Welcome to "Elevate with Elsner," the podcast that dives deep into the stories of individuals who've taken the bold step to follow their passion and make an impact!
I'm Blake Elsner, a real estate professional by day and your host by passion. I've always believed that our true calling can often be found in the most unexpected places. That's why I'm thrilled to bring you inspiring conversations with amazing guests who have transformed their lives by pursuing work they truly love.
Each episode of "Elevate with Elsner" is packed with candid discussions, heartfelt stories, and practical advice from people who took the leap and never looked back.
Whether it's leaving the corporate grind to start a business, swapping a finance job for a creative career, or any other impactful journey, you'll hear it all right here.
We'll explore the highs and lows, the challenges and triumphs, and most importantly, the impact these changes have made not just in their lives, but in the lives of others.
So, if you're ready to be inspired, if you're dreaming of making a change, or if you just love a good story of passion and impact, "Elevate with Elsner" is the podcast for you!
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Can’t wait for you to tune in, listen to passion stories and know that even you can make an impact on the next episode of "Elevate with Elsner." See you next time!
A $700,000 debt at 19 can either crush you or forge you. We sit down with Hadley Nightingale, founder and director of New Zealand Property Buyers, to unpack how one bold farm purchase turned into years of pressure, hard lessons, and eventually a full real estate investment business that helps people buy, renovate, and manage rental property across New Zealand.
Hadley walks us through the decisions that went sideways early, including a crop deal done on a handshake that should have paid the bills but instead became a painful lesson in contracts, cash flow, and due diligence. From there, the story goes bigger and tougher: working in Australia driving massive road trains, long hours, remote breakdowns, and the kind of resilience you only build when nobody is coming to save you.
Then we shift into the practical side of New Zealand real estate investing. Hadley explains how a typical purchase works using a sale and purchase agreement, why conditional offers matter, what “unconditional day” means, and how fast settlement can move. We also compare market realities like typical investment price ranges, rent levels, and a key financing difference: New Zealand mortgage terms are often floating or fixed for short windows up to five years, not a 30 year fixed mortgage. Finally, we talk about DIY culture, the real value of hiring a property buyers agent, and how buying back your time can be the best investment you make.
If you’re curious about real estate entrepreneurship, remote property investing, and what it takes to rebuild after an expensive mistake, hit play. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves real estate, and leave a review. What’s one money lesson you had to learn the hard way?
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Welcome back to another episode of Elevate with Elsner. Today we're taking a podcast international all the way to New Zealand. And what's really cool about today's conversation is that my guests and I are both in real estate, but we're operating on completely opposite sides of the world. My guest today is Hadley Nightingale, founder and director of New Zealand property buyers. But his journey didn't exactly start with success. At just 19 years old, Hadley purchased a farm and found himself carrying roughly $700,000 in debt. He eventually found himself working in Australia, driving massive road trains, putting in incredibly long hours, and earning around $13 an hour during the early part of his working life. Fast forward to today, and he's built a real estate investment business helping people purchase, renovate, and manage properties throughout New Zealand. But you guys know me, I just don't want to talk about the business, right? I want to talk about the person behind it, the mistakes, the sacrifices, and what it actually takes to build something when life necessarily doesn't go according to plan. So today we're talking real estate entrepreneurship, building wealth, family, and probably a few differences between America and New Zealand that neither of us probably expect, right? Hadley, welcome to Elevate with Elsner.
SPEAKER_00
Hey Mike, thanks for having me. Looking forward to uh seeing where the conversation goes this morning.
Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you coming on here. So let's just like jump right into it. So obviously, I was doing some research and came across this story about you buying a farm at 19 years old and taking on 700,000 in debt. So I've got to hear this story. How the how the how in the world did that happen?
