An immigrant from China who bought her first home at age 10 shares how she became a successful financial analyst.
Amy Hu Sunderland, 43, came to the U.S. 34 years ago, speaking no English and wearing only the clothes on her back.
Today, she is one of the top 10 female wealth managers in the country and lives in Utah with her husband Seth, she said. Deseret News this month.
Posing for a photo from a sauna overlooking her home in a desirable Salt Lake City suburb, she talked about how she’s grown her real estate investments over the years and is now living what she calls the American dream.
She says she grew up in poverty, with dirt floors, no electricity and no running water in Hunan Province, a lifestyle she fled when she emigrated at age nine to live with her father, who had traveled to the US just months earlier.
Amy Hu Sunderland, 43, arrived in the US 34 years ago – without speaking a word of English, only with the clothes on her back
“I didn’t know what interest was,” she told the newspaper of her thinking at the time, when she was a young girl, just off a plane at Salt Lake City Airport.
“Thank goodness, because it was 12 percent,” the mother of four added of the home she and her father Yijiang “John” Hu moved into when they were struggling to make ends meet, paying $200 a month in rent for a small Salt Lake City apartment.
Yet it was she, not her father, who discovered the ad while watching soap operas to learn English, said the portfolio manager at investment firm Grandeur Peak Global Advisors.
It appeared in an advertisement placed between episodes of “General Hospital” and “All My Children,” which featured a then-famous local figure known as Dan the Realtor,
The TV agent showed a house that he said was available for $200 a month, which was $50 less than the new rent their landlord had just put in place.
Sunderland was keen to help her father, who worked three jobs called the 800 number flashing on the screen.
On the other end of the line, she said, she was met with Dan, who despite his age, listened to her call.
“I saw your commercial. I want that house on TV,” she allegedly told him.
“I don’t have that house,” he replied back. “But I can get you one. When can I talk to your parents?”
Today, she is one of the nation’s top 10 female wealth managers and lives in Utah with her husband, Seth, she told the Deseret News this month.
The rest quickly fell into place when the agent met Sunderland and her father and quickly realised who the mastermind behind the plan was.
Sunderland took over, having learned English for only a year. She explained to him that she wanted a guarantee that the payments would never exceed $200.
Then he swore that he had told the truth and added that father and daughter would own the house outright within 30 years.
She then delivered the Salt Lake Tribune every morning to supplement her father’s income as a dishwasher, busboy and food processor. She managed to scrape together a down payment.
Within weeks, the dishwasher and the fourth-grader were the proud owners of a home in downtown Salt Lake City for which they paid just $22,000.
But it took years for the family to find success, after Mao’s Cultural Revolution forced them to pursue a better life in the US.
But things got better: Sunderland eventually returned to China to care for her ailing mother, who stayed behind.
She was able to bring her to Utah and used the equity she had built up from purchasing her first home to pay back her family and friends who had freed up money to help her and her mother.
This comes after growing up in poverty, with a dirt floor, no electricity and no running water in Hunan province, she said — a lifestyle she escaped after emigrating at age nine to live with her father, who had traveled to the U.S. just months earlier.
She soon had enough money to attend college, graduating magna cum laude from the University of Utah’s Eccles School of Business.
There she did so well academically that she was hired by Goldman Sachs before she even graduated. It was there that she met her husband, a fellow financial analyst.
The two soon started a family, and the combination of the startup property, her job as a waitress, and her work at TCBY Yogurt and Goldman Sachs allowed her to pay off all of her family debts.
Today, her real estate holdings include dozens of residential units and a few commercial properties, all in Salt Lake City.
But despite all these achievements and her success as a stock analyst, Sunderland still downplays her success.
“I guess I’m just a small town girl trying to figure out what’s going on,” she told the Tribune during a profile piece they wrote about her in 2013.
‘We never had television, we never saw cars, we never had cranes.
“I was really angry at my parents at the time because they were taking me away from everything I knew,” she added. “It was a big transition.”
She went on to describe how that first purchase made it all possible.
“We were lucky because the house we bought for $20,000 was now worth $100,000,” she said.
“We took some of the equity out and just started buying rental properties,” she said, remembering that she had to repay everyone who had helped her and her family.
‘Your environment determines who you are,’ concluded the successful consultant. ‘My parents are very frugal and I inherited that too, because I don’t like to spend and waste money.’