Episode 126: Understanding your why when investing in property

In this week’s podcast we talk to Zoliswa (Zoe) Singcu, a mother of two and world traveler who is originally from Port Elizabeth (PE), South Africa and is currently working in Saudi Arabia as a Medical Technologist.

She is a world traveler. She bought her first property for her family in Kimberly; she and her husband struggled to get that property. She spent a lot of her time watching programs that have to do with houses and decorations. When she was working the night shift at her job at the hospital, she would look at properties internationally.

 

She wasn’t even thinking of property investment at that time, but she loved the architecture and the designs. One time, she was viewing properties in PE, and she realized she could afford to buy one of her dream properties. This is how she bought her second property.

 

At the time, she just wanted to own a property in that estate; there was already a tenant in the property, and she took over the tenant. The property was positive cash flowing from day 1.

 

She bought her third property in Pretoria when she was getting divorced and some of her friends suggested she leave Kimberly. She bought the house without seeing it, moved to that house and rented out the house in Kimberly, which she has since turned into an AirBnB.

 

Shortly after buying the third property, she bought 2 units from a developer and a year later she bought another 2 units from the same developer and rented out those properties to tenants and started breaking even.

 

After buying the 4 properties, she didn’t buy anything for two years, she approached her brother to partner with her to buy land in PE, but he changed his mind because he was scared of losing his money, she went ahead with the sale. Her plan with the land is to sub-divide the land and build 2 houses and resell them.

 

She then bought a new unit (new development) in Pretoria and turned it into an AirBnB unit, which is doing very well, and that income covers the expenses for some of the properties that are under performing.

Zoliswa buys property for different reasons - to make sure that her kids have properties and don’t have to start from zero. She wants to have a lot of properties so that she doesn't have to struggle later in her life.