– A young couple aims to be mortgage-free by 2026 after buying their first home in their early 20s.
– Litia and Jake Segerstrom leveraged property sales and investments to reduce their mortgage debt.
– They plan to subdivide their Te Poi property to clear the remaining debt on their home.
A young couple who bought their first home in their early 20s have an ambitious plan to be mortgage-free before the end of 2026.
Litia and Jake Segerstrom told OneRoof they were close to owning outright their lifestyle property in Te Poi, near Matamata.
By the time they’ve made their final mortgage payment, she’ll be 29 and he’ll be 31. And while they’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices to get on the property ladder and pay down their debts, they believe it is worth it, and they are keen to share their story to give hope to would-be first-home buyers.
The Segerstrom told OneRoof they were living in a converted shed in Katikati, in the Bay of Plenty, when their minds turned towards home-ownership.
Jake and Litia outside their first home, in Athenree, in 2017. Photo / Supplied
Their initial conversations with the banks about getting a mortgage were grim. They didn’t have a 20% deposit, and so the banks said no. “We just seemed like a bit of a hassle for a lot of bankers,” Jake said.
On their fourth go at securing finance, they found someone who was prepared to sit down and help them. Within days of that help, they had a pre-approval for $400,000 based on a 10% deposit.
“We lived a pretty frugal life for a while until we could save our cash part of the deposit. We also used our KiwiSaver.”
Discover more:
– First-time buyers snap up Kiwi comedy legend’s childhood home
– Kiwi hubby built Italian mega-mansion on the edge of Hamilton for his Japanese wife
– 250 buyers swarm Auckland home: $200,000 renovation gamble pays off
They eventually found a three-bedroom in Athenree, near Waihī. “It was quite small and it didn’t really tick a lot of the boxes you think you are going to tick, but realistically what you want and what you can afford are two different things when you are buying your first home,” Jake said.
The house cost them $370,000 and offered them plenty of scope to add value inside and out.
Within a few years, they decided it was time to move closer to Litia’s job in banking in Tauranga. They bought a new build in Ōmokoroa using the equity in their Athenree home to fund the purchase.
They had been living in their new home in Ōmokoroa for three years when Jake, a landscaper, found himself doing a bit of work in Matamata. The countryside left him with an itch to move. “I started to get a little bit sick of the traffic,” he said of their hometown.
The couple sold their new-build home in Ōmokoroa and used the proceeds to buy a lifestyle block in Te Poi. Photo / Supplied
He started trawling through property websites and found a lifestyle property in Te Poi, which he thought was much better value for the couple. Litia took some convincing, though. “It didn’t make sense in a number of ways,” she told OneRoof.
But with the couple determined to continue their property journey and try and pay off their mortgage on their family home as soon as possible, she saw the benefits.
They had sold their first home for $630,000 and got $1.05m for their house in Ōmokoroa. With the money they made on the sales, they bought a near-new four-bedroom home in Te Poi on 2500sqm for $950,000.
“All properties so far, we’ve managed to walk away with a profit,” Litia said.
Jake said that they had benefited from the rising property market post-Covid, but they knew they couldn’t rely on further gains to fulfil their dream of ditching the mortgage.
“Basically, with the property market being so slow, we had to start thinking a little bit more and being a bit creative as to how we were going to make some money to pay the mortgage off.”
The couple started looking for cheap investment properties within a 100km radius of their home, and finally found one with an existing tenant in Waharoa. “The numbers worked out really well. It was positively geared from day one,” Jake said.
The couple also plan to subdivide their Te Poi property and put a relocatable house on the newly created section. Once they’ve done that, they’ll sell the new property, all of which should clear the debt on their family home.
Litia said: “I would love to do it before I’m 30, but I’m 30 next September, so we’ve got 13 months.”
The couple, who now have two young children, said they didn’t want to be paying a mortgage on their home in their 60s.
“It’s about not paying so much interest to the bank. When you go on the mortgage calculators and stuff like that and punch in your details for X amount for your mortgage over 30 years, you are paying double the cost of your house.”
They have set up an Instagram page, Lucki 13, to share their experiences and encourage other young people not to give up their dreams of home-ownership.
Jake said: “It seems hard to do it when you are young, but once you are older, you have kids and all these other commitments that slow down your ability to save. Pre-kids, it’s a bit easier. We did make a lot of sacrifices. When you are in your 20s, you are out partying and travelling and buying things that don’t really matter, but we were quite determined to save what we needed.”
Litia said buyers shouldn’t be too fussy about their first home and should be prepared to be flexible on location. “It’s just getting a foot in the door.”