29-05-2025
I own more than 300 properties... but I'm angry with myself for missing a life goal when I turned 40
A property mogul who owns more than 300 homes worth nearly $250million has claimed he still doesn't believe he has enough.
Nathan Birch, 40, said he was not completely satisfied with his achievement because he had not yet become a billionaire.
Mr Birch said he was planning on buying another 100 properties in just four weeks to grow his empire even further.
'I wanted to be a billionaire when I hit 40,' he said.
'That's not going to happen, but I will get to a billion at some point.
'My goal is to have 10,000 properties one day. It's for grandkids. I hope that when I die, my life will be like a corporate entity.'
Mr Birch knows his ambition will make some Aussies cranky given the cost-of-living and housing crises.
He acknowledged people will say he's part of the problem when it comes to rising property prices.
'There will be a whole bunch of people who won't like it. Some people will say "how dare he",' Mr Birch said.
'I've just come to accept that not everyone agrees with it. Even my mum, when I got to 200 properties, she said "don't be stupid, don't buy more".
'The thing is, my actions are based on numbers. This is what keeps me focused.'
Mr Birch grew up in a single-income household in Mt Druitt in western Sydney and made his first investment at 18 with money saved from working while he was still at school.
He's planning on buying his next 100 properties by exploiting a banking mechanism known as 'leverage'.
His strategy is to draw out equity from his other properties through refinancing deals, which fund the costs of buying new homes - many of which have been bought for just $200,000.
The properties are generally rented out for a higher price than the loan repayments so banks are happy to give Mr Birch credit for his deals because the holding costs of his portfolio are low.
He will also buy properties in low socio-economic areas, which helps him buy under the market value.
He said buying under market value made his loans low risk to the banks and meant he had instant equity which he would use to 'leverage' into another home.
It helped him buy 200 properties by the time he was 31, but he said buying so many properties was not an easy task.
'I got to a point pre-Covid where banks wouldn't lend to me,' Mr Birch said.
'I had to pay in cash. Over time, it caught up with me. I had to sell off a few in 2017 and 2018. I had to swap a lot of properties and there was a lot of land tax.
'There have been days when I vomited up food because of the stress, and I usually handle stress really well. Sometimes it gets to you.'
He said family members had tried to tell him to stop buying more properties.
'My mum is fearful. She was excited for the first few properties but then she said 'you'll go bankrupt',' he said.
'All this noise from people who loved me were thoughts. They weren't real. Many of my family members didn't know how all this debt stuff worked.
'Now my mum says "I don't know how you do it, but you know what you are doing".'
