Kiwi entrepreneur Edna Swart has bought her first home, annoucing the news to her followers on Instagram.
The star of the TVNZ reality show Boss Babes and Celebrity Treasure Island slapped a special "Boss Babe Wins!" sticker on the real estate sign outside her new home, on Auckland's northern fringes.
Swart, 33, was in a celebratory mood, writing on her Instagram post: "I just need a moment to take this in. Never did I think I could be a homeowner."
She said she was "excited to build a future" with her husband, Reid Stephen, in their new-build home.
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She added: "Watch this space. Ed the interior designer in the making."
A video posted on her TikTok account captured the moment she was told by her real esate agent that she was going to be a homeowner.
The news came just days after she went viral on TikTok with a video documenting her housing market experience.
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“Come spend over a million dollars with me,” Swart declared at the start of the video, which racked tens of thousands of views.
She told OneRoof earlier this week that she had being a first-home buyer in Auckland, even in the current market, challenging. “In my corporate world in my late 20s, when everyone else was buying a house, I invested all my money in a business,” she said.
“I was in banking writing mortgages, and when people were buying in 2018 and 2019 I remember thinking, ‘This is a joke. These prices don’t make sense’.”
Swart told OneRoof that she and Stephen were “blessed” to be able to live with Stephen’s parents for a year while they saved their deposit. The couple had paused their search last year after missing out on several houses, but six weeks ago they decided to jump back into the market.
Swart and her husband embrace outside their new home. Photo / TikTok
Swart asks her fans to accompany her own her buying journey in her viral video. Photo / TikTok
They looked at houses on Auckland's North Shore, from Devonport to Mairangi Bay, but nothing ticked all their boxes, until their agent pointed them to two new-build homes on the northern fringes of the city.
Swart said her banking experience helped them set their budget and stress-test affordability should interest rates go up again, and said buying this year felt much less competitive than last, with fairer prices.
She admitted that the “let’s spend $1m” opener hooked in her TikTok audiences, but declined to reveal the actual offer the couple made on their chosen house. “People do want to see what you get for $1m in Auckland. Some of the comments were ‘what the heck’, but it builds aspiration for people," she said.
“We’ve not rushed into it, but everyone would like to own their house. It’s the Kiwi dream.”
Swart said the couple didn’t want to deal with renovations, nor a cold old house, while non-negotiables on her list were a massive wardrobe for her collection of clothes and four bedrooms to have room for her office, visiting family and, one day, a baby.
“It needed to be open-plan. I’m very much a homebody, so a kitchen for entertaining, and dining to fit eight to 10 people.”
Swart is tearful as she opens up about the house-buying process. Photo / Supplied
Edna Swart and her Boss Babes co-star Iyia Liu. Photo / Supplied
She told OneRoof that once the deal closed, she planned to share her experience of moving and designing their new home. “All of a sudden I become an interior designer. [Viewers] have been so engaged with me, so invested, so they want to see.”
Swart, whose posts on social media are a mixture life lessons, exotic holiday locales and skin care tips, runs swimwear and skincare business ed&I body, which she started in 2016. The venture hasn't been without its challenges, with Swart telling the New Zealand Herald last year that she had battled depression and feelings of loneliness.
“You have this pressure on you that you have to be perfect for your online community – then all of a sudden everything was falling apart and I had no control. I felt like my life and business were falling through my fingers, and I didn't know how to communicate that to my community and reach out for help,” she said.
“I'm not everything that you see. I'm also human, and I found it so dark and lonely and I didn't know what to do. I felt like I had failed. Everyone looks to me as the 'boss babe' who has everything sorted, and that was just not the case. I was embarrassed and I hid away from the world.”
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