An immigrant from China who bought her first home at age 10 has detailed how she became a successful financial analyst.
Amy Hu Sunderland, 43, arrived in the U.S. 34 years ago, not knowing a word of English and with only the clothes on her back.
Today, she is among the top 10 investment 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 an attractive Salt Lake City suburb, she described how she has increased her real estate investments over the years and is now living what she sees as the American dream.
She said this comes after growing up poor, with dirt floors, no electricity or running water in Hunan province, a lifestyle she escaped after emigrating at age nine to live with her father, who had arrived in the U.S. just months earlier.
Amy Hu Sunderland, 43, arrived in the U.S. 34 years ago, not knowing a word of English and with only the clothes on her back.
“I didn’t know what the interest rate was,” she told the paper of her thinking at the time, as a young girl fresh off a plane at Salt Lake City airport.
“Thank God, because it was 12 percent,” the mother of four added of the home she and her father, Yijiang “John” Hu, found while struggling to make ends meet, paying $200 a month in rent for a small apartment in Salt Lake City.
That said, it was she, not her father, who found the property while watching daytime soap operas that taught her English, said the portfolio manager at investment firm Grandeur Peak Global Advisors.
He appeared in an ad that aired between daytime installments of ‘General Hospital’ and ‘All My Children,’ and featured a then-famous local figure known as Dan the Realtor.
The TV agent was showing a house he said was available for $200 a month — $50 less than the new rent the landlord had just imposed.
Eager to help her father, who worked three jobs, Sunderland He called the 800 number that appeared on the screen.
On the other end of the phone she found Dan, who heard her call despite his age, she recalled.
“I saw your ad. I want that house to be on TV,” he reportedly told her.
“I don’t have that house,” he replied. “But I can get you one. When can I talk to your parents?”
Today, she is among the top 10 investment managers in the country and lives in Utah with her husband Seth, she told the Deseret News this month.
The rest fell into place fairly quickly: the estate agent met with Sunderland and his father before quickly realising who had masterminded the scheme.
Upon taking over, Sunderland (who had only been learning English for a year) explained that he wanted a guarantee that payments would never exceed $200.
Dan swore he had been telling the truth and added that the father and daughter would own the house outright in 30 years.
Then, while delivering the Salt Lake Tribune every morning to supplement the take-home pay for his father, who worked as a dishwasher, busboy and food handler, he managed to scrape together the money needed for a down payment.
Within weeks, the dishwasher and the fourth-grader had become the proud owners of a home in downtown Salt Lake City, for which they had paid just $22,000.
But it still took years for the family to achieve success after Mao’s Cultural Revolution forced them to seek a better life in the United States.
But things got better: Sunderland eventually returned to China to care for his ailing mother, who was left behind.
She was able to bring her to Utah, before eventually using the equity she earned from purchasing that first home to pay off family and friends who had shelled out money to help her and her mother.
She said this comes after growing up in poverty, with dirt floors, no electricity or running water in Hunan province, a lifestyle she escaped after emigrating at age nine to live with her father, who had arrived in the U.S. just months earlier.
He soon had enough money to go to college and graduated 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 even before graduating, where she met her husband, a fellow financial analyst.
The two soon began to raise a family and soon, through a combination of start-up ownership, waitressing, working at TCBY Yogurt and Goldman Sachs, she was able to pay off all of the family’s debts.
Today, his real estate holdings total dozens of residential units and some commercial properties, all in Salt Lake City.
But despite all these achievements, along with his success as a stock analyst, Sunderland still downplays his success.
“I guess I’m just a small-town girl trying to figure out what’s going on,” she told the Tribune during An article they did about her in 2013.
‘We never had television, we never saw cars, we never had taps.
“At the time, I was very angry with my parents for taking me away from everything I knew,” she added. “It was a big transition.”
He went on to describe how that first purchase made it all possible.
“We were lucky because the house we bought for $20,000 appreciated to about $100,000,” he said.
“We took out some of the capital and started buying rental properties,” she said, recalling the need to pay back all those who had been helping her and her family.
“Your environment defines who you are,” the successful consultant concluded. “My parents are very thrifty and I inherited that as well, since I don’t like to spend or waste money.”
