Regional rentals yield lifestyle dream

Property investor Ellie Tadema

For Ellie Tadema, who is profiled in this month's NZ Property Investor magazine, success is a self-sustaining farm a long way from city life, funded in part by affordable rentals from an under-rated region.

Starting with just $77,000 in equity, Tadema has grown a sizeable portfolio in Gisborne with 13 rental streams and has achieved three major goals in just a few years.

After many years working in corporate roles in first New Zealand, then London and finally Perth, Tadema was made redundant after the mining industry took a nosedive.

But she and her husband a plan that had been simmering away in their heads for almost a decade.

In 2006, she had spent around $1 million buying four properties in Auckland. “But I didn’t do it very well, and I sold it all over the next few years.”

In hindsight, keeping those properties would have been advantageous - which was another reason that Tadema decided to give property investment another go in 2015.

So she went to a Wealth Mentor event and it changed her entire trajectory, giving her a roadmap toward her three objectives.

Reading an article that described Gisborne as the best-value region in the country, both overlooked and underrated, she set off on a road trip to Gisborne.

This led to the purchase of three properties in January 2016, just before it started coming up. “The timing was perfect, but not because I’m clever. It just happened to be amazing.”

Since then, she has bought another three properties, returned to New Zealand with her husband to live on the farm they have bought and embraced her property investing passion.

This year she plans to spend more on Gisborne property in order to create seven new income streams to take her total to twenty.

Here are Tadema’s top five tips for successful investing:

• Be absolutely clear with your strategy. Know what you want to do and by when.
• You need a team of good people around you.
• It’s all about relationships.
• You’ve just got to grow some and get on with it.
• No deal is perfect, but it doesn’t have to be perfect to be good.

To read more of Tadema’s story, along with the details of her tips, click here to get the digital issue of NZ Property Investor magazine.

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