For the last few years, Melbourne has been the forgotten child of Australia’s property market. While Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide enjoyed extraordinary price growth, Melbourne seemed stuck in neutral. Investors looked elsewhere, headlines focused on the city’s higher taxes and weaker short-term performance, and many concluded that Melbourne had simply lost its shine. I believe…
Australia’s housing shortage is already serious, construction costs remain elevated, finance is expensive and too many proposed developments struggle to stack up financially. Now the Federal Government’s proposed changes to the taxation of discretionary trusts are creating another potential obstacle for the small and medium-sized developers responsible for delivering much of Australia’s new housing. New…
For years, auctions have been the preferred selling method in Australia’s largest property markets, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney. When buyer demand is strong, an auction can create urgency, competition and fear of missing out, encouraging emotional buyers to push the price beyond where a private negotiation may have ended. However, auctions rely on one…
Most of the people I meet who are still waiting to become financially free aren’t lazy and they aren’t unlucky. They work hard, they earn a reasonable income, and they genuinely want to get ahead. Yet somehow the wealth never quite arrives, and after five decades of watching investors succeed and fail, I can tell…
This month the Reserve Bank lifted the cash rate to 4.60%, its fourth increase this year and the highest level since late 2011. Sydney home values are now around 7% below their February peak, the top end of the Melbourne and Sydney markets has fallen more than 10%, and plenty of investors are quietly wondering…
Australia’s changes to negative gearing have been promoted as a way to give first-home buyers a better chance against investors. While some aspiring homeowners will benefit from less investor competition for established properties, particularly apartments and more affordable homes, the policy is being introduced into a rental market that is already seriously undersupplied, and that…
Australia’s rental crisis has been building for years, but new figures suggest the pressure could become even worse. We already know Australia doesn’t have enough homes. Vacancy rates remain tight, rents have risen substantially and population growth continues to create new households requiring somewhere to live. Yet at precisely the time we need more rental…
Over the past two decades, I’ve advised hundreds of property investors at every stage of their wealth journey. Some were purchasing their first investment property, while others already had substantial portfolios and were seeking a clearer strategy to move to the next level. I’ve also worked with investors who owned several properties but found that…
It might not feel like it when you’re at the checkout or watching your mortgage repayments rise, but Australians have quietly become some of the richest people on the planet. According to the latest Allianz Global Wealth Report 2025, the average Australian is now worth €383,720 (about $686,000) — making us the third-wealthiest population in…
Do you remember playing pretend when you were little? Maybe you were a superhero, a dinosaur or a princess. Of course, that was normal when you were little, and it was usually harmless. While most children know the difference between pretending to be a superhero and jumping off the roof thinking they can fly, adults often…
