, I was thriving, working my way up the ladder,” she said. “I was making pretty good money when I was younger, it was basically a 24-7 job for me. I lived it, I breathed it. I was succeeding quite quickly and I was getting all the awards.”

Then Sofia walked away from it all. She hasn’t looked back since.

“I remember one day realising that I became the person where people would invite me to things but they knew I would say no because I was too busy working,” Sofia said. “My dad said to me one day, ‘Sofia, I just know that if I call you, you’re never going to answer’.”

Boom. That was the turning point.

“The amount of times that I sat in this empire that I built,” she said. “I’d come home maybe at 11pm when I’d finished work and I’m like, what is this all for?”

Today, Sofia has no mortgage and no electricity or water bills (just $15 for 10 cans of gas).  What she does have is a swag of sponsors (mostly Australian brands).

Her day job is content creator and travel blogger and after six months she’d already attracted 600,000 TikTok followers. After 18 months she had 1.2 million.

“This is my third year doing it and you know what’s crazy? I originally set off to do a lap for six to 12 months, I’ll be back and I’ll come to work again. About a year in, I picked up my major sponsor, which is Backpacker Deals.

“They reached out and said ‘hey, what you’re doing right now, we will actually pay you to go on those experiences and just vlog exactly the way they’re doing’. I was like, what’s the freaking catch? There was no catch.”

Now Sofia travels to any place in Australia (or New Zealand) she wants to, with no time restrictions.

“[Backpacker Deals] would say, tomorrow we’ll get you on this skydiving tour, or we’ll get you on this rafting tour and then they would pay me,” Sofia said. “Honestly, I’ve been so lucky.”

Such is her success, Sofia now hosts her own group tours and her followers pay to go travelling overseas with her.  Jealous yet? It gets better.

Singapore Tourism Board Oceania, in partnership with global social media and influencer marketing agency Komodo, has just launched The Journey: Singapore – the world’s first gamified TikTok travel mini-series.

The inaugural season will feature six of Australia’s top content creators including Canberra’s very own Sofia Ligeros. She will compete to win the title of ‘The Destination’s Most Viral Creator’, with an added bonus of a trip-for-two to Singapore for one of their followers.

“They’re going to throw all of these challenges our way,” Sofia said. “Some of them will be mental, physical, foodie challenges.”

Sofia’s biggest challenge, however, is staying in one place.

“I’m pretty go-go-go,” she said. “I’ll get to one spot and I’ll explore it and then I’ll just get this feeling. I don’t want to stay anywhere for too long.”

There’s no going back now. Sofia said she could never return to her old corporate life.

“I have fully committed to this nomad life. I’ve gotten tattoos in places I probably would otherwise never get if I still wanted a corporate job and now I’ve got crazy hair,” she said.

Sofia’s advice to the rest of us tied down with a mortgage is, “you just have to make that break”.

“The hardest part is just going but once you’re on the road, you never look back.”

Sofia Ligeros is on TikTok and Instagram. The Journey premiers on 3 February. To watch the show, and enter to win a trip to Singapore, follow @thejourneylive on TikTok.