Kiwi entrepreneur Edna Swart is about to buy her first home – and the process has left her feeling quite emotional.
The star of the TVNZ reality show Boss Babes and Celebrity Treasure Island has been documenting her housing market experience in a series of videos promoted on her popular TikTok channel.
“Come spend over a million dollars with me,” Swart declares at the start of her house-buying journey.
Dressed in a black vest and wearing sun glasses, she invites her fans to accompany her and her husband, Reid Stephen, as they tour two new-build homes on Auckland’s northern fringes.
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Filming herself on her phone, Swart reveals her frustrations. “What I mean by over a mill is it’s the bank’s money, because we are trying to buy a house,” she says.
“To be honest with you, I thought buying a house would be easier but it has been a bit of a mission trying to find the perfect house, so we’re looking at two houses today and hopefully trying to put an offer in.”
Option one is a four-bedroom house that’s listed with Harcourts Cooper Co.
Swart takes her fans straight to the master bedroom, where she gets excited about the spacious walk-in wardrobe. “I am gelling with this. I have been wanting a walk-in wardrobe for ever!”
As she tours the rooms, she notes her likes and dislikes, and takes a peek at the attic space, which says could be turned into a kids’ playroom.
A listing photo from the second house, which Swart and her partner have put an offer on. Photo / Supplied
Swart is tearful as she opens up about the house-buying process. Photo / Supplied
After leaving the open home, Swart and her partner compare notes in the car. “I feel like we’re still torn between the two houses,” she says. Stephen agrees, but he is a fan of the parking at house one: “I’ve got to buy a boat,” he says, as he backs out the driveway. Swart jokingly chides him: “The boat can wait – we’ve got to buy a house first.”
House two, which is in the same development, has three-bedrooms, but comes with a pool and a small putting green on the lawn (something for Stephen). Swart notes that the walk-in wardrobe is smaller than house one's, but she likes the flow, the homely vibe and the kitchen: “It’s so freaking nice.”
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In the car, after the open home, Swart and Stephen announce their choice to their fans: “Definitely the second one,” says Swart. “It feel so much more homely, so guess what. We’ve put an offer in. Watch this space.”
In a confessional video posted a day later, she told her TikTok fans: “I’m about to spend a million dollars in the next couple of days. We currently have an offer in, which has pretty much been accepted and we've got five days of DD until we go unconditional, but I want to be real for a second.
“I am pretty emotional about this whole process, and I guess achievement, milestone, getting this first home. I am 33 and I never thought I would get to this point and be able to put in an offer on such a house.”
Tearful and choking up, she said: “To this day I’ve never truly felt like I've had a home. I’ve couch-surfed and I’ve slept in my car ... standing here today, I am emotional about this.”
Edna Swart and her Boss Babes co-star Iyia Liu. Photo / Supplied
“I shouldn’t discount myself because I know how hard I’ve worked. I’m going to be homeowner. I don’t want 10 investment properties and a bach and a boat or anything. I just want one home. I want to feel safe.”
She reiterated the above sentiments to OneRoof in a phone interview, detailing how hard she found being a first-home buyer in Auckland. “In my corporate world in my late 20s, when everyone else was buying a house, I invested all my money in a business,” she told OneRoof.
“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 said 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.
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 in the 2021 series of Celebrity Treasure Island. Photo / Supplied
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.”
She told OneRoof that once the deal closes later this week, she plans 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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