$ 1.6 million portfolio: investor buys four properties at age 25

A 25-year-old Kiwi investor who initially washed the dishes to make money has put aside fears about the Covid-19 pandemic to buy his fourth property.

Riyaan Mohamed said he backed the housing market to quickly recover from the coronavirus crisis, after officially registering on his last property during the shutdown.

It means that you will now have a $ 1.6 million home portfolio, since you bought your first home just four years ago, at age 21.

And it was not an easy journey as the Herald revealed the previous Sunday.

Mohamed emigrated from India to New Zealand when he was 13, but dropped out of his senior year of high school to pay his own expenses after his family struggled financially.

Working long hours in dishwashing and retail jobs, he raised his pennies for the next two and a half years until he had a $ 70,000 deposit on his first home, before moving on to his second and third properties.

And it does not plan to slow down, despite the economic consequences of the looming blockade.

“If you look around you, cafes, restaurants and companies are struggling, just like KiwiSaver and the stock market has its teeth going right now, even pharmacies are struggling,” said Mohamed.

“But property is one thing that still remains and continues to give a good income.”

Housing prices in Auckland and in most of the country soared earlier this year, but with the market stoppage and thousands of homeowners and tenants at risk of losing their jobs, uncertainty surrounds how many people will be able to pay your mortgages and rentals at current prices.

However, Mohamed was hopeful that his investments would be sustained, because his last purchases were new buildings in downtown Christchurch.

His fourth property, a $ 420,000 city-center one-bedroom townhouse, will be completed in February, with Mohamed depositing a $ 42,000 deposit last week.

The apartment was within walking distance of Christchurch’s new planned stadium and city center, as well as close to shops.

It came just a few months after Mohamed deposited a $ 41,000 deposit for another new one-bedroom house in downtown Christchurch for $ 410,000.

“People always need houses to live and when you have a rental in a good central area there are not that many options, so you are likely to get a better paid tenant with a secure job,” he said.

“By contrast, I’ll just throw up in the Rolleston suburb and see at least 100 to 120 houses that need tenants right now, it’s not so easy to get good tenants.”

And if house prices fall during the pandemic, Mohamed is not so concerned.

“I was never buying a property to sell it the following year and make a small profit; it is always about the long term,” he said.

“So even if prices go down, they will eventually go up again.”

It’s a philosophy Mohamed joined in the beginning when he realized that working 9-5 could only take you far, and he started gobbling up books, YouTube videos, and blogs about real estate investors abroad and in New Zealand.

Starting on a dishwashing job at a Lower Hutt restaurant seven years ago, he rented a small room upstairs with a shared kitchen and bathroom for $ 120 a week, and started saving all his extra money.

Without qualifications and no work experience, it took him a year before he could move on to another job, land a job at a health supplement store at the local mall before impressing his bosses and being hit on the shoulder to move to manage a new store. Opening at Hornby in Christchurch in 2017.

After spending two and a half years collecting his deposit, Mohamed bought his first home in Hornby for $ 350,000 six months later.

• Covid19.govt.nz – The official government Covid-19 advisory website

By January of last year, he and his new partner had saved another $ 160,000 deposit and settled in their second Christchurch property, a $ 484,000, three-bedroom house in Halswell.

After recently starting his own business, which was suspended during the shutdown, Mohamed said his rental income was helping him stay afloat.

“This has only strengthened my faith in the property,” he said.