Young Person Buys Home
"If I can do it, anyone can!"
For many young Australians these days, home ownership feels out of reach. But that doesn’t have to be the case according to one plucky young entrepreneur who recently purchased his fourth investment property.
Bonathan Sharpe, 25, bought his first property when he was just 20 years old thanks to a bit of good old fashioned elbow grease — and the help of his parents, who went guarantor on the loan, meaning Bonathan only had to contribute $10,000 to the initial deposit.
Saving the money was “a piece of piss”, says Bonathan, now 25, from the leafy suburb of Mosman on Sydney’s north shore.
How To Save Money And Win Friends
“It’s really just about hard work and sacrifice,” he told Junkee. “Sacrifice. Sacrifice. Sacrifice.”
“Take your lunch to work, stop buying coffees and eating avocado toast every day. While my friends were blowing money on booze and partying, I was skipping out of the pub when it was my turn to shout,” he says with a roguish grin.
He now works as a mortgage broker under the watchful eye of his CEO father, and volunteers as the President of his local branch of the Young Liberals (“A thankless task, I tell you!”).
But Bonathan insists his success is down to hard work that began in his late teens and stretched right through to his mid-twenties. When he put down a deposit on his first property, Bonathan was working for just $25 an hour as the receptionist at his mother’s dental surgery.
“It was my first job and those were long, hard days — starting at 10 and ending at 4.30 — but I knew it was all worth it to save the money to buy my first pad,” Bonathan told Junkee.
“It was such an exciting moment to finally sign those papers” he said. “I mean, Mum did the actual signing. But I was there to put the whole thing on Instagram.”
And the sacrifices didn’t end there. The young property mogul even turned down his parents’ offer to put him up in a fully furnished inner-city apartment when he graduated from his law degree at UNSW.
“They really wanted to get me out of the house, and even though they were willing to pay my rent, I know a bad deal when I see one,” Bonathan told Junkee. “By staying at home for as long as I did, I not only avoided paying rent, I also simply refused to pay for any of the household bills or groceries.”
This, Bonathan claims, is the secret to success if young people want to get a foot on the property ladder.
“It was a fucking great deal. For me.”
Putting In The Work
With his first tentative steps into the Sydney property market complete, and despite some high profile legal troubles (“I was just minding it for a friend!”) Bonathan decided he wanted more.
“I thought this was a really good opportunity to build a portfolio. I’ve always loved the idea of building something from the ground up with my own hands — metaphorically. It kind of felt like a calling, y’know?”
Bonathan once again turned to his parents, who used the equity in their Byron Bay investment property to put a deposit on a Redfern terrace that was previously dedicated to public housing.
“That was the breakthrough moment for me,” Bonathan told Junkee. “I thought ‘wow. I can really do this’”.
With the rental income from his two investment properties, a significant inheritance from his late Scottish great-uncle, and his six figure salary, Bonathan was able to borrow more money to put down deposits on two more properties — a high rise apartment on the Gold Coast that he rents out on Airbnb (“perfect for lads weekends!”) and a humble three bedroom bungalow in Penrith on Sydney’s western outskirts (“I’ve never even seen it in person!”).
With four properties under his belt, Bonathan and his pet dachshund, Billy, have finally moved out of his parents’ home and into a terrace house in the inner-western Sydney suburb of Glebe (“I never thought I’d live in the west!”).
But he’s not resting on his laurels. Bonathan has his eyes on more future investments, saying the current rental market — there are literally no affordable properties for a young person on Newstart — presents the perfect time to become a landlord.
“If I can do it. Anyone can,” he says.
Note: If you’d like to know more about Bonathan’s secret to success, you can sign up to his webinar series for the low price of $89.99 per session. Follow Bonathan on Twitter: @SkillzPayDaBills.