+ Meet the 21-year-old building a property empire
Diligent research aids Aucklander to acquire 11 homes valued at $3m.
Millionaire and budding property magnate Johnathan Brownlee isn’t your typical 21-year-old. He owns 11 properties valued at more than $3 million across New Zealand, from Auckland down to Invercargill.
Brownlee’s created $1m in equity and expects to pull in more than $60,000 a year after expenses once he finishes his next renovation.
His parents topped up his savings to reach the threshold for the initial deposit for his first property in Hamilton, but his entrepreneurial spirit from a young age helped him get to where he is today.
Brownlee imported goods through China’s Alibaba website and onsold them through TradeMe while in high school to build up his savings.
His interest in property was sparked when he was 18, after a guest speaker at university introduced him to the concept of leverage and using the bank’s money to pay for a highvalue asset, like a home.
It wasn’t just the speaker’s words that caught his attention.
“He was driving something like a new Bentley and that was my lightbulb moment,” Brownlee said.
“I realised that there is a snowball effect with property, so the sooner I could get into it and get investing, the better off I would be in the long term.”
Brownlee’s story of carving out a housing empire at a time when many young people feel shut out of the property market will either give millennials hope, or make them weep.
For Brownlee, the trick was to look outside his home city of Auckland and first buy in Hamilton.
Brownlee poured all his savings from his importing job into the deposit, while his parents picked up the rest and guaranteed the loan on the proviso they would be paid back everything they put in.
Then Brownlee sat on the Hamilton home for six months. He used the increase in equity to ask the bank for a new loan for another property.
From there he moved quickly, buying homes below market rate and making renovations before getting them revalued so he could borrow on the difference as soon as possible.
He was able to buy his second property at 19 and owned five by the time he was 20. His parents, both accountants, helped with financial guidance, but the grunt work and passion has always been his.
He remembers driving home at 3am from Hamilton one night, having worked on his first property at the same time as doing a night shift in a call centre and studying at university. “Surely, no one else is doing this,” he recalls exhaustedly thinking.
Brownlee spends hours reading “everything available on property”, chatting to other investors, engaging in online property forums, keeping an eye on different markets and dealing “with hundreds of real estate agents”.
However, not all his investments have been winners. His decision, while at high school, to import a damaged BMW car from Japan with the idea of repairing and onselling it ended with a loss.
”[It] taught me how important it is to do a lot of research before making any investment decision,” he said.
It’s a lesson Brownlee believes has lessened the fear of being caught in a housing crash with 11 mortgages.
“I make sure that every property I buy, I’m buying below market value so I’ve got a buffer in there from day one,” he said.
“And also I make sure that every property I buy is quite high cash-flow so it can sustain an interest rate increase and pay for all of its expenses.”
I make sure that every property I buy, I’m buying below market value. Johnathan Brownlee