Nhan Nguyen - BANKABLE: How to make big money from small developments

W hy do they call me the No Money Down Man ? My claim to fame is that by the age of twenty-four, Id bought a couple of million dollars worth of property using none of my own money, so I have a fair bit of experience in this area. I love pushing myself to another level. Some people think Im crazy, but Im always looking at creating new material. Cutting-edge concepts and processes that are relevant in the current marketplace. Others tend to rehash the same process over and over again, but I want to give people a feel for whats actually going on and create a blueprint for what to do in volatile times.

First, Id like to tell you a bit more about where I come from.

I was born in a housing commission estate in Darra. My parents had been wealthy in Vietnam but lost it all in 1975. To escape the war, they jumped on a boat with little more than the clothes on their backs. Im living proof that to be successful in this game, you dont need to be born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

We moved to Carol Park, where I spent much of my childhood. These days Carol Park is quite industrial, and theres a lot of development. When I was a little kid, my auntie wouldnt allow me to play with my cousin who lived next door, and I believe this incident first planted the seed of me wanting to become a property developer. At the tender age of three years old, I knew I needed control of what I owned, what I did, and how I created my future.

Under the encouragement of my parents, who wanted me to become a doctor, I received instead a science degree at the University of Queensland. Admittedly, I did fail one of my subjects, BC306, because I was out there looking at property when I should have been studying.

When I was twenty-one, I bought my first investment property in Goodna, which is a suburb about twenty minutes out of Ipswich. I figured out a strategy to receive the First Homeowners grant and get a positive cash flow deal as well.

This experience helped me to understand something important about property, and that is you need to take responsibility for what you can control. I began to observe how I reacted when circumstances didnt go right for me. After purchasing my first two properties, I started doing a renovation on the second, but both of them were sitting vacant at the same time. I became stressed. I was earning twenty-five grand a year, and each month I was short five hundred dollars. For some people thats less than a car payment, but for me it was a massive amount of money.

Because I was stressed and desperate, I put a tenant in the property not being renovated. They had six kids and were on Centrelink. On paper, they seemed like a good choice. They were earning one thousand dollars a week, which was double the five hundred I was earning. I moved into one of the rooms to reduce their rent (and mine), and I was able to get a positive cash flow.

Then I started to get into trouble. The tenants trashed my property. What they would do was open up the window and throw the rubbish outside. Heaps of stuff. It was just disgusting. So, I sold the property too fast, because I was desperate. I only made two thousand dollars profit out of the whole transaction, but I was lucky to make any money at all. This taught me that if youre desperate and emotional, you will make irrational decisions. Just because you can buy a property, doesnt mean you know how to become a rental manager. It was an important lesson.

You need to know that wherever you are, whether you have assets and income or nothing, it doesnt matter. For me, I used having nothing as an excuse to step up. Some people might use it as a justification to do the opposite. You might say, I dont have this. Im losing money. Im negatively geared. I have negative equity. But none of that matters. Use all of your difficulties to lift the bar and go to the next level. Im living proof you can make it happen.