Many investors we profile in these pages were born outside New Zealand. Aotearoa is rich with opportunities, and it can take the perspective of those who were born in countries where there is significant struggle to appreciate all this country has to offer.

Zebunisso Alimova is a Tajik expat whose preternatural work ethic and understanding of the property market has taken her family far. Brought up by a solo mother who worked for the United Nations, she spent her early life in challenging locales such as her own country, Tajikstan, and East Timor, before moving to New Zealand as a student, aged just 16.

She lost her father when she was just 7 and there were periods of homelessness in her family’s life. So, when her brother was offered home stay accommodation and the opportunity to attend school in NZ by a family they met in East Timor, her family were delighted, despite the cost of education and living.

She was soon to follow – moving to Palmerston North. She initially disliked it, but her mother gave her some good advice. “She said ‘no-one promised this would be easy, give it a go’. And I soon realised there was so much freedom and opportunity, and I embraced the challenge.”

Alimova, even at that young age, was not afraid of hard work and, alongside school, she started earning money as a babysitter. She was an excellent student, earning a scholarship to a private university in Palmerston North, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in international relations.

She had planned to follow her mother’s footsteps and work at the UN, but then changed her mind and decided to be a teacher. Graduating at just 20, she took neither of these paths – the university was so impressed they asked her to work in marketing, travelling the world to recruit new students. And it was here she met her future husband, from Uzbekistan, with whom she would have four children.

Several Jobs

In 2011, the couple were ready to settle down and buy a house. Alimova had saved money from her work – and earned extra from baking, car washing et al, on top of her main job.

They saved a 10 per cent deposit and expected to get a mortgage without too much fuss, but when a major bank declined their application for preapproval, they turned to a mortgage broker for help and guidance.

“They really helped us,” says Alimova. “They were able to find a bank that would lend to us, and this got us into our first home in Palmerston North.”

Alimova loved working with people and decided she wanted to become a counsellor. She left her job at the university, which her husband took over, and also started working part-time as a bank teller while training. It was this job, rather than counselling, she credits with changing her life.

The job became full-time and Alimova stopped her counselling degree; she also discovered she was pregnant. The demands of a full-time job and pregnancy were soon compounded by a course that her husband discovered – a certificate of money management.

This would give her a great grounding in the art and science of money – and provide a backdrop for her future ventures in property investment.

The couple’s first baby was born in late 2012, and after a three-month break, Alimova was back at work. They were keen to move into a larger property and the family found a new home around the corner from the original house. They leveraged the equity in their first home to purchase this property and kept the original home as a rental.

Alimova remembers how she found tenants for the home.

“I advertised it on Facebook and rented to a friend of a friend,” she says.

But while the tenant seemed good on paper, they would not live up to their promise. “When she left, the house was in a terrible state.”

The next tenant was much better. “She offered to clean the house in exchange for one week’s free rent, which I agreed to. She is still there, and we have great communication with each other.”

New Builds

In 2015, the family moved to the Kapiti Coast.

Alimova’s husband had found a job in the region, and she was transferred to the region, working full time as a personal banker while pregnant with her second child.

She’d always wanted to build a house, so they bought a home in Paraparaumu as temporary accommodation while they found a spot to build.

After six months they found a suitable section in Waikanae.

They sold the Paraparaumu house for a profit of $150,000, although they had to to sacrifice their living arrangement and stay in a “terrible rental” with a baby and small child while the house was being built.

Alimova loved the building process so much that when they moved into their new home, she decided to build again.

The house was eventually sold for a profit of $100,000 when they moved into a larger home in the district.

It was soon time for her to move in a new direction. She loved working with people and had money nous, so mortgage broking seemed the ideal option. She was pregnant with her third child when she bought a Mike Pero Mortgages franchise and started to work for herself.

Her husband had developed an interest in flipping and was away much of the time. Although she helped with finding homes and some of the design work, this wasn’t her chosen strategy. “It was a hard time,” she reveals. “I was working for myself, chasing clients, and looking after three kids alone. It was totally insane.”

But then Covid hit, and her life changed again.

Boom Arrives

Alimova was pregnant with her fourth child during the first lockdown and her business went wild – the post-lockdown boom led to massive interest in her mortgage brokering services. The flipping continued, with the couple keeping one out of every six houses.

With four children, in 2021, the couple needed a larger house. They found another section in Waikanae, and she worked on designing a new build. By this stage her stepdaughter was living with the family, so there were five children to care for alongside all the other work. The home is large and beautiful, and it was a big project.

She still lives in the home, but is no longer with her husband.

This year has been extremely hard for Alimova. Her beloved grandmother died and, shortly after, her husband ended the marriage.

“I felt all the energy seep out of me,” she says. “I left the marriage with six houses; we now share the parenting of the children.”

She is now able to look to the future with more positivity. She loves new builds and is planning on realigning her portfolio to reflect this. There are also plans for more “land banking” (another strategy she employs) and she has started a podcast around financial literacy to help others get on the ladder.

Her buy-and-hold strategy will remain ... after her early traumas, houses offer her security. “I want each of my kids to have a house. And I love being able to provide families with lovely homes.” ν