Darrin and I first met around 2001, while my partner (and now wife) were renting a 2-bedroom unit in Havelock North and about to buy our first investment property. Darrin was recommended as someone who could assist us with arranging finance, and we have pretty much used him ever since. Our first property purchase was a daunting prospect, even though at the time we were only paying $68,000 for our investment property! Darrin was able to guide us through the lending quagmire and we haven’t looked back. Since then we have done around 20 property purchases across investment properties, our own home, as well as re-financing during the sale of some properties, all with the assistance from Darrin.
We continue to be active in the residential property investment market (apart from a prolonged hiatus between 2010 and 2014), buying long term buy and hold residential investment properties. Our strategy has evolved over the years, as a result of trial and error and learning some lessons along the way.
Since meeting Darrin, his support and financial advice has been instrumental in enabling us to build a strong investment portfolio generating strong cash flows.
One key piece of advice Darrin gave us about 5 years ago, was around considering selling a couple of rental properties. Following through on this advice has paid big dividends, enabled us to “reset” our underperforming rental portfolio and roll long term gains on properties we had held for many years, into higher yielding properties. The result of this has been an acceleration of our property investing success and growth since then.
Paired with this has been the establishment of my own Civil Engineering Consultancy in 2017, called CivilTEC (www.civiltec.co.nz), which focuses in providing Civil Engineering services to our clients in both the public and private sectors, to help bring our clients vision of their project, to life. We also partner with other local consultancies to bring the best team to the table for every project. The business has a strong workload, requiring me to bring on another Engineer within the first year of starting CivilTEC, and with CivilTEC’s 2-year anniversary having been reached in May this year, we are looking to recruit again.
Starting my own business has given me the tremendous opportunity to work with a diverse range of clients ranging from Napier City Council, Hasting District Council, Kapiti Coast District Council and the NZ Transport Agency delivering road safety initiatives and cycling & walking projects; working with local Iwi to help develop Papakainga; assisting other like-minded consultancies on roading projects across New Zealand; and working with individuals, couples and families who wish to develop their a piece of land to create their own small “slice of paradise”.
All of this success and fun along the way isn’t possible without having a great team of advisors, of which I consider the part that Darrin plays in our team, as being pivotal to our success.
On that note, if you have any lending queries or need financial advice, I would highly recommend contacting Darrin and his team at DM Consult.

Regards,
Richard Gruiters