Opes Partners' founder and managing partner, Andrew Nicol. Photo / Supplied.
Property investor and founder of Opes Partners, Andrew Nicol says he aims to always own more properties than his age.
He’s 41 now and has 43 properties.
“I come from a family where we knew nothing about money,” he says. “Other than the fact we didn’t have any.”
But growing up in the working-class Christchurch suburb of Waltham, he was determined to understand it.
Nichol considered going to university but found his way to a banking job that allowed him to learn about wealth.
“I started to learn a bit more about clients that had quite a bit of money, and the common theme among those clients was that they were property investors...people that just had normal jobs.”
“You might get, get a truck driver and a teacher, and they’re on modest incomes, but they own like four or five properties.”
That made him realise he wanted to be a property investor.
“So everything in my being for the last 20 years has been about property investment and making money off property.”
Speaking to Money Talks, Nicol doesn’t actually recommend that aspirational investors follow his path, which he describes as being far too risky for most people.
That was the logic behind setting up Opes Partners.
“I thought there’s gotta be a better way for people to get advice and for me to share my experiences with people.”
So 13 years ago he started the property investment advice company.
The company has grown dramatically, as has his own portfolio.
He’s come a long way from the first investment he made in Christchurch 22 years ago.
So have the numbers involved in buying a house.
“The first house I ever bought, at 19, was $230,000. I only needed to have a 5% deposit,” he says.
“I managed to save about two-thirds of my deposit. And my girlfriend at the time, she’d saved the other third...and then we went house shopping.
“The numbers are bigger now,” he concedes.
But it’s too easy to look back and compare what the relevant number 20 years ago with the numbers now, he says.
“The way I did it is I hustled until I could achieve what I wanted to achieve, and too many people make an excuse for themself and say, well, I’m not buying back then. It’s too expensive now.”
“Houses are expensive. That’ll be the biggest transaction you make in your life. It should be hard.”
But it remains achievable, he says.
“I met a girl the other day on our podcast, and she bought her property at 18. She’s better than me. And she did it the same way, hustling. She worked as a waitress. Then she worked at a day spa. After school. She worked for her mom’s company.”
There’s no special secret to it, he says.
“I think the secret to success, having owned a number of businesses, is work harder than everyone else.
“There’s no magic bullet to making money. You’ve just gotta grind.”
Nicol is well aware that some of his comments upset people and that property developers are polarising in New Zealand.
“It’s become a bit of a political football.
“[There’s] the whole argument is that it’s hard for first-home buyers, and there seems to be this misconception out there. I think it, it is a little bit of political spin.”
“That, grubby investors going out there, outbidding first-home buyers and the first-home buyers just don’t stand a chance. That’s just not the case.”
There are currently more first-home buyers in the market than there have been in generations, he says.
I do think we should be encouraging first-home buyers. I think the problem with first-home buyers sometimes is that it’s hard, and nowadays we don’t like it when something’s hard and we don’t work towards it, we just complain.”
The other issue many economic commentators have with New Zealand’s property obsession is that it is non-productive, inflating Australian bank profits and draining our current account.
Shouldn’t we aim to be more sophisticated in our investing habits?
“I think there is some truth to that,” Nicol says.
“I think that we need to be better savers, and we do need to have a bit more of an understanding of our managed funds.”
But it will take a long time to re-educate people, he says.
“So for most of us, we’ve made our money through property accidentally. We bought a house because we wanted somewhere to live.”
“It went up in value and we’ve made some money. So then it’s natural to have that bias towards...well it worked for me, then great, I’m gonna go do it again.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.