Review Of Property Quadrants By Nichole Lewis
I’ve been trying to broaden my finance related reading to include property investing so I’ve been trying to pick out titles like the Female Investor. So here’s my review of Property Quadrants by Nichole Lewis, my latest property investment read!
*Disclaimer: This post will include an affiliate link. If you choose to click through and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission, at a no cost to you! If you’d like to support my blog by using the link, thank you!
Who is Nichole Lewis
Nichole Lewis is an Auckland based full time property investor who has won property awards and as the property queen.
Nichole has been investing in property since her early 20s, but lost everything in the Global Financial Crisis.
She has since reflected on the mistakes she made that lead to her losing everything when the market took a turn, and rebuilt her property portfolio on a better foundation.
Nichole aims to share the lessons she learnt and help others achieve great results with property, which Property Quadrants is also about.
What is the book about
In Property Quadrants Nichole explains that in her view, there’s four different types of property purchases you can make, quadrants 1 to 4.
Properties in quadrants 1 and 2 will cost you money, whereas properties in quadrants 3 and 4 will make you money.
As you may guess, quadrant 1 property is your family home, but quadrant 2 property could be a holiday home or an investment property that costs money to have.
Quadrant 3 properties you flip for a quick profit and quadrant 4 properties you hold for long term and they provide you with passive income.
The book goes through Nichole’s methods of how she uses quadrant 3 and 4 properties to make money and finance properties in quadrants 1 and 2.
Nichole also shares property success stories that she has helped people achieve.
She also goes through different ways of making money with property without money.
My review of Property Quadrants
I found Property Quadrants quite an inspiring book and a bit of different take on property investing that I have used to reading about.
The book has Nichole’s basic method of choosing what kind of property to invest in in quadrants 3 and 4, and emphasises the importance of making sure that your numbers make sense before even thinking about making an offer.
There is a lot of tips on especially flipping properties and how to be successful with it.
Reading the book did get my mind racing and created an itch to hop on TradeMe to look at property listings, even though I had previously only briefly thought about the possibility of investing in property.
I do have to say though that the book only gives an overview of Nichole’s methods and I imagine that the deep dive, and how to actually calculate numbers when choosing an investment property etc, will be in the online course she sells on her website.
While I did enjoy the book, and like I mentioned earlier, felt inspired by it towards property investing, there was one thing that left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
In the quadrant 3 section where she talks about flipping property and dealing with tradespeople, she advised to insist on fixed quotes rather than estimates.
I do understand the logic behind this advice but as a tradesman’s partner I have feelings about it anyway.
She emphasises in the book to strive for deals where everyone involved wins and to not be greedy, so to me it struck as a bit off to insist on fixed quotes when it came to work being done to the properties.
When quoting, someone loses. Either the quote comes under the cost and the tradesperson has to take the loss, or the quote is over and the client pays too much.
In theory therefore, charge up is a much fairer way of doing things for everyone involved, especially with renovations when no-one can actually tell what is going to be found once the work commences.
So to insist that tradespeople take on the risk that your asset is in worse condition than can reasonably be expected doesn’t sound like you have everyone’s best interest at heart.
But anyway, I do understand that there are people who take advantage of charge ups and “milk” it, which is why a quote is safer for the client, especially if you do not know their work ethic well.
I do recommend the book, it opened my eyes to all different possibilities in property investing and how to make the best of it, and has really made me want to read more about it.
You can find your own copy *here if you are in NZ, or *here if you are anywhere else (or if you’d prefer the Kindle version).
Have you read Property Quadrants? Or would you be interested to read it? I’d love to hear in the comments!