SPEAKER_00
Um back in the golden days of like the the pre-OH, can you fog a mirror? We're gonna give you a loan uh days. So great for getting money, not so great on the responsibility side of things for uh responsible lending. And so that's that's more or less how it uh how it happened with farming at the time. Thought, well, you know, if you're gonna become a farmer, you need to buy some land, and what can I uh what can I go and what can I buy? And then found a place that was overpriced and wasn't quite right, but with a bit of 19-year-old naivety and talked my parents into to help me out a little bit with it as well. Uh, you know, there there I there I found myself going, Jeepers, I've got no idea what I'm doing. I've got this land, and I've got to try and pay for it, like you're saying on 13 bucks an hour. It was a uh it was an interesting time.
Blake Elsner
Yeah, I can't imagine being in that amount of debt. I mean, obviously being that young, it helps. You're naive, right? You're like, oh, we can kind of do anything. So did you really even understand what that meant?
SPEAKER_00
Like, oh, I'm not a hope, man. Like my my plan was like pretty simple. Become a farmer, buy some land because that's what you need to do, put some cattle on it. Uh, we've got to make some money, it'll pay for itself. That'll get me started. By the time I'm 30, I'm set. Rough plan.
Blake Elsner
Yeah. I I mean, and prior to 19, were you what were you into business or what what was your your your growing up like?
SPEAKER_00
Uh a little a little bit entrepreneurial right the way through. Like we used to do a bit of market gardening stuff. Um, my parents had a market gardener, then myself and my brother had like a small section of that that we used to do. I was like always, always working. So I think like as soon as I had a driver's license, I uh was like stacking milk in um in supermarkets before school started and um then go to school and then go back to the supermarket and stack the milk afterwards and then working on dairy farms in the weekends. So there was always like that element of work, work, work, work. Um, but not so much in terms of like the business skill, the business acumen. It was uh just a case of like, well, if I work a bit harder, it's worked for me so far. If I work a bit harder, then uh then it's all gonna work out.
Blake Elsner
So you're sitting there, you got you have this debt. Um, what and your family's probably going, This, this, this is our son, he's crazy, you know, right? And and so what what did you ever like get to a point where you're like, I just I might just lose it all?
Uh yeah, 100%, man. There were there was like multiple times through that because basically what happened was was is that maybe a couple of bad decisions around like some cropping and not having contracts and like working things off the back of a handshake, which now I just simply wouldn't do for the amount of money that there was involved. But once again, naivety can be a great thing, but it can also be the thing that trips you up, right? Uh and so we had had it, we planted a crop and it was worth about 80, or should have been worth about 80 grand, which would have covered our expenses for the year. Um, and then it was done off the back of a handshake. The guy that was gonna buy it changed his mind. I didn't have any contracts in place, and then we ended up like the crop stood there, it uh deteriorated, and then we ended up selling it for like 20 or 25 grand or something, a quarter of what it should have been. And I was like, Jeepers, this is just getting harder and harder. I've got to go and find somewhere that's gonna back to my old philosophy if I can just work harder and find somewhere that pays me more, uh, then then life's gonna be good. So that's sort of where Australia came in, um, just to try and earn some more money to um to be able to fund you know what was uh what was going on.
Uh so road trains have got depending on the size of them, um, they started about 30 meters long, go out to out to 60. Uh, and so it's like Prime Uber with uh back then they were like three 40-foot trailers with like a 20-foot as the second to last. So you're about I I don't know about pounds, but it was like about a hundred and seventy metric ton um hauling down the road at 65 mile an hour.
Blake Elsner
Yeah, wow. So I'm getting so was that like was that dangerous work or was that what would you consider what type of work is that?
SPEAKER_00
Uh it's it's it's not for the faint-hearted from the perspective of like your miles from anywhere. It's it's you doing, and this is like before Starlink, this is before like you used to have to carry a sapphone everywhere with you. Um, and it was more so a thing of like if something went wrong, you were the one that had to figure out how to fix it. Um it was you know the the the constraints around working hours weren't the same as what they uh what they are now, so it was more so a case of just go, go, go, go. Uh and it was as I said, it was just long hours, middle and nowhere, um hot long days. Something goes wrong. The only person that's coming to rescue you is you. Um I think I got stuck on the side of the road one day, and it took someone like a day and a half to come out and send a mechanic to come out and get me when I had a a piston that went up through the side of a block, and uh, and so wasn't going anywhere in a hurry. And so nothing, nothing happens quickly. It was like, oh, we might be able to get out last night. No, we can't get out this night, we'll come out and get you tomorrow. Um and so, but yeah, it's uh it's just just what happens, right? But it's a good community, people ask you how you're doing, and you've got a bunk in the back and always carry food and ice pack and just uh catch them on some sleep while you're waiting.
