Meet three investors who prove that nothing is impossible for super-young investors who learn their way around the market: Tom Neivandt, Patricia Cheah and Danny Stojovski.
None of these investors started out as high income earners. None had rich parents. In fact, all worked relatively low paying jobs when they first started investing in property and all struggled to save for a deposit. Despite this, these three investors have, between them, built up millions of dollars in equity.
In the latest issue of Your Investment Property magazine, these amazing young investors shared the lessons they learned along the way and how they managed to overcome the challenges of investing at a young age. The secrets they share are enlightening for anyone – young or old – trying to get into the property market.
Danny Stojovski
Danny amassed three properties returning $40,820 per year and started investing at 23. While Danny is sitting comfortably now, the road to success was not always so smooth.
“You get a lot of doubters,” he says. “I was often forced to talk to friends and family. They would question you on why you’re doing it, if you were sure you were going to be able to afford it and just put doubt in your mind.”
Real estate agents also often proved to be a prickly bunch. Looking only at age, many would not take Danny seriously.
“I remember when I first started I was very young looking into it, agents often just judged you and quite literally just blew you off.
“I knew I had done my research and my cash flow analysis, I did everything and I knew that I just need to back my judgement and really go for it.”
Tom Neivandt
Tom built a property portfolio of three properties worth $1.19 million and started investing at age 21.
In order to get into the property market, he started saving at 18 and stayed with his parents to accumulate the $22,000 deposit he needed to buy his first property which he then renovated.
Sitting on a wage of just $45,000 meant such a strategy would not be a simple process. This inspired him to come up with some resourceful ways to save money.
“Because I don't have a lot of money to spend on the renovations, I try to buy second hand products where I can,” he says. “I never pay full price for materials because I will buy them on sale or second hand. On the first two renovation projects, I did the majority of the labour work myself to save money. This really helped to keep the cost down.”
Patricia Cheah
Patricia started at age 19 and has since built a portfolio of four properties worth $1.7 million. Being young and experienced, Patricia made a number of mistakes when she was starting out, but this didn’t deter her pursuing her goals.
For example, her first property was a block of land which means that she wasn’t earning any income from it to help her pay her mortgage.
Her second property was also a challenge being bought off-the-plan.
“I listened to people who had never invested before – even though they worked in the industry. That was one of the most expensive lessons I have learned,” says Patricia.
“For a person like me who is not on an extremely high income it’s definitely not the strategy I would use,” she says.
Despite making mistakes with her first two purchases early in her investing life, Patricia feels the lessons learned have helped her become a much wiser investor.
“When I look back, I’m glad I made those mistakes early because I couldn’t afford to make those mistakes today,” she says.
“Although those setbacks were disheartening at the time, I never once thought that I would stop. It has always been a motivation of mine just to keep going no matter what.”
To read the full story of these amazing young investors, grab a copy of the latest issue of Your Investment Property magazine out on sale now.
