Recently we interviewed the lovely Jane Slack-Smith from Your Property Success  and Investors Choice Mortgages. It was the second time Jane has been on the show and it won’t be the last! I know this simply because, aside from being fun to talk to and a nice person, Jane knows what she is talking about and I learn something everytime I speak with her. Hopefully, therefore, you also learn something everytime we speak with her!

So what do you do when you know lots about the topic of property and investing and want to share it with the world? Well, of course you come on the Everyday Property Investing show! Ok, that was just a plug for us, but what you really do is write a book! That, EPI readers is just what Jane has done! In fact, she wrote two – but that was just an accident…more on that later!

So, Your Property Success with Renovation is Jane’s recently released book and it has joined the list of books that lives on my ever expanding bookshelf of property and investment books.

I love a book that is well structured and this one definitely is. It takes the reader through a logical process starting at understanding property and understanding your own goals. This is one of the reasons I am into Jane’s teachings, she really makes sure that you’ve thought through your endgame and then gives you practical steps for implementing your plan.

Part I of the book is all the setting the foundations. This is about assessing your goals, understanding risk and the level of comfort you have with risk, choosing the right strategy and understanding finance and how the banks see you in terms of your ability to obtain finance. Importantly from all of this, Jane helps you to set your buying criteria with which you can move forward.

A core component of this book is Jane’s Trident Strategy – and although these concepts aren’t new – it’s a solid strategy that reminds you of what is important. The three main components of the strategy are to:

1. Buy in a high capital growth area
2. Buy under market value
3. Add equity through renovation

The style is casual and easy to read. In fact, having met Jane a few times now, I could hear her in my head whilst reading this book and it felt just like a conversation that we could be having. That’s a good trait to have for an investing book as many that I have read can be slow and boring in parts, whereas I was happily entertained and interested throughout this one.

Part II was my favourite section of the book. It covered finding and purchasing a property. Often when you read property investing books the part about how you find the right property can be very theoretical or simply glossed over, but there is some really great, practical information in this section about how to find, select and assess the right location and the right property. Once again, really importantly, Jane gives a reality check on finding a property where renovation will provide you with a profitable outcome. This is an area where many renovators fall down – they’ve chosen a property that was never going to work from the beginning and so getting the numbers of assessing your renovation down is so very important. If you are planning on using renovation in your investing strategy – and surely you would be if you purchased a book with a title of  ‘Your Property Success with Renovation’ –then make sure you pay attention in this section!

Part III of the book covers the more practical side of renovating. It doesn’t go too deep here though, so if you’re looking for a book on the ins and outs of actually performing a renovation, this isn’t it. Jane does provide some good practical tips in this section, but for me, it was more of an ‘overview’than providing comprehensive start to finish renovation guide – but of course, this is what is intended. I believe that the real value of this book though is in parts I and II.

Summary

Your Property Success with Renovation is easy to read, provides good foundation information and practical steps to determining your goals and strategy and then finding the right location and property. It makes you want to get out there and ‘get amongst it’! Jane also has a heap of book bonuses that you can download from her website as an accompaniment to the book itself, such as checklists and spreadsheets – and we all know I’m quite partial to a good spreadsheet or checklists (just take a look at our Everyday Property Pack if you don’t believe me!).

Jane is very knowledgeable and being a very methodical and analytical person she has great knowledge to share for property investors. I enjoyed the book and certainly found some great information and tips to put into place for my own investing and therefore can recommend that you too will find Your Property Success with Renovation entertaining and educational.