Blake Elsner
Wow, so you were getting 13 an hour? Is that whatever you're gonna do?
SPEAKER_00
Uh no, that that so like 13 an hour in New Zealand, and then the wages in Australia were like the first job I had, I went up to 20 bucks thinking I'd cracked it. And then uh and then I went up to 25, and then when we were doing there was like a set run with uh the 170 ton trucks uh where we were doing like 16 hours a day, six days a week. Uh, if if you did it well, and then the the um but the roster was like something ridiculous, like 12 weeks on, two weeks off. Um, but we were earning like 600 bucks a day if you were um, and this is back in the like early 2010, uh, 2012, 2010, 2012. Um, so the the money then was phenomenally different to what it was at the start, but the um you know the hours and the conditions were um was something else. I think I was like we had like 50 drivers and Biber, just to give you some context around the the turnover, we had like 50 drivers, and by the time I was there for like seven months, I was the eighth longest serving person. You just turn up to work and then there'd be some other like random person jumping into someone's truck, go, who's that guy? He's the new guy for the left two days ago. Oh, okay, cool. Hey man, good luck, see how long you last.
Blake Elsner
Wow, wow, that yeah. So I so obviously you're like, okay, we can't do we can't do this forever. Um, so what so like now obviously tell us like what you do now. Like obviously you're you're extremely successful, obviously you've long, long outlasted the the farm, um the debt. And so like what what is what do you do today?
so back in 2017, uh I saw a bit of an opportunity, I saw a bit of an opportunity to uh you know help people buy property and buy it well, rather than just it being uh a hobby on a Saturday to go and look at a few open homes. But just to preface that too, is like obviously the the farm was there. I I learned pretty quickly that if I was gonna do it myself, I was gonna stuff it up. Uh or I did a really good job of stuffing up. So I went and got some some training and some mentorship through that time. It's like the cliche story, right? And then saw um saw an opportunity to go and help some people, uh, got licensed, had to work for another guy for uh three three years while we were uh while I got my licensing sorted out so I could run my own company. And then in uh 2020, just as COVID started, uh like the week before COVID, I decided to hand my notice in because I was gonna go work for myself, and then we got locked down for a long period of time. So uh yeah, that's how it that's how it started. And then now uh is how we help buyers purchase property, uh, we then help them renovate the properties, and then we've also got a property management company that manages it. So people turn up, say, hey, look, I'm looking for an investment property. This is what I think I need. We help them find out what they need, uh, and then run the whole process for them from start to finish.
Blake Elsner
That's neat. So get walk me through like a typical real estate transaction in New Zealand, if you can, from you know,
you start with the showing or what how does that work?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so most of the stuff we do, we buy our people are remote, uh, and then we buy a chunk of stuff remote as well. So it's it mainly starts out with like base due diligence for us. Uh and then over here, I don't quite know how it works in the States, but like in terms of for us, uh everything's done on a sale and purchase agreement where you put like a conditional offer in on a property. Uh so we'll do base due diligence, put a base offer in, or put an offer in on a property if it gets accepted, great. If it doesn't, we go back and start the process again. Um but once we've got the property under contract, we know what our numbers are, we'll go through, view the property, uh, get our inspections, get finance sorted. Uh, and then after sort of 10 to 15 days of that, what we have is called like an unconditional day. And that's the day that you basically buy the house. Your finances in place, you've done your building and inspections, you've done the other tests that you need to do, you've got council reports, um, go on conditional, and then you just wait till settlement to happen, which sometimes like 10 working days, two weeks out to sort of 80, 90 days to get that settled. So things here have can happen fairly quickly. Um there's no but there's not there's nothing to say that you have to have a conditional offer, you can just go and pay cash for sort or put a cash offer in and then you know settle 10 days later, five days later, as soon as the money's there, you could in fact settle it the next day if you were just paying cash for something. Um and then yeah, you wait the settlement period out, get all your quotes in line, and then as soon as the property is vacant, uh then you know get stuck into the renovation side of things.
