Small beginnings, big dreams

INVESTOR PROFILE: A Lower Hutt investor couple started small but they are well on the road to investment success – and now they are sharing how they got there.

Monday, October 15th 2018, 10:30AM 1 Comment

by The Landlord

Lower Hutt investor couple Gurpreet and Kanwal Gill

Starting small and thinking big has proved to be a successful strategy for Gurpreet Gill and his wife Kanwal.

The couple have only been in the game for just over two years, but they already have four properties in their portfolio and a real passion for investment.

Gurpreet and Kanwal both moved to New Zealand to study nine years ago from India (they didn’t know each other at the time).

The pair met in 2014, but in the early days they had rather different goals.

“I always wanted to be a property investor. But Kanwal wanted a massive mansion,” he says. “It was in Greymouth!” Kanwal laughs. “So it was affordable.”

It didn’t take long for Gurpreet to convince her that property investment was a better idea than a Greymouth mansion.

He gave her a copy of Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which she read in three days; “It was a real eye opener for me,” she says.

Their first step was to buy a Petone property to live in for a few years so they could take advantage of the lower LVR and get their foot on the first rung of the property ladder.

In August 2017, they bought their first rental property and, since then, they have bought two more properties.

They are currently focussing on improving their renovation skills but they now have a property portfolio that will provide them with a great foundation for future growth.

And they have some simple advice for people wanting to get into the investment game.

“Be humble - you don't have to rip someone off to get a good deal. A great deal is when it works for both parties.”

To read more about the Gills’ property journey – along with their top investing tips - click here to get the digital issue of NZ Property Investor magazine.

Subscribe to NZ Property Investor magazine here to get great stories like this delivered to your mailbox every month.

Tags: property investment

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Comments from our readers

On 18 October 2018 at 9:57 am Lara Jane Maloney said:

This is great. I love hearing about people being smart and setting themselves out for the future. I think it would be really beneficial for readers wanting to model their success by having more detail about exactly *how* they acquired four properties in such a short time frame. For example, if they were maxing out their LVR each time to get into the next property, were they able to achieve this because of the strong capital gains we've experienced these last few years (in which case this may not necessarily be something others can base a reliable financial plan on) or was a key focus paying down debt to increase equity to borrow (in which case this indicates they had a healthy surplus to work with). Either way, a little more detail would go along way to paint a more accurate picture for people to base their own wealth creation strategy on.

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