If the last two years are anything to go by then 2018 should be an exciting time for Nellie McQuinn and her property company, Property 165. She’s just won the New Investor of the Year award at the Property Investor Awards in London and after chatting through her various deals it’s not hard to see why. However, she’s not necessarily your typical property investor. “I came from a family steeped in entertainment and to be honest it never crossed my mind that I would do anything other than that! My mother was an actress, my father a producer, my grandmother was a ballet dancer in the original Australian Ballet and my grandfather one of the first television directors in Australia.”
After being born and raised in Sydney, Nellie moved to the UK at the age of 17 whilst on a gap year. “I trained as a dancer and an actress and started producing for my production company, Grass Roots Media, when I was 19. Since then my production company has specialised in creating YouTube videos for children (along with other content). The channels we create content for have over 7 billion views. Entertainment has always been in my blood, however working as a producer made me realise that whilst I love the entertainment industry I also love business and management just as much. Jumping from here into property was an easy transfer of skills. I also still run my production company so I get the best of both worlds!”
With such a family background in the arts I am curious to know why she ever became interested in bricks and mortar. “I was very lucky and had two incredibly strong women raise me; my gran and my mum. I didn’t realise it when I was growing up but my gran was an entrepreneur. She started her own business (a chain of dancewear stores) and also invested in property. Her biggest investment was our family home - in the 1950s she bought a riverfront property in Sydney for £6,000 despite everyone’s protestations.
It was incredible for a woman in this era to have such gumption and it was from the sale of this property that I got my first pot of money to invest. It was gran’s stipulation that this money HAD to go into property – she knew that this would set me up for life. I believe that if she were a young woman in this day and age she would have been an incredible property investor. My drive in property partly comes from a massive desire to do her proud. I was also exposed to property through my mum.