Blake Elsner
Okay, so yeah, there's uh I mean obviously a lot of similarities. So in the beginning, when you what's like the average price that you I guess do you have an average price or your average sale? Do you know?
SPEAKER_00
Um most most of the stuff that we buy runs between like six hundred and nine hundred thousand as a as a sort of average price. We wouldn't work with anyone that's got less than sort of 400, 450 would be uh like our base entry price.
Blake Elsner
Wow. So they're purchasing investment properties between six and nine hundred thousand.
SPEAKER_00
Are these these r are they family homes too, or do they have to be strictly uh like you're probably getting like two houses on one title, uh like some small multifamily stuff for around like you probably get uh a duplex for like 700, six to six to nine hundreds in that range. As soon as you get up to like three or four, they start to get like nine hundred to a million, uh is is where things. But our I suppose our pricing's much the same as like Canada. Okay, there's like you you really can't buy anything here for any less than sort of 250,000.
Blake Elsner
Um that may that makes sense. I mean I I uh I guess yeah, the last two houses I were so you're saying like single if it's if it's a duplex, do they most most of the time they buy one side, live on the other side and rent the other side out?
SPEAKER_00
Is that or you do you uh in in terms of like our clients, they they just buy the whole lot, rent the whole lot out. Okay. Um there's there's not many people that like buy one side, rent the other out. It generally tends to be like if this is an investment, I'm just buying the investment. Um and it's generally in a different place to where they live. So very rarely is it like, oh, we're gonna buy go and buy a house for you three doors down. Uh it generally tends to be different location in the country.
Blake Elsner
So, what's the the demand like for like the the rental side? Like out clearly, like if you're you're paying this type of money for um investment properties, you're you obviously want them filled, correct? Like, yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Uh rent rent rent here is uh probably the the lowest that someone pays for rent with the places that we've got, and this would be like the lower end of it, sort of four four twenty-five a week, four twenty-five, four fifty. I think our average rent for our rent book is about five eighty-five. Um and so your ranges between sort of that and a thousand bucks a week, so our our top end.
Blake Elsner
So between yeah, two and four K, I guess, is kind of two thousand or four thousand a month. Um so it's not, it's rough, roughly similar, similar things, which is pretty interesting how um obviously the the process is pretty similar, the prices are pretty similar because that's kind of what you know what it would go here, go for here too, those similar, similar things. So um we obviously we have like 30-year fixed rate mortgages. What what how does financing
Uh so we have like uh floating, so you just don't fix it and your interest rate bumps around all the time. Uh, then we have like six months, one year, 18 months, two years, three years, five years is the longest you can fix anything for. Um so yeah, it'd be great to have a well, I suppose it'd be a help and a hindrance to have a 30-year term where you're like, right, cool, I locked in the rates at 2%. Um, but probably not so great when it's six or or seven. Um, but yeah, we've always been on like a five-year, but five years the max term you can lock in.
Blake Elsner
That's interesting because obviously it makes payments higher, right? Per se. If um if your loan, you know, if your mortgage is stretched out only five years compared to 30 years, um, that's interesting because you look at like a lot of people here what we call the golden handcuffs, because everybody has a you know two, three, four interest rate um on a 30-year fix, right? So that's kind of what's causing this market to I would say it's more of a stalled market um more than anything. So that's interesting. So like a five-year like per like for your rental properties, um, somebody came to you and said, Hey, I got or investment first, I got 600K, um, or I want to buy something 600k. Do you how does that do you like connect them with a lender?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so we we work with uh work with brokers to make sure they can get their finance if they haven't got one already. Most of the people that come to us are already sort of finance ready, they know what they're looking for. Um, but you would sit down, we'd send them to a broker, and then we'd sit down and work out between with the broker and us exactly what they they needed to buy. Uh, because sometimes, you know, uh what people think they need and what they actually need can be two sort of very different things. Um, and so we just work through that that process with them to get them to where they they want to be in the long run.
