Property Investment
2 min read
Author: Andrew Nicol
Managing Director, 20+ Years' Experience Investing In Property, Author & Host
Just this week, a client said to me:
“Why didn’t I invest in property 10 years ago? It doesn’t take much time.”
“I could have made like … $10,000 an hour!”
I’d met this lady 10 years ago. She wanted to invest in property and even had the deposit ready.
But then … work got in the way. She didn’t invest.
Fast-forward to last week. We caught up, and she pulled out all the information I gave her a decade ago.
She realised that if she’d bought the property I recommended back in 2015 for $400k … it would be worth around $750k today.
A $350,000 jump.
How many hours does it take to buy and hold a property over a decade? Maybe:
45 hours. To make $350,000.
She would have earned $8,000 an hour from that decision.
How many hours at your job does it take to earn that?
If you earn $80k / year full-time, the answer is 267 hours.
267 hours working to make the same money as 1-hour in property.
Of course, it’s not as simple as buying a property and having $8k magically appear every hour you work. There’s a bit more to it than that.
But the math raises an important question: “How can you spend more time on those high value tasks?”
The book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People introduced the Eisenhower Matrix.
It shows that some tasks are urgent. Some are important. Some are neither.
Most of us spend too much time doing things that feel urgent.
You might think the $10k / hour tasks are in the important AND urgent square.
Wrong.
The $10k / hour tasks are in the Golden Square. The tasks that are important, but not urgent.
They’re the tasks that you know you should do, but never get around to:
You don’t get around to these tasks because, while they’re important, they’re not that urgent.
So it’s easy to postpone when something ‘urgent’ comes up.
Be honest: how much time have you wasted in pointless meetings or scrolling Trade Me, pretending it’s ‘research’?
Those are $40 an hour tasks. And here’s how to start saying ‘no’ –
Why do we never get around to those $10,000 / hour tasks?
You might think: “I don’t have time!”
That’s not it. It’s because other tasks feel more urgent, even if they’re not that important.
You need to consciously press pause on the $40 / hour tasks (like email and pointless meetings).
It’s the only way to create time for the non-urgent tasks that are game-changing.
That might mean:
You’ve got to turn off the busy work so you can do more of the big work.
Remember that investor I mentioned at the start?
She’s finally set a few hours aside to look at property seriously.
She’s now got a property under contract.
And within a week or two … she might just own her first investment property.
All because she started setting time aside for the important, non-urgent tasks.
Now it’s your turn. Which $10,000 / hour task will you finally make space for this week?
Managing Director, 20+ Years' Experience Investing In Property, Author & Host
Andrew Nicol, Managing Director at Opes Partners, is a seasoned financial adviser and property investment expert with 20+ years of experience. With 40 investment properties, he hosts the Property Academy Podcast, co-authored 'Wealth Plan' with Ed Mcknight, and has helped 1,894 Kiwis achieve financial security through property investment.
