'My Favourite Investment' With Clint Greaves

How long have you been investing in property?

Sixteen years. My wife Annette and I purchased our first investment properties in New Zealand whilst living in the UK in 2000. After a long period of searching and analysis, we found two properties that met our criteria and we put offers in on both, hoping to successfully negotiate one. Amazingly, both offers were accepted and they were both great deals. We worked out that we could finance both, so we bought both! From there, we got the bug and bought a number of rentals before we even considered buying a property to live in for ourselves.

What is your favourite or best investment and why? 

I’m not sure I have a favourite investment, but certainly one of the most interesting deals was a complete renovation of an old and very poorly presented 18-room boarding hoame. Annette found the deal, and when she took me to view it I thought she was crazy. 

You could hardly walk in the front door because there was so much junk everywhere. But we did the numbers and knew it could be great. Unsurprisingly, there was very little competition when it came to buying – most people wouldn’t even step inside the property. We decided it would a great learning experience to get our hands dirty and do the renovation ourselves, but we knew our limitations so we did a JV with a very skilled renovator. 

We bought the property for $505,000 and for the first two weeks we did nothing but empty and clean the place. Ten very large skip bins later we were ready to renovate and I got the valuer in. Just by cleaning out the property, it valued up at $620,000. After three months and with a renovation budget of $60,000 (plus many long days of painting and labouring), we eventually finished and the property was valued at $915,000. More impressively, it generated over $2,000 per week in rental income.

What is your ultimate goal as an investor?

I’ve certainly made and lost plenty of money with property deals in the last 16 years, and still have a long way to go before I reach my goals. But ultimately, I think property is the single best vehicle to create long-term wealth and the ability to generate passive income. The ultimate goal is to be able to have choices in life about what you and your family can do, and property investment is a great vehicle to support these goals. I’ve been very lucky to be involved in the industry itself, and as CEO of Real Estate Investar I get to see first-hand how many of our thousands of members are going about achieving their goals as property investors every day, and that’s pretty inspiring. Most of all, I want to be able to support my family and teach my son that he can create the outcomes he wants in life through property.