Blake Elsner
So would you say like owning a home, it's a you know, it's like like you know, they say American dream, right? Is that a dream of New Zealand, like to own your home, right?
SPEAKER_00
Uh Kiwis a lot Kiwis get drunk on property all the time. Like it's it's like the it's like the thing that drives our economy to a degree is like the the property market. Um and it was sort of the thing when we started the the business that Kiwis are very DIY. We were one of the first companies to do what we do, and people are like, well, why would we pay you to go and do the thing that we can do? Uh and so that that took a little bit of uh getting used to and and sort of working out how to how to sell. And um yeah, it's sorry, I just uh I completely lost uh.
Blake Elsner
No, you're saying so people would do stuff like by themselves, you're saying like yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, sorry, yeah. Uh like people are very yeah, people are very DIY. It's like why would I go and do this? And then um, yeah, so it took a bit to to get over that and and work through that, but we're at a place now where people are like, right, cool, I can sort of see value and service.
Blake Elsner
Yeah, because you're you're buying back your time by hiring you and having you do it all. Because that's yeah, that's the that's the biggest thing I tell people all the time. You don't you don't have time to do all this stuff. Um, and if you do, then you need to figure out something better to do with your time. Because there's people out us like ourselves that we do this for a living, and that's that's why we're here. So um it's the same thing like a lawyer, you're not gonna go fight your case by yourself. I say the same thing with professional athletes, like the whole professional athlete. I'm like, you think LeBron James can't go sell himself? Like, there's a reason why he's got an agent. Like, I mean, it's it's it's clear. So um if if if you could if you could go back to that 19-year-old kid, like what would you tell yourself now
Don't don't buy it, go and buy yourself some residential real estate. Instead, it would have been a uh it would have been a whole lot different. I I suppose like hindsight's a great thing, right? Because you can always sit there and go, I wish that hadn't happened, or that was stupid, but you wouldn't have had the lived experience that you've uh that you've had along the way. And there's I think there's decisions that everyone makes in their life that go shit, that was dumb. Uh but you don't end up in the uh in the the place that you do if you if you hadn't made the decisions that you you had. And I think the the last sort of five or six years with uh growing the business, COVID, everything else, I think if I hadn't done the road train thing, lived in the middle of nowhere, uh had that resilience built in, uh I I don't know the type of person. Like I've always been pretty determined, but I don't know whether that sealed the resilience and the you've just got to get it done sort of mentality. So that's probably that that's like the million dollar question, right? Is uh what who who would you turn out like if you if you've made some different decisions and at the end of the day you can't say you're just gonna be happy with with where you're at, and or if you're not happy, push yourself in a direction to to get you somewhere where you are.
Blake Elsner
Yeah, I love that. Obviously, it pushed you up, kind of pushed you over the edge and and uh did that. So I you know I appreciate coming on here. Um I know you gotta run, so appreciate coming on here all the way from New Zealand. Any final words?
SPEAKER_00
No, no uh no final words. It's uh all's good. Enjoyed the the quick chat. I thought, yeah, it's just unfortunately gonna bounce, but um, yeah, we've been good uh to chat longer.
Blake Elsner
I appreciate it. Well, uh, we'll have to come back on here, and obviously people can follow you. We'll put in the show notes, your Instagram handle, some other stuff. Um, and I really appreciate you uh coming on here. And I think conversations like this are fascinating. You know, you talk about real estate and life on completely opposite sides of the world. So uh I think some of the the biggest takeaways from your story is that obviously success isn't necessarily about where you start, right? Um it's about what you do with the circumstances you're given, the mistakes you make, and the lessons you take from them. So I appreciate you coming on here.
