Owning houses ‘can be quite stressful’

[Property investment] is not as easy as everyone thinks.

Ben Lewis, investor

When Ben Lewis began investing in his mid-20s he jumped into the property market buying an apartment in Auckland’s Panmure.

He then bought a second Panmure apartment and another in CBD-fringe Eden Terrace with a family member within a few years.

But 18 years later Lewis is eyeing a sale of one of his properties and says he wants to invest more in shares and privately-owned companies.

“I’ve got too much property at the moment and want to spread more into shares. Property is just not as favourable.”

A process improvement analyst by day for the telecommunications sector, Lewis says that’s because property prices have gone up so much now the yield he is getting from the rent can’t keep up.

“You end up sitting on a lot of value in the property but it’s not returning that much because the rent is not keeping up.” And he says over time there have also become more and more expenses for maintaining the properties.

“I can’t remember the last time I had a clean month where there hasn’t been anything that had to be fixed.”

While he has made good capital gains on paper the investments have had their challenges.

Just a few years after buying the Panmure apartments they turned out to be a leaky building meaning Lewis had to spend $140,000 on each one to fix them up.

And last year a decision to turn his Eden Terrace apartment into a short-term Airbnb coincided with the outbreak of Covid-19.

While he earned $37,000 renting it out, after the set-up costs, power and internet costs and property management fees he says he only made $800 on the investment.

“It is not as easy as everyone thinks and it can be quite stressful.”

Lewis already has some investments in shares, he set up an ASB Securities account in 2013 and was also one of the first to jump aboard online investment platform Hatch when it launched in late 2018.

“Other investment classes are looking way easier to get into and lucrative. Only three or four years ago if you wanted to buy American shares you would have to go to a broker . . . and they would charge you a much higher fee.

“It is a lot easier to get into now and I’m more comfortable investing in shares overseas. Previous to this I was only [doing NZ] and Australian shares.”