BeamVibe

A university dropout is raking in $258,000 in passive income every year after developing a property portfolio worth almost $7 million.

Stallon Zayya, 24, from Sydney, makes a significant amount of money from his positively-geared properties in Wollongong, southern NSW.

He also has a six-figure cryptocurrency and non-fungible token (NFT) portfolio as well as running a lucrative e-commerce business that has made him $10 million in sales.

Mr Zayya’s entrepreneurial streak began in high school when a YouTube channel he created about gaming took off in 2014, netting him $4000 a month.

He then went into university doing a double major of finance and financial planning.

While studying, he dabbled in the drop shipping industry — where he would buy products directly from the manufacturer to fill a customer’s order then sell it on at a slightly higher price.

His online business went slowly at first but when Covid-19 arrived on Australia’s shores in 2020, things started to pick up considerably.

He made $500,000 in 50 days from selling a pet brush.

“’Screw this’’, I thought, and decided to drop out of uni,” Mr Zayya recalled, speaking to news.com.au.

Fast forward three years and Mr Zayya has bought his mum a luxury car and earlier this month snapped up his fourth property, with all his real estate assets now worth $6.8 million.

The Sydneysider is the first to admit he didn’t get off to the smoothest smart when it came to making money.

While at university, Mr Zayya was determined to find his niche but it took some time before he discovered what he was good at.

He worked briefly in a sneaker reselling business but acknowledged “that didn’t work out for me”.

The then-teenager eventually came across drop shipping and researched deeply, learning that most of the success came from advertising and jumping onto a trend early.

Mr Zayya wasted money on seven different products before he came across the winning one — a pet brush.

“You can only sell it for period of about two to four months, then the market becomes saturated,” he explained.

Other successful products he’s sold include two-in-one shorts for men, shoes and hair brushes for women.

“I sell pretty much anything that works,” he said.

For each product, he makes about $300,000 on average, before he has to move on as competitors start to sell the same items.

Last year the business generated $9.8 million in sales.

At the same time, Mr Zayya has been investing in NFT and cryptocurrency. He poured around $250,000 into ethereum — although this would be worth substantially less now after the cryptocurrency crash.

He also bought an NFT valued at over $165,000 and sold a plot of land in Facebook’s virtual reality, Metaverse, for $150,000.

“It came to a time when I had over $1 million liquid just sitting there,” he said. “To me personally I hate dead money, I’d rather go through and invest it.”

With his fortune growing, Mr Zayya resolved to buy his first property.

“My goal is to have 10 properties by the age of 30,” Mr Zayya said.

He’s well on the way, with four under his belt already at the age of 24.

In April last year, he snapped up his first property, a Wollongong house for $1.3 million.

He had to pay a 20 per cent deposit but because of his massive fortune, it took just seven days for a bank to approve his home loan.

Then just two months later, in June, when Australia’s property craze was in full swing, Mr Zayya snapped up two more properties.

One was a similar price to his first purchase, at $1.31 million, and he also bought a block of units in an off-market deal for $1.55 million.

“I got renters in straight away, nothing stays not rented, at most five days,” he said, explaining they were all positively geared.

With property values across Australia increasing by an average of 25 per cent last year, Mr Zayya also experienced some windfalls after he got his homes re-evaluated by the bank.

His first house valued at $1.32 million rose to $1.72 million and the $1.31 million property is now worth $1.73 million.

His best investment was the $1.55 million block of units which ballooned to $2.1 million.

Using equity from those, he was able to buy his fourth property earlier this month, a block of two units for $1.275 million.

“It’s essentially a free property because of the equity,” he added.

“This brings total yearly rental income approximately all my properties to $258,000.”